The Five

Introduction

The Five, also known as the Strong handful, the Five Strong and New Russian School, were five prominent Russian composers of the 19th century who collaborated to create a distinctive national style of classical music. The members of the group were Balakirev, who was the leader of the group, Kiwi, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘The Five (Composers)’)though the group is best known for its three great composers who are Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov (INTRODUCTION TO CLASSICAL MUSIC - Post-Romanticism in Russia).

This group aimed to create an independent Russian school of music in the footsteps of Glinka. They had to fight for the "national character", turn to what they called "oriental" melodies and prefer the music of the program over the absolute.  To create this Russian style of classical music, Stasov wrote that the group incorporated four characteristics. The first was the rejection of academicism and fixed Western forms of synthesis. The second was the incorporation of musical elements from eastern nations into the Russian Empire. This was a quality that would later become known as musical orientalism. The third was a progressive and anti-academic approach to music. The fourth was the incorporation of compositional mechanisms associated with popular music. These four characteristics distinguished the group's compositions from their contemporaries (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five’). Further objective of composers Kuchka was to prove that there was a unique and indigenous Russian music that could challenge the German teaching of Anton Rubinstein at the newly founded St. Petersburg Conservatory (The Political in Rimsky-Korsakov's Operas). For this reason, They invented a new style of musical nationalism which incorporated genres of folk songs to include what was considered Russian culture. These five composers, in addition to several other Russian composers, were responsible for shaping musical nationalism in Russia. They achieved this by combining the literature and music that represented the country (Taylor).

Starting Point

The second half of the 19th century was an important period for Russian art and cultural life. In particular, the 60s were a flourishing period of clear ideas, fine arts, theater, Russian literature (A LOOK AT RUSSIAN MUSICAL CULTURE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY). This decade was marked by nationalist movements that spread throughout Europe. Composers, especially in Russia, even if they were not nationalists, expressed through their music the aspirations and specificity of peoples (INTRODUCTION TO CLASSICAL MUSIC - Post-Romanticism in Russia).

These led to the formation of the Group of Five, which began in 1856, after a meeting between Balakirev and Kiwi (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘The Five (Composers)’). After this meeting, Balakirev and critic Vladimir Stasov, who publicly espoused a nationalist agenda for the Russian arts, began to gather young composers through whom they would spread ideas and gain followers. All five were essentially self-taught and avoided conservative and "ordinary" musical techniques (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five’).

In 1867, the gradual split of the group began, as Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov wanted to distance themselves from Balakirev's influence as they now considered it suffocating. They began to go in new synthetic directions (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five’). The group split completely in 1870, after Balakirev's retirement from the music scene (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘The Five (Composers)’).

Music

The nineteenth century was the century in which emotion and imagination prevailed. It encompassed concepts such as individuality and freedom. New musical forms were introduced and older ones evolved. The composers focused on timbre and tried to convey musically a mood and exhausted all the sound possibilities that could be produced. In Russian music, two conflicting tendencies appeared, conservative and progressive. The first showed a shift towards Naturalism and Realism using national elements outside Western standards, while the latter presented national elements through the prism of the romantic ideal. To the first trend, belongs the Group of Five, while in the second Rubinstein (1887-1982) and Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) (Kyriosoglou and Talakoudi).

The Five They came mainly from the countryside. Its members were motivated by Russian nationalist ideas and tried to include in their works elements of rural Russian life, build national pride and prevent the penetration of Western ideals into their culture (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘The Five (Composers)’). The creations of the composers of the company, despite their diversity, were united by one goal (A LOOK AT RUSSIAN MUSICAL CULTURE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY), the creation of a Russian national music by choosing the most expressive genres: opera, ballet and symphonic music (INTRODUCTION TO CLASSICAL MUSIC - Post-Romanticism in Russia). For this reason, they studied in depth folk songs (A LOOK AT RUSSIAN MUSICAL CULTURE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY). Further, the group's music was filled with sounds that mimicked Russian life (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘The Five (Composers)’). They tried to incorporate what they heard into village songs, Cossack and Caucasian dances, church chants and the ringing of church bells. They also tried to reproduce the long and lyrical peasant song, what Glinka had once called the "soul of Russian music." (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘The Five (Composers)’). The music of this group inspired other great composers such as Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Rachmaninov, who were inspired by national identity while continuing the romantic tradition (INTRODUCTION TO CLASSICAL MUSIC - Post-Romanticism in Russia).

The Five and Tchaikovsky

In 1869, Tchaikovsky entered into an employment relationship with Balakirev. the result was Tchaikovsky's first acclaimed masterpiece, the fantastic Romeo and Juliet, a work that the Five embraced wholeheartedly. When Tchaikovsky wrote a positive review of Rimsky-Korsakov's Fantasy on Serbian subjects, he was accepted into the circle, despite concerns about the academic nature of his musical background (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five’).

Tchaikovsky's analysis of each of the Five It was unrestrained. He wrote in the newspaper that all the composers in the group were talented but also "infected to the core", with arrogance and "a purely reluctant confidence in their superiority". While at least some of his observations may seem distorted and biased, he also mentions some details that sound clear and true. His critique of Rimsky-Korsakov's creative judgment is very accurate. He also called Mussorgsky the most musically gifted of the Five, although Tchaikovsky could not appreciate the forms that the originality of the second took. He called Kywi "a talented dilettante" whose music "has no originality, but is clever and graceful." He described Mussorgsky as "a hopeless case," superior in talent but "narrow-minded, without any impulse toward self-perfection." He badly underestimated Borodin's technique by saying that "he has talent, even strong one, but he has been lost to neglect ... and his technique is so weak that he cannot write a single line of music without outside help," and gave Balakirev far less credit than he deserved, especially as Balakirev helped him conceive and shape it Romeo and Juliet. He specifically referred to him as someone of "immense talent" but who had also "done a lot of harm" as "the general inventor of all the theories of this strange group." (Wikipedia Contributors, ‘Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five’).

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