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Russian Composers: "The Five"
Russian Composers: "The Five"
POSTED JANUARY 20, 2022
Russia developed its classical music tradition later than many European countries. Through the 18th century, Russian music consisted mainly of church music, folk songs and music for dances, although Italian, French, and German operas were popular among the middle and upper classes.
In the latter part of the 18th century, Catherine II (later known as Catherine the Great) became the Empress of Russia. During her 34-year reign, Catherine westernized Russia and led her country into full participation in the political and cultural life of Europe. She championed the arts, reorganized the Russian law code, and significantly expanded Russian territory. Shortly after her reign, Russia's classical music tradition began.
The first Russian composer of international renown was Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857). Considered the founder of Russian classical music, Glinka created classical compositions with elements of Russian folk and religious music. His operas Ruslan and Lyudmila and A Life for the Tsar, are considered ground-breaking works in the establishment of Russian national music, although they are loosely modeled on Italian opera.
In 1859 the Russian Music Society was founded to foster musical performances and appreciation for classical music from Western Europe. The most influential figures in the society were the composer Anton Rubinstein and his brother Nikolay, who founded influential conservatories in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
A rival school was founded shortly thereafter. In the 1860's, a group of composers from St. Petersburg came together intent on creating an authentic national sound, continuing Glinka's movement away from the imitation of European classical music by adding in elements of Russian folk music and tales . The group - the New Russian School often referred to as "The Five" or "The Mighty Handful" - was led by Mily Balakirev and included Alexander Borodin, Cesar Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. This new nationalistic sound would distinguish itself from the conventions of Western European forms such as the German lieder and Italian opera. The New Russian School created some of the most loved pieces in the classical music repertoire.
The founder of the New Russian School, Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev (1837-1910) was a composer, pianist, and conductor known today primarily for his work promoting Russian musical nationalism and his encouragement of other Russian composers, most notably Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Often, the musical ideas normally associated with Rimsky-Korsakov or Borodin originated in Balakirev's compositions, which Balakirev played at informal gatherings of The Five. However, his slow pace in completing works for the public deprived him of credit for his inventiveness, and pieces that would have enjoyed success had they been completed in the 1860s and 1870s made a much smaller impact.
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin's "day job" was as a chemist. Borodin had a brilliant musical talent and composed as a hobby until his premature death at age 53 in 1887. A doctor and chemist by profession and training, Borodin made important early contributions to organic chemistry. Although he is presently known better as a composer, he regarded medicine and science as his primary occupations, only practicing music and composition in his spare time or when he was ill. Borodin's triumph with his first symphony spurred him to start on his second, also in 1869. He also became involved with an opera project which was to become Prince Igor. In the 1870s, due largely to the efforts of Franz Liszt, his works began to make inroads in concert halls in the West. Borodin's Second Symphony, his two string quartets and his symphonic poem, In the Steppes of Central Asia, were composed in the productive years from 1869 to 1881.
Borodin's beautiful String Quartet No. 2 in D Major (sidebar) was dedicated to his wife on their twenty-fifth anniversary. A wonderful sense of affection permeates the quartet, and some scholars suggest that the work has a "missing" program evoking the couple's first meeting in Heidelberg.
Borodin's symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia (sidebar - analysis and performance video) depicts an interaction between Russians and Asians in the steppe lands of Central Asia. A caravan is crossing the desert under the protection of Russian troops. The opening theme, representing the Russians, is heard first; after it, the strains of an ornamented eastern melody on English horn, representing the Central Asians. Amid these two ethnic melodies Borodin inserts a "traveling" theme in pizzicato that represents the plodding hoofs of the horses and camels.
César Antonovich Cui (1835- 1918) was a Russian composer and music critic. His primary goal as a critic was to promote the music of contemporary Russian composers, especially the works of his now better-known co-members of The Five. Cui wrote many works for piano and for chamber groups (including three string quartets), numerous choruses, and several orchestral works, but his most significant efforts are reflected in the operas, of which he composed fifteen of varying proportions.
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881) strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on Bald Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.
Mussorgsky originally composed Pictures at an Exhibition as a set of short pieces for the piano to honor his good friend Viktor Hartmann, an artist who tragically died of an aneurism in 1873 at the age of 39. In Pictures, Mussorgsky depicts himself walking through the exhibition and contemplating Hartmann’s works. The piano pieces were later adapted for a full orchestra by various composers, which is how they are played today. A performance of the most famous orchestration. by Maurice Ravel, is in the sidebar.
The piece begins with what Mussorgsky called a “Promenade in modo russico”. Promenade is French for “a walk,” and “in modo russico” is Italian for “in the Russian style.” A kind of musical self-portrait, it depicts Mussorgsky walking into the great hall of the Imperial Academy. The Promenade melody reappears throughout Pictures as Mussorgsky walks from one work of art to another. The artworks are now lost, but they live on in Mussorgsky's marvelous musical depictions, which are described in the Houston Symphony's program notes in the sidebar.
Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 - 1908) was a master of orchestration, a professor of music, and the most influential of The Five. Besides creating a considerable body of original Russian nationalist compositions, he prepared works by The Five for performance, which brought them into the active classical repertoire, and shaped a generation of younger composers and musicians during his decades as an educator. Rimsky-Korsakov is considered the main architect of what the classical-music public considers the "Russian style". He influenced non-Russian composers as well - including Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, and Ottorino Respighi.
Shortly after his appointment as a professor of musical composition, harmony, and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871, Rimsky-Korsakov undertook a rigorous three-year program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five.
Rimsky-Korsakov's music is heavily inspired by Russian folk melodies and old legends, full of Russian tunes, exotic rhythms, and imaginative orchestration. Although his studies of classical music and his change in attitude regarding music education caused some dissension with his fellow nationalist composers, he incorporated the musical ideals espoused by The Five. He employed Orthodox liturgical themes in the Russian Easter Festival Overture (sidebar), folk song in Capriccio Espagnol and orientalism in Scheherazade, his best known work.
His symphonies are composed using the classical four movement structure. Symphony No. 2, which he renamed "Antar" [sidebar] after extensive revisions, is a composition for symphony orchestra in four movements. The work was inspired by an Arabian tale: Antar, an enemy of all mankind, has become a recluse in the desert. After saving a gazelle from a large bird, he falls asleep exhausted. He dreams he is in the palace of the Queen of Palmyra. The queen, the fairy Gul-Nazar, was the gazelle Antar saved from the bird. As a reward, she grants Antar to three wishes. He chooses vengeance, power and love but asks that queen take his life if those pleasures become tiresome. The legend as a whole is incorporated in the opening movement; the other three depict each of his three joys.
Sources: Britannica, Express to Russia, Hello Music Theory, Facts and Details, Wikipedia, Classical Net, Favorite Classical Composers, Mahler Foundation
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