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Russian Nationalism: The Five Fathers

Nico Ruggieri
ID #0821660
MHIS-203
11/23/18
 The Romantic era of Western music was a period of great innovation and discovery
amongst composers in many countries. An important catalyst of the new styles of music was a
growing sense of nationalism, or pride for one’s country. Following the radical French and
American revolutions, many European territories under the control of foreign empires were
inspired to develop their own voices for rebellion. Of all the mediums to express heritage,
national music became one of the most influential, embedding traditional folklore and folk songs
into large-scale compositions. Divided opinions of tsars and kings made it challenging for some
composers to develop the national style, but with a determined and passionate group of
composers, territories such as Russia were able to create a new style of national music.
Russian national music was refined and popularized primarily by a group of five
musicians known as “The Mighty Handful”. The Mighty Handful consisted of Mily Balakirev,
Aleksandr Borodin, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Centered in
St. Petersburg, the group of musicians got their renowned name in 1867 from music critic
Vladimir Stasov who reviewed one of Balakirev’s performances in the St. Petersburg News.
Stasov was a proponent of Russian national music and declared the five composers, plus their
inspirations Mikhail Glinka and Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky, the producers of a national genre.
The work of Glinka and Dargomyzhsky gave The Mighty Handful a strong platform from
which to grow. Glinka founded the Russian Nationalist School of Music, where he hoped to
inspire the next wave of Russian composers to represent their country. Glinka’s “The Life for the
Tsar” set the stage for his successors by painting Russian patriotism through the story of hero
Ivan Susanin. Iconic in its musical and societal influence, Glinka’s works inspired Mily
Balakirev and The Mighty Handful to continue Glinka’s original work.
Balakirev took a leading role in the formation of the Mighty Handful. Born a natural
leader in 1836, Balakirev studied with his mother and Karl Eisrich, who both had plenty
resources for him to study in his youth. As a young composer and pianist, Balakirev made
himself known in the 1850s by performing piano concertos and his early compositions like
Overture on Russian Themes. Most of his early work was derived from the composers he
studied: Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. His training was done by ear, which brought him
to take a position in the Free School of Music in 1862. Opposed to the St. Petersburg
Conservatory, the Free School did not charge tuition and avoided conventional practices. As the
Free School’s principle conductor, Balakirev brought his friends and colleagues to study under
his influence. He developed his own style and shared it with many. Balakirev’s wide repertoire
served as the foundation for Russian nationalist music, which was apparent in two of his well-
known compositions Tamara and Islamey. Both compositions are derived from Russian poetry
and folkloric traditions. In the tone poem Tamara, Balakirev composed to the poetry of Russian
romanticist Mikhail Lermontov. Both compositions quote at Russian folk songs, which are “little
more than the keys which unlock his exuberant fancy”1 as described by musicologist Gerald
Abraham. Specifically, in Tamara, Balakirev implements perpetuum mobile with technical
virtuosity, using rapid repeated notes to convey the images the story presents, like rushing water
or the eroticism of princess Tamara as she lures her tower visitors into their own death. Even in
the piano work Islamey, Balakirev combined many diverse folk songs of the Caucasus
Mountains region to write an “unplayable” composition, according to himself.2 With complex
melodic developments of folk art and oriental tastes that defined Russia, Balakirev set a difficult
standard for his colleagues to follow.
Following Balakirev was another developer of the Russian genre named César Cui.
Before he started composing, much of his time was spent as an engineer student. In 1857, Cui
had expanded his focus beyond war engineering in fortification after first meeting with Balakirev
in St. Petersburg. Under Balakirev’s guidance, Cui wrote his first operetta The Mandarin’s Son,
which didn’t have the Russian influence, nor the same appeal as his colleagues’ works. He was
very comfortable with admitting that he could not write Russian music, as he was known for
saying, “Although Russian, I am half of French and half of Lithuanian descent and have not the
sense of Russian music in my veins…”3 The only two operas that relate to Russia directly are
The Prisoner of the Caucasus, which was orchestrated by Balakirev, and The Captain’s
Daughter; both illustrate the works of the prestigious Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin. Cui found
that his best work was not only composing piano and violin miniatures like Orientale from
Kaleidoscope but also reporting essays, reviews, and articles on the radical realism of his
colleagues in The Mighty Handful.
Following Cui’s work was Modest Mussorgsky who served for the Imperial Russian
Army and as a civil service lieutenant. With a heart dedicated to his army and civilians of Russia,

1
Gerald Abraham, Music and Letters, (Oxford University Press, 1933), pp. 362.
2
Georg Predota, Mily Balakirev: Islamey, (Interlude, 2016).
3
Georg Predota, César Cui, (Interlude, 2016).
Mussorgsky was able to easily display patriotism in his music. Mussorgsky started his studies on
piano early with his mother and later studied composition with Aleksandr Dargomizhsky. Their
focus in composition was innovating librettos, for Mussorgsky believed in strict and real
imitation of voices in music. According to historian Richard Taruskin, Mussorgsky believed
composers should only write “in conversational prose, with the music mirroring the tempo and
contour of actual conversation speech.”4 This was clearly outlined in his composition Boris
Gudnov. Like Cui in his two Russian operas, Mussorgsky accompanied a Pushkin play, this time
telling the dark story of corrupt Tsar Boris Gudunov’s coronation as his guilt grew. Pushkin’s
play was once censored by Russian authority, which only inspired Mussorgsky to make the
composition as realistic as possible. In the Coronation Scene, Mussorgsky uses imitative speech
to expose the internal guilt of Gudnov and harmonic stasis to imitate the “bells ringing” at the
coronation. Initially, the composition was not well received. Critics, small audiences, and even
members of the Mighty Handful were highly critical of Mussorgsky’s political piece and its lack
of a prima donna role, making it challenging to perform, yet remain realist. Mussorgsky revised
his composition to make it more presentable, but this was an act against his belief in “real”
tragedy. Despite the effort to suppress his radical voice, Mussorgsky became an icon for other
composers to follow, specifically Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Rimsky-Korsakov started piano at a young age with the help of his mother. After his
family relocated to St. Petersburg, his Russian navy-affiliated relatives inspired him to pursue the
naval academy and sailing with the Russian Navy. In 1861, Rimsky-Korsakov met Balakirev
who inspired him to accept the director position at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, even though
he did not have any formal training. This brought Rimsky-Korsakov into some of his biggest
accomplishments, such as Scheherazade and The Snow Maiden. Though having little to do with
Russia’s folklore, Scheherazade displays Rimsky-Korsakov’s obvious collaboration with
Balakirev. Both composers worked not only to develop a national style of music but also to
incorporate oriental folk traditions from Asian territories. Scheherazade is orchestrated in a way
similar to The Mighty Handful’s Russian style, but it tells the stories from “Tales of the Arabian
Nights”. His best demonstration of developing Russian style can be seen in The Snow Maiden.
The combination of both real and fantasy characters allowed for an exotic illustration of the
truth. In both works, Rimsky-Korsakov’s ability to orchestrate was superior. Many of his

4
Richard Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music, (New York, Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 545-548.
compositions introduced textures and fullness never heard before, which became a new model
for orchestration worldwide.5
Along with Rimsky-Korsakov’s late addition to The Mighty Handful was Aleksandr
Borodin in 1862. Borodin learned flute and piano young and started composing at age nine.
However, his passion for chemistry would take him to St. Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy
to research where he always fainted at the first sight of blood.6 Because of this, Borodin moved
on to meet Mussorgsky and followed him to The Free School in St. Petersburg. After meeting
Balakirev, they began working on his first major compositions, specifically the opera of Prince
Igor. One can say that Borodin’s opera would have been a masterpiece if he completed the work,
but due to his many obligations and talents, finishing the opera was not his first priority. An
underlying passion for chemistry and teaching his students overcame his desire to complete his
compositions. With colorful lyricism and the incorporation of new chromaticism and
instruments, Borodin’s finished and unfinished works set an impression in The Mighty Handful.
With the help of one another, the school of musicians known as “The Mighty Handful”
shared many stylistic features that intentionally defined Russian music. Balakirev led the
movement with a call for more harmonically complex music. This meant going beyond
major/minor modes and transposing between intervals besides the dominant harmony. In
Balakirev’s Tamara, a modulation occurs within a major second, proving that there are more
modulations than the dominant. To help this, Rimsky-Korsakov introduced “deceptive
resolution” in Scheherazade when the dominant harmony resolved to the Russian submediant.
Melodically, Russian music challenged conventional practices by aiming to be more realistic and
good
natural. Melodies were based on folk songs and traditions heard in Russia before programme
music was developed. New scales such as the pentatonic scale were implemented to melodicize
many folk songs. All of the composers implemented Russian folklore in many of their works,
mainly derived from Aleksandr Pushkin. The lyricism in their operas was exotic and colorful, yet
realistic and natural. This style of lyricism was incorporated by Mussorgsky in Boris Godunov,
Cui in The Prisoner of Caucasus, and Borodin in Prince Igor. While the orchestration techniques
they shared decorated the music, it sometimes became too complex for musicians to perform.

5
Paul Horsley, Suite from The Snow Maiden: About the Work, (Washington, Kennedy Center, 2018).
6
George B. Kauffman, and Kathryn Bumpass, An Apparent Conflict Between Art and Science: The Case of
Aleksandr Borodin, (The MIT Press, 1988), pp. 430.
Conventional practices like avoiding parallel fifths, limiting ranges of instruments, and
maintaining rhythmic clarity were ignored by the Russian composers, which only made it harder
for their pieces to resonate with audiences. However, The Mighty Handful stayed true to their
purpose, which allowed their music to permeate all throughout Western Europe.
The Mighty Handful not only defined a new style of national music for Russia, but it
influenced the development of music in the 19th century. They were one of the first groups along
with Les Six in France to successfully develop a national school of music based on aesthetics and
and more importantly, drawing on their folk music and language
taste rather than rules. This revolutionary idea was succeeded in Russia by Igor Stravinsky,
Aleksandr Glazunov, and Dmitri Shostakovich, three impressive composers of 20th century
music. With more publicity and exposure, Russia’s call for originality, complexity, unity, and
honesty became a theme for the development of national music throughout all of Europe. The
work of The Mighty Handful was great and necessary for the development of music, for their
determination is what started the flywheel effect that introduced a diversity of genres in the 20th
century.
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