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The Five (), also known as the Mighty Handful or The Mighty Five, were five prominent 19th-century Russian
composers A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and defi ...
who worked together to create a distinct national style of classical music:
Mily Balakirev Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev ( , ; ,BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian, BGN/PCGN romanization: ; ALA-LC romanization of Russian, ALA-LC system: ; ISO 9, ISO 9 system: . ; – )Russia was still using Adoption of the Gregorian calendar#Adoption in E ...
(the leader), César Cui,
Modest Mussorgsky Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (; ; ; – ) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five (composers), The Five." He was an innovator of Music of Russia, Russian music in the Romantic music, Romantic period and strove to achieve a ...
,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov. At the time, his name was spelled , which he romanized as Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakow; the BGN/PCGN transliteration of Russian is used for his name here; ALA-LC system: , ISO 9 system: .. (18 March 1844 – 2 ...
and
Alexander Borodin Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (12 November 183327 February 1887) was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as " The Five", a group dedicated to prod ...
. They lived in
Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
and collaborated from 1856 to 1870.


History


Name

In May 1867 the critic Vladimir Stasov wrote an article, titled ''Mr. Balakirev's Slavic Concert'', covering a concert that had been performed for visiting Slav delegations at the "All-Russian Ethnographical Exhibition" in Moscow. The four Russian composers whose works were played at the concert were
Mikhail Glinka Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka ( rus, links=no, Михаил Иванович Глинка, Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, mʲɪxɐˈil ɨˈvanəvʲɪdʑ ˈɡlʲinkə, Ru-Mikhail-Ivanovich-Glinka.ogg; ) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognit ...
, Alexander Dargomyzhsky,
Mily Balakirev Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev ( , ; ,BGN/PCGN romanization of Russian, BGN/PCGN romanization: ; ALA-LC romanization of Russian, ALA-LC system: ; ISO 9, ISO 9 system: . ; – )Russia was still using Adoption of the Gregorian calendar#Adoption in E ...
, and
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov. At the time, his name was spelled , which he romanized as Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakow; the BGN/PCGN transliteration of Russian is used for his name here; ALA-LC system: , ISO 9 system: .. (18 March 1844 – 2 ...
. The article ended with the following statement: The expression "mighty handful" (, ''Moguchaya kuchka'', "Mighty Bunch") was mocked by enemies of Balakirev and Stasov: Aleksandr Serov, academic circles of the conservatory, the Russian Musical Society, and their press supporters. The group ignored critics and continued operating under the moniker. This loose collection of composers gathered around Balakirev now included Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin — the five who have come to be associated with the name "Mighty Handful", or sometimes "The Five". Gerald Abraham stated flatly in the ''
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and th ...
'' that "they never called themselves, nor were they ever called in Russia, 'The Five'" (although today the Russian equivalent "Пятёрка" ("Pyatyorka") is occasionally used to refer to this group). In his memoirs, Rimsky-Korsakov routinely refers to the group as "Balakirev's circle", and occasionally uses "The Mighty Handful", usually with an ironic tone. He also makes the following reference to "The Five": The Russian word ''kuchka'' also spawned the terms "kuchkism" and "kuchkist", which may be applied to artistic aims or works in tune with the sensibilities of the Mighty Handful.


Formation

The formation of the group began in 1856 with the first meeting of Balakirev and César Cui.
Modest Mussorgsky Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (; ; ; – ) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five (composers), The Five." He was an innovator of Music of Russia, Russian music in the Romantic music, Romantic period and strove to achieve a ...
joined them in 1857,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov. At the time, his name was spelled , which he romanized as Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakow; the BGN/PCGN transliteration of Russian is used for his name here; ALA-LC system: , ISO 9 system: .. (18 March 1844 – 2 ...
in 1861, and
Alexander Borodin Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (12 November 183327 February 1887) was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as " The Five", a group dedicated to prod ...
in 1862. All the composers in The Five were young men in 1862. Balakirev was 25, Cui 27, Mussorgsky 23, Borodin the eldest at 28, and Rimsky-Korsakov just 18. They were all self-trained amateurs. Borodin combined composing with a career in
chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...
. Cui was an army engineer who, starting in 1857 and throughout 1860s, taught fortification at military academies. Rimsky-Korsakov was a
naval officer An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an armed force or uniformed service. Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer (NCO), or a warrant officer. However, absent ...
(he wrote his First Symphony on a three-year naval voyage circumnavigating the globe). Mussorgsky had been in the prestigious
Preobrazhensky Regiment The Preobrazhensky Lifeguard (military), Life-Guards Regiment (, ''Preobrazhensky leyb-gvardii polk'') was a regiment of the Russian Imperial Guard, Imperial Guard of the Imperial Russian Army from 1683 to 1917. The Preobrazhensky Regiment was ...
of the Imperial Guard, and then in the civil service before taking up music; even at the height of his career in the 1870s he was forced by the expense of his drinking habit to hold down a full-time job in the State Forestry Department. In contrast to the élite status and court connections of Conservatory composers such as
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer during the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popula ...
, The Five were mainly from the minor gentry of the provinces. To some degree their ''
esprit de corps Morale ( , ) is the capacity of a group's members to maintain belief in an institution or goal, particularly in the face of opposition or hardship. Morale is often referenced by authority figures as a generic value judgment of the willpower ...
'' depended on the myth, which they themselves created, of a movement that was more "authentically Russian," in the sense that it was closer to the native soil, than the classic academy. Spurred on by Russian nationalist ideas, the Five “sought to capture elements of rural Russian life, to build national pride, and to prevent western ideals from seeping into their culture.” Before them,
Mikhail Glinka Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka ( rus, links=no, Михаил Иванович Глинка, Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, mʲɪxɐˈil ɨˈvanəvʲɪdʑ ˈɡlʲinkə, Ru-Mikhail-Ivanovich-Glinka.ogg; ) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognit ...
and Alexander Dargomyzhsky had gone some way towards producing a distinctly Russian kind of music, writing operas on Russian subjects, but the Mighty Handful represented the first concentrated attempt to develop such a music, with Stasov as their artistic adviser and Dargomyzhsky as an elder statesman to the group, so to speak. The circle began to fall apart during the 1870s, no doubt partially due to the fact that Balakirev withdrew from musical life early in the decade for a period of time. All of "The Five" are buried in
Tikhvin Cemetery Tikhvin Cemetery () is a historic cemetery in the centre of Saint Petersburg. It is part of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, and is one of four cemeteries in the complex. Since 1932 it has been part of the , which refers to it as the Necropolis of the ...
in
Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
.


Musical language


Stylization

The musical language The Five developed set them far apart from the Conservatoire. This self-conscious Russian styling was based on two elements: *They tried to incorporate in their music what they heard in village songs, in
Cossack The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Eastern Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Cossacks played an important role in defending the southern borders of Ukraine and Rus ...
and
Caucasian Caucasian may refer to: Common meanings *Anything from the Caucasus region or related to it ** Ethnic groups in the Caucasus ** ''Caucasian Exarchate'' (1917–1920), an ecclesiastical exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Caucasus re ...
dances, in church chants and the tolling of church bells (to the point where the bell tolling became a cliché). The Five's music became filled with imitative sounds of Russian life. They also tried to reproduce the long-drawn, lyrical and
melisma Melisma (, , ; from , plural: ''melismata''), informally known as a vocal run and sometimes interchanged with the term roulade, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in ...
tic peasant song, what Glinka had once called "the soul of Russian music." Balakirev made this possible by his study of songs from the Volga in the 1860s. More than any previous anthology, his transcriptions artfully preserved the distinctive aspects of Russian folk music: **Tonal mutability *:A tune seems to shift naturally from one
tonal center Tonal may refer to: * Tonal (mythology), a concept in the belief systems and traditions of Mesoamerican cultures, involving a spiritual link between a person and an animal * Tonal language, a type of language in which pitch is used to make phone ...
to another, often ending up in a different key than the one in which the song began. This can produce a feeling of elusiveness, a lack of definition or of logical progression in the harmony. Even when stylized by The Five, this quality can make Russian music sound very different from the tonal structures of the West. **
Heterophony In music, heterophony is a type of texture characterized by the simultaneous variation of a single melodic line. Such a texture can be regarded as a kind of complex monophony in which there is only one basic melody, but realized at the same time ...
*:A melody is simultaneously rendered by two or more performers in different variations. This is improvised by the singers until the end, when the song reverts to a single melodic line. ** Parallel fifths, fourths, and thirds *:The effect lends Russian music a raw sonority missing entirely from the comparatively polished harmonies of Western music. *The Five also adopted a series of harmonic devices to create a distinct "Russian" style and color different from Western music. This "exotic" styling of "Russia" was not just self-conscious but entirely invented. None of these devices were actually used in Russian folk or church music: **
Whole tone scale In music, a whole-tone scale is a scale (music), scale in which each Musical note, note is separated from its neighbors by the interval (music), interval of a whole tone. In twelve-tone equal temperament, there are only two Complement (music)#Ag ...
*:Although Glinka did not invent this scale, his application of it in the opera '' Ruslan and Lyudmila'' (1842) — most recognizable at the end of the festive overture — provided a characteristic harmonic and melodic device. This scale in "Russian" works often suggests evil or ominous personages or situations. It was used by all the major composers from Tchaikovsky (the appearance of the Countess's ghost in '' The Queen of Spades'') to Rimsky-Korsakov (in all his magic-story operas—''
Sadko Sadko () is a principal character in Russian '' byliny'' (oral epic poems). He is an adventurer, merchant, and '' gusli'' musician from Novgorod. The story of Sadko is best known outside Russia in the opera '' Sadko'' by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov ...
'', '' Kashchey the Deathless'' and '' The Invisible City of Kitezh'').
Claude Debussy Achille Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionism in music, Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influe ...
also uses this scale in his music, taking this, among many things, from the Russians. Later it became a standard device in horror-movie scores. **The Russian submediant *:Also linked to Glinka's ''Ruslan'', this is a harmonic pattern (in major mode) in which one upper part proceeds from the dominant pitch chromatically to the submediant while the other harmony parts remain constant. The most basic form of this pattern can be shown as follows (beginning with typical tonic): root-position tonic triad → root-position augmented tonic triad → 1st inversion submediant minor triad. A famous example of the Russian submediant occurs in the very opening bars of the third movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's '' Scheherezade''. ** Diminished or octatonic scale *:Rimsky-Korsakov first used this in his symphonic poem ''Sadko'' in 1867. This scale became a sort of Russian calling-card — a ''
leitmotif A leitmotif or () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is a partial angliciz ...
'' of magic and menace used not just by Rimsky-Korsakov but all of his followers, above all
Alexander Scriabin Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, scientific transliteration: ''Aleksandr Nikolaevič Skrjabin''; also transliterated variously as Skriabin, Skryabin, and (in French) Scriabine. The composer himselused the French spelling "Scriabine" which was a ...
,
Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
,
Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...
and
Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithology, ornithologist. One of the major composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th century, he was also an ou ...
(mode 2). **Modular rotation in sequences of thirds *:The Five made this device of
Franz Liszt Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz Liszt, body of work spanning more than six ...
their own to base a loose symphonic-poem type of structure. This way, they could avoid the rigid Western laws of modulation in
sonata form The sonata form (also sonata-allegro form or first movement form) is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of t ...
, allowing the form of a musical composition to be shaped entirely by the "content" of the music (its programmatic statements and visual descriptions) rather than by formal laws of symmetry. This loose structure became especially important for Mussorgsky's ''
Pictures at an Exhibition ''Pictures at an Exhibition'' is a piano suite in ten movements, plus a recurring and varied Promenade theme, written in 1874 by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. It is a musical depiction of a tour of an exhibition of works by architect and ...
'', a work that may have done more than any other to define the Russian style. **
Pentatonic scale A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to heptatonic scales, which have seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale). Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancient ci ...
*:This stylistic aspect became used by every Russian nationalist composer.Figes, 391. Its distinctive feature is to have only five notes in the octave, rather than the seven of the
heptatonic scale A heptatonic scale is a musical scale (music), scale that has seven pitch (music), pitches, or musical tone, tones, per octave. Examples include: * the #Diatonic scale, diatonic scale; including the major scale and its modes (notably the natural m ...
s (e.g.,
major Major most commonly refers to: * Major (rank), a military rank * Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits * People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames * Major and minor in musi ...
and minor). The pentatonic scale is one of the ways of suggesting a "primitive" folk-melodic style as well as the "Eastern" element (Middle East, Asia). A melodic example of the "major-mode" pentatonic scale (C-D-E-G-A) can be heard at the entrance of the chorus at the beginning of Borodin's '' Prince Igor''.


Orientalism

One hallmark of "The Five" was its reliance on
orientalism In art history, literature, and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of the Eastern world (or "Orient") by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. Orientalist painting, particularly of the Middle ...
.Figes, 391. Many quintessentially "Russian" works were composed in orientalist style, such as Balakirev's '' Islamey'', Borodin's '' Prince Igor'' and Rimsky-Korsakov's ''
Scheherazade Scheherazade () is a major character and the storyteller in the frame story, frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the ''One Thousand and One Nights''. Name According to modern scholarship, the name ''Scheherazade ...
''.Figes, 391. Orientalism, in fact, became widely considered in the West both one of the best-known aspects of Russian music and a trait of Russian national character.Maes, 80. As leader of "The Five," Balakirev encouraged the use of eastern themes and harmonies to set their "Russian" music apart from the German symphonism of
Anton Rubinstein Anton Grigoryevich Rubinstein (; ) was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor who founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He was the elder brother of Nikolai Rubinstein, who founded the Moscow Conservatory. As a pianist, Rubinstein ran ...
and other Western-oriented composers.Figes, 391. Because Rimsky-Korsakov used Russian folk and oriental melodies in his First Symphony, Stasov and the other nationalists dubbed it the "First Russian Symphony," even though Rubinstein had written his ''Ocean'' Symphony a dozen years before it.Figes, 391. These were themes Balakirev had transcribed in the Caucasus.Figes, 391. "The symphony is good," Cui wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov in 1863, while the latter was out on naval deployment. "We played it a few days ago at Balakirev's—to the great pleasure of Stassov. It is really Russian. Only a Russian could have composed it, because it lacks the slightest trace of any stagnant Germanness."Rimsky-Korsakov, A.N., ''N.A. Rimskii-Korsakov: zhizn' i tvorchestvo'', vyp. 2 (Moscow, 1935), 31. Orientalism was not confined to using authentic Eastern melodies.Maes, Francis, tr. Pomerans, Arnold J. and Erica Pomerans, ''A History of Russian Music: From ''Kamarinskaya ''to'' Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), 82. What became more important than the melodies themselves were the musical conventions added to them. These conventions allowed orientalism to become an avenue for writing music on subjects considered unmentionable otherwise, such as political themes and erotic fantasies.Maes, 80. It also became a means of expressing Russian supremacy as the empire expanded under Alexander II.Maes, 80. This was often reinforced through misogynist symbolism—the rational, active and moral Western man versus the irrational, passive and immoral Eastern woman. Two major works entirely dominated by orientalism are Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite '' Antar'' and Balakirev's symphonic poem ''Tamara''. ''Antar'', set in Arabia, uses two different styles of music, Western (Russian) and Eastern (Arabian). The first theme, Antar's, is masculine and Russian in character. The second theme, feminine and oriental in melodic contour, belongs to the queen, Gul Nazar. Rimsky-Korsakov was able to soften the implicit misogyny to some extent. However, female sensuality does exert a paralyzing, ultimately destructive influence. With Gul Nazar extinguishing Antar's life in a final embrace, the woman overcomes the man. Balakirev gives a more overtly misogynistic view of oriental women in ''Tamara''. He had originally planned to write a Caucasan dance called a ''lezginka'', modeled on Glinka, for this work. However, he discovered a poem by
Mikhail Lermontov Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov ( , ; rus, Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, , mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjʉrʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲerməntəf, links=yes; – ) was a Russian Romanticism, Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called ...
about the beautiful Tamara, who lived in a tower alongside the gorge of Daryal.Maes, 83. She lured travelers and allowed them to enjoy a night of sensual delights, only to kill them and throw their bodies into the River Terek.Maes, 83. Balakirev uses two specific codes endemic to orientalism in writing ''Tamara''. The first code, based on obsessive rhythms, note repetitions, climactic effects and accelerated tempi, represents Dionysian intoxication. The second code, consisting of unpredictable rhythms, irregular phrasing and based on long passages with many repeat notes, augmented and diminished intervals and extended
melisma Melisma (, , ; from , plural: ''melismata''), informally known as a vocal run and sometimes interchanged with the term roulade, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in ...
s, depict sensual longing. Not only did Balakirev use these codes extensively, but he also attempted to supercharge them further when he revised the orchestration of ''Tamara'' in 1898.Maes, 83.


Quotations

Rimsky-Korsakov provides the following picture of "The Mighty Handful" in his memoirs, ''Chronicle of My Musical Life'' (translated by J. A. Joffe):


Tastes


Balakirev


Abilities


Influence

Except perhaps for Cui, the members of this group influenced or taught many of the great Russian composers who were to follow, including
Alexander Glazunov Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov ( – 21 March 1936) was a Russian composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Russian Romantic period. He was director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory between 1905 and 1928 and was instrumental i ...
,
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov Mikhail Mikhailovich Ippolitov-Ivanov (; born Mikhail Mikhailovich Ivanov; 28 January 1935) was a Russia, Russian and Soviet Union, Soviet composer, conductor and teacher. His music ranged from the late-Romantic era into the 20th century era. ...
,
Sergei Prokofiev Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''. , group=n ( – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who l ...
,
Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...
, and
Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer. Shostak ...
. They also influenced the two French symbolist composers
Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
and
Claude Debussy Achille Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionism in music, Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influe ...
through their radical tonal language.


Timeline

ImageSize = width:800 height:155 PlotArea = width:620 height:135 left:100 bottom:20 AlignBars = justify Colors = id:Borodin value:tan1 id:Cui value:rgb(1,0.6,0.5) id:Balakirev value:lightorange id:Mussorgsky value:gray(0.8) id:Rimsky-Korsakov value:coral id:Ruler value:white Period = from:1830 till:1920 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1830 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:10 start:1830 Define $markred = text:"*" textcolor:red shift:(0,3) fontsize:10 PlotData= align:center textcolor:black fontsize:8 mark:(line,black) width:18 shift:(0,-5) bar:Ruler color:white text:"" from: 1830 till: 1855 color: orange text: Nicholas I from: 1855 till: 1881 color: yellow text: Alexander II from: 1881 till: 1894 color: orange text: Alexander III from: 1894 till: 1917 color: yellow text:
Nicholas II Nicholas II (Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov; 186817 July 1918) or Nikolai II was the last reigning Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 1 November 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917. He married ...
from: 1917 till: 1920 color: red text:
Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
bar:Borodin color:Borodin from: 1833 till: 1887 bar:Cui color:Cui from: 1835 till: 1918 bar:Balakirev color:Balakirev from: 1837 till: 1910 bar:Mussorgsky color:Mussorgsky from: 1839 till: 1881 bar:Rimsky-Korsakov color:Rimsky-Korsakov from: 1844 till: 1908 LineData= at:1855 color:black width:0.5 layer:back at:1881 color:black width:0.5 layer:back at:1894 color:black width:0.5 layer:back at:1917 color:black width:0.5 layer:back


See also

* Belyayev circle, successors to The Five * List of Russian composers * Tchaikovsky and the Five *
American Five The American Five is a collective name applied by some writers to the modernism (music), modernist United States, American composers Charles Ives (1874–1954), John J. Becker (1886–1961), Wallingford Riegger (1885–1961), Henry Cowell (1897� ...
* Group of Eight (music), Spanish composers *
Les Six "Les Six" () is a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who lived and worked in Montparnasse. The name has its origins in two 1920 articles by critic Henri Collet in '' Comœdia'' (see Bibliography). Their mu ...


References


External links


The Article about The Five in "1000 years of Russian Music"

Russian musical influences of The Five on works of Claude Debussy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Five, The Russian classical composers Articles which contain graphical timelines