The Mighty Handful
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The Mighty Handful, also known as The Five or The Mighty Five in English-speaking countries (and by comparable translation of one of these two in other languages), was a label applied in 1867 by the critic Vladimir Stasov to a loose collection of Russian classical composers brought together under the leadership of Mily Balakirev with the aim of producing a specifically Russian kind of art music rather than one that imitated older European music or relied on European-style conservatory training. In a sense, they were a branch of the Romantic Nationalism movement in Russia, with the Abramtsevo Colony and Russian Revival striving to achieve similar goals in the sphere of fine arts.
The original Russian name for this group is "Могучая кучка" [Mogučaja kučka], which means "mighty little heap", the second word of the moniker constituting a diminutive of the word for "heap" or "pile." The derivative term "kuchkist" soon came to be applied as well.
The formation of the group began in 1856, with the first meeting of Balakirev and César Cui; Modest Mussorgsky joined them in 1857, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1861, and Alexander Borodin in 1862. Before them, Mikhail Glinka 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 advisor and Dargomyzhsky as an elder statesman to the group, so to speak.
As a group the Handful 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. Interestingly, all of "The Five" are buried in Tikhvin Cemetery in St. Petersburg.
Except perhaps for Cui, the members of this group influenced and/or taught many of the great Russian composers who were to follow, including Alexander Glazunov, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.
The name of Les Six, an even looser collection of French-speaking composers, emulates that of 'The Five'.
Members of The Mighty Handful
| Romanticism | |
|---|---|
| 18th century - 19th century | |
| Romantic music: Beethoven - Brahms - Chopin - Grieg - Liszt - Puccini - Schumann - Tchaikovsky - The Five - Verdi - Wagner | |
| Romantic poetry: Blake - Burns - Byron - Coleridge - Goethe - Hölderlin - Hugo - Keats - Lamartine - Leopardi - Lermontov - Mickiewicz - Nerval - Novalis - Pushkin - Shelley - Słowacki - Wordsworth | |
| Visual art and architecture: Brullov - Constable - Corot - Delacroix - Friedrich - Géricault - Gothic Revival architecture - Goya - Hudson River school - Leutze - Nazarene movement - Palmer - Turner | |
| Romantic culture: Bohemianism - Romantic nationalism | |
| << Age of Enlightenment | Victorianism >> Realism >> |
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