Moguchaya Kuchka

(From left to right:  a  singer,  Moussorgsky, Korsakov, (Stasov), Balakirev,Cui,andBorodin)

    The musical partnership of the Mighty Five was brought together by circumstance and through the help of the composer Dargomyzhsky. While Dargomyzhsky was composing The Stone Guest he became very ill. Dargomyzhsky ended up relying on a group of very talented young composers: Mily Balakirev , Cesar Cui, and Modest Mussorgsky along with Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. (Solomon Volkov, 75-77)

The young group came together through talking about music and helping the older composer finish his works. It was delight, awe, it was an almost prayerful bowing before a mighty creative force, which had transformed that weak bilious, sometimes petty and envious man into a powerful giant of will, energy, and inspiration. 'The Balakirev group' was overjoyed and delighted. It surrounded Dargomyzhsky with its sincere adoration, and with its profound intellectual sympathy rewarded the poor old man in the final days of his life for all the long years of moral loneliness. (Solomon Volkov, 77)

    Petersburg was beginning to attract musical life during the 1860s and 1870s. Larger audiences had begun to appreciate the music of the Russian composer. This increase in participation in the St. Petersburg music scene brought with it an inner conflict in the music teaching industry of St. Petersburg. (Solomon Volkov, 80) The conflict was between the schools of the Imperial Russian Musical Society and the Petersburg Conservatory, who were both run by Anton Rubinstein and the Free Music School which was run by the Mighty Handful. Balakirev started his society in reaction to Rubinstein's force in the St. Petersburg music scene. The two music schools of Anton Rubinstein were western oriented in both their teaching style and music output. Balakirev and the Mighty Handful created their school to be more Russian. The Free Music school offered music education to its student if they were poor. Concerts were given regularly and the composers where mostly the Five. The Free Music school had trouble operating because of lack of supports from donors such as Duchess Elena Pavlovna. Duchess Pavlona was giving Rubinstein and his two schools all the money that they needed to operate. (Solomon Volkov, 77)

    The Mighty Handful also changed the style of music outside of Russia, which was mostly accomplished by Mussorgsky's music. Mussorgsky "cross bred" prose with his music, creating a new style of Russian music. The prose was not the poetic text that had been used before but other prose which created a shocking style. (Solomon Volkov, 79) "More important, the composers' very approach to their themes was refreshingly unorthodox, without reliance on traditional post-romantic effects. ((Solomon Volkov, 79-80) The Marriage was one of Mussorgsky's first musical masterpieces. It was an experiment in Russian opera, using grotesque and satirical musical language. "With all its jolting contrasts and exaggerations, when the composer, in the best Russian- Petersburg tradition, mocks his characters but at the same time "weeps" over them." (Solomon Volkov, 80)

    The Mighty Five were brought together by a mutual interest in the music of Russia, and music that would differ from the music of the West that was so prevalent in this time. (Suzanne Massie, 339) They were a group of brilliant composers, musicians, and theorists, whose power was in their ability to go against the popular ideas about music and to create a new style of Russian music.

last update: May 12, 2003