Nationality: Russian

Born in Novgorod, 30 June/July 12, 1861
Died near Terioki, Finland [now Zelenogorsk, Russia], Feb 25, 1906

• Anton Arensky [PRONUNCIATION] was a Russian composer, pianist, and educator best remembered today for his chamber music and songs.
• Arensky received his formal education in composition at St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied under Rimsky-Korsakov. After graduating, Arensky pursued teaching himself at the Moscow Conservatory as a professor of harmony and counterpoint. Among his students were Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Glière.
• While in Moscow, Arensky also became close with fellow composer Tchaikovsky, whose musical style played an influential role in Arensky’s own music.
• Unfortunately, Arensky’s music would become overshadowed by his Russian contemporaries following his death.¹

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Biography

Born in Nizhniy Novgorod, Dec 21, 1836/Jan 2, 1837
Died in St Petersburg, 16/May 29, 1910¹

Balakirev was the acorn from which the mighty oak of Russian music in the second half of the 19th century sprang; the charm of his genius and the wholesome spread of his influence are more than enough to guarantee his immortality.²

• Mily Alekseyevich Balakirev [pronunciation] is known more for the profound influence of those he mentored than his own compositions.
  • Balakirev was seen as the leader of the “Mighty Handful,” a group of five Russian nationalist composers that included César Cui, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and Rimsky-Korsakov.
• That being said, Balakirev’s compositions were crucial to the development Russian music for two reasons:
  1. His treatment of native folk music
  2. His development of “the Balakirevan east” musical idiom, influences by the composer’s visits to the Caucasus in the 1860s.
     • Balakirev’s amanuensis, Vasily Yastrebtsev, wrote, “What an enormous and important role he played in the education of all of us – this energetic young Balakirev, who had just returned from the Caucasus and played for us the Georgian folksongs he had heard there… we had never heard anything like that. We were all literally reborn.”³
• As a composer, Balakirev wrote piano works, orchestral works, and songs. His primary instrument was piano, and his works for the instrument are among his most popular (ex: Islamey).⁴

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Biography from Naxos

Born in St Petersburg, 31 Oct/Nov 12, 1833
Died in St Petersburg, 15/Feb 27, 1887

• Borodin was the illegitimate son of a Russian prince, and as such was considered a serf. His father had him freed and educated; he studied medicine and became research chemist and chair of chemistry at Medical-Surgical Academy at St. Petersburg.¹
• Borodin had minimal formal music training. He composed with encouragement and guidance of Mily Balakirev, who wanted to train Russian musicians to create a distinctly Russian style of classical music, as opposed to the Germanic-dominated composers before them.²
• Borodin was part of an influential circle of St. Petersburg Russian Nationalist composers who gathered around Balakirev, sometimes known as Les cinq (Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Cesar Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin). ³

“Balakirev’s circle consisted of Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and me (the French have retained the denomination of “Les Cinq” for us to this day).”

Rimsky-Korsakov, on Les Cinq, from The Chronicle of My Musical Life (1909)⁴

• Balakirev and his circle are also called ‘The Mighty Handful’ because of a 1867 press quote from music critic Vladimir Stasov, regarding a concert of music by Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov and others.

“God grant that our Slav guests may never forget today’s concert; God grant that they may forever preserve the memory of how much poetry, feeling, talent, and intelligence are possessed by the small but already mighty handful of Russian musicians.”

Vladimir Stasov⁵

Short biography

Born in Vilnius, 6/Jan 18, 1835
Died in Petrograd [St Petersburg], March 26, 1918

• Cui was a military engineer as well as a composer and music critic.¹
• He was a member of “The Five” or “The Mighty Handful” (Cui, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov)² a group of mostly-amateur composers based in St. Petersburg, mentored by Balakirev, seeking to create a uniquely Russian composition style.³

Short biography

Born in Novospasskoye, nr Yelnya, Smolensk district, 20 May/June 1, 1804
Died in Berlin, Feb 15, 1857

• Glinka is often referred to as the “father of Russian music,” from which many prominent 19th and 20th-century Russian composers identify as their forefather, including Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Stravinsky.
• Born into the Russian ruling class, Glinka was trained to be a civil servant but pursued his love of music as a hobby. He never received a formal musical education.
• In his youth, Glinka was influenced by the folk music of the Russian serfs who worked for his family (in fact, his uncle had a “serf orchestra”) and by Russian Orthodox church music and bells.
• Glinka traveled Europe to hear Italian and German music styles, but he became one of the first Russian composers to utilize folk idioms and create a Russian orchestral style.
  • His music, particularly his operas A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Ludmilla, inspired the next generation of Russian composers, including “The Five,” who were more overtly nationalist.
  • At the same time, Glinka’s ability to successfully combine Western music traditions with Russian idioms was a model for more cosmopolitan composers like Tchaikovsky.¹
  • In his memoirs, Glinka wrote that after spending time abroad, he felt “a longing for my own country [which] led me gradually to the idea of writing in a Russian manner.”
• Fun fact – Glinka was one of the first Western composers to use the whole-tone scale in his music.²

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Biography

Born in St Petersburg, 29 April/May 11, 1855
Died in Polïnovka, Novgorod district, 16/Aug 28, 1914

• Lyadov was a composer and conductor who studied under Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Prokofiev was one of his students.
• As a composer, Lyadov developed a reputation for being lazy and failing to produce a respectable number of compositions. In reality, Lyadov was extraordinarily detail oriented and self-critical, to the detriment of his own productivity. He spent years, and even decades in some cases, working out the details of a work that lasted less than five minutes.¹
  • Fun Fact: Lyadov was infamous for procrastination, so much so that he was expelled from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1876 for not attending classes (he managed to get back in). Diaghilev invited him to compose the score for The Firebird, but he procrastinated and finally turned down the commission. Diaghilev then invited Stravinsky to write the score instead, and The Firebird helped jumpstart Stravinsky’s career.²

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Biography from Hyperion Records
Biography from Interlude

Born in Karevo, Pskov district, March 9/21, 1839
Died in St. Petersburg, March 16/28, 1881

• Modest Mussorgsky was born to a wealthy land-owning family. As a child, Mussorgsky showed an exceptional talent for piano. However, as a 13-year-old, the burgeoning musician was forced to enter military training instead. Mussorgsky wouldn’t be able to return to formal musical training for several years.
  • In late 1857, Mussorgsky began composition lessons with Mily Balakirev. Under Balakirev, Mussorgsky analyzed works by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Glinka, Bach, Handel, Mozart, and more.
  • Mussorgsky’s relationship under Balakirev quickly began to fray, after which the young composer set out on his own, writing pieces based on his own creative instincts and musical tastes.¹
  • In 1861, as a result of the emancipation of the serfs, Mussorgsky’s family estate collapsed, and Mussorgsky was forced to take on side jobs to support his art.
• As a composer, Mussorgsky is best known for his opera, Boris Godunov, as well as his songs. Interestingly, despite piano being his primary instrument, Mussorgsky wrote little for the instrument.
• For subject matter, Mussorgsky often turned to more realistic depictions of life, even the grittier moments, rather than more traditional topics of love, heartbreak, nature, etc.
  • “Mussorgsky’s aim… was to free Russian music from the ‘high-heel inserts and tight shoes’ of Western European music, and to give unaffected expression of the depiction of Russia in its ‘bast sandals.'”²
• Despite leaving behind a multitude of unfinished works, the influence Mussorgsky had on emerging turn-of-the-century composers cannot be underestimated. For example, Debussy and Ravel were both fascinated by the Russian composer’s “innovative and audacious use of harmony.”³
• Mussorgsky died in poverty at just 42 years old as a result of chronic alcoholism.⁴

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Biography via Deutsche Grammophon

Born inTikhvin, Mar 6/18, 1844
Died in Lyubensk, near Luga [now Pskov district], June 8/21, 1908

Short biography and Fun Facts

Born in Vikhvatintsï, Ukraine [Podoliya], 16/Nov 28, 1829 
Died in Peterhof [now Petrodvorets], 8/Nov 20, 1894 

• Rubinstein was a Russian pianist, conductor, composer and educator. He and his brother Nicolai Rubinstein were influential forces in the Russian musical culture of the late 19th century.  
• With Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, Anton Rubinstein founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Before this, most orchestral musicians in Russia had relocated there from Europe (mostly Germany). Nicolai Rubinstein founded the Moscow Conservatory soon afterward.¹

Biography from Steinway

Born in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka province, 25 April/May 7, 1840
Died in St Petersburg, 25 Oct/Nov 6, 1893¹

Biography