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The original Russian name for this group is "Могучая кучка" kučka , which means roughly "mighty handful," 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 |
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