Early years and
Mikhail Glinka by
Ilya Repin. The painting is somewhat anachronistic – Balakirev is depicted as a man approaching middle age, with a full beard; however, Glinka died in 1857, when Balakirev was only 20 years old. Balakirev was born in
Nizhny Novgorod into a
noble Russian family. His father, Alexey Konstantinovich Balakirev (1809–1869), was a
titular councillor who belonged to the ancient dynasty founded by Ivan Vasilievich Balakirev, a Moscow
boyar and
voivode who led the Russian army against the
Khanate of Kazan during the 1544
expedition (Alexey's branch traced its history to Andrei Simonovich Balakirev who played a part in defending the city in the 1618
Siege of Moscow and was granted lands in Nizhny Novgorod). The legend of a supposed
Tatar ancestor who was baptized and took part in the
Battle of Kulikovo as
Dmitry Donskoy's personal
khorunzhyi that circulated among fellow composers was made up by Balakirev and does not find any proof. The name Mily (either from
Russian miliy —
nice, or from
Greek Milos — the island
of the same name) was a traditional male name in her family. Balakirev studied at the Nizhny Novgorod gymnasium. After his mother's death, he was transferred to the Nizhny Novgorod Noble Institute of Alexander II where he studied from 1849 to 1853. Balakirev's musical talents did not remain unnoticed, as he soon found a patron in
Alexander Ulybyshev (Oulibicheff). Ulybyshev was considered the leading musical figure and patron in Nizhny Novgorod; he owned a vast musical library and was the author of a biography of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and other books on Mozart and
Ludwig van Beethoven. Balakirev's musical education was placed in the hands of the pianist Karl Eisrach, who also arranged the regular musical evenings at the Ulybyshev estate. Through Eisrach, Balakirev was given opportunities to read, play and listen to music and was exposed to the music of
Frédéric Chopin and
Mikhail Glinka. Eisrach and Ulybyshev also allowed Balakirev to rehearse the count's private orchestra in rehearsals of orchestral and choral works. Eventually, Balakirev, still aged only 14, led a performance of Mozart's
Requiem. At age 15, he was allowed to lead rehearsals of Beethoven's
First and
Eighth Symphonies. His earliest surviving compositions date from the same year—the first movement of a
septet for
flute,
clarinet, piano and
strings and a
Grande Fantasie on Russian Folksongs for piano and orchestra. After Balakirev completed his courses in the late autumn of 1855, Ulybyshev took him to
Saint Petersburg, where he met Glinka. While Glinka considered Balakirev's compositional technique defective (there were as yet no music textbooks in Russian and Balakirev's German was barely adequate), he thought highly of his talent, encouraging him to take up music as a career. Nevertheless, he was still in extreme poverty, supporting himself mainly by giving piano lessons (sometimes nine a day) and by playing at
soirées given by the aristocracy.
The Five The deaths of Glinka in 1857 and Ulybyshev the following year left Balakirev without influential supporters. Nevertheless, his time with Glinka had sparked a passion for
Russian nationalism within Balakirev, leading him to adopt the stance that Russia should have its own distinct school of music, free from Southern and Western European influences. He had also started meeting other important figures who would abet him in this goal in 1856, including
César Cui,
Alexander Serov, the Stasov brothers and
Alexander Dargomyzhsky. These included
Modest Mussorgsky in 1858,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in November 1861 and
Alexander Borodin in November or December 1862. It was better in his view to begin composing right away and learn through that act of creation. This line of reasoning could be argued as a rationalization to his own lack of technical training. He had been trained as a pianist and had to discover his own way to becoming a composer. Rimsky-Korsakov eventually realized as much, but nevertheless wrote: Balakirev, who had never had any systematic course in
harmony and
counterpoint and had not even superficially applied himself to them, evidently thought such studies quite unnecessary.... An excellent pianist, a superior sight reader of music, a splendid
improviser, endowed by nature with a sense of correct harmony and part-writing, he possessed a technique partly native and partly acquired through a vast musical erudition, with the help of an extraordinarily keen and retentive memory, which means so much in steering a critical course in musical literature. Then, too, he was a marvelous critic, especially a
technical critic. He instantly felt every technical imperfection or error, he grasped a defect in form at once. Balakirev had the musical experience that the others in The Five lacked, While this approach may have been helpful for Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov writes, it was not so helpful for individuals completely different in nature from Balakirev or who matured as composers "at different intervals and in a different manner". Balakirev's eventual undoing was his demand that his students' musical tastes coincide exactly with his own, with the slightest deviation prohibited. Whenever one of them played one of his own compositions for Balakirev, Balakirev would seat himself at the piano and show, through improvisation, how he felt the composition should be changed. Passages in other people's works came out sounding like his music, not their own. and Stasov began to distance himself from Balakirev.
Saint Petersburg Conservatory and Free School of Music The formation of The Five paralleled the early years of
Tsar Alexander II, a time of innovation and reform in the political and social climate in Russia. The
Russian Musical Society (RMS) and the musical conservatories in St. Petersburg and Moscow were all established at this time. While these institutions had powerful champions in
Anton Rubinstein and
Nikolai Rubinstein, others feared the influence of German instructors and musical precepts into Russian classical music. Balakirev's sympathies and closest contacts were in the latter camp, and he frequently made derogatory comments about the German "routine" which, he believed, came at the expense of the composer's originality. Balakirev was outspoken in his opposition to Anton Rubinstein's efforts. This opposition was partly ideological and partly personal. Anton Rubinstein was at that time the only Russian able to live on his art, while Balakirev had to live on income from piano lessons and recitals played in the salons of the aristocracy. There was also a petty, personal side to Balakirev's attacks. Rubinstein had written an article in 1855 that was critical of Glinka. Glinka had taken the article badly, and Balakirev likewise took Rubinstein's criticism personally. To raise funds for the school, Balakirev conducted orchestral concerts between 1862 and 1867, while Lomakin conducted choral ones. These concerts offered less conservative programming musically than the RMS concerts. They included the music of
Hector Berlioz,
Robert Schumann,
Franz Liszt, Glinka and
Alexander Dargomyzhsky, and the first works of The Five.
Mature works and Prague visit Balakirev spent the summer of 1862 in the Caucasus, mainly in Essentuki, and was impressed enough by the region to return there the following year and in 1868. He noted down folk tunes from that region and from Georgia and Iran; these tunes would play an important part in his musical development. One of the first compositions to show this influence was his setting of
Alexander Pushkin's "Georgian song", while a quasi-oriental style appeared in other songs. In 1864, Balakirev considered writing an opera based on the folk legend of the Firebird (a subject upon which
Igor Stravinsky would later base his ballet
The Firebird), but abandoned the project due to the lack of a suitable libretto. He completed his
Second Overture on Russian Themes that same year (1864), which was performed that April at a Free School concert and published in 1869 as a "musical picture" with the title
1000 Years. Even at this point, however, Balakirev had trouble finishing large works; the symphony would not be finished until decades later. He began a second piano concerto in the summer of 1861, with a slow movement thematically connected with
a requiem that occupied him at the same time. He did not finish the opening movement until the following year, then set aside the work for 50 years. He suffered from periods of acute depression, longed for death and thought about destroying all his manuscripts. Balakirev also intermittently spent time editing Glinka's works for publication, on behalf of the composer's sister, Lyudmilla Shestakova. At her behest, he travelled to
Prague in 1866 to arrange the production of Glinka's operas there. This project was delayed due to the
Austro-Prussian War until the following year. "[F]ive weeks of quarrels, intrigues by Smetana and his party, and intensive rehearsals" followed, Balakirev suspected Smetana and others were influenced by pro-Polish elements of the Czech press, which labeled the production a "Tsarist intrigue" paid for by the Russian government. Biographer
Mikhail Tsetlin (aka Mikhail Zetlin) writes, "It is hard to say, nowadays, whether Balakirev's suspicions were fully justified or whether they were partly due to his own high-strung disposition." Afterwards, he and Smetana no longer spoke to each other. During this visit, Balakirev sketched and partly orchestrated an
Overture on Czech Themes; this work would be performed at a May 1867 Free School concert given in honor of Slav visitors to the All-Russian Ethnographical Exhibition in
Moscow. This was the concert for which, in his review, Vladimir Stasov coined the phrase
Moguchaya kuchka ("Mighty Handful") to describe The Five. The choice of Berlioz as foreign conductor was widely lauded, but Balakirev's appointment was seen less enthusiastically. Balakirev's uncompromising nature caused tension at the RMS, In 1869, she informed him that his services were no longer required. at the time he wrote
Romeo and Juliet with Balakirev's support The week after Balakirev's dismissal, an impassioned article in his defense appeared in
The Contemporary Chronicle. The author was
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Balakirev had conducted Tchaikovsky's symphonic poem
Fatum and the "Characteristic Dances" from his opera
The Voyevoda at the RMS, and
Fatum had been dedicated to Balakirev. The appearance of Tchaikovsky's article may have been calculated, as he knew Elena Pavlovna was due in Moscow, where he lived, the day the article was to appear. He sent two notes to Balakirev; the first alerted him to Elena Pavlovna's planned presence in Moscow, and the second thanked Balakirev for criticisms he had made about
Fatum just after conducting it. Balakirev's immediate response was positive and enthusiastic. This exchange of letters grew into a friendship and a creative collaboration over the next two years, with Balakirev helping Tchaikovsky produce his first masterpiece, the fantasy-overture
Romeo and Juliet. After
Romeo and Juliet, the two men drifted apart as Balakirev took a sabbatical from the music world. In 1880, Balakirev received a copy of the final version of the score of
Romeo from Tchaikovsky, care of the music publisher Besel. Delighted Tchaikovsky had not forgotten him, he replied with an invitation for Tchaikovsky to visit him in Saint Petersburg. The
Manfred Symphony, finished in 1885, became the largest, most complex work Tchaikovsky had written to that point. As with
Romeo and Juliet and
Fatum, Tchaikovsky dedicated the
Manfred Symphony to Balakirev. When Lomakin resigned as director of the Free Music School in February 1868, Balakirev took his place there. Once he had left the RMS, he concentrated on building attendance for concerts of the Free Music School. He decided to recruit popular soloists and found Nikolai Rubinstein ready to help. Elena Pavlovna was furious. She decided to raise the social level of the RMS concerts by attending them personally with her court. This rivalry caused financial difficulties for both concert societies as RMS membership declined and the Free Music School continued to suffer from chronic money troubles. Soon the Free Music School could not pay Balakirev and had to cut its 1870–71 series short. The RMS then scored the
coup de grâce of assigning its programming to
Mikhaíl Azanchevsky, who also took over as director of the
Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. Azanchevsky was more progressively-minded musically than his predecessors, a staunch believer in contemporary music on the whole and Russian contemporary music in particular. For the opening concert of the RMS 1871–72 season, he had conductor
Eduard Nápravník present the first public performances of Tchaikovsky's
Romeo and Juliet and the
polonaise from Mussorgsky's
Boris Godunov. This implicit recognition of Balakirev's ideas made his own concerts seem unnecessary and redundant. Balakirev then hoped that a solo recital in his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod in September 1870 would restore his reputation and prove profitable. Neither happened—he played to an empty house, and the profits of the recital amounted to 11 rubles.
Breakdown and return to music In the spring of 1871, rumors circulated that Balakirev had suffered a nervous breakdown. Borodin wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov that he wondered whether Balakirev's condition was little better than insanity. He was especially concerned about Balakirev's coolness toward musical matters, and hoped he would not follow the example of author
Nikolai Gogol and destroy his manuscripts. He took a five-year break from music, and withdrew from his musical friends, In his mental state, he neglected to give up his post as director of the Free Music School, and the directors of the school were at a loss as to what to do. He finally resigned in 1874 and was replaced by Rimsky-Korsakov. Nikolai Rubinstein offered him a professorship at the
Moscow Conservatory but he refused, stating that his musical knowledge was basically empirical (coming only or primarily from experience) and that he did not have enough knowledge of
music theory to take on such a position. Financial distress forced Balakirev to become a railway clerk on the
Warsaw railroad line in July 1872. Balakirev also began sending individuals to Rimsky-Korsakov for private lessons in
music theory. This paved the way for Rimsky-Korsakov to make occasional visits to Balakirev. By the autumn, these visits had become frequent. Also, Lyudmilla Shestarova asked him to edit Glinka's works for publication, in consort with
Anatoly Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1882, he finished
Tamara and revised his "symphonic picture"
1,000 Years two years later, retitling it
Rus. In 1883, he was appointed director of the Imperial Chapel; Rimsky-Korsakov eventually became his assistant. He held this post until 1895, when he took his final retirement and composed in earnest. Between 1895 and 1910 he completed two symphonies, a piano sonata and two movements of his
Second Piano Concerto, along with republishing his collection of folk-song arrangements. While Balakirev resumed musical Tuesday gatherings at his home by the 1880s, it was music patron
Mitrofan Belyayev who became a fixture of the Russian classical music scene at this time. Some composers, including
Alexander Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov, initially attended these meetings. However, Balakirev's modest gatherings eventually proved no match for Belyayev's lavish Friday gatherings, nor could he compete with the commissions, prizes and performances that Belyayev offered. Musicologist
Richard Taruskin asserted that another reason Balakirev did not participate with the
Belyayev circle was that he was not comfortable participating in a group at which he was not at its center. The exception to this was Balakirev's collection of folk songs, to which Belyayev bought the rights after the death of the songs' initial publisher. Unlike his earlier days, when he played works in progress at gatherings of The Five, Balakirev composed in isolation. He was aware that younger composers now considered his compositional style old-fashioned. Except initially for Glazunov, whom he brought to Rimsky-Korsakov as a prodigy, and his later acolyte
Sergei Lyapunov, Balakirev was ignored by the younger generation of Russian composers. Balakirev died on 29 May 1910 and was interred in
Tikhvin Cemetery at the
Alexander Nevsky Monastery in
Saint Petersburg. ==Personal life==