The Influence of Balakirev on Tchaikovsky

Abstract

In examining the relationship between Tchaikovsky and Balakirev, I shall investigate in some detail the influence upon the Moscow composer of the leader of the St Petersburg group or ‘mighty handful’ (which included, besides Balakirev himself, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov). Balakirev's group had been established before the St Petersburg Conservatoire of Music was founded by Anton Rubinstein in 1862; this, coupled with the fact that there were no textbooks on the theory of music in the Russian language, meant that Balakirev and his protégés had had no formal musical education, but had learned the technique of composition solely by studying the actual works of other composers, past and present. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, had been a student at the Conservatoire from the time of its foundation till 1865, his graduation exercise taking the form of a setting of Schiller's ‘Ode to Joy’ which was performed at the end of that year and was torn to pieces by Cui in a typically vituperative article. By the time this article had appeared early in 1866 Tchaikovsky had already moved to Moscow to take up a teaching post at the new Conservatoire there. According to Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev's group knew Tchaikovsky only as having composed a Symphony in G minor (his First) of which the two middle movements had been performed at a concert of the Russian Musical Society in St Petersburg in February 1867. As a product of the despised Conservatoire, they viewed Tchaikovsky askance.