Mily

MILY ALEXEYEVICH BALAKIREV

21st December 1836   ---   16th May 1910

Balakirev was born  in Nijni-Novgorod in 1836 and died at St Petersburg in 1910.   He began to study music with his mother,   later he received
a few lessons from Aleksandr Dubuque and subsequently was taken in hand by Karl Eisrich, to whom he dedicated his early work for pianoforte
and orchestra, a fantasy on Russian Motives.

It was in his youth he was fortunate also in living with Oulibichev,  author of the well-known life of Mozart, who had a private band,   and from
the performances of which Balakirev derived much benefit.  At 18,  after university course in mathematics,  he went to St Petersburg and there
attracted attention as a pianist. He made the acquaintance of Mikhail Glinka,  and carried on that musician's influence as a member of the then
so called Nationalist Russian school, which had sprung up in the 1850's.

Just before he was 25, he found himself the acknowledged leader of an important group of his contemporaries, many of whom were destined to
be heard of later,  including as they did Cesar Cui,  Alexsandr Borodin, Modest Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. With Tachikovsky who he was
in close relations, although the latter was not actually to be reckoned as one of his disciples. Of his own poem Russia were only published many
years after they were written.   From the first,   indeed,   Balakiev appears to have displayed  even more desire to promote  the cause of Russian
music generally then to advance his own indivudual claims.

It was to this end that he joined in 1862  with Gabriel Lomakin and Vladimir Stassov in  founding the Free School  of Music in St Petersburg and
with same object that he  organized many concerts, at  which representative works  of the younger  school, were given a Imperial Chapel and a
conductor of the Imperial Russian Musicical society.   He found however,  that the offical duties were  quite incompatible with the development
of his own creative powers,  and in 1874,  therefore, he retired into the country  and devoted himself solely to composition,  the most important
product of his labours being revealed in due course in the shape of his finest work, the symphonic poem Tamara.

Although not to be reakoned among the greatest masters, he was one to be esteemed more for his inspiring influence on others than for his own
individuel achievements, Balakirev remain none the less a composer that has to be respected.  His output was uneven but such things asTamara,
the pianoforte fantasy Islamy and  the tone poem Russia,  as well as some of his early songs,   leave no room for doubt as to his creative powers.

Copyright 1953 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated on 2024
By Steven

And now for the Music

Below is a real time Sequence.

NEW (4530)"In the Garden, Etude Idyll". Real time Sequenced played by Ozaki.

Thanks to Bernd Krueger for the music below.

New (3588)"Islamei Orientalische Fantasie". Sequenced by Bernd Krueger.

Thanks to George Pollen for the music below.

(2416)"Symphony No. 1 in C major (4th Movement)" a really beautiful sequence by George Pollen

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