The Works of the "Mighty Handful" of Composers in the Evaluations of the Conservative Press of the 1860s-1880s (On the Materials of the Newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti and the Magazine Russkiy Vestnik)

The article analyzes the publications of the conservative press of the 1860s-1880s (the newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti and the magazine Russkiy Vestnik) devoted to the innovative work of the composers of the Mighty Handful - the Balakirev Circle formed in St. Petersburg in the late 1850s and early 1860s. The members of the Mighty Handful - Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Cesar Cui - opposed academic routine and sought new forms of musical art. It is revealed that the political conservatism of Moskovskie Vedomosti and Russkiy Vestnik, their traditionalist attitude and vigilance to any attempts to introduce changes into the existing world order were also implemented in their aesthetic program. The article examines the publications of the leading music critics of Moskovskie Vedomosti and Russkiy Vestnik: Herman Laroche, Feofil Tolstoy, and Sergey Flerov. These authors actively polemized with the members of the Balakirev Circle and with Vladimir Stasov, their inspirer and main ideologist. The critics rightly pointed out the extremes of the musical views of the Mighty Handful: the fanatical fear of the "banal", the often groundless "pursuit of originality", the demonstrative rejection of authority and disregard for traditional musical tastes, features of nihilism in relation to the classical heritage and traditional professional music education. In contrast to the composers of the Mighty Handful, in their articles, the conservative authors actively promoted classical music, first of all, the works of Mikhail Glinka and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, the educational activities of the composer and musician Anton Rubinstein, defended the artist's freedom from social and political attitudes. It is concluded that the main ideas of the performances of the music critics of Moskovskie Vedomosti and Russkiy Vestnik corresponded to the theory of "reasonable conservatism" defended in these publications and, despite their inherent subjectivity of evaluations and partiality, had nothing to do with stagnation and dogmatic adherence to the classics, to the denial of everything new that the music of the Mighty Handful presented. The debate in the press of the 1860s-1880s around the innovative trends of contemporary music and the involvement of the conservative press, with its approach deeply respectful of the classics and critical to the creative aspirations of the composers of the Balakirev Circle, helped to identify the extremes inherent in the views of the Mighty Handful on art, the strengths and weaknesses of their creative practice.

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