Complex Presentiment: Half-Figure in a Yellow Shirt by Kazimir Malevich, 1928-1932

In parapsychology, precognition (from the Latin præ-, “before,” + cognitio, “acquiring knowledge”), also called future sight,^[1] and second sight,^[2][3][4] is a type of extrasensory perception that would involve the acquisition or effect of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information or laws of physics and/or nature.^[5][6] A premonition (from the Latin praemonēre) and a presentiment are information about future events that is perceived as emotion.^{[citation needed]}

The existence of precognition, as with other forms of extrasensory perception, is not accepted as other than a purely psychological process by the mainstream scientific community because no replicable demonstration, "on demand", has ever been achieved.^{[7][verification needed]}

Scientific investigation of extrasensory perception (ESP) is complicated by the definition which implies that the phenomena go against established principles of science.^[8] Specifically, precognition would violate the principle that an effect cannot occur before its cause.^[8] However, there are established biases, affecting human memory and judgment of probability, that create convincing but false impressions of precognition.^[9]

Belief[link]

Many of the "psychic experiences" that are volunteered to parapsychologists by the general population involve apparent precognition. In one review of a U.S. case collection, submitted to Duke University's Parapsychology Laboratory, 75% of 1777 dream-based experiences were of an ostensibly precognitive type, as were 60% of 1513 wakeful experiences.^[10] A similar pattern was identified for a separate collection of 157 cases experienced by children; here, the largest category of experiences was again of precognitive dreams (52%), followed by precognitive intuitions (52%).^[11] A German case collection produced a similar figure: 52% of 1,000 cases were of the apparently precognitive type.^[12] A British study of 300 volunteered cases showed 34% to be apparently precognitive.^[13]

Evidence[link]

Case collections[link]

History records many instances of apparent precognition (see Ides of March), and belief in its occurrence as a form of seeing into the future (this can be through visions, déjà vu or through dreams which is usually the cause of recognition).^[14] The first thorough collection and critical review of such spontaneous cases was created by the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Reports of these cases were authored by Eleanor Sidgwick in 1888,^[15] and Herbert Saltmarsh in 1938.^[16] Sidgwick believed the evidence warranted further investigation as to the validity of the concept of precognition, and Saltmarsh offered that the evidence, if it did not scientifically establish the phenomenon, at least excluded alternative hypotheses. Nicol, however, in a later review, came to the conclusion that their evidence was not so suggestive, given, in particular, the long length of time between the occurrence of some of the most suggestive cases, and their first report to the SPR.^[17]

J. W. Dunne, a British aeronautics engineer, recorded each of his dreams as they occurred to him, identifying any correspondences between his future experiences and his recorded dreams. In 1927, he reported his findings, together with a theory, in An Experiment with Time. In this work, at least 10% of his dreams appeared to represent some future event, pertaining to some relatively trivial incident in Dunne's own life, or some major news events appearing in the press a day or so after the dream. Dunne concluded that precognitive dreams are common occurrences: many people have them without realizing it, largely because they do not recall the details of the dream.^[18] Also reported in the book was an experiment Dunne conducted with several other people who studiously recorded their dreams and sought to associate them with subsequent experiences. Dunne felt these confirmed his theory, but a 1933 independent experiment failed to replicate his findings.^[19]

Experimental approaches[link]

Free-response studies[link]

With free-response methods, experiments have been conducted in precognitive dreaming at the sleep laboratory of the Maimonides Medical Center,^[20][21] in precognitive Ganzfeld hallucinations and visions.^[22] While such experiments have produced some suggestive evidence for precognition, they have been somewhat limited to studies of selected participants, and have involved procedures that can be too expensive for other researchers to replicate, or too complex to theoretically interpret.^[23]

Forced-choice studies[link]

Most experiments on precognition have involved a forced-choice procedure.^{[citation needed]} The first such ongoing and organized research program on precognition was instituted by J. B. Rhine in the 1930s at Duke University's Parapsychology Laboratory.^[24] Rhine used a method of forced-choice matching in which participants recorded their guesses as to the order of a deck of 25 cards, each five of which bore one of five geometrical symbols. The test of precognition was based on the fact that these "guesses" were made before the deck was shuffled by the experimenter.^[25] In an effort to distinguish between different parapsychological accounts of precognition, and to better understand its conditions, experiments were conducted in which the order of the target deck of cards was determined by hand versus machine, or by reference to macroscopic events, such as randomly selected meteorological readings, or by complex algorithms. Early experiments also sought to determine the temporal scope of precognition by organizing the target deck only 1-2 versus 10 days, or even a year, after responses had been recorded and secured.^[26][27][28]

Experiments by Samuel G. Soal, a mathematician, and colleagues seemed to provide impressive evidence of precognition. They ran forced-choice ESP experiments in which someone attempted to identify which of five animal pictures a subject in another room was looking at.^[29] Their performance on this task was at chance, but when the scores were matched with the card that came after the target card, three of the thirteen subjects showed a very high hit rate. These experiments were hailed as "the most impressive data ever reported" for ESP, with controls that "seem to be absolutely watertight".^[29] Rhine described Soal's work as "a milestone in the field".^[29] A dissenting view came from research chemist George Price who reviewed Soal and Bateman's book Modern Experiments in Telepathy for the journal Science in 1955.^[30] Price argued that since ESP was so unlikely, the positive results not attributable to error were more likely the result of deliberate fraud.^[30] This prompted several replies that Price's criticism was unfair, resting on the mere possibility of fraud rather than actual proof.^[29] In 1978, the experiments were in fact exposed as totally fraudulent. The statistician and paragnost Betty Markwick, while seeking to vindicate Soal, discovered that he had altered his data to create all the extra hits and give the study its statistical significance.^[30] The untainted experimental results showed absolutely no evidence of precognition in the hits or the ratios.^[29]

A meta-analysis of all reports in the parapsychological literature of card-calling experiments on precognition was conducted in the late 1980s.^[31] This encompassed 309 experiments reported by 62 different investigators and published between 1935 and 1987. 23 of the 62 investigators reported positive results. The overall result offered precognition as a reliable but small effect over these studies, and an effect that could not be accounted for by levels of methodological reliability (as assessed by rating the studies on eight attributes of method), nor any publication bias against reporting null results.^{[citation needed]}

Other researchers, including Smithsonian Executive Secretary Charles Greeley Abbot and British psychologist R. H. Thouless, introduced the study of precognition in the displacement of guesses to targets. This involved a set of target symbols, and "guesses" as to their identity, but, rather than precognizing the order of a whole deck of symbols, scored for precognition by checking the correspondence between each response and the target assigned to one or more trials ahead of that to which the response was originally assigned. Several studies using this method have continually offered displacement as reliable evidence for precognition.^[32][33]

Following these experiments, a more automated technique of experimentation was introduced that did not rely on hand-scoring of equivalence between targets and guesses, and in which the targets could be more reliably and readily tested as random. This involved testing for precognition with the use of high-speed random event generators (REG), as introduced by Helmut Schmidt in 1969^[34] and further conducted, in particular, at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (1979–2007).^[35] In this procedure, participants indicate when they believe (by whatever means available to them) that the REG has produced an event that either conforms or differs from one of two target events. In comparison to the card-guessing type of experiments, this procedure permits much more data to be collected in an experimental session, while reducing the number of alternatives that need to guessed.^{[citation needed]}

Unconscious perception studies[link]

Another class of experiments have tested for precognition by unconscious signs. These have involved physiological responses, such as of skin conductance and electroencephalographic activity, or indirect psychological measures, such as ratings of preference for one or another target alternative. In these experiments, participants are not asked about their experiences, and do not need to be informed that they are participating in an experiment on ESP. Dick Bierman and Dean Radin have reported positive evidence of precognition in experiments of these kinds.^[36][37]

Explanations[link]

Psychological[link]

Various psychological processes have been offered to explain experiences of apparent precognition.

Cognitive failure/distortion models[link]

Suited to explaining at least naturalistic occurrences of apparent precognition are several more or less hypothetical unconscious cognitive processes. These include:

• Selection bias where people remember the "hits" and forget the "misses," remember coincidences more often than other non-coincidences, or when they were correct about a future event rather than instances when they were wrong. Examples include thinking of a specific person before that person calls on the phone. Human memory, it is argued, has a tendency to record instances when the guess was correct, and to dismiss instances when the guess was incorrect.

• Unconscious perception by which people unconsciously infer, from data they have unconsciously learned, that a certain event will probably happen in a certain context. As with cryptomnesia, when the event occurs, the former knowledge appears to have been acquired without the aid of recognized channels of information.

• Self-fulfilling prophecy and Unconscious enactment in which people bring events that they have precognized to pass, but without their conscious knowledge.

Some psychologists have explained the apparent prevalence of precognitive dreams in terms of memory biases, namely a selective memory for accurate predictions and distorted memory so that dreams are retrospectively fitted onto subsequent events.^[9] In one experiment, subjects were asked to write down their dreams in a diary. This prevented the selective memory effect, and the dreams no longer seemed accurate about the future.^[38] Another experiment gave subjects a fake diary of a student with apparently precognitive dreams. This diary described events from the person's life, as well as some predictive dreams and some non-predictive dreams. When subjects were asked to recall the dreams they had read, they remembered more of the successful predictions than unsuccessful ones.^[39]

Parapsychological[link]

There are several ways by which precognition can be conceived as occurring without fundamental dependence on normally recognized processes of perception and cognition, i.e., by psi.

Firstly, there are several ways to explain precognition as a form of extrasensory perception. Precognition can be conceived as an extraordinary process of clairvoyance, involving no direct perception of the future.^[40] If, as is offered by the philosophy of determinism, all future events are determined by present conditions, then it can be suggested that it is clairvoyance of all the relevant present conditions that permits one to know their future outcomes. Alternatively, if somebody in the present is aware of what will happen in the future, then it can be suggested that it is telepathy of that information that grants oneself a like knowledge of the future. "Seeing into the future" can also be conceived as not a direct perception of a future event, but only a perception of one's own future experience of that event; what J. B. Rhine called precognitive sensory perception.^[41] Support to this suggestion is given by the meta-analysis^[31] which includes the study of a subset of experiments in which details were provided about the feedback of target information given to subjects in the future. The study shows that when no feedback was given, the significance of the results fell to chance-expectation. This does suggest that the contacts were being made with the subject's future experience of receiving the target information, and not with the targets themselves.

The construct of psychokinesis permits another set of ways to think about precognition. It can be suggested that precognition involves the influence of present conditions so that they conform with what is precognized.^[42] Alternatively, a retrocausal process can be proferred as an explanation, raising the idea that, at a future time, the ostensibly present conditions are influenced backward in time.^[43]

As for theories of precognition itself, parapsychologists have offered several phenomenological theories that – like most psychological theories themselves – do not presume to provide a physical explanation of how precognition occurs, but only seek to describe the processes that must, it seems, be occurring at a psychological level of explanation. There are two classes of such theories, which are not exclusive to each other.

Subliminal awareness[link]

One class of theories – principally as discussed, albeit in quite disparate ways, by Dunne (1927) and Saltmarsh (1938) – supposes that awareness is fundamentally trans-temporal, acquiring information beyond the "specious present" of information that is typically available for immediate awareness.^[16][18] While we are only ever consciously aware of some limited temporal range of information, these theories assert that, unconsciously, a much wider temporal range of information is sampled and used for the benefit of the organism.

Tachyon theory[link]

Influenced by Gerald Feinberg's concept of a tachyon (particles that travel faster than light) some parapsychologists such as Martin Ruderfer (1974) theorised that tachyons can travel backwards in time and may be able to explain cases of precognition.^[44] The British physicist and mathematician Adrian Dobbs (1965) proposed a theory in which precognition occurs due to “psitrons,” hypothetical particles similar to tachyons that travel backward in time which may contact an observer's brain to produce a precognitive experience.^[45] The major problem with the tachyon theory of precognition is that tachyons have never been observed to exist; they remain theoretical constructs. Arthur Koestler discussed the theory of Dobbs in his book The Roots of Coincidence.

Psi-mediated instrumental response (PMIR)[link]

This theory, offered by then psychologist Rex G. Stanford,^[46][47] proposes that humans unconsciously and automatically scan their environment for motivationally relevant information, including - as the subliminal awareness models suggest - information that will only occur in the future of each conscious observer. This information will be used, by those who are so disposed, to place the person in a goal-relevant position with respect to its environment. This creates the experience of precognition, should some of this information have been represented in conscious imagery or other representational forms.

Observational theories[link]

One class of parapsychological theories makes reference to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, particularly as it implicates the constructive role of human observation.^[48][49][50] Precognition, in the context of these theories, is generally conceived in the manner of retroactive psychokinesis, but without recourse to any notion of the transmission of psychophysical energy. According to some observational theories, it is at the point of observation of a future event that the event is, in fact, determined, and, under certain conditions of motivation, randomness and feedback, this future observation can inform the present observer.^[51]

Resonance theories[link]

Another class of theories is based on the block universe model, in which future events already exist in spacetime, according to the special theory of relativity. The theories explain precognition as the retrieval of memories from the brain in the future, which could occur in a similar way to that in which ordinary memories are retrieved from the brain in the past.^[52][53]

The theory proposed by Jon Taylor is based on David Bohm's theory of the implicate order, which suggests that if similar structures are created at different places and different times, the structures resonate with a tendency to become more closely similar to one another.^[54] Taylor applies the principles to the neuronal spatiotemporal patterns that are activated in the brain, to show how an information transfer could be produced. For example, a precognition would occur when the pattern activated at the time of the future experience of an event resonates with any similar pattern that is spontaneously activated in the present. This might enable the present activation to be sustained until it produces the conscious awareness of an event similar to the one that will be experienced in the future.^[53]

Methodological[link]

The experimental research into ostensible precognition has, like much of the research into extrasensory perception, been subject to various critiques of its methodology. This concerns the fundamental logic of the methods, and particular aspects of procedure. A general issue is concerned with the possibility that the phenomena contradict generally recognized principles of science,^[30] coupled with the absence of a method to demonstrate precognition on demand.^[7]

In dreams[link]

Louisa Rhine at the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University compiled the best-known and largest body of dream evidence.^[55] Dr. Rhine collected over 7000 accounts of ESP experiences. The majority of these accounts were dream related and were seemingly precognitive in nature. The material for this work was collected by advertisements in various well-known popular media.^[56]

David Ryback, a psychologist in Atlanta, used a questionnaire survey approach to investigate precognitive dreaming in college students. His survey of over 433 participants showed that 290 or 66.9 percent reported some form of paranormal dream. He rejected many of these claims and reached a conclusion that 8.8 percent of the population was having actual precognitive dreams.^[57]

An early inquiry into this phenomenon was done by Aristotle in his On Divination in Sleep. His criticism of these claims appeals to the fact that "the sender of such dreams should be God", and "the fact that those to whom he sends them are not the best and wisest, but merely commonplace persons." Thus: "Most [so-called prophetic] dreams are, however, to be classed as mere coincidences...", here "coincidence" being defined by Aristotle as that which does not take "place according to a universal or general rule" and referring to things which are not of themselves by necessity causally connected. His example being taking a walk during an eclipse, neither the walk nor the eclipse being apparently causally connected and so only by "coincidence" do they occur simultaneously.^[58]

Other researchers in this area are more guarded in their reports on the value or use of dreams. In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, first published at the end of the 19th century, Sigmund Freud argued that the foundation of all dream content is the fulfillment of wishes, conscious or not and devoid of psychic content.^{[citation needed]} On the other hand, Freud's view of precognition evolved. According to Jung, Freud's "materialistic prejudice" and "shallow positivism" lead him to reject the entire complex of questions relating to precognition and the occult as "nonsensical."^[59] But years later, adds Jung, Freud both "recognized the seriousness of parapsychology and acknowledged the factuality of 'occult' phenomena." ^[60]

Dreams which appear to be precognitive may in fact be the result of the "Law of Large Numbers". Robert Todd Carroll, author of "The Skeptic's Dictionary" put it this way: "Say the odds are a million to one that when a person has a dream of an airplane crash, there is an airplane crash the next day. With 6 billion people having an average of 250 dream themes each per night, there should be about 1.5 million people a day who have dreams that seem clairvoyant."^[61]

See also[link]

• Anomalous cognition
• Déjà vu
• Dune (novel)
• Fortune-telling
• List of parapsychology topics
• Premonition (film)
• Premonitions (novel)
• Retrocognition
• Second sight

References[link]

Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Wikipedia's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (February 2012)

Further reading[link]

• Guiley, Rosemary Ellen: Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience, New York: HarperCollins, 1991, pages 465-466
• Robertson, Morgan and Stevenson, Ian, M.D.: The Wreck of the Titan: The Paranormal Experiences Connected with the Sinking of the Titanic. Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Bks, 1991.
• Spence, Lewis: An Encyclopedia of Occultism, New York, Carol Publishing Group Edition, 1996, pages 329
• Stevenson. "A Review & Analysis of Paranormal Experiences Connected with the Sinking of the Titanic". Journal of American Society for Psychical Research 54: 1961. 
• Barrett, Deirdre, PhD .”The Committee Of Sleep”. New York: Crown Publishers, 2001
• Quinn, Adriene. “Dreams of History That Came True”. Tacoma: Dream Research, 1987.
• Reed, Henry, PhD. “Getting Help From Your Dreams”. Virginia Beach: Inner Vision Publishing, 1985.
• Thurston, Mark. PhD. “Tonight’s Answers To Tomorrow’s Questions”. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988.

External links[link]

• Precognition, Presentiment & Remote Viewing - Dean Radin
• "Precognition and Second Sight" in Robert Todd Carroll's The Skeptic's Dictionary
• Definition of "precognition" in James Randi's An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural
• The Best Case for ESP?
• Failed Psychic Predictions for 1998
• Online Psi Experiments Links to precognition experiments (Parapsych.org affiliate of the AAAS)
• International Association for the Study of Dreams Guidance on dreams from a clinical approach with little emphasis on precognition
• Intuitive Connections
• Wait, what? Study Finds Evidence for Precognition - LiveScience
• Edgarcayce.org
• Stockdreams.org

Dean Radin (born February 29, 1952) is a researcher and author in the field of parapsychology. He has been Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), in Petaluma, California, USA, since 2001, and is on the Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University, on the Distinguished Consulting Faculty at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, and former President of the Parapsychological Association.^[1][2] He is also co-editor-in-chief of the Elsevier journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing.^[3]

Biography[link]

Professionally, Radin worked as a concert violinist for five years,^[4] later switching to engineering after earning an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as both a master's degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.^[4]

After graduation, Radin worked at Bell Labs, and then conducted research at Princeton University, GTE Laboratories, University of Edinburgh, SRI International, Interval Research Corporation, and was a faculty member at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Radin was elected President of the Parapsychological Association in 1988, 1993, 1998, and 2005 and has published a number of articles and scientific papers,^[5][6] as well as two books directed to a popular audience: The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds.

Radin's books have drawn mixed reviews.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]} A critical review of The Conscious Universe was published by Nature,^[13] to which Dean Radin objected due to what he described as factual inaccuracies. Following an exchange of letters, in April 1998 Nature published an acknowledgment of a numerical error introduced during the editing process, and later in July 1998 reproduced a slightly edited version of the original letter from Radin requesting the correction.^[14]

Research[link]

Radin has conducted parapsychological research in several areas, drawing a conclusion that some psychic phenomena exist. Radin was featured on the BBC Horizon TV series explaining an experiment he designed that recorded people's emotional response to a randomized series of pictures. He believes the results to be evidence of retrocausation, a conclusion not supported by mainstream scientists.^[15][16] Radin's research has yet to capture the attention of the mainstream scientific community as a whole.^[13]

Books[link]

• Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality (2006)
• Captain of My Ship, Master of My Soul: Living With Guidance (2001), with F. Holmes Atwater, Joseph McMoneagle, Skip Atwater
• The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (1997, HarperCollins). Note: in Great Britain this book is entitled The Noetic Universe.

See also[link]

• Parapsychology

References[link]

External links[link]

• Dean Radin's official website - Contains a blog and various resources to do with his work
• Dean Radin articles & MP3 audio provided by Shift in Action, sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Sciences
• [3] Dean Radin Lecture Entangled Minds at Theosophy Hall, NYC Part 1 of 2
• [4] Dean Radin Lecture Entangled Minds at Theosophy Hall, NYC Part 2 of 2
• [5] - Interview with Radin responds to criticisms of Global Consciousness Project

The Five
Mily Balakirev César Cui Modest Mussorgsky Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Alexander Borodin
v t e

The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful, The Mighty Five, or The Mighty Coterie (Russian: Могучая кучка, Moguchaya kuchka), refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. The group had the aim of producing a specifically Russian kind of art music, rather than one that imitated older European music or relied on European-style conservatory training. In a sense, they were a branch of the Romantic Nationalist movement in Russia, sharing similar artistic goals with the Abramtsevo Colony and Russian Revival.

History[link]

Name[link]

Vladimir Stasov
(1824–1906)

In May 1867 the critic Vladimir Stasov wrote an article, Mr. Balakirev's Slavic Concert, on a concert given for visiting Slav delegations to the "All-Russian Ethnographical Exhibition" in Moscow. The four Russian composers whose works were played at the concert were Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Mily Balakirev, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.^[1] The article ended with the following statement:

God grant that our Slav guests may never forget today's concert; God grant that they may forever preserve the memory of how much poetry, feeling, talent, and intelligence are possessed by the small but already mighty handful of Russian musicians.^[2]

—Vladimir Stasov, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, 1867

The expression "mighty handful" (Russian: Могучая кучка, Moguchaya kuchka, "Mighty Bunch" or "Group"), was mocked by enemies of Balakirev and Stasov: Aleksandr Serov, academic circles of the conservatory, the Russian Musical Society, and their press supporters. The group responded by defiantly adopting the name.^[2] This loose collection of composers gathered around Balakirev now included Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin — the five who have come to be associated with the name "Mighty Handful", or sometimes "The Five". Gerald Abraham stated flatly in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that "they never called themselves, nor were they ever called in Russia, 'The Five'"^[3] (although today the Russian equivalent "Пятерка" ("Pyatyorka") is occasionally used to refer to this group).^[4] In his memoirs, Rimsky-Korsakov routinely refers to the group as "Balakirev's circle", and occasionally uses "The Mighty Handful", usually with an ironic tone. He also makes the following reference to "The Five":

If we leave out of account Lodyzhensky, who accomplished nothing, and Lyadov, who appeared later, Balakirev's circle consisted of Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and me (the French have retained the denomination of "Les Cinq" for us to this day).^[5]

—Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Chronicle of My Musical Life, 1909

The Russian word kuchka also spawned the terms "kuchkism" and "kuchkist", which may be applied to artistic aims or works in tune with the sensibilities of The Mighty Handful.

The name of Les Six, an even looser collection of French-speaking composers, emulates that of "The Five".

Formation[link]

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. All the composers in The Five were young men in 1862. Balakirev was 25, Cui 27, Mussorgsky 23, Borodin the eldest at 28, and Rimsky-Korsakov just 18. They were all self-trained amateurs. Borodin combined composing with a career in chemistry. Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer (he wrote his First Symphony on a three-year naval voyage circumnavigating the globe). Mussorgsky had been in the Guards, then in the civil service before taking up music; even at the height of his career in the 1870s he was forced by the expense of his drinking habit to hold down a full-time job in the State Forestry Department.^[6]

In contrast to the élite status and court connections of Conservatory composers such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Five were mainly from the minor gentry of the provinces. To some degree their esprit de corps depended on the myth, which they themselves created, of a movement that was more "authentically Russian," in the sense that it was closer to the native soil, than the classic academy.^[7]

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 adviser and Dargomyzhsky as an elder statesman to the group, so to speak. The circle 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. All of "The Five" are buried in Tikhvin Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.

Musical language[link]

Stylization[link]

The musical language The Five developed set them far apart from the Conservatoire. This self-conscious Russian styling was based on two elements:

• They tried to incorporate in their music what they heard in village songs, in Cossack and Caucasian dances, in church chants and the tolling of church bells (to the point where the bell tolling became a cliché). The Five's music became filled with imitative sounds of Russian life. They also tried to reproduce the long-drawn, lyrical and melismatic peasant song, what Glinka had once called "the soul of Russian music." Balakirev made this possible by his study of songs from the Volga in the 1860s. More than any previous anthology, his transcriptions artfully preserved the distinctive aspects of Russian folk music:
  • Tonal mutability

  A tune seems to shift naturally from one tonal center to another, often ending up in a different key than the one in which the song began. This can produce a feeling of elusiveness, a lack of definition or of logical progression in the harmony. Even when stylized by The Five, this quality can make Russian music sound very different from the tonal structures of the West.

  • Heterophony

  A melody is simultaneously rendered by two or more performers in different variations. This is improvised by the singers until the end, when the song reverts to a single melodic line.

  • Parallel fifths, fourths and thirds

  The effect lends Russian music a raw sonority missing entirely from the comparatively polished harmonies of Western music.

• The Five also adopted a series of harmonic devices to create a distinct "Russian" style and color different from Western music. This "exotic" styling of "Russia" was not just self-conscious but entirely invented. None of these devices was actually used in Russian folk or church music:
  • Whole tone scale

  Although Glinka did not invent this scale, his application of it in the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) — most recognizable at the end of the festive overture — provided a characteristic harmonic and melodic device. This scale in "Russian" works often suggests evil or ominous personages or situations. It was used by all the major composers from Tchaikovsky (the appearance of the Countess's ghost in The Queen of Spades) to Rimsky-Korsakov (in all his magic-story operas—Sadko, Kashchey the Deathless and The Invisible City of Kitezh). Claude Debussy also uses this scale in his music, taking this, among many things, from the Russians. Later it became a standard device in horror-movie scores.

  • The Russian submediant^[8]

  Also linked to Glinka's Ruslan, this is a harmonic pattern (in major mode) in which one upper part proceeds from the dominant pitch chromatically to the submediant while the other harmony parts remain constant. The most basic form of this pattern can be shown as follows (beginning with typical tonic): root-position tonic triad --> root-position augmented tonic triad -> 1st inversion submediant minor triad. A famous example of the Russian submediant occurs in the very opening bars of the third movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade.

  • Diminished or octatonic scale

  Rimsky-Korsakov first used this in his symphonic poem Sadko in 1867. This scale became a sort of Russian calling-card — a leitmotif of magic and menace used not just by Rimsky-Korsakov but all of his followers, above all Alexander Scriabin, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen (mode 2).

  • Modular rotation in sequences of thirds

  The Five made this device of Franz Liszt their own to base a loose symphonic-poem type of structure. This way, they could avoid the rigid Western laws of modulation in sonata form, allowing the form of a musical composition to be shaped entirely by the "content" of the music (its programmatic statements and visual descriptions) rather than by formal laws of symmetry. This loose structure became especially important for Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a work that may have done more than any other to define the Russian style.^[9]

  • Pentatonic scale

  This stylistic aspect became used by every Russian nationalist composer.^[10] Its distinctive feature is to have only five notes in the octave, rather than the seven of the heptatonic scales (e.g., major and minor). The pentatonic scale is one of the ways of suggesting a "primitive" folk-melodic style as well as the "Eastern" element (Middle East, Asia). A melodic example of the "major-mode" pentatonic scale (C-D-E-G-A) can be heard at the entrance of the chorus at the beginning of Borodin's Prince Igor.

Orientalism[link]

One hallmark of "The Five" was its reliance on orientalism.^[10] Many quintessentially "Russian" works were composed in orientalist style, such as Balakirev's Islamey, Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.^[10] Orientalism, in fact, became widely considered in the West both one of the best-known aspects of Russian music and a trait of Russian national character.^[11] As leader of "The Five," Balakirev encouraged the use of eastern themes and harmonies to set their "Russian" music apart from the German symphonism of Anton Rubinstein and other Western-oriented composers.^[10] Because Rimsky-Korsakov used Russian folk and oriental melodies in his First Symphony, Stasov and the other nationalists dubbed it the "First Russian Symphony," even though Rubinstein had written his Ocean Symphony a dozen years before it.^[10] These were themes Balakirev had transcribed in the Caucasus.^[10] "The symphony is good," Cui wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov in 1863, while the latter was out on naval deployment. "We played it a few days ago at Balakirev's—to the great pleasure of Stassov. It is really Russian. Only a Russian could have composed it, because it lacks the slightest trace of any stagnant Germanness."^[12]

Orientalism was not confined to using authentic Eastern melodies.^[13] What became more important than the melodies themselves were the musical conventions added to them.^[13] These conventions allowed orientalism to become an avenue for writing music on subjects considered unmentionable otherwise, such as political themes and erotic fantasies.^[11] It also became a means of expressing Russian supremacy as the empire expanded under Alexander II.^[11] This was often reinforced through misogynist symbolism—the rational, active and moral Western man versus the irrational, passive and immoral Eastern woman.^[11]

Two major works entirely dominated by orientalism are Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Antar and Balakirev's symphonic poem Tamara.^[13] Antar, set in Arabia, uses two different styles of music, Western (Russian) and Eastern (Arabian).^[13] The first theme, Antar's, is masculine and Russian in character.^[13] The second theme, feminine and oriental in melodic contour, belongs to the queen, Gul Nazar.^[13] Rimsky-Korsakov was able to soften the implicit misogyny to some extent.^[13] However, female sensuality does exert a paralyzing, ultimately destructive influence.^[13] With Gul Nazar extinguishing Antar's life in a final embrace, the woman overcomes the man.^[13]

Balakirev gives a more overtly misogynistic view of oriental women in Tamara.^[13] He had originally planned to write a Caucasan dance called a lezginka, modeled on Glinka, for this work.^[14] However, he discovered a poem by Mikhail Lermontov about the beautiful Tamara, who lived in a tower alongside the gorge of Daryal.^[14] She lured travelers and allowed them to enjoy a night of sensual delights, only to kill them and throw their bodies into the River Terek.^[14] Balakirev uses two specific codes endemic to orientalism in writing Tamara. The first code, based on obsessive rhythms, note repetitions, climactic effects and accelerated tempi, represents Dionysian intoxication.^[13] The second code, consisting of unpredictable rhythms, irregular phrasing and based on long passages with many repeat notes, augmented and diminished intervals and extended melismas, depict sensual longing.^[13] Not only did Balakirev use these codes extensively, but he also attempted to supercharge them further when he revised the orchestration of Tamara in 1898.^[14]

A direct result of such orientalism was the big influence that this circle left on the formation of classical traditions in other nations of the east and south of Russia. For instance, one of Rimsky-Korsakov's famous students, Alexander Spendiaryan went on to become the founder of Armenian classical music, carrying on the traditions and aesthetics of the Mighty Handful to the Caucasus.

Quotations[link]

Rimsky-Korsakov provides the following picture of "The Mighty Handful" in his memoirs, Chronicle of My Musical Life (translated by J. A. Joffe):

Tastes[link]

"The tastes of the circle leaned towards Glinka, Schumann, and Beethoven's last quartets ... they had little respect for Mendelssohn ... Mozart and Haydn were considered out of date and naive ... J. S. Bach was held to be petrified ... Chopin was likened by Balakirev to a nervous society lady ... Berlioz was highly esteemed ...Liszt was comparatively unknown ... Little was said of Wagner ... They respected Dargomyzhsky for the recitative portions of Rusalka ... [but] he was not credited with any considerable talent and was treated with a shade of derision. ...Rubinstein had a reputation as a pianist, but was thought to have neither talent nor taste as a composer."

Balakirev[link]

"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 the 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 extraordinary memory, keen and retentive, which means so much in steering a critical course in musical literature ... He instantly felt every technical imperfection or error, he grasped a defect in form at once. Whenever I or other young men, later on, played him our essays at composition, he instantly caught all the defects of form, modulation, and so on, and forthwith seating himself at the piano, he would improvise and show how the composition in question should be changed exactly as he indicated, and frequently entire passages in other people's compositions became his and not their putative authors' at all. He was obeyed absolutely, for the spell of his personality was tremendous. ... His influence over those around him was boundless, and resembled some magnetic or mesmeric force. ... he despotically demanded that the tastes of his pupils should exactly coincide with his own. The slightest deviation from his taste was severely censured by him. By means of raillery, a parody or caricature played by him, whatever did not suit him at the moment was belittled — and the pupil blushed with shame for his expressed opinion and recanted...."

Abilities[link]

"Balakirev considered me a symphony specialist ... in the sixties, Balakirev and Cui, though very intimate with Mussorgsky and sincerely fond of him, treated him like a lesser light, and of little promise at that, in spite of his undoubted talent. It seemed to them that there was something missing in him and, in their eyes, he was in need of advice and criticism. Balakirev often said that Mussorgsky had "no head" or that his "brains were weak." ... Balakirev thought that Cui understood little in symphony and musical forms and nothing in orchestration, but was a past master in vocal and operatic music; Cui, in turn, thought Balakirev a master in symphony, form, and orchestration, but with little liking for operatic composition and vocal music in general. Thus they complemented each other, but each, in his own way, felt mature and grown up. Borodin, Mussorgsky, and I, however — we were immature and juvenile. Obviously, towards Balakirev and Cui we were in somewhat subordinate relations; their opinions were listened to unconditionally...."

Influence[link]

Except perhaps for Cui, the members of this group influenced or taught many of the great Russian composers who were to follow, including Alexander Glazunov, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich. They also influenced the two french symbolist composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy through their radical tonal language.

Timeline[link]

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 id:Balakirev          value:lightorange
 id:Mussorgsky         value:gray(0.8)
 id:Rimsky-Korsakov    value:coral
 id:Tsar               value:white
   

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 from: 1830 till: 1855 color: orange text: Nicholas I       
 from: 1855 till: 1881 color: yellow text: Alexander II
 from: 1881 till: 1894 color: orange text: Alexander III
 from: 1894 till: 1917 color: yellow text: Nicholas II
 bar:Borodin color:Borodin
 from: 1833 till: 1887  
 bar:Cui color:Cui
 from: 1835 till: 1918 
 bar:Balakirev color:Balakirev
 from: 1837 till: 1910  
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 from: 1839 till: 1881  
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 from: 1844 till: 1908  

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See also[link]

• List of Russian composers
• Tchaikovsky and the Five
• Les Six, French composers
• Armenian Mighty Handful
• Group of Eight (music), Spanish composers

References[link]

External links[link]

• Encyclopædia Britannica article about "The Five" [1]
• The Article about The Five in "1000 years of Russian Music" [2]
• Turgenev and Russian Music: The Mighty Handful (with music samples)
• Russian musical influences of The Five on works of Claude Debussy [3]

This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (December 2011)

Graham Nicholls (born July 30, 1975 in London, England) is an author, artist and specialist on out of body experiences and spirituality. He speaks widely on issues around parapsychology, ethics and art at institutions ranging from the London Science Museum^[1] to the Cambridge Union Society. ^[2]

Early life[link]

Graham Nicholls was born in the Paddington district of central London into a working class family. He states that during his early life he was surrounded by crime and social problems, but that the influence of literature, art, science and spiritual philosophies helped him to look beyond the limitations of this environment.^[3][4]

Art career[link]

Since the early 1990s he has developed artistic works which explore subjects such as sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and psi abilities.^[4] Nicholls had his first solo show at a gallery run by James Fuentes in New York City in July, 1999 and in 2004 developed many of his psychological ideas into an interactive virtual reality installation at London's Science Museum, much of which was based upon his life and locations from his childhood.^[3] Technology and science take a central role in his artistic output, his virtual web projects being considered internationally recognised by the Handbook of the economics of art and culture.^[5]

Out-of-body experiences[link]

Nicholls claims to have had out of body experiences (OBEs) since the age of approximately twelve years old. ^[6] These experiences led him to study many aspects of parapsychology.^[7] In 2009 Nicholls outlined his experiences and ideas relating to OBEs in an article that appeared in Kindred Spirit magazine. In the article he makes it clear that he believes mainstream science will eventually fully embrace psi, or psychical perceptions as natural, rather than supernatural or paranormal. He draws upon the ideas of Brian Josephson, Dean Radin and Rupert Sheldrake.^[7] He also explores these issues in his 2011 book, Avenues of the Human Spirit.

As part of his inquiry into psi and human consciousness, in 2009 he began working on a series of telepathy experiments in a joint project with controversial scientist Rupert Sheldrake. The resulting data formed part of the Perrott-Warrick project, administered by Trinity College, Cambridge.^[8] Nicholls is also a member of the Society for Psychical Research. ^[9]

Activism[link]

In 2004 Nicholls founded an organisation called the Shahmai Network with a special focus on work towards relieving poverty, as well as human rights and animal rights. The network were official member's of the Make Poverty History campaign focused on campaigning for debt relief to countries in situations of extreme poverty, this culminated with protests aimed to influence the G8 conference, which took place in 2005. ^[10]

Books[link]

• Avenues of the Human Spirit (2011) ISBN 978-1-84694-464-2
• Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience: Radical New Techniques (2012) ISBN 978-0-7387-2761-5

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Graham Nicholls interviewed by Lilou Mace - Video interview about his book Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience, 2012
• Avenues of the Human Spirit - Interview about Nicholls' first book, science and skepticism, 2011
• Can Out-of-Body Experiences Explain God? - Graham Nicholls interview with Skeptiko exploring the existence of God, morality and the spiritual, 2011
• The Unexplained with Howard Hughes - Interview about his book as well as wider social and spiritual issues, 2011
• Out-of-Body Experiences: In Search of the Truth - Article by Graham Nicholls for Noetic Now, the journal of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, 2011
• Skeptical Investigations - A report on TAM London by Graham Nicholls, 2010