Look up signs in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Signs is the plural of sign. See sign (disambiguation).

Signs may also refer to:

• Signs (film), a 2002 film by M. Night Shyamalan
• Signs (journal), a journal of women's studies
• Signs (International Journal of Semiotics), International Journal of Semiotics, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark
• Signs Gospel, a hypothetical source text for the Gospel of John, according to source criticism
• Signs of the Times (magazine), a Seventh-day Adventist magazine published in the U.S. by Pacific Press
  • Signs of the Times (Australian magazine), the Australian edition of that magazine published by Signs Publishing Company
• Signs Publishing Company in Victoria, Australia

Albums[link]

• Signs, a 1993 album by Kathryn Tickell
• Signs (album), a 2001 album by Badmarsh & Shri

Songs[link]

• "Signs" (Five Man Electrical Band song), a 1970 song by Five Man Electrical Band
  • "Signs" (Tesla song), the 1990 cover of the above song by Tesla
• "Signs" (Cardiacs song), a 1999 song by Cardiacs
• "Signs" (Snoop Dogg song), a 2004 song by Snoop Dogg
• "Signs" (Bloc Party song), a 2009 Bloc Party song from the album Intimacy Remixed
• "Signs", a 1995 single from the band Blameless

See also[link]

• "Signes" (song), a 2004 song by Nâdiya
• Sign of the times (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Felicia Day
Born	Kathryn Felicia Day (1979-06-28) June 28, 1979 (age 32)[1] Huntsville, Alabama, United States
Residence	Los Angeles, California
Nationality	American
Occupation	Actress/Writer/Singer
Years active	2001-present
Website
http://www.feliciaday.com/

Kathryn Felicia Day^[2] (born on June 28, 1979^[1]) is an American actress and singer, known for her work as "Vi" on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and for parts in movies such as Bring It On Again and June, as well as the Internet musical, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Day is also the star, script writer and producer of the original web series The Guild, a show loosely based on her life as a gamer. She also starred in the Dragon Age web series Dragon Age: Redemption, which she wrote. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Academy of Web Television.^[3]

Personal life and education[link]

Day began her acting career at the age of 7 when she starred as Scout in a local production of To Kill a Mockingbird. She studied operatic singing and ballet professionally, performing at concerts and competitions nationwide. Home-schooled throughout much of her childhood, she began college at the age of 16.^[4]

She was a National Merit Scholar (1995)^[5] and graduated as valedictorian of her class. ^[4][6] An accomplished violinist,^[4] Day was accepted to the Juilliard School of Music but chose to attend the University of Texas at Austin on a full scholarship in violin performance. She double majored in mathematics and music performance.^[7][6]

Day is an avid player of a wide variety of video game genres. Much of her work on The Guild web series was based on her personal experience with video games.^[8]

Career[link]

Early career[link]

After graduation, Day moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. She landed several roles in various short and independent films, as well as commercials and guest spots on television shows, including Undeclared and Maybe It's Me. These parts propelled her to larger roles: a part in the film Bring It On Again, the starring role in June, and a recurring guest spot as potential Slayer Vi on television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a recurring role that is still occasionally utilized in that show's eighth season comic book series.

[edit] The Guild

Felicia Day

Day is the creator, writer, and star of The Guild, a web series which started airing its fifth season in July 2011. The first season was primarily hosted on YouTube where it garnered millions of views.^[9] Its second season premiered on Microsoft's three major video channels Xbox Live, MSN Video and The Zune Marketplace after Microsoft made a deal with The Guild, allowing Day, her cast, and her crew to be paid for their work. Day also created a song and music video called "(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar", featuring the cast dressed up as their in-game personae. The final moments of the music video itself also detailed that the release date for the 3rd season of Day's The Guild would be August 25, 2009. A second song and video "Game On" was released prior to the premiere of the 4th season of The Guild.

The Guild has won multiple awards, including the Greenlight Award for Best Original Digital Series Production at the South by Southwest festivals,^[10] the YouTube Video Award for Best Series,^[11] the Yahoo! Video Award for Best Series,^[12] and 2009 Streamy Awards for Best Comedy Web Series, Best Female Actor in a Comedy Web Series, and Best Ensemble Cast in a Web Series.^[13]

Other work[link]

In July 2008, Day starred as Penny in the three-part web-based musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (created by Joss Whedon, who also created Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which Day has a minor role as the potential slayer Vi during the seventh season).^[14] Day was featured as a patient in the episode "Not Cancer" of the medical drama House,^[15] and had a guest starring role in the sci-fi drama Dollhouse's unaired episode "Epitaph One",^[16] as well as its series finale "Epitaph Two."^[17] In 2008, Day was featured in a series of commercials for Sears.^[18][19] She also appeared in the first of the revitalized Cheetos commercials.^[20] In the series Lie to Me, on the episode called "Tractor Man", airing December 14, 2009, Day sang a song called "White Lie" alongside Brendan Hines.^{[citation needed]} Day starred in the Syfy film adaption of the saga Little Red Riding Hood, called Red;^[21] it was produced by Angela Mancuso.^[22] Day also played the continuing role of Dr. Holly Marten in the Syfy channel's original series, Eureka, appearing for 10 episodes until episode 2 of series 5.

Day also starred in Guild co-star Sandeep Parikh's web-series The Legend of Neil, in which she portrayed a Fairy. She sings in the second season musical episode, in which she obliquely references her history of internet musicals.

Day lent her voice to the character Veronica Santangelo in the video game Fallout: New Vegas.

In February 2011, Day announced that she would be starring in a new web miniseries. Called Dragon Age: Redemption, it is based on the Dragon Age video games made by BioWare^[23] and aired on October 10, 2011.^[24] She also voices the elf Tallis, the protagonist of the Dragon Age downloadable content "Mark of the Assassin".

In March 2012, Day announced that she would be launching a premium YouTube channel, "Geek & Sundry," on April 2. ^[25]

In April 2012 it was announced that Day will host the 2012 IndieCade Awards Ceremony on October 4th, 2012. ^[26]

On April 29, 2012 she also appeared on the YouTube show MyMusic as a Norwegian Black Metal singer named Gorgol^[27].

Awards[link]

In September 2008, TV Week included her in their list of Top 10 Web Video Creators.^[28]

During the inaugural Streamy Awards held in Los Angeles on March 28, 2009, Day received the award for the "Best Female Actor in a Comedy" for her work as protagonist Cyd Sherman in The Guild, and won the same award again in 2010.^[29] She was also recognized for her work on Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog in 2009.

Filmography[link]

TV series/internet productions[link]

Video games[link]

References[link]

Further Reading

• Schramm, Mike. (Aug. 24, 2009) BlizzCon 2009: WoW.com interviews Felicia Day. (part 2)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Felicia Day

• Felicia Day Online - official website and blog
• Felicia Day at the Internet Movie Database

Michael Morhaime
Michael Morhaime, BlizzCon 2007
Born	1966
Employer	Blizzard Entertainment
Title	President of Blizzard Entertainment, CEO and Co-Founder

Michael "Mike" Morhaime (born 1966) is the president and a co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment (originally founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse), a video game developer located in Irvine, California, currently owned by Activision Blizzard. He is also an alumnus of Triangle Fraternity^[1] and received his bachelor's degree in 1990 from UCLA.^[2][3]

In 2008 Morhaime was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for Blizzard’s creation of World of Warcraft. Along with Don Daglow of Stormfront Studios and John Carmack of id Software, Morhaime is one of only three designers or producers to accept awards at both the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards and at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Interactive Achievement Awards.

Morhaime plays poker and reached 2nd place in edition 2006 of DICE's Celebrity Poker Tournament. In the last round, Mike faced Scott Fischman and Perry Friedman (World Series of Poker professionals), as well as Ray Muzyka, co-founder and CEO of video game developer Bioware. After a dramatic 45-minute game, Ray emerged victorious, with Morhaime placing 2nd overall in the tournament.^[4]

Morhaime graduated from Granada Hills High School in 1985. Morhaime is also a member of L90ETC, a Metal Band formed of and by Blizzard Employees, where he plays bass. His avatar is a male Troll, Mai'Kyl. He also appears in animated form in the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft," which deals with World of Warcraft.

In 2008, Morhaime was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame.^[5]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Michael Morhaime's profile at MobyGames

This business-related biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Bill Prady (born June 7, 1960) is a television writer and producer who has worked on American sitcoms and variety programs, including Married... with Children, Dream On, Star Trek: Voyager, Dharma & Greg, and The Gilmore Girls and co-created The Big Bang Theory.

Career[link]

He began his writing career working for Jim Henson's Muppets. During his tenure at The Muppets, he was visually caricatured as the puppet "Chip" (The Jim Henson Hour).^[1] In 1991, Prady was nominated for an Emmy award for co-writing the posthumous tribute to Jim Henson entitled "The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson."^[2]

He wrote the Disney theme Park attractions Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.

He is currently the executive producer and co-creator of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

Personal life[link]

Prady is one of a number of graduates of the Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills, MI currently working in entertainment (others include actors Selma Blair and Douglas Sills, writer Todd A. Kessler and former ABC president Stuart Bloomberg).^[3] In 2009, he was presented with the schools' Distinguished Alumni award.^[4] He attended Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.^[5]

In 2003, he was one of 135 candidates who ran for California governor in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, receiving 474 votes.^[6]

Prady's "nerd cred" is often attributed to his having been a Z80 programmer at The Small Computer Company.^[7]

In 2010, Prady was given honorary membership in the Royal Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Science.^[8]

Selected credits[link]

• Caroline in the City, 1995–1997 (writer, producer)
• Dharma & Greg, 1997–2002 (writer, executive producer)
• Gilmore Girls, 2004–2005 (writer, co-executive producer)
• The Big Bang Theory, 2007–present (creator, writer, executive producer)

Awards[link]

Wins[link]

Nominations[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bill Prady at the Internet Movie Database
• Bill Prady's Twitter feed

This article about a television producer from the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

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:Cui                value:rgb(1,0.6,0.5)
 id:Balakirev          value:lightorange
 id:Mussorgsky         value:gray(0.8)
 id:Rimsky-Korsakov    value:coral
 id:Tsar               value:white
   

Period = from:1830 till:1920 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1830 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:10 start:1830

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 bar:Tsar color:white text:""
 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  
 bar:Mussorgsky color:Mussorgsky
 from: 1839 till: 1881  
 bar:Rimsky-Korsakov color:Rimsky-Korsakov
 from: 1844 till: 1908  

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  at:1881 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1894 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1917 color:black width:0.5 layer:back

</timeline>

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]