Rebecca at the Well by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini.

Rebecca (also spelled Rebekah) (Hebrew: רִבְקָה, Modern Rivkah Tiberian Riḇqāh ISO 259-3 Ribqa, from the Hebrew ribhqeh (lit., "connection"), from Semitic root r-b-q, "to tie, couple or join"^[1] or "to secure")^[2] appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. Rebecca and Isaac were one of the three couples buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs, the other two being Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob and Leah.

Early life[link]

According to the account in the Book of Genesis, Rebecca was the wife of Isaac and the sister of Laban, who would later become the father of Rachel and Leah, two of the wives of Rebecca's son Jacob.

The news of her birth was told to her great-uncle Abraham after he returned from Akeidat Yitzchak (the Binding of Isaac), the episode in which Abraham was told by God to bring Isaac as a sacrifice on a mountain.

After the Binding of Isaac, Sarah, Abraham's wife, died. After taking care of her burial, Abraham went about finding a wife for his son Isaac, who was already thirty-seven years old. He commanded his servant (whom the Torah commentators identify as Eliezer of Damascus)^[3] to journey to his birthplace of Aram Naharaim to select a bride from his own family, rather than engage Isaac to a local Canaanite girl. Abraham sent along expensive jewelry, clothing and dainties as gifts to the bride and her family. If the girl had refused to follow him, Abraham stated that Eliezer would be absolved of his responsibility.

Rebecca and Eliezer by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 17th century.

Eliezer devised a test in order to find the right wife for Isaac. As he stood at the central well in Abraham's birthplace with his men and ten camels laden with goods, he prayed to God:

"Let it be that the maiden to whom I shall say, 'Please tip over your jug so I may drink,' and who replies, 'Drink, and I will even water your camels,' her will You have designated for Your servant, for Isaac" (Genesis 49:39).

To his surprise, a young girl immediately came out and offered to draw water for him to drink, as well as water to fill the troughs for all his camels. Rebecca continued to draw water until all the camels were sated, proving her kind and generous nature and her suitability for entering Abraham's household.

Eliezer immediately gave her a golden nose ring and two golden bracelets (Genesis 49:47), which Rebecca hurried to show her mother. Seeing the jewelry, her brother Laban ran out to greet the guest and bring him inside. Eliezer recounted the oath he made to Abraham and all the details of his trip to and meeting with Rebecca in fine detail, after which Laban and Bethuel agreed that she could return with him. After hosting Eliezer and his men overnight, however, the family tried to keep Rebecca with them longer. Eliezer insisted that they ask the girl herself, and she agreed to go immediately. Her family sent her off with her nurse, Deborah (according to Rashi), and blessed her, "Our sister, may you come to be thousands of myriads, and may your offspring inherit the gate of its foes."

As Rebecca and her entourage approached Abraham's home, they spied Isaac from a distance in the fields of Beer-lahai-roi. The Talmud^[4] and the Midrash explain that Isaac was praying, as he instituted Mincha, the afternoon prayer. Seeing such a spiritually exalted man, Rebecca immediately dismounted from her camel and asked Eliezer who he was. When she heard that he was her future husband, she modestly covered herself with a veil. Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, married her, and loved her.

According to Rashi, the three miracles that characterized Sarah's tent while she was alive, and that disappeared with her death, reappeared when Rebecca entered the tent. These were: A lamp burned in her tent from Shabbat eve to Shabbat eve, there was a blessing in her dough, and a cloud hovered over her tent (symbolizing the Divine Presence.)

Wedding allusions[link]

Some of the events leading up to the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca have been institutionalized in the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony. Before the bride and bridegroom stand under the chuppah, they participate in a special ceremony called badeken (veiling). The bridegroom is led to the bride by two escorts and, seeing her, covers her face with a veil, similar to the way Rebecca covered her face before marrying Isaac. Then the bridegroom (or the father of the bride, or the officiating rabbi) recites the same blessing over the bride that Rebecca's family recited over her, "Our sister, may you come to be thousands of myriads, and may your offspring inherit the gate of its foes."^[5]

Marriage and motherhood[link]

"Rebecca sees Isaac," woodcut from the Pictorial Bible by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860.

There are two opinions in the Midrash as to how old Rebecca was at the time of her marriage. According to the traditional counting cited by Rashi, Isaac was 12 years old at the time of the Binding of Isaac, and news of Rebecca's birth reached Abraham immediately after that event.^[6] Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebecca,^[7] making Rebecca three years old at the time of her marriage. According to the second opinion, Isaac was 54 years old and Rebecca was 39 years old at the time of their marriage.^[8] Another view is that Rebecca was 35 years old at the time.^{[citation needed]} In any case, 45 years elapsed before they had children. Throughout that time, both Isaac and Rebecca prayed fervently to God for offspring. God eventually answered Isaac's prayers and Rebecca conceived.

Rebecca was extremely uncomfortable during her pregnancy and went to inquire of God why she was suffering so. According to the Midrash, whenever she would pass a house of Torah study, Jacob would struggle to come out; whenever she would pass a house of idolatry, Esau would agitate to come out.^[9] Thinking that she was carrying one baby who was displaying conflicting propensities, Rebecca sought enlightenment at the yeshiva of Shem and Eber. There she received the prophecy that twins were fighting in her womb and would continue to fight all their lives.^[10] The prophecy also said that the older would serve the younger; its statement, "One people will be stronger than the other" has been taken to mean that the two nations will never gain power simultaneously; when one falls, the other will rise, and vice versa.^[11] According to tradition, Rebecca did not share the prophecy with her husband.

When the time came for Rebecca to give birth, the first child to come out emerged red and hairy all over, with his heel grasped by the hand of the second to come out. Onlookers named the first עשו, Esau (`Esav or `Esaw, meaning either "rough", "sensibly felt", "handled", from Hebrew: עשה‎, `asah, "do" or "make";<sup>[12]</sup> or "completely developed", from Hebrew: עשוי‎, `assui, since Esau had as much hair as a child who was much older)^[13] The second was named יעקב, Jacob (Ya`aqob or Ya`aqov, meaning "heel-catcher", "supplanter", "leg-puller", "he who follows upon the heels of one", from Hebrew: עקב‎, `aqab or `aqav, "seize by the heel", "circumvent", "restrain", a wordplay upon Hebrew: עקבה‎, `iqqebah or `iqqbah, "heel").^[14] The Bible states that Isaac was sixty years old when the twins were born.^[15]

The Midrash says that as long as they were young, people did not notice much difference between the boys. But when they reached the age of 38, Jacob busied himself in the house of study, while Esau busied himself with idolatry.^[16] The descriptions of the two young men hint at their opposing spiritual natures: "The lads grew up and Esau became one who knows hunting, a man of the field; but Jacob was a wholesome man, abiding in tents".^[17] The description of Esau as a "hunter" hints to his skill of trapping his father with his mouth; for example, he would ask Isaac whether tithes should be taken from salt and straw, making his father think he was scrupulous in keeping the mitzvahs.^[18] Scripture notes that the attitudes of their parents toward the boys differed: "Isaac loved Esau because game was in his mouth, but Rebecca loved Jacob".^[19]

According to the Talmud, immediately after Abraham died, Jacob prepared a lentil stew as a traditional mourner's meal for his father, Isaac.^[20] The Hebrew Bible states that Esau, returning famished from the fields, begged Jacob to give him some of the stew. (Esau referred to the dish as "that red, red stuff", giving rise to his nickname, Hebrew: אדום‎ (`Edom, meaning "Red").) Jacob offered to give Esau a bowl of stew in exchange for his birthright (the right to be recognized as firstborn), and Esau agreed. The Talmudic dating indicates both men were 40 years old at the time.^[21]

At a later time, a famine struck the land of Israel and Isaac moved his family, upon God's command, to Gerar, which was ruled by Abimelech, king of the Philistines. Like Abraham before him, who called Sarah his "sister" rather than his "wife" so that the Egyptians would not kill him and take his wife, Isaac told the people of Gerar that Rebecca was his sister. She was not molested, but one day Abimelech looked through the window and saw Isaac "sporting" (a euphemism for sexual play)^[22] with her. Abimelech called Isaac on his lie, and then warned others not to touch Rebecca. Eventually Isaac parted from Abimelech in peace.

At the age of 40 (the same age his father had been when he married), Esau took two Hittite wives, Judith the daughter of Beeri and Basemath the daughter of Elon, who vexed Isaac and Rebecca to no end, as these women were also idol-worshippers. One reason why Isaac became blind in his old age was due to the smoke of the incense that these women offered to their idols.^[23]

The deception of Isaac[link]

Isaac became blind in his old age and decided to bestow the blessing of the firstborn upon Esau. According to the Midrash, Isaac had reached the age of 377, five years shy of the age his mother, Sarah, had been at her death. According to Genesis, Isaac had reached the age of 387, the age Ishmael, his half-brother, had been at his death. At this time, the Sages state that one should begin to think he might not exceed the age of whichever parent died first.^[24] Isaac therefore sent Esau out to the fields to trap and cook a piece of savory game for him, so that he could eat it and bless Esau before he died.

Rebecca overheard this conversation and realized that Isaac's blessings should go to Jacob, since she was told before the twins' birth that the older son would serve the younger.^[24] She therefore ordered Jacob to bring her two goats from the flock, which she cooked in the way Isaac loved, and had him bring them to his father in place of Esau.

When Jacob protested that his father would recognize the deception and curse him as soon as he felt him, since Esau was hairy and Jacob smooth-skinned, Rebecca said that the curse would be on her instead. Before she sent Jacob to his father, she dressed him in Esau's garments and laid goatskins on his arms and neck to simulate hairy skin.

Thus disguised, Jacob entered his father's room. Surprised to perceive that Esau was back so soon, Isaac asked how it could be that the hunt went so quickly. Jacob responded, "Because the LORD your God arranged it for me"; Rashi (on Genesis 52:46) says Isaac's suspicions were aroused because Esau never used the personal name of God. Isaac demanded that Jacob come close so he could feel him, but the goatskins felt just like Esau's hairy skin. Confused, Isaac exclaimed, "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau!" (52:47). Still trying to get at the truth, Isaac asked him point-blank, "Are you really my son Esau?" and Jacob answered simply, "I am" (which can be taken as "I am me", not "I am Esau"). Isaac proceeded to eat the food and to drink the wine that Jacob gave him, and then he blessed him with the dew of the heavens, the fatness of the earth, and rulership over many nations as well as his own brother.

Jacob had scarcely left the room when Esau returned from the hunt to receive the blessing. The realization that he has been deceived shocks Isaac, yet he acknowledged that Jacob received the blessings as sworn, by adding, "Indeed, he will be [or remain] blessed!" (52:8). Rashi explains that Isaac smelled the heavenly scent of Gan Eden (Paradise) when Jacob entered his room and, in contrast, perceived Gehenna opening beneath Esau when the latter entered the room, showing him that he had been deceived all along by Esau's show of piety.^[25]

Esau was heartbroken by the deception, and begged for his own blessing. Having made Jacob a ruler over his brothers, Isaac could only promise, "By your sword you shall live, but your brother you shall serve; yet it shall be that when you are aggrieved, you may cast off his yoke from upon your neck" (52:14-15).

Esau was filled with hatred toward Jacob for taking away both his birthright and his blessing. He vowed to himself to kill Jacob as soon as Isaac died. Here again, Rebecca prophetically perceived his murderous intentions and ordered Jacob to travel to her brother Laban's house in Haran, until Esau's anger subsided. She then convinced Isaac to send Jacob away by telling him that she despaired of him marrying a local girl from the idol-worshipping families of Canaan (as Esau had done). After Isaac sent Jacob away to find a wife, Esau realized that his own Canaanite wives were evil in his father's eyes, and he took a daughter of Isaac's half-brother Ishmael as another wife.

Death and burial[link]

Jacob lived with Laban for 45 years (Gen. 56:16), marrying Laban's two daughters and two maidservants. As he returned to Canaan with his large family, servants, and possessions, Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died and was buried at a place that Jacob calls Alon Bachuth (אלון בכות), "Tree of Weepings" (Genesis 10:33). According to the Midrash,^[26] the plural form of the word "weeping" indicates a double sorrow, implying that Rebecca also died at this time. Her death was not mentioned explicitly for several reasons:

1. She needed to be buried secretly. Had she had the type of burial she deserved, Esau would probably have attended, and there was risk of Rebekah being treated disrespectfully as the one who gave birth to such a wicked son.^[27]
2. She was buried in tragic circumstances: Isaac was blind and could not come to honor her properly; Jacob was away; and Esau refused to come because he still hated her for taking away his blessings.

According to the Talmud, the Torah's explicit dating of the life of Ishmael helps to date various events in Jacob's life and, by implication, the age of Rebekah at her death. Ishmael was born when Abraham was 92 years old (Gen. 41:41) and died at the age of 387 (50:42). Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 (46:5); at that time Ishmael was 39. Jacob and Esau were born when Isaac was 85 (50:51); at that time Ishmael was 99. Right after Jacob receives the blessings and flees to Laban, the Torah states that Esau married "Mahalat, the daughter of Ishmael, son of Abraham, sister of Nebaiot" (53:34), on which Rashi, quoting Megillah 17a, notes that Ishmael died between the engagement and wedding, so the girl's brother gave her away. If Ishmael was 387 at the time of his death, this means that Jacob and Esau were 63 at the time of the blessings.^[28] The Talmud adds that Jacob spent 39 years in the yeshiva of Shem and Eber before proceeding to Laban, arriving when he was 77.^[28] Rebecca's death after Jacob's twenty years with Laban indicates that Jacob was 72 when his mother died and Rebekah was either 370 or 384 (based on different Midrashim mentioned earlier about her age at marriage).

See also[link]

• Rebekah (Women of Genesis series)

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rebecca

External links[link]

• Nicholas Poussin's "Rebecca at the Well"

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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Colors =

 id:Borodin            value:tan1
 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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 align:center textcolor:black fontsize:8 mark:(line,black) width:18 shift:(0,-5)

 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  

LineData=

  at:1855 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  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]