William's Song a Day Blog - est. September 2007

Today I am finishing my workweek of "The Five" with a piece from Alexander Borodin. Probably his music is my second favorite of "The Mighty Handful" behind Mussorgsky. This is a piece of music is from his opera " Prince Igor ," I really love the artfulness and the passion behind this piece of music. Here is part one on YouTube. Here is part two on YouTube. +

Continuing my themed workweek of "The Five" I decided to choose the one member that I know the least about: Cesar Cui. He seemed to be more of a down-to-earth member of the five; not as radical. This could be because his father was a member of Napoleon's army that stayed in Russia and his mother was Lithuanian. Another part of his career was that he was a prolific music critic as well. Here is a recording of the piece played by Toscha Seidel on YouTube. +

Continuing my workweek of "The Five" I decided on choosing my favourite of the "Mighty Handful:" Modest Mussorgsky. He was the extremest of the group with his Russian nationalism in his music. When I first heard his music my first impression was that it is insanity put to music, plus the popular portrait of him seemed to re-affirm this. All of his music has a lot of passion to it and is quite powerful. One of the aspects of his career that was interesting, but not unexpected, is that most of his contemporaries reviled him as a composer. His career also paralleled a lot of modern day musicians in that he was a substance abuser in the extreme and died young. However, this was normal in the day to protest by having an extreme lifestyle. This song, " Night on Bald Mountain " is probably his most famous piece of music today and was used in the Disney film Fantasia in the scene with the demon and skeletal warriors. Here is an orchestral performance of the ...

Continuing my work week of picking a song from each of "The Five," or "The Mighty Handful," I am picking one from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This is a piece that has been heard by almost everyone alive unless he/she was living under a proverbial boulder. This piece of music has been covered by many artists in all genres of music and has been used a lot in popular culture. Here is a live performance of the song on YouTube. Here is an orchestral version of the song on YouTube. +

I decided to pick a piece from each member of "The Five" or "The Mighty Handful" to make a working week theme. Most people have probably heard the music of these Russian composers' from the Romance period but do not know the composers. While their music is not extremely popular today, they had an incredible impact on future music. Mostly what they are known for is their Russian nationalism in their music. Most music from this time was very western influenced, however they focused on music and themes from their own country like Russian folk music and Cossack music. It is quite interesting that many of the stories of these five great composers actually parallels what most rock groups have to deal with: censorship, substance abuse, and early death to name a few. For the first day I decided to look no further than their leader: Mily Balakirev. This is a virtuoso piece of piano music, which is one of Mily Balakirev's most famous pieces. Here is a live rec...