Belyayev circle

As Belyayev circle (Russian Беляевский кружок ) refers to the influential group of Russian composers, the end of the 19th century gathered in St. Petersburg to the patron and music publishers Mitrofan Petrovich Belyayev.

The active 1885-1908 company, headed by Nikolai Rimsky- Korsakov and Alexander Borodin as the personalities, Vladimir Vasilievich Stasov and Alexander Glazunov belonged, continued the tradition of the Group of Five, after it was gradually disintegrate.

While the predecessor, also known under the name Mighty Handful, by Rimsky- Korssakovs words " the period of the storm and the clash in the development of Russian music " in line, stood the circle Belyayev for the phase of "peaceful advance. " The national style the Russian tradition was indeed still highlighted; but rejected the circuit techniques and influences of Western European music from not so rigorous. In this new attitude he followed Rimsky- Korsakov, the influential composer and teacher at the conservatory.

Background and details

The namesake Belyayev, an amateur music-loving, organized in his St. Petersburg apartment Quartet every Friday evenings, where he mostly played the viola. The mid- 1880s expanded the circle of visitors to the Belyayev Fridays also to Rimsky-Korsakov, who should determine the group's development from now on. They submitted their works and discuss them. The contact with influential personalities of the St. Petersburg musical life brought Belyayev to support contemporary art of music with the generous financial resources available to him. So he gave up the management of the company, which he had inherited from his father and devoted himself to the promotion of Russian music. To this end he founded in 1884 Glinka awards that honored symphonic works and awarded until 1917.

While the district emphasized the importance of music Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninov he was critical of. In retrospect, was Alexander Ossowski, then deputy chairman of the Glinka Prize Committee, the circle ignoring the creative individuality of the composer by consider him epigones Tchaikovsky. Unlike Scriabin, whose work Belyayev estimated and moved that he was not interested in the compositions Rachmaninoff. After Belyayev death, the Trustees had become towards him objectively.