Five, The

views updated May 29 2018

Five, The. Name given to group of 5 Russ. composers, Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov, who est. a ‘national’ sch. of comp. in 19th cent. In Russia they were known as moguchaya kuchka, ‘the mighty handful’, a term invented by the critic Stasov in 1867.