Folklorism, Orientalism, "fantastic" Style
Unlike their predecessors in the Five, composers in the Belyalev circle did not concern themselves greatly with folklorism—the invention or adaptation of folklore to newly-written stories or songs, or to folklore that is reworked and modified for modern tastes. They also did not travel to other parts of Russia to actively search for folk songs, as Balakirev had done. When the Belyalev composers produced folkloric works, "they simply imitated Balakirev's or Rimsky-Korsakov's styles".
One of the Belyayev composers, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, continued the Five's work in musical orientalism—the use of exotic melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements to depict the middle- and far-eastern parts of the Russian Empire. He wrote three operas set in an oriental background and composed in Balakirev's style—Ruth, Azra and Izmena. The story for the last of these operas "deals with the struggle between Christians and Muslims during the sixteenth-century occupation of Georgia by the Persians". Ippolotov-Ivanov is best known in the West for his two sets of Caucasian Sketches "an orientalist orchestral work modeled on Balakirev and Borodin".
Lyadov wrote in a "fantastic" vein akin to Rimsky-Korsakov's, especially in his tone poems based on Russian fairy tales, Baba Yaga, Kikimora and The Enchanted Lake. This style of musical writing was based on extensive use of the whole tone scale and the octatonic scale to depict supernatural or magical characters and events, hence the term "fantastic". Though he would break from the Belyayev aesthetic in subsequent works, Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet The Firebird in a similar musical style.
Read more about this topic: Belyayev Circle
Famous quotes containing the words fantastic and/or style:
“[Madness] is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as effective over the general population as detention centers in dictatorships, the image of the madhouse floats through every mind for the course of its lifetime.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)