Intelligentsia y modernidad en la música rusa del siglo XIX. El kruzhok de Mily Balakirev, Modest Musorgsky y la relación de Rusia con Europa

Abstract

This article presents a characterization of Balakirev’s kruzhok -traditionally known as ‘The Mighty Five’- from including it within a larger group, nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia. It was important in order to think about the relationship between Russia and European modernity, not only musical but also cultural and political. One of its members, Modest Musorgsky, addressed the question and in his letters and some of his work the way in which this particular link was manifested can be traced. Far from the total condemnation or absolute submission, Musorgsky -and largely all the kruzhok- thought this contact as from the adaptation of European contributions to the Russian reality. Thus, it is possible to contextualize in a more fully and less reductionist way the works of a group of composers-intelligenty that were both creating a musical field and finding solutions to Russia’s fundamental problems.