Talk:The Five (composers)

"Members?"
The use of "members" here and similar language in other articles of these five connotes some sort of establishment. I can't recall ever seeing them described as any more than like-minded associates in any notable texts. I'm inclined to replace with "...one of five composers known as..." with conforming edits in related articles. Thoughts? CleffedUp 11:26, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


 * That would seem not to be necessary. The phrase "член могучей кучки" ("member of the Mighty Handful") is used in Russian as well. "Member" does not have to suggest that a person is in an organisation or society. (Even the supposedly more definite expression "card-carrying member of X" is often used in English in a figurative sense.) Mademoiselle Fifi 16:16, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

The Mighty Handful
I've always heard this phrase describes the works of Tomaso Albinoni. There were only a handful of them to survive but had a mighty influence. The Russian composers refered to here are correctly known as "The Five." Probably, someone incorrectly remembered the Mighty Handful and assumed that it connected to the Russian composers.


 * You are insuffuciently informed. 'Mighty Handful' is a universally accepted translation of 'Kuchka' (literally 'mighty little heap'), which was a term contemporaneously assigned to these Russian composers by their friend Stasov. And with all due respect to Albinoni, he has been no 'influence' on anybody.
 * Pfistermeister 10:03, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Other names
In my native language(s), The Mighty Handful is also known as "The Petersburg group", "The Balakirev circle" and "The new Russian school" (direct translations). Are any of those frequent in English use? Should not those be added? --Dijxtra 16:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I've never heard those names used in English before. I have however seen "The Mighty Fistful" used quite often. JLP101 15:49, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The Five is Standard English Usage
Encylopædia Britannica lists this group as "The Five" Columbia University Press's Encylopedia also refers to this group as "The Five" according to this page. The third source here, giving "The Mighty Handful" is this article.... People looking for "The Five" aren't going to find this page. It should be moved. Musikfabrik 09:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Did this article formerly reside at "The Mighty Handful"? If so, why did it change? Anyone who knows Russian music deeply knows this group in English as "The Mighty Handful". The point is that Stasov named them not "The Five", but "Могучая кучка", and "The Mighty Handful" is clearly the more accurate designation. Almost every serious book (not encyclopedias) I have read about these composers uses "The Mighty Handful". The more accurate name should be the preferred name. Caving in to the majority is cowardly. Anyway, when you have the ability to direct all inquiries for "The Five" to "The Mighty Handful", there is no reason not to do it. Wikipedia should be encouraging precision. Of course you could argue that by pursuing this line of reasoning I would advocate using "The Mighty (Little) Heap", or "Moguchaya Kuchka", or even the Cyrillic equivalent. That would be stupid. But I would be seriously interested in knowing how many people who know a great deal about this group of composers actually prefer "The Five" to "The Mighty Handful". I think those Frenchies are involved in this one too somehow. Please pardon my arrogance, but this one always gets my hackle up.Ivan Velikii 07:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)


 * What would it change if "those Frenchies", as you choose to call them, had been involved? I made the change and I'm an American. I do happen to be a French music specialist. Does this make me unqualified to discuss this article?
 * This isn't about how people "prefer" this group to be called: this is about standard English usage as is practiced in English-speaking countries. To quote Naming_conventions:
 * "articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists."
 * I made the change because this is how this group is usuually refered to in English, as these very "standard" references prove. This is the English lanuage section of Wikipedia. I think that it's perfect that you use "Могучая кучка" in the Russian Language version, but most sources in English use "The Five". You will notice that after I made the name change, i also added the other names by which this group is known, as translated into English. Most English speakers will find "The Five" and then they will find the knowledge that, in Russian, this group is known as "The Mighty Handful". It seems to me that this will further people's education, since they won't know to look for the "Mighty Handful", but they WILL look for "the Five".
 * The change was made almost a month ago and no one has noticed before. Perhaps you might want to bring this point up for discussion at the discussion page of the Wikiproject for composers and see what the general reaction is. Cordially Musikfabrik 19:16, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I have moved this page to where it originally was - The Mighty Five Handful - which is the most common, not to mention the most accurate translation of the Russian name. There was never any consensus to have the page on The Five, in fact, it appears that the only person objecting in 2006 was an editor who has since been indefinitely blocked due to deceptively using multiple accounts to support his point. --Damianmx (talk) 23:42, 15 January 2016 (UTC)


 * "The Mighty Five"? You seem to be confusing the two names.
 * But seriously, are you relying on a very brief discussion held almost 10 years ago involving all of three editors, to justify a position you're adopting today in 2016? That is hardly anyone's idea of an established consensus, and even if it were, what took it 10 years to be be implemented?
 * For my money, there is no consensus to change this from The Five (composers). If you want to change it, please start a new discussion, giving your reasons.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  04:19, 16 January 2016 (UTC)


 * My apologies for the typo, I meant the Mighty Handful. As far as the consensus, it is of note that the banned user who changed the name from the Mighty Handful to The Five did so without a consensus in the first place and his changes were not removed even after they were disputed. Why it took so long is beside the point, it always gets me when someone manages to stick something controversial into an article and then insists it cannot be removed without a consensus, that's not what consensus means or how it works...
 * Also on the topic of consensus, I am a little confused. Recently you reverted my edit suggesting that The Five was the last consensus, but just now you say the consensus does not exist. Does one say whatever is convenient just to keep things as they are? That's not fair and also not pertinent to the substantive discussion at hand. --Damianmx (talk) 06:03, 16 January 2016 (UTC)


 * What I said in my edit summary was Last time this was discussed, the outcome was The Five; if you want to revive the discussion, you're welcome to do so. (Note that I said "outcome"; I made no mention of "consensus".) Edit summaries have a character limit, so one sometimes has to abbreviate one's point.  My point was that the 2006 discussion resulted in no change to the status quo (The Five).
 * It's difficult to follow the history of this page. The first time any significant content appeared was here in August 2006. The edit summary said the content was being moved here, but didn't say where it was being moved from.  That aside, I can't see any evidence that this page was ever called anything except "The Five" - until now. If there was in fact a page move at some earlier time, it must have been done in a very unorthodox manner, leaving no obvious record that it ever happened.  if you know more than I do about this murky matter, I'd be delighted to be enlightened. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  06:52, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I did some research and it seems the reason you are unable to track the page history is because once upon a time the same pushy user Musikfabrik, who started this whole mess, deleted and physically moved the original page to a new page under a different name that suited him. That is not an acceptable way to move a page and is one more reason why I am baffled that no one ever corrected the mess he made. So the original blanked page was named The Mighty Handful and should have stayed that way.--Damianmx (talk) 08:22, 16 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Ok, thanks for that. Look, given the time that's elapsed, I think it would be judicious to have a proper, contemporary discussion about the title of the article, not connected to what it was originally called or what certain users may have said 10 years ago.  What users think now - that's what we need to know.  Is anyone interested apart from you and me?  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  11:21, 16 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I contacted another user who may be interested in this topic but beyond that, I don't know who is interested. Lets leave this section open for a while and see if there are other points of view. I would add that lack of participants should not be an excuse to leave the page as it was left by the user who made the original changes.--Damianmx (talk) 10:06, 17 January 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Damianmx (talk • contribs) 10:01, 17 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Except that, apart from the fact that the change should never have been made because of the way it was done, I happen to agree with it. We'll get to that in due course.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  11:18, 17 January 2016 (UTC)


 * One thing to note in any decision is that the term "The Five" is used in other pages, most notably Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five, which is a featured article. Jrt989 (talk)


 * Indeed. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:51, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Lead picture's caption
The caption of the lead picture should specify which image corresponds to which composer. IronGargoyle (talk) 14:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * ✅ as of 28 March 2015‎ by an anonymous IP. --BjKa (talk) 10:56, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Why isn't this a disambiguation page?
I'm sure a majority of people don't know who The Five are... BlueChainsawMan (talk) 07:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Requested move 18 May 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Move. Cúchullain t/ c 16:55, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

The Mighty Handful → The Five (composers) (or simply The Five) – per WP:COMMONNAME; see Google Books results for "The Five" + Borodin vs. "The Mighty Handful" + Borodin. The article was titled simple from its creation in 2002 until 2012 and then The Five (composers) till 2016. There has never been a formal RM discussion but the issue was discussed extensively above. Also note the title of FA Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five. —  AjaxSmack 02:22, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support—I've always known them as Les Cinque. The English equivalent is fine, and more common than the current name. Tony (talk)  08:23, 19 May 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Recent additions to the lead
An anonymous IP keeps adding this to the lead:

''Although The Five struggled to promote the Russian music, ironically, except Balakirev, who claimed he had a Tatar forefather, but the claim wasn't substantiated, none was of ethnically Russian (Velikoross) descent: Cui of French, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov of Polish-Lithuanian, Borodin of Georgian ancestry respectively. Also, Balakirev was the only true civilian of the five, with others being either career military officers or of a strong military background. ''

I'm not sure what are the user's intentions and why he thinks it is important to mention ethnicity or military careers in the lead. But even if he wants to make some point about the composers not belonging to Russian people, his sources are still wrong: only Cui wasn't ethnically Russian, and even then he grew up in a Russian-speaking environment and studied in Saint Petersburg. The fact that Rimsky-Korsakov's family traced their roots to the 14th-century Czech from Lithuania or that Borodin was born to a Georgian father (and a Russian mother) doesn't make them non-Russians. Details on their ancestries could be found in corresponding articles. I will delete any future additions of this sort as offtopic and WP:OR. AveTory (talk) 22:49, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Excessive weight in section
The section currently comprises over 20% of this article (over 500 words), and the information in it is largely taken out of 3 pages from a single source (N.B.: 500 words is roughly the same amount of words in 3 standard book size pages).

That this article on a highly significant topic in classical music has undergone so few major changes since nearly 14 years ago is a sign that it could use some updating. Either reducing the length of the current section, or expanding the article with enough other material such that the current section proportionally takes up the weight it deserves, would be reasonable solutions, though the latter would be calling for a huge amount of work.

I suspect that the emphasis given in this article to covering the possibly misogynistic portrayals of female characters may be undue and using Wikipedia's voice to sound more objective than it is. It seems like it is roughly as notable as the portrayals of similar subjects by any other composer in the era or context they belong to. I would not be surprised if there were academic writings arguing that the music of almost other major composer is "guilty" of portraying something similar, yet you don't generally find them covered in such detail on their respective Wikipedia articles.

A good benchmark that comes to mind is that this encyclopedia article should not cover to a high level of detail what would generally not be included in most program notes, textbooks, or other educational materials that gives an intermediate-level overview of The Five, which again is such a central topic in the history of classical music that there are at least tens of thousands of such documents, certainly not a shortage that makes relying on 3 pages from a single source necessary.

On any subject, very many things could plausibly be covered; but a general encyclopedia article on it should probably use a more coarse-grained overview approach. A single sentence such as "A few scholars have explored how misogynistic elements might figure in works such as X and Y." would probably suffice for this article; or if not, perhaps the detail would belong better in a new article called "Orientalism in Russian music" or articles about those specific pieces or something. Hftf (talk) 03:46, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Influence on Debussy
I find the following part a bit one-sided. In "Claude Debussy also uses this scale in his music, taking this, among many things, from the Russians." at ''Musical Language > Stylization > "The Five adopted ..." > Whole Tone Scale'', I get the impression that Debussy's usage of the whole tone scale is solely based on russian influence. Without being able to offer a quick source, I learned that Debussy was at least equally influenced by south-east asian music during the world exhibition(s?) in Paris.

I people are interested, i would try to find a fitting source. If not, maybe a source for the heavy influence would be interesting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:C8:971D:6600:5D7E:DB18:3835:74C0 (talk) 09:08, 5 April 2022 (UTC)