Before them , Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky had gone some way towards producing a distinctly Russian kind of music , writing operas on Russian subjects , but The Mighty Handful represented the first concentrated attempt to develop such a music , with Stasov as their artistic adviser and Dargomyzhsky as an elder statesman to the group , so to speak .
Before The Five were established as a group , Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky were trying to create a Russian kind of music .