Belyayev circle
Maes writes that the composers who formed the Belyayev circle have often been described as "important links to, and pathbreakers for" modernist Russian composers such as Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. This, he asserts, is actually a false assumption which suggests that modernism was the result of a gradual process. The truth, Maes suggests, was that modernist music in Russia was a much more radical break from the Belyayev circle than many have claimed. Rimsky-Korsakov's extensive use of the octatonic scale and other harmonic experiments "was a gold mine for those bent on a modernist revolution," Maes writes. "However, the renewing force had still to be liberated from the cliches and routines into which the Belyayev aesthetic had been pressed".