Talk:The Five (composers)

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  "Members?" 

message: 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)
thread_title:  The Mighty Handful 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Other names 

message: The caption of the lead picture should specify which image corresponds to which composer. IronGargoyle (talk) 14:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: as of 28 March 2015‎ by an anonymous IP. --BjKa (talk) 10:56, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead picture's caption 

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

message: 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)
thread_title:  Recent additions to the lead 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Excessive weight in section 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Influence on Debussy