Editing Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (section)

===Relationship with The Five===
{{Further|Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five|The Five (composers)}}
[[File:Balakirev from 1914 Windsor Magazine.png|thumb|alt=A man in his late 20s or early 30s with dark hair and a bushy beard, wearing a dark coat, dress shirt and tie.|A young [[Mily Balakirev]], one of [[The Five (composers)|The Five]], {{circa|1866}}]]
In 1856, while Tchaikovsky was still at the School of Jurisprudence and Anton Rubinstein lobbied aristocrats to form the [[Russian Musical Society]], critic [[Vladimir Stasov]] and an 18-year-old pianist, [[Mily Balakirev]], met and agreed upon a [[musical nationalism|nationalist]] agenda for Russian music, one that would take the operas of [[Mikhail Glinka]] as a model and incorporate elements from folk music, reject traditional Western practices and use non-Western harmonic devices such as the [[whole-tone scale|whole tone]] and [[octatonic scale]]s.<ref>Figes, 178–181</ref> They saw Western-style conservatories as unnecessary and antipathetic to fostering native talent.<ref>Maes, 8–9; Wiley, ''Tchaikovsky'', 27.</ref>

Balakirev, [[César Cui]], [[Modest Mussorgsky]], [[Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]] and [[Alexander Borodin]] became known as the ''moguchaya kuchka'', translated into English as the "Mighty Handful" or [[The Five (composers)|"The Five"]].<ref>Garden, ''New Grove'' (2001), 8:913.</ref> Rubinstein criticized their emphasis on amateur efforts in musical composition; Balakirev and later Mussorgsky attacked Rubinstein for his musical conservatism and his belief in professional music training.<ref>Maes, 39.</ref> Tchaikovsky and his fellow conservatory students were caught in the middle.<ref>Maes, 42.</ref>

While ambivalent about much of The Five's music, Tchaikovsky remained on friendly terms with most of its members.<ref>Maes, 49.</ref> In 1869, he and Balakirev worked together on what became Tchaikovsky's first recognized masterpiece, the fantasy-overture ''[[Romeo and Juliet (Tchaikovsky)|Romeo and Juliet]]'', a work which The Five wholeheartedly embraced.<ref>Brown, ''Man and Music'', 49.</ref> The group also welcomed his [[Symphony No. 2 (Tchaikovsky)|Second Symphony]], later nicknamed the ''[[Little Russia]]n''.<ref>Brown, ''The Early Years'', 255.</ref>{{refn|group=n|According to historian [[Harlow Robinson]], it was [[Nikolay Kashkin]] who first "suggested the moniker [Little Russian] in his 1896 book ''Memories of Tchaikovsky''."<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.bso.org/works/symphony-no-2-little-russian | title = Symphony No. 2, Little Russian | author = Robinson, Harlow | website = bso.org | access-date = 14 June 2024}}</ref>}} Despite their support, Tchaikovsky made considerable efforts to ensure his musical independence from the group as well as from the conservative faction at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.<ref>Holden, 51–52.</ref>