Free Music School
The Free Music School was a private music and educational organization in St. Petersburg, Russia founded in 1862 to rival the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.
Founding and purpose
and Vladimir Stasov were the main opponents against the musical conventions of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory headed and founded by Anton Rubinstein in 1861. They and others founded the Free Music School in 1862, the School became the stronghold of the Mighty Five : Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. They feared that German musical principles would stifle the Russian musical form, and so they aimed to cultivate native talent but most of the early members were self-trained amateurs as opposed to their rivals in the Conservatory who enjoyed court connections and were mainly from the gentry.The Free Music School was conceived by its founders not only as an educational organization, but also as a concert organization. Concerts of the BMSh in the 1860s and 1870s became a platform for promoting new Russian music. The quality of the pupils upon their entry is noted to have been relatively low, Cesar Cui noting that most students at the beginning of their studies could not read any music.