What makes music truly ‘Russian’? The forgotten debate between Tchaikovsky and his star pupil

What makes a piece of music Russian? A folk tune, a church melody, or simply the fact that the composer was born in Russia? For 19th-century composer Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915), the answer was complicated. He wanted Russian composers to develop a musical voice of their own. But he believed they could do so by learning from composers elsewhere in Europe. By the time Taneyev began his career, the world of classical music in Russia was expanding. Musical life, which had previously been centred on the imperial court and aristocratic families, increasingly came to include public concerts and new institutions for training professional musicians. Conservatoires opened in St Petersburg in 1862 and in Moscow in 1866, where teaching methods developed in various European countries were employed. Sergei Taneyev saw Russian classical music as something should be open to European influences to augment the tunes at the core of its identity. Wikipedia, CC BY However, musicians’ views on how the Russian tradition should develop differed. Tchaikovsky was one of the first graduates of the St Petersburg Conservatoire. At the same time, a group known as “The Five” – César Cui, Aleksandr Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – drew on folk songs, Russian history and folk legends in their quest to forge a distinctive national style. The question at stake was how Russian composers could create their own tradition while drawing on established European musical culture. November 2026 marks 170 years since Taneyev’s birth. This anniversary offers a chance to revisit an argument with his former teacher, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), over a question that still shapes how we listen: how much does a national identity label actually tell us about music? A musical argument Taneyev was closely connected to some of the best-known names in Russian classical music. He studied with Tchaikovsky, later taught Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, and directed the Moscow Conservatory between 1885 and 1889. Tchaikovsky (pictured) and his pupil Taneyev disagreed over how Russian music could be developed. Émile Reutlinger NYPL Digital Gallery / Wikipedia In my research on Tchaikovsky’s operas, I have explored how his music brought Saint Petersburg to life as a Russian city shaped by European culture. In his opera Eugene Onegin (based on the novel by Alexander Pushkin), elegant ballroom dances evoke the capital’s aristocratic society, contrasting with the rural world of the earlier scenes. But Tchaikovsky and Taneyev argued over how drawing on European traditions could help composers develop a distinctively Russian voice. Taneyev was troubled by the direction Russian music might take. He thought composers needed to do more than place Russian folk tunes inside the kinds of pieces already familiar from European concert halls. Instead, they should examine how earlier European composers had turned folk songs and church melodies into complex works. Could Russian musicians do something similar with their own songs? That meant studying counterpoint: the art of combining different melodies so that each remains distinct while working with the others. Bach was an important model. For Taneyev, learning these techniques could help a composer create music with a recognisably Russian character. Education was part of the plan. Taneyev argued that Russian songs should become a foundation of musical training. Composers would learn their craft through melodies connected to their own surroundings, while drawing on knowledge built up elsewhere. Tchaikovsky was sceptical. In their 1880 correspondence, he questioned whether Russian music could be separated from European music in the way his pupil proposed. Tchaikovsky is famous for The Nutcracker, the music for a much-loved ballet of the same name set around Christmas. Taneyev explained his position through an image. European music was a tree that had grown over centuries from folk and church melodies. Russian melodies were seeds from which another tree might grow. Russian composers therefore had a choice. They could help the existing European tree grow, or cultivate something of their own. Crucially, Taneyev did not want musicians to turn their backs on Europe. Its history could show them how to proceed. Studying another culture’s achievements could help them develop their own. Tchaikovsky challenged the comparison. Why treat European music as a single tree? French, German and Italian music already had different characters. He preferred to imagine a garden, with Russian music growing alongside its neighbours. For Tchaikovsky, music could belong to a wider European culture and still sound distinctly Russian. He heard French qualities in the music of Massenet and Bizet, just as Taneyev heard Russian qualities in Tchaikovsky’s compositions. Neither man was arguing that national character meant nothing. They disagreed about how it developed, and whether composers needed a deliberate programme of study to create it. Tchaikovsky’s argument also had limitations. His letter dismissed English and Spanish music in terms that revealed his own prejudices. His garden was not a place where every tradition received equal admiration. Nevertheless, Tchaichovsky rejected the idea that Russian music needed to grow outside Europe. It had already taken root in shared musical ground. Musicians without borders Taneyev’s life shows how those connections worked in practice. In 1876, he reported playing Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto at the Paris home of the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. Tchaikovsky subsequently asked him to discuss a possible concert of his music in Paris. Taneyev would play the piano; French contacts would help make it happen. The plan came to nothing, but the correspondence shows musicians working across borders to find listeners. The exchange was artistic as well as practical. Taneyev’s 1884 cantata John of Damascus, for choir and orchestra, draws on Russian sacred music while using the techniques he studied in earlier European works. For listeners, the important point is that these influences could coexist. Learning from another tradition did not automatically make a composer’s music less connected to home. Calling Taneyev Russian remains useful. It connects him to the language, institutions and experiences that shaped his life. But it cannot explain his music on its own. His career suggests that Russian classical music was never a closed national tradition. Even the ambition to create something distinctly Russian could depend on knowledge acquired from elsewhere. That matters when composers become symbols of national identity today. Their music can express a sense of belonging while carrying the traces of other places, people and ideas. Taneyev and Tchaikovsky disagreed about the best way forward. But argument points towards a shared lesson: that a national musical voice could emerge through international exchange.