A metropolitan is the chief prelate in an ecclesiastical territory that usually coincided with a civil province.
The metropolitan ranks just below a patriarch and just above an archbishop, except in the contemporary Greek Orthodox Church, where since the 1850s the archbishop ranks above the metropolitan. The term derives from the Greek word for the capital of a province where the head of the episcopate resides. The first evidence of its use to designate a Churchman’s rank was in the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.) decision, which declared (canon 4; cf. canon 6) the right of the metropolitan to confirm episcopal appointments within his jurisdiction.
A metropolitan was first appointed to head the Rus Church in 992. Subsequent metropolitans of Kiev and All Rus resided in Kiev until 1299 when
Metropolitan Maxim (1283-1305) moved his residence to Vladimir-on-the-Klyazma. His successor, Peter (1308-1326), began residing unofficially in Moscow. The next metropolitan, Feognost (1328-1353), made the move to Moscow official. A rival metropolitan was proposed by the grand duke of Lithuania, Olgerd, in 1354, and from then until the 1680s there was a metropolitan residing in western Rus with a rival claim to heading the metropoly of Kiev and all Rus.
Until 1441, the metropolitans of Rus were appointed in Constantinople. From 1448 until 1589, the grand prince or tsar appointed the metropolitan of Moscow and all Rus following nomination by the council of bishops. When the metropolitan of Moscow and all Rus was raised to the status of patriarch in 1589, the existing archbishops-those of Novgorod, Rostov, Kazan, and Sarai-were elevated to metropolitans. The Council of 1667 elevated four other archbishops-those of Astrakhan, Ryazan, Tobolsk, and Belgorod-to metropolitan status. After the abolition of the patriarchate in 1721 by Peter I, no metropolitans were appointed until the reign of Elizabeth, when metropolitans were appointed for Kiev (1747) and Moscow (1757). Under Catherine II, a third metropolitan- for St. Petersburg-was appointed (1783). In 1917, the patriarchate of Moscow was reestablished and various new metropolitanates created so that by the 1980s there were twelve metropolitans in the area encompassed by the Soviet Union. See also: PATRIARCHATE; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ellis, Jane. (1986). The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History. London: Croom Helm. Fennell, John. (1995). History of the Russian Church to 1448. London: Longman. Preobrazhensky, Alexander, ed. (1998). The Russian Orthodox Church: Tenth to Twentieth Centuries. Moscow: Progress.
(1874-1940), born Karl-Theodor Kazimir Meyer-hold, stage director.
Among the most influential twentieth-century stage directors, Vsevolod Meyerhold utilized abstract design and rhythmic performances. His actor training system, “biomechanics,” merges acrobatics with industrial studies of motion. Never hesitating to adapt texts to suit directorial concepts, Meyerhold saw theatrical production as an art independent from drama. Born in Penza, Meyerhold studied acting at the Moscow Philharmonic Society (1896-1897) with theatrical reformer Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. When Nemirovich co-founded the Moscow Art Theater with Konstantin Stanislavsky (1897), Meyerhold joined. He excelled as Treplev in Anton Chekhov’s Seagull (1898). Like Treplev, Meyerhold sought new artistic forms and left the company in 1902. He directed symbolist plays at Stanislavsky’s Theater-Studio (1905) and for actress Vera Kommissarzhevskaya (1906-1907).
From 1908 to 1918, Meyerhold led a double life. As director for the imperial theaters, he created sumptuous operas and classic plays. As experimental director, under the pseudonym Dr. Daper-tutto, he explored avant-garde directions. Meyerhold greeted 1917 by vowing “to put the October revolution into the theatre.” He headed the Narkom-pros Theater Department from 1920 to 1921 and staged agitprop (pro-communist propaganda). His Soviet work developed along two trajectories: He reinterpreted classics to reflect political issues and premiered contemporary satires. His most famous production, Fernand Crommelynck’s Magnificent Cuckold (1922), used a constructivist set and bio-mechanics. When Soviet control hardened, Meyer-hold was labeled “formalist” and his theater liquidated (1938). The internationally acclaimed Stanislavsky sprang to Meyerhold’s defense, but shortly after Stanislavsky’s death, Meyerhold was arrested (1939). Following seven months of torture, he confessed to “counterrevolutionary slander” and was executed on February 2, 1940. See also: AGITPROP; MOSCOW ART THEATER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Braun, Edward. (1995). Meyerhold: A Revolution in the Theatre. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Rudnitsky, Konstantin. (1981). Meyerhold the Director, tr. George Petrov. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.
Group of nationally oriented Russian composers during the nineteenth century; the name was
coined unintentionally by the music and art critic Vladimir Stasov.
The “Mighty Handful” (moguchaya kuchka), also known as the New Russian School, Balakirev Circle, or the Five, is a group of nationalist, nineteenth century composers. At the end of the 1850s the brilliant amateur musician Mily Balakirev (1837-1920) gathered a circle of like-minded followers in St. Petersburg with the intention of continuing the work of Mikhail Glinka. His closest comrades became the engineer Cesar Cui (1835-1918; member of the group beginning in 1856), the officers Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881, member beginning in 1857), and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908, member beginning in 1861), and the chemist Alexander Borodin (1833-1887, member beginning in 1862). The spiritual mentor of the young composers, who shared their lack of professional musical training, was the music and art critic Vladimir Stasov, who publicly and vehemently promoted the cause of a Russian national music separate from Western traditions, in a somewhat polarizing and polemic manner. When Stasov, in an article for the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti (St. Petersburg News) about a “Slavic concert of Mr. Balakirev” on the occasion of the Slavic Congress in 1867, praised the “small, but already mighty handful of Russians musicians,” he had Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky in mind as well as the group, but the label stuck to Balakirev and his followers. They can be considered a unit not only because of their constant exchange of ideas, but also because of their common aesthetic convictions. Strictly speaking, this unity of composition lasted only until the beginning of the 1870s, when it began to dissolve with the growing individuation of its members.
The enthusiastic music amateurs sought to create an independent national Russian music by taking up Russian themes, literature, and folklore and integrating Middle-Asian and Caucasian influences, thereby distancing it from West European musical language and ending the supremacy of the latter in the musical life of Russian cities. Balakirev, who had known Glinka personally, was the most advanced musically; his authority was undisputed among the five musicians. He rejected classical training in music as being only rigid routine and recommended his own method to his followers instead: composing should not be learned through academic courses, but through the direct analysis of masterpieces (especially those created by Glinka, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, or Ludwig van Beethoven, the composers most venerated by the Five). The St. Petersburg conservatory, founded in 1862 by Anton Rubinstein as a new central music training center with predominantly German staff was heavily criticized, especially by Balakirev and Stasov. Instead, a Free School of Music (Bezplatnaya muzykalnaya shkola) was founded in the same year, and differed from the conservatory in its low tuition fees and its decidedly national Russian orientation. Balakirev advised his own disciples of the Mighty Handful to go about composing great works of music without false fear.
In spite of comparatively low productivity and long production periods, due in part to the lack of professional qualifications and the consequent creative crises, in part to Balakirev’s willful and meticulous criticisms, and in part to the members’ preoccupation with their regular occupations, the composers of the Mighty Handful became after Glinka and beside Peter Tchaikovsky the founders of Russian national art music during the nineteenth century. An exception was Cui, whose compositions, oriented towards Western models and themes, formed a sharp contrast to what he publicly postulated for Russian music. The other members of the Balakirev circle successfully developed
