BALAKIREV, MILY ALEXEIVICH was born at Nijni-Novgorod on Dec. 31, 1836 (O.S.), and died at St. Petersburg, May 16/29, 191o. He began to study music with his mother, later received a few lessons from Dubuque and sub sequently was taken in hand by Karl Eisrich, to whom he dedi cated his early work for pianoforte and orchestra, a Fantasy on Russian Motives. In his youth he was fortunate also in living with Oulibichev, . author of the well-known life of Mozart, who had a private band, from the performances of which Balakirev derived much benefit. At 18, after a university course in mathe matics, he went to St. Petersburg and there attracted attention as a pianist. He made the acquaintance of Glinka, and carried on that musician's influence as a member of the so-called "Na tionalist" Russian School, which had sprung up in the 'fifties. Before he was 25 he found himself the acknowledged leader of an important group of his contemporaries, many of whom were destined to be heard of later, including as they did Cesar Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. With Tschaikovsky also he was in close relations, although the latter was not actually to be reckoned as one of his disciples. Of his own compositions of this period many were never published, while others, such as the incidental music to King Lear and the tone-poem Russia, were only published many years after they were written. From the first, indeed, Balakirev appears to have displayed even more desire to promote the cause of Russian music generally than to advance his own individual claims. It was to this end that he joined in 1862 with Lomakin and Stassov in founding the Free School of Music in St. Petersburg and with the same object that he organized many concerts at which representative works of the younger school were given a hearing unobtainable elsewhere. In 1869 he became director of the Imperial Chapel and conductor of the Imperial Russian Musical Society. He found, however, that official duties were quite incompatible with the development of his own creative powers, and in 1874, theref ore, he retired into the country and devoted himself solely to composition, the most important product of his labours being revealed in due course in the shape of his finest work, the symphonic poem Tamara. Although not to be reckoned among the greater masters, and one to be esteemed more for his inspiring influence on others than for his own individual achievements, Balakirev remains none the less a composer to be respected. His output is uneven, but such things as Tamara, the pianoforte fantasy Islamy and the tone-poem Russia, as well as some of his early songs, leave no room for doubt as to his creative powers.