Mily Balakirev 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 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.
Concerts of the BMSh (choral conducted by Lomakin and orchestral by Balakirev) in the 1860s and 1870s became a platform for promoting new Russian music.
Mily Balakirev adapted the tonal mutability, the distinctive heterophony and the specific use of parallel fifths, fourths and thirds by studying Volga folk songs in the 1860s.
[1] The school's student body began to drastically reduce by the late 1860s after Gavriil lomakin stepped away from leadership in 1868, and soon dissolved in 1917 due to the beginning of the revolution.