Kamarinskaya

Glinka's Kamarinskaya, written in 1848, was the first orchestral work based entirely on Russian folk song and to use the compositional principles of that genre to dictate the form of the music.

According to musicologist Richard Taruskin, the traditional Kamarinskaya is "a quick dance tune" otherwise known as a naigrish, distinctive for its three-bar phrase lengths, which are played in an endless number of variations in moto perpetuo fashion by an instrumentalist.

[3] As in traditional nagriish songs, Glinka uses three-bar phrase lengths throughout the fast sections of his composition.

[2] The structure and mechanics of Kamarinskaya differ markedly from Western European compositional principles and in some ways are diametrically opposed to them.

[6] Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who had received Western-oriented musical instruction from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, had used folk songs in his student overture The Storm.

He believed fervently that in Kamarinskaya lay the core of the entire school of Russian symphonic music, "just as the whole oak is in the acorn", as he would write in his diary in 1888.

Successful upon its premiere, the symphony also won the favor of the group of nationalistic Russian composers known as The Five, led by Mily Balakirev.

For Tchaikovsky, Kamarinskaya offered a viable example of the creative possibilities of folk songs in a symphonic structure, using a variety of harmonic and contrapuntal combinations.