Mitrofan Belyayev

He was also the founder of the Belyayev circle, a society of musicians in Russia whose members included Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov and Anatoly Lyadov.

Later he became a member in a circle of friends in St. Petersburg of chamber musicians, and with the leaders of that time - Anatoly Lyadov and Alexander Borodin - undertook journeys in Russia and abroad to learn more music, among other places to Bayreuth.

The works published there were edited to a high standard, while the authors received higher fees than was usual and kept full control over performance rights.

For example, in 1886, for his 50th birthday, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Lyadov and Glazunov collaborated on a string quartet on the notes B-A-F (Be-la-ef),[1] in 1895, Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov composed the three movement 'Jour de fête' or 'Name-Day Quartet',[2] and in 1899, 10 of the group collaborated to compose the Variations on a Russian Theme in G major,[3] and another collection -of 16 movements by 11 of the group- was published under the "Les Vendredis" group name.

[4] Another of their joint projects was a set of variations on a Russian theme for piano and orchestra, to which in addition Alexander Kopylov, Nikolay Sokolov and other members of the circle contributed individual movements.

Mitrofan Belyayev c. 1880
Portrait of M. P. Belyayev by Ilya Repin (1886).