While the seminal significance of Glinka's operas was by no means unanimously recognized at their first appearance, it was not long before almost all Russian musical figures were paying tribute to it. It is striking that Tchaikovsky and Serov as well as the ‘mighty handful’ claimed Glinka as their forerunner. The two operas were substantially different, the first showing the combination of features from Russian folklore with elements from contemporary French and Italian styles, while the second displayed a wealth of novel experiment in timbre, harmony and melody, some of it in the context of an oriental realm of the imagination. Kamarinskaya was a virtual anthology of Russian folksong treatments. Since the way ahead owed so much to Glinka's pioneering works, it is not surprising that their exegesis consumed so much of the attention of critics.

(a) A. N. Serov: The role of a single motive through the whole of Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar. Theatrical and Musical Herald, 13 December 1859, no. 49. Serov 4, pp. 186–92

Serov's discovery of organic connections between different numbers of the opera coincided with his enthusiasm for viewing entities as wholes, and for the ‘organic criticism’ of Apollon Grigor'yev. The latter was also linked with pochvennichestvo, the idea that Russia's destiny lay in the reconciliation of the educated classes with the peasantry (the pochva (‘soil’)) on a religious and ethical basis.

Experiments in technical criticism carried out on the music of M. I. Glinka