César Cui

César Antonovich Cui was a Russian composer and music critic, member of the Belyayev circle and The Five – a group of composers gathered by the idea of creating a specifically Russian type of music. As an officer of the Imperial Russian Army, he rose to the rank of engineer-general, taught fortifications in Russian military academies and wrote a number of monographs on the subject.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article on César Cui.

From the period sources

César Cui, born in Vilna in 1835, was the son of a French officer who settled in Poland after 1812, marrying a Lithuanian lady and becoming a French professor (Grove’s Dictionary, 1904). This “French blood in his veins” (Grove’s American Supplement, 1922) may explain why some of his best songs are set to French words. Though he showed precocious musical talent and received irregular theory instruction from Polish composer Moniuszko, Cui pursued a military career, becoming a professor of fortification at the Engineers’ Academy in St. Petersburg, where he even numbered Emperor Nicholas II among his pupils (Grove’s Dictionary, 1904).

His musical enthusiasm, which he had set aside for his examinations, was rekindled in 1857 upon meeting Balakirev, who became the center of a new musical movement (Grove’s Dictionary, 1904). Cui was Balakirev’s first disciple, joining a group that included Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin (Grove’s Dictionary, 1904). This “new school of Russian music” was progressive, aiming for vocal music to be in “perfect accordance with the meaning of the text” (Grove’s American Supplement, 1922). Despite Balakirev’s guidance, Cui is largely considered a self-taught musician (Grove’s Dictionary, 1904). He also contributed to the St. Petersburg Journal for four years, extolling Schumann, Liszt, and Berlioz (Famous Composers, 1891).