GLINKA, MIKHAIL

born May 21 [June 1, New Style], 1804, Novospasskoye, Russia died February 3 [February 15], 1857, Berlin, Prussia in full Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka the first Russian composer to win international recognition, and the acknowledged founder of the Russian nationalist school. Glinka first became interested in music at age 10 or 11, when he heard his uncle's private orchestra. From 1818 to 1822 he studied at the Chief Pedagogic Institute at St. Petersburg, also taking piano lessons from John Field and Charles Mayer. From 1824 to 1828 he served in the Ministry of Communications but was too indolent and unambitious for an official career. As an amateur he composed songs and a certain amount of chamber music. Three years in Italy brought him under the spell of the composers Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti, though ultimately homesickness led him to the idea of writing music in Russian. First he studied composition for six months in Berlin, where he began a Sinfonia per l'orchestra sopra due motive russe (1834; Symphony for Orchestra on Two Russian Motifs). Recalled to Russia when his father died, Glinka married and settled down to the composition of the opera that first won him fame, A Life for the Tsar; it was first produced at St. Petersburg (1836) in the presence of the tsar. During this period Glinka composed some of his best songs, and in 1842 his second opera, Ruslan and Lyudmila, was produced. The fantastic Oriental subject and often boldly original music of Ruslan won neither imperial favour nor popularity, though Franz Liszt was at once struck by the novelty of the music. Disgruntled, and with his marriage broken, Glinka left Russia in 1844. He had the satisfaction of hearing excerpts from both his operas performed in Paris under Hector Berlioz (1845, as the first performance of Russian music in the West) and other conductors. From Paris he went to Spain, where he stayed for two years (until May 1847) collecting the materials used in his two Spanish overtures, the capriccio brillante on the Jota aragonesa (1845; Aragonese Jota) and Summer Night in Madrid (1848). Between 1852 and 1854 he was again abroad, mostly in Paris, until the outbreak of the Crimean War drove him home again. He then wrote his highly entertaining Zapiski (Memoirs; first published in St. Petersburg, 1887), musical, social, and amorous, which give a remarkable self-portrait of his indolent, amiable, hypochondriacal character. His last notable composition was Festival Polonaise for Tsar Alexander II's coronation ball (1855). Glinka has been described as a dilettante of genius. His work, small in quantity, is considered the foundation of practically all later Russian music of any value. Ruslan and Lyudmila provided models of lyrical melody and colourful orchestration on which Mily Balakirev, Aleksandr Borodin, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov formed their styles. Glinka's orchestral composition Kamarinskaya (1848) was said by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky to be the acorn from which the oak of later Russian symphonic music grew.