Mikhail Glinka 

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka was the first Russian composer to gain recognition within his own country. He born on 1st June 1804 in Novospasskoye, Smolensk, Russia and died on 15th February 1857 in Berlin, Germany aged 52.

“Ivan Susanin” or “A Life of a Tsar” (1836)
“Ruslan and Lyudmila” (1842)
“Jota Aragonesa” (1845)
“Kamarinskaya”. “A Night in Madrid” (1848) 

1804: Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka was born on 1st June in Novospasskoye, Smolensk, Russia. His father was a retired army captain from a family loyal to the Tsars. Mikhail was looked after by protective paternal grandmother who wrapped him in furs. This led him to become a hypochondriac in later life.

1814: After his grandmother’s death he is looked after by his uncle who has a private orchestra which specialised in western music, particularly Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. A performance of Bernhard Henrik Crusell’s clarinet quartet has a particular effect on him and establishes his interest in music. He receives tuition on the piano and violin.

1818: He moves to St Petersburg where he studies at the Pedagogic Institute and receives music lessons from the composer John Field and piano lessons from the Prussian composer Charles Mayer. He begins composing.

1822: He leaves school and his father wishes him to join the Foreign Office however, he is appointed as Assistant Secretary at the Department of Public Highways and later works for the Ministry of Communications. The work is not onerous giving him time to compose melancholy romances and chamber music as well as attend many social gatherings at houses of the nobility.

1830: One of the many doctors he consults recommends he seek the sun in Italy and he travels there, via Germany and Switzerland, with the singer Nikolai Kuzmich Ivanov. He finally settles in Milan where he meets famous composers such as Felix Mendelsohn and Hector Berlioz and is impressed by the music of Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti. He takes lessons with Francesco Basili at the Conservatory.

1834: He studies composition with Sigfreid Dehn in Berlin and begins his “Sinfonia per l’Orchestra Sopra due Motive Russe” (Symphony for Orchestra on Two Russian Motifs) and a “Capriccio on Russian Themes” for piano duet.  His father dies and as soon as news reaches him, he returns to Novospasskoye and reunites with his mother. While in Berlin, he falls in love with a beautiful singer for whom he had composed “Six Studies for Contralto” but, unable to get the correct paperwork, he had to leave her behind in Germany.

1836: He begins work on his first opera which establishes his fame, “Ivan Susanin” which the Tsar says he should rename “A Life of a Tsar”. Set in 1612, it tells of the Russian peasant hero who sacrifices his life for the Tsar by heading off a group of invading Poles. Its premiere is held on 9th December and is a great success. Tsar Nicholas the First gives him an expensive ring as a reward. He marries Maria Petrovna Ivanova but the two are incompatible and it does not last. Glinka becomes known as a founder of Russian music.

1837: He is appointed as the instructor of the Imperial Chapel Choir with a substantial salary and lodgings at court.

1838: The Tsar suggests he travel to Ukraine to employ new members for the choir.

1842: His second opera, “Ruslan and Lyudmila” is produced, based on a story by Alexander Pushkin with a libretto by Konstantin Bakhturin. Sadly, the plot is rushed and the story is muddled but it contains a great deal of folk material. The performance on 9th December is not a success, although Franz Liszt expresses his delight at the novelty of the music. The work does however influence other members of the “The Five” such as Mily Balakirev, Aleksandr Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. When his marriage breaks down irrevocably, he moves in with his mother, and later with his sister, Lyudmila Shestakova.

1844: Disgruntled with the failure of his music and his marriage he leaves Russia on the journey to Spain. There he meets Don Pedro Fernández who becomes his secretary and companion for the last years of his life. 

1845: In Paris he sees Hector Berlioz conduct some excerpts from his operas, the first performance of Russian music in the west. In Spain he collects material for his “Spanish overtures” and the capriccio brillante “Jota Aragonesa” (Aragonese Jota). 

1847: He leaves Spain.

1848: “Summer Night in Madrid” and “Kamarinskaya” (The Kamarinsky) are first performed. Pyotr Tchaikovsky declares the latter to be “the acorn from which the oak of later Russian symphonic music grew”.

1852: He travels abroad widely and lives mainly in Paris. 

1854: The outbreak of the Crimean War drives him to leave for Russia, who are on the opposing side to the French. He publishes his highly entertaining memoirs (“Zapiski”).

1855: His last major composition is “Festival Polonaise” produced for Tsar Alexander the Second’s coronation ball.

1857: He moves to Berlin where he spends five months.

Mikhail Glinka died suddenly on 15th February 1857 in Berlin, Germany after contracting a cold. He was buried there, but after a few months his body was taken to Saint Petersburg and reinterred in the cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. His memoirs (“Zapiski”) were first published in St Petersburg in 1887.

Mikhail Glinka first discovered orchestral music aged 10 or 11 by hearing his uncle’s private orchestra which played local folk tunes. These early exposures gave him the ideas to use native Russian and Slavic folk rhythms in his major works such as “Kamarinskaya” and “A Life for the Tsar”. 

His governess, Varvara Klammer, was his first piano teacher and then he studied at the Chief Pedagogic Institute in St Petersburg from 1818 and also took piano lessons with the Irish pianist and composer John Field who lived and worked in Russia at the time. He began composing in 1822 and his early work showed the influence of Western European Classical music and pieces such as the “Overture in G minor” and “Variations on a Theme by Mozart” clearly show the stylistic hand of the great Viennese composer.

In 1824, after spending some months on the family estate studying Classical masters, he joined the Ministry of Ways and Communication in St. Petersburg where he stayed for four years but was not cut out for a career outside of music. Pleading ill health, he resigned and went on a three-year residence in Italy which exposed him to the lyrical freedom of bel canto opera as composed by Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti who both became his friends. His homesickness during his stay made him consciously combine Italian techniques with a distinct Russian identity.

In 1833 he spent six months studying strict counterpoint and composition in Berlin under Siegfried Dehn which helped fuse his melodic style into formal symphonic structures. He began his “Sinfonia per l’Orchestrsa Sopra due Motive Russe” (Symphony for Orchestra on Two Russian Motifs) in 1834 whilst there. 

Returning to Russia after the death of his father he felt competent enough to embark on his first opera. The poet Vasily Zhukovsky suggested the story of Ivan Susanin and his heroic sacrifice to save the Tsar during war with Poland and this became “A Life for the Tsar”, a truly Russian work. Premiered in 1836 in front of the Imperial family it was an immediate success. On the strength of this work, he was appointed choirmaster to the Imperial Chapel.

He was known as a dilettante composer with a tendency for procrastination and an eye for pretty young girls and so his next major work “Ruslan and Lyudmila” based on a work by Alexander Pushkin was not completed until 1842. Its exoticism failed to please the Russian aristocracy but later became an inspiration for other Russian composers such as Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. Disappointed by the perceived failure of the opera he resolved to travel and forget, and spent much of the rest of his life wandering from one European cultural centre to another, in particular France and Spain. In France he became a friend of Hector Berlioz and promoted his music in Russia and Berlioz performed some of his in return in Paris.

During the 1850’s he attempted to write several choral works but his symphonic poem “Taras Bulba” based on a work by Nikolai Gogol remained unfinished at his death. Returning to Germany once more he met up with Dehn again to study but sadly died there shortly after his arrival.

He was the first Russian composer to win international recognition and is the acknowledged founder of the Russian Nationalist School. Franz Liszt was impressed by the novelty of his music and championed him in Western Europe and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky stated that “Kamarinskaya” was the acorn from which the oak of later Russian symphonic music grew. “The Five” Russian composers (also known as the Mighty Handful) viewed Glinka’s operas and orchestral pieces as the blueprint for a true Russian musical identity. Modest Mussorgsky adopted his innovative use of native folk idioms. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was heavily influenced by his colourful orchestration techniques and treatment of fantastic or exotic subjects. Alexander Borodin also followed suit in integrating Russian folk elements into large-scale symphonic and operatic works. Igor Stravinsky also acknowledged a debt to his rhythmic and harmonic innovations.

In 1884 Mitrofan Belyayev founded the annual Glinka Prize and early winners included Borodin, Balakirev, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, César Cui and Anatoly Lyadov.

Nowadays the overture to “Ruslan and Lyudmila” is a staple of the orchestral concert repertoire. In 1967, the New York City Ballet premiered George Balanchine’s “Glinkiana” which uses his “Polka in B-flat”, “Valse-Fantaisie”, “Jota Aragonesa”, and “Divertimento Brilliante”. His Vocal/ piano work “Patriotic Song” served as the official national anthem of Russia from 1991 to 2000. Three Russian music conservatories are named after him at Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk and Magnitogorsk.

List of compositions by Glinka.