Mikhail Glinka (1804 - 1857) Russian

List of Glinka compositions


Mikhail Glinka was the first Russian composer to gain wide acclaim in Russia.  He is considered the fountainhead of Russian music in a long line of composers to follow including "the Five" (Mily Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin who all collaborated from 1856 to 1870) and other Russian composers such as Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Prokofiev, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich.  


Youth and education

Glinka was from  a wealthy Russian family. As a young boy, he was confined to the bedroom of his strange grandmother.  The only music he heard then the sounds of the village church bells and the folk songs of passing peasant choirs.  The church bells were tuned to a dissonant chord and so his ears became used to strident harmony.  While his nurse would sometimes sing folk songs, the peasant choirs who sang using the podgolosochnaya technique (an improvised style – literally under the voice – which uses improvised dissonant harmonies below the melody) influenced the way he later felt free to emancipate himself from the smooth progressions of Western harmony
Later he was raised by an uncle whose personal orchestra played the music of Beethoven and other western composers, and at 13 Glinka went off to school in St. Petersburg.  He received a thorough education and also took piano lessons from the Irish composer John Field.  He started composing music at this point.  He later traveled about Europe, most notably to Milan, learning classical music of various countries.  Much of Glinka's music is in the Italian style he learned in Milan.  He only incorporated Russian folk tunes in some of his music.   


Compositional output


Glinka's most important works are his two operas. 

A Life for the Tsar (1836) Set in 1612, it tells the story of the Russian peasant and patriotic hero Ivan Susanin who sacrifices his life for the Tsar by leading astray a group of marauding Poles who were hunting him. It was a great success at its premiere.  Although the music is more Italianate than Russian, Glinka shows superb handling of the recitative which binds the whole work, and the orchestration is masterly, foreshadowing the orchestral writing of later Russian composers.
The plot of his second opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) was based on the tale by Alexander Pushkin, was concocted in 15 minutes by Konstantin Bakhturin, a poet who was drunk at the time.  Consequently, the opera is a dramatic muddle, yet the quality of Glinka's music is higher than in A Life for the Tsar.  He uses a descending whole tone scale in the famous overture. This is associated with the villainous dwarf Chernomor who has abducted Lyudmila, daughter of the Prince of Kiev.  Glinka's great achievement in this opera lies in his use of folk melody which becomes thoroughly infused into the musical argument.

         Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila  (play 4:40)  


His major orchestral works include the symphonic poem Kamarinskaya (1848), based on Russian folk tunes, and two Spanish works, A Night in Madrid (1848, 1851) and Jota Aragonesa (1845).


Piano works:

      Trio Pathetique in D minor for piano, violin and bassoon  (1832)  (play - 15:30)

       Sonata in D minor for viola and piano (uncompleted).  (play -  9:35) 

      Nocturne in Eb  (1832)  (play - 5 min)


      "The Lark"  (1840)  (play - 6 min)