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Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (Ru-Mikhail-Ivanovich-Glinka.ogg; ) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country and is often regarded as the fountainhead of Russian classical music."...regarded by his compatriots as the source and fountainhead of Russian Music", in "Russian Symphony Orchestra", New York Times, 1904-11-13, p. 10. His compositions were an important influence on other Russian composers, notably the members of The Five, who produced a distinctive Russian style of music.
Mikhail was raised by his overprotective and pampering paternal grandmother, who fed him sweets, wrapped him in furs, and confined him to her room, which was kept at . Accordingly, he became something of a hypochondriac and later in life retained the services of numerous physicians, and often falling victim to quackery. The only music he heard in his youthful confinement was 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 folksongs, the peasant choirs who sang using the Heterophony technique (an improvised style—literally "under the voice"—using improvised dissonant harmonies below the melody) influenced his independence from the smooth progressions of Classical music.
After his grandmother's death, he moved to his maternal uncle's estate some away, where he heard his uncle's orchestra, whose repertoire included Joseph Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. At the age of about ten he heard them play a clarinet quartet by the Finnish people composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell, which had a profound effect upon him. "Music is my soul", he wrote many years later, recalling the experience. While his governess taught him Russian, German, French and geography, he also received instruction on the piano and violin.
At 13, Glinka went to the capital, Saint Petersburg, to attend a school for children of the nobility. He learned Latin, English, and Persian, studied mathematics and zoology, and considerably widened his musical experience. He had three piano lessons from John Field, the Irish composer of , who spent some time in Saint Petersburg. He then continued his piano lessons with Charles Mayer and began composing. When he left school his father wanted him to join the Foreign Office, and he was appointed assistant secretary of the Department of Public Highways. The light work allowed Glinka to settle into the life of a musical Amateur, frequenting the city's and social gatherings. He was already composing a large amount of music, such as melancholy romances which amused the rich amateurs. His songs are among the most interesting parts of his work from this period.
In 1830, at a physician's recommendation, Glinka traveled to Italy with tenor . They took a leisurely pace, ambling through Germany and Switzerland, before settling in Milan. There, Glinka took lessons at the conservatory with Francesco Basili. He struggled with counterpoint, which he found irksome. After three years listening to singers, romancing women with his music, and meeting famous people including Mendelssohn and Hector Berlioz, he became disenchanted with Italy. He realized that his life's mission was to return to Russia, write in a Russian manner, and do for Russian music what Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini had done for Italian music.
His return took him through the Alps, and he stopped for a while in Vienna, where he heard the music of Franz Liszt. He stayed another five months in Berlin, where he studied composition under the distinguished teacher Siegfried Dehn. A Capriccio on Russian Themes for piano duet and an unfinished Symphony on Two Russian Themes were important products of this period.
When word reached Glinka of his father's death in 1834, he left Berlin and returned to Novospasskoye.
A Life for the Tsar was the first of Glinka's two great operas. It was originally entitled Ivan Susanin. 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 Polish people who were hunting him. Tsar Nicholas I himself followed the work's progress with interest and suggested the change in the title. It was a great success at its premiere on 9 December 1836, under the direction of Catterino Cavos, who had written an opera on the same subject in Italy. The Tsar rewarded Glinka for his work with a ring valued at 4,000 Russian ruble. (During the Soviet era, the opera was staged under its original title, Ivan Susanin.)
In 1837, Glinka was installed as the instructor of the Imperial Chapel Choir, with a yearly salary of 25,000 rubles and lodging at the court. In 1838, at the Tsar's suggestion, he traveled to Ukraine to gather new voices for the choir; the 19 new boys he found earned him another 1,500 rubles from the Tsar.
He soon embarked on his second opera, Ruslan and Lyudmila. The plot, 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. The overture features a descending whole tone scale associated with the villainous dwarf Chernomor, who has abducted Lyudmila, daughter of the Prince of Kiev. There is much Italianate coloratura, and Act 3 contains several routine ballet numbers, but Glinka's great achievement lies in his use of folk melody which becomes thoroughly infused into the musical argument. Much of the borrowed folk material is oriental in origin. When it debuted on 9 December 1842, it was received coolly, but subsequently gained popularity.
The first to note this new direction was Alexander Serov. He was then joined by his friend Vladimir Stasov, who became the theorist of this cultural trend; it was developed further by composers of "The Five".
Modern Russian music critic Viktor Korshikov wrote: "Russian musical culture would without...three operas— Ivan Soussanine, Ruslan and Ludmila, and The Stone Guest. Soussanine is an opera where the main character is the people; Ruslan is the mythical, deeply Russian intrigue; and in Guest, the drama dominates over the softness of the beauty of sound." Victor Korshikov. Do you want, I'll teach you to love the opera. And not only about the music. Publishing house Ya T. Moscow, 2007 // ru: Виктор Коршиков. Хотите, я научу вас любить оперу. О музыке и не только. Издательство ЯТЬ. Москва, 2007 Two of these operas— Ivan Soussanine and Ruslan and Ludmila—were Glinka's.
Glinka's work, and that of the composers and other creative people he inspired, has been instrumental in the development of a distinctly Russian artistic style that occupies a prominent place in world culture.
In 1884, Mitrofan Belyayev founded the annual Glinka Prize, whose early winners included Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, César Cui and Anatoly Lyadov.
Outside Russia, several of Glinka's orchestral works have been fairly popular in concerts and recordings. Besides the well-known to the operas (especially the brilliantly energetic overture to Ruslan), his major orchestral works include the symphonic poem Kamarinskaya (1848), based on Russian folk songs; and two Spanish works, A Night in Madrid (1848, 1851) and Jota Aragonesa (1845). He also composed many and piano pieces, and some chamber music. Ю. Н. Фост — Память о М. И. Глинке в Берлине
A lesser work that received attention in the last decade of the 20th century was Glinka's "Patrioticheskaya Pesnya", supposedly written for a contest for a national anthem in 1833. In 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Russia adopted it as the regional anthem of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which till then was the only Soviet constituent state without its own anthem. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Russian SFSR, the hymn was retained unofficially until it was officially confirmed as the Russian national anthem in 1993, where it remained as such until 2000 when it was replaced by the Soviet anthem with new lyrics.
Three Russian Music school are named after Glinka:
Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh named a minor planet 2205 Glinka in his honor. It was discovered in 1973. A crater on Mercury is also named after him.
Glinkastraße in Berlin was named in Glinka's honor. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, the Berlin U-Bahn station Mohrenstraße was proposed to be renamed "Glinkastraße", which is adjacent to the station. The plan was cancelled due to Glinka's reputed antisemitism.
In September 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a street in Dnipro, Ukraine, that was named after Glinka was renamed to honor Queen Elizabeth II.
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Legacy
After Glinka's death, the relative merits of his two operas became a topic of heated debate in the musical press, especially between Vladimir Stasov and his former friend Alexander Serov. Glinka's orchestral composition Kamarinskaya (1848) was said by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to be "the acorn from which the oak" of later Russian symphonic music grew.
In popular culture
The stirring overture to Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila is heard as the theme of the long-running U.S. television comedy series Mom. Its creators felt the fast-paced, complex orchestral music reflected the characters' struggles to overcome their destructive habits and keep up with the demands of daily life.
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Categories: 1804 Births, 1857 Deaths, People From Smolensk Oblast, People From Yelninsky Uyezd, People From The Russian Empire Of Polish Descent, Composers From The Russian Empire, Russian Male Opera Composers, National Anthem Writers, Russian Opera Composers, Russian Romantic Composers, 19th-century Classical Composers From The Russian Empire, 19th-century Male Musicians From The Russian Empire, Pupils Of Siegfried Dehn, Burials At Tikhvin Cemetery, Mikhail, Ballets Russes Composers
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