thumb|Portrait of Mikhail Glinka by [[Karl Bryullov, 1840]]

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (; ) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country and is often regarded as the fountainhead of Russian classical music. His compositions were an important influence on other Russian composers, notably the members of The Five, who produced a distinctive Russian style of music.

Early life and education

thumb|Glinka family coat of arms|left|150px

Glinka was born in the village of Novospasskoye, not far from the Desna River in the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in the Yelninsky District of the Smolensk Oblast). His wealthy father had retired as an army captain, and the family had a strong tradition of loyalty and service to the tsars, and several members of his extended family had lively cultural interests. His great-great-grandfather was a Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth nobleman, Wiktoryn Władysław Glinka of the Trzaska coat of arms who was given lands in the Smolensk Voivodeship. In 1655, Wiktoryn converted to Eastern Orthodoxy with the new name Yakov Yakovlevich (Jacob, son of Jacob), and remained the owner of his lands under the tsar.

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 quacks. 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 podgolosochnaya technique (an improvised style—literally "under the voice"—using improvised dissonant harmonies below the melody) influenced his independence from the smooth progressions of Western harmony.

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 Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. At the age of about ten he heard them play a clarinet quartet by the Finnish 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 nocturnes, who spent some time in Saint Petersburg. He then continued his piano lessons with Charles Mayer and began composing. In Paris, Hector Berlioz conducted some excerpts from Glinka's operas and wrote an appreciative article about him. Glinka in turn admired Berlioz's music and resolved to compose some fantasies pittoresques for orchestra. Beginning in 1852, he spent two years in Paris, living quietly and frequently visiting the botanical and zoological gardens. He then moved to Berlin where, after five months, he died suddenly on 15 February 1857, following a cold. He was buried in Berlin, but a few months later his body was taken to Saint Petersburg and reinterred in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.

The genesis of a Russian style

Glinka was the beginning of a new direction in Russian music. Musical culture arrived in Russia from Europe, and for the first time specifically Russian music began to appear, in Glinka's operas. Historical events were often used as its basis, but for the first time they were presented realistically.

The first to note this new direction was Alexander Serov. He was then joined by his friend Vladimir Stasov, 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.

Legacy

thumb|upright|Grave of Mikhail Glinka in [[Tikhvin Cemetery in Saint Petersburg]]

thumb|upright|Statue near [[Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg]]

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 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 overtures 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 art songs and piano pieces, and some chamber music.

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 conservatories are named after Glinka:

  • Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory ()
  • Novosibirsk State Conservatory ()
  • Magnitogorsk State Conservatory ()

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.

thumb|1954 Soviet stamp honouring Glinka; he is depicted with [[Vasily Zhukovsky and Alexander Pushkin.]]

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.

George Balanchine's Glinkiana

In 1967, the New York City Ballet premiered George Balanchine's Glinkiana, choreographed to Glinka's Polka in B-flat, Valse-Fantaisie, Jota Aragonesa, and Divertimento Brilliante. Of the four sections, only Valse-Fantaisie is regularly performed today.

Works

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

  • Brown, David (1974). Mikhail Glinka, a biographical and critical study, Oxford University Press.
  • Glinka Mikhail Ivanovich, biographic encyclopedia, in Russian on biografija.ru
  • Knowles, John Paine (Ed.), Theodore Thomas, and Karl Klauser (1891). Famous Composers and Their Works, J.B. Millet Company.
  • Taruskin, Richard, "Glinka, Mikhail" in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, (Ed.) Stanley Sadie (London, 1992)
  • List of works
  • Cylinder recording of a Glinka composition, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
  • Glinka – the author of Russian national anthem by K.Kovalev
  • A short video from 1998
  • Turgenev and Glinka <small>(with music samples)</small>

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