Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (18 March [O.S.

6 March] 1844,[a 1] – 21 June [O.S.

8 June] 1908) is a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.

He was a master of orchestration.

His best-known orchestral compositions—Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade—are staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his 15 operas.

Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy tale and folk subjects.

Rimsky-Korsakov believes, as does fellow composer Mily Balakirev and critic Vladimir Stasov, in developing a nationalistic style of classical music.

This style employs Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschews traditional Western compositional methods.

However, Rimsky-Korsakov appreciates Western musical techniques after he becomes a professor of musical composition, harmony and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871.

He undertakes a rigorous three-year program of self-education and becomes a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five.

His techniques of composition and orchestration are further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner.

For much of his life, Rimsky-Korsakov combines his composition and teaching with a career in the Russian military—at first as an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, then as the civilian Inspector of Naval Bands.

He writes that he had developed a passion for the ocean in childhood from reading books and hearing of his older brother's exploits in the navy.

This love of the sea might have influenced him to write two of his best-known orchestral works, the musical tableau Sadko (not his later opera of the same name) and Scheherazade.

Through his service as Inspector of Naval Bands, Rimsky-Korsakov expands his knowledge of woodwind and brass playing, which enhances his abilities in orchestration.

He passes this knowledge to his students, and also posthumously through a textbook on orchestration that is completed by his son-in-law, Maximilian Steinberg.

Rimsky-Korsakov leaves a considerable body of original Russian nationalist compositions.

He prepares works by The Five for performance, which brings them into the active classical repertoire (although there is controversy over his editing of the works of Modest Mussorgsky), and shapes a generation of younger composers and musicians during his decades as an educator.

Rimsky-Korsakov is therefore considered "the main architect" of what the classical music public considers the Russian style of composition.

His influence on younger composers is especially important, as he serves as a transitional figure between the autodidactism which exemplifies Glinka and The Five and professionally trained composers which will become the norm in Russia by the closing years of the 19th century.

While Rimsky-Korsakov's style is based on those of Glinka, Balakirev, Hector Berlioz, and Franz Liszt, he "transmitted this style directly to two generations of Russian composers" and influenced non-Russian composers including Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas and Ottorino Respighi.

(Abraham, Gerald, "Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay Andreyevich".

In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980) 20 vols., ed.

Stanley Sadie.)

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