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. 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
dilettante, frequenting the city's
drawing rooms 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
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
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. ==Career==