Early years Rimsky-Korsakov was born in
Tikhvin, east of
Saint Petersburg, into a
Russian noble family. Tikhvin was a town of
Novgorod Governorate at that time. Throughout history, members of the family served in Russian government and took various positions as governors and war generals.
Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov was famously a lover of
Catherine the Great. By a Tsar's decree on 15 May 1677, 18 representatives of the Korsakov family acquired the right to be called the Rimsky-Korsakov family (the Russian adjective 'Rimsky' means 'Roman') since the family "had a beginning within the Roman borders", i.e.
Czech lands, which used to be a part of the
Holy Roman Empire. In 1390, Wenceslaus Korsak moved to the Grand Prince
Vasily I of Moscow from the
Duchy of Lithuania. The father of the composer, Andrei Petrovich Rimsky-Korsakov, was one of the six illegitimate sons of Avdotya Yakovlevna, daughter of an
Orthodox priest from
Pskov, and
lieutenant general Peter Voinovich Rimsky-Korsakov, who had to officially adopt his own children as he was unable to marry their mother because of her lower social status. Using his friendship with
Aleksey Arakcheyev, he granted them all the privileges of the noble family. Andrei went on to serve in the Interior Ministry of the Russian Empire, as vice-governor of
Novgorod, and in the
Volhynian Governorate. The composer's mother, Sofya Vasilievna Rimskaya-Korsakova, was also born as an illegitimate daughter of a
peasant serf and Vasily Fedorovich Skaryatin, a wealthy landlord who belonged to a noble Russian family. Her father raised her in full comfort, yet under an improvised surname, Vasilieva, and with no legal status. By the time Andrei Petrovich met her, he was already a widower: his first wife,
knyazna Ekaterina
Meshcherskaya, died just nine months after their marriage. Since Skaryatin found him unsuitable for his daughter, Andrei secretly "stole" his bride from the father's house and brought her to Saint Petersburg, where they married. He later recalled that his mother played the piano a little, and his father could play a few songs on the piano by ear. Beginning at six, he took piano lessons from local teachers and showed a talent for aural skills, but he showed a lack of interest, playing, as he later wrote, "badly, carelessly, ... poor at keeping time". Although he started composing by age 10, Rimsky-Korsakov preferred literature to music. This love, with subtle prompting from Voin, encouraged the 12-year-old to join the
Imperial Russian Navy. Voin, now director of the school, Ulikh perceived Rimsky-Korsakov's musical talent and recommended another teacher, Feodor A. Kanille (Théodore Canillé). Beginning in late 1859, Rimsky-Korsakov took lessons in piano and composition from Kanille, whom he later credited as the inspiration for devoting his life to composition. Through Kanille, he was exposed to a great deal of new music, including
Mikhail Glinka and
Robert Schumann. Voin cancelled his brother Nikolai's musical lessons when the latter reached age 17, feeling they no longer served a practical purpose. In November 1861, Kanille introduced the 18-year-old Nikolai to
Mily Balakirev. Balakirev in turn introduced him to
César Cui and
Modest Mussorgsky; all three were known as composers, despite only being in their 20s. Rimsky-Korsakov later wrote, "With what delight I listened to
real business discussions [Rimsky-Korsakov's emphasis] of instrumentation,
part writing, etc! And besides, how much talking there was about current musical matters! All at once I had been plunged into a new world, unknown to me, formerly only heard of in the society of my dilettante friends. That was truly a strong impression." in
New York Harbor in 1863. Rimsky-Korsakov served as a
midshipman on this ship and later wrote about this cruise. Balakirev encouraged Rimsky-Korsakov to compose and taught him the rudiments when he was not at sea. When he showed Balakirev the beginning of a
symphony in E-flat minor that he had written, Balakirev insisted he continue working on it despite his lack of formal musical training. By the time Rimsky-Korsakov sailed on a two-year-and-eight-month cruise aboard the
clipper in late 1862, he had completed and orchestrated three
movements of the symphony. He composed the slow movement during a stop in England and mailed the score to Balakirev before going back to sea. At first, his work on the symphony kept Rimsky-Korsakov occupied during his cruise. He purchased scores at every port of call, along with a piano on which to play them, and filled his idle hours studying
Berlioz's
Treatise on Instrumentation.
Mentored by Balakirev; time with The Five Once back in Saint Petersburg in May 1865, Rimsky-Korsakov's onshore duties consisted of a couple of hours of clerical duty each day, He wrote that contact with Balakirev in September 1865 encouraged him "to get accustomed to music and later to plunge into it". At Balakirev's suggestion, he wrote a trio to the
scherzo of the E-flat minor symphony, which it had lacked up to that point, and reorchestrated the entire symphony. Its first performance came in December of that year under Balakirev's direction in Saint Petersburg. A second performance followed in March 1866 under the direction of Konstantin Lyadov (father of composer
Anatoly Lyadov). encouraged Rimsky-Korsakov to continue composing. Rimsky-Korsakov recalled that "Balakirev had no difficulty in getting along with me. At his suggestion I most readily rewrote the symphonic movements composed by me and brought them to completion with the help of his advice and improvisations". Though Rimsky-Korsakov later found Balakirev's influence stifling, and broke free from it, this did not stop him in his memoirs from extolling the older composer's talents as a critic and improviser. He spent an increasing amount of time with Mussorgsky.
Mendelssohn was not thought of highly,
Mozart and
Haydn "were considered out of date and naïve", and
J.S. Bach merely mathematical and unfeeling. Berlioz "was highly esteemed", Liszt "crippled and perverted from a musical point of view ... even a caricature", and Wagner discussed little.
Professorship, marriage, inspector of bands In 1871, the 27-year-old Rimsky-Korsakov became Professor of Practical Composition and Instrumentation (orchestration) at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, , where Rimsky-Korsakov taught from 1871 to 1906 Rimsky-Korsakov explained in his memoirs that
Mikhaíl Azanchevsky had taken over that year as director of the Conservatory, had offered to pay generously for Rimsky-Korsakov's services. Biographer
Mikhail Tsetlin (aka Mikhail Zetlin) suggests that Azanchevsky's motives might have been twofold. First, Rimsky-Korsakov was the member of the Five least criticized by its opponents, and inviting him to teach at the Conservatory may have been considered a safe way to show that all serious musicians were welcome there. Second, the offer may have been calculated to expose him to an academic climate in which he would write in a more conservative, Western-based style. Balakirev had opposed academic training in music with tremendous vigor, but encouraged him to accept the post to convince others to join the nationalist musical cause. Rimsky-Korsakov's reputation at this time was as a master of orchestration, based on
Sadko and
Antar. He had written these works mainly by intuition. His knowledge of musical theory was elemental; he had never written any
counterpoint, could not harmonize a simple
chorale, nor knew the names or
intervals of musical chords. Aware of his technical shortcomings, Rimsky-Korsakov consulted
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with whom he and the others in The Five had been in occasional contact. Tchaikovsky, unlike The Five, had received academic training in composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, and was serving as Professor of
Music Theory at the
Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky advised him to study. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that while teaching at the Conservatory he soon became "possibly its very best
pupil [Rimsky-Korsakov's emphasis], judging by the quantity and value of the information it gave me!" To prepare himself, and to stay at least one step ahead of his students, he took a three-year sabbatical from composing original works, and assiduously studied at home while he lectured at the Conservatory. He taught himself from textbooks, and followed a strict regimen of composing contrapuntal exercises,
fugues, chorales and
a cappella choruses. which encouraged him to settle down and to start a family. They married in July 1872, with Mussorgsky serving as best man. Their first son,
Mikhail, became an entomologist while another son,
Andrei, became a musicologist, married the composer Yuliya Veysberg and wrote a multi-volume study of his father's life and work. Nadezhda became a musical as well as domestic partner with her husband, much as
Clara Schumann had been with her own husband Robert.—she had attended the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in the mid-1860s, studying piano with Anton Gerke (one of whose private students was Mussorgsky) and music theory with
Nikolai Zaremba, who also taught Tchaikovsky. Nadezhda proved a fine and most demanding critic of her husband's work; her influence over him in musical matters was strong enough for Balakirev and Stasov to wonder whether she was leading him astray from their musical preferences. Musicologist Lyle Neff wrote that while Nadezhda gave up her own compositional career when she married Rimsky-Korsakov, she "had a considerable influence on the creation of [Rimsky-Korsakov's] first three operas. She travelled with her husband, attended rehearsals and arranged compositions by him and others" The composer commented, "I parted with delight with both my military status and my officer's uniform", he later wrote. "Henceforth I was a musician officially and incontestably." These studies prompted him to write a textbook on orchestration. He used the privileges of rank to exercise and expand upon his knowledge. He discussed arrangements of musical works for military band with bandmasters, encouraged and reviewed their efforts, held concerts at which he could hear these pieces, and orchestrated original works, and works by other composers, for military bands. In March 1884, an Imperial Order abolished the navy office of Inspector of Bands, and Rimsky-Korsakov was relieved of his duties. which allowed him to study Russian Orthodox church music. He also taught classes at the chapel, and wrote his textbook on
harmony for use there and at the Conservatory. After he strove "to crowd in as much counterpoint as possible" into his Third Symphony, he wrote
chamber works adhering strictly to classical models, including a string sextet, a string quartet in F major (Op. 12) and a quintet for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano in B-flat. About the quartet and the symphony, Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness,
Nadezhda von Meck, that they "were filled with a host of clever things but ... [were] imbued with a dryly pedantic character". According to Rimsky-Korsakov, the other members of the Five showed little enthusiasm for the symphony, and less still for the quartet. He wrote that Tchaikovsky continued to support him morally, telling him that he fully applauded what Rimsky-Korsakov was doing and admired both his artistic modesty and his strength of character. Privately, Tchaikovsky confided to Nadezhda von Meck, "Apparently [Rimsky-Korsakov] is now passing through this crisis, and how it will end will be difficult to predict. Either a great master will come out of him, or he will finally become bogged down in contrapuntal tricks". Two projects helped Rimsky-Korsakov focus on less academic music-making. The first was the creation of two folk song collections in 1874. Rimsky-Korsakov transcribed 40 Russian songs for voice and piano from performances by folk singer Tvorty Filippov, This collection was followed by a second containing 100 songs, supplied by friends and servants, or taken from rare and out-of-print collections. Rimsky-Korsakov later credited this work as a great influence on him as a composer; it also supplied a vast amount of musical material from which he could draw for future projects, either by direct quotation or as models for composing
fakeloric passages. No similar project had been attempted before in Russian music, and guidelines for scholarly musical editing had to be established and agreed. In mid-1877, Rimsky-Korsakov thought increasingly about the short story
May Night by
Nikolai Gogol. The story had long been a favorite of his, and his wife Nadezhda had encouraged him to write an opera based on it from the day of their betrothal, when they had read it together. While musical ideas for such a work predated 1877, now they came with greater persistence. By early 1878 the project took an increasing amount of his attention; in February he started writing in earnest, and he finished the opera by early November. He wrote the opera in a folk-like melodic idiom, and scored it in a transparent manner much in the style of Glinka. from time to time he suffered from creative paralysis between 1881 and 1888. He kept busy during this time by editing Mussorgsky's works and completing Borodin's
Prince Igor (Mussorgsky died in 1881, Borodin in 1887). Belyayev was one of a growing coterie of Russian nouveau-riche industrialists who became patrons of the arts in mid- to late-19th century Russia; their number included railway magnate
Savva Mamontov and textile manufacturer
Pavel Tretyakov. Belyayev, Mamontov and Tretyakov "wanted to contribute conspicuously to public life". They had worked their way into wealth, and being Slavophiles in their national outlook believed in the greater glory of Russia. This preference paralleled a general upsurge in nationalism and Russophilia that became prevalent in mainstream Russian art and society. By 1883 Rimsky-Korsakov had become a regular visitor to the weekly "quartet Fridays" ("Les Vendredis") held at Belyayev's home in Saint Petersburg. Belyayev, who had already taken a keen interest in the musical future of the teenage
Alexander Glazunov, rented a hall and hired an orchestra in 1884 to play Glazunov's First Symphony plus an orchestral suite Glazunov had just composed. This concert and a rehearsal the previous year gave Rimsky-Korsakov the idea of offering concerts featuring Russian compositions, a prospect to which Belyayev was amenable. The
Russian Symphony Concerts were inaugurated during the 1886–87 season, with Rimsky-Korsakov sharing conducting duties with Anatoly Lyadov. He finished his revision of Mussorgsky's
Night on Bald Mountain and conducted it at the opening concert. The concerts also coaxed him out of his creative drought; he wrote
Scheherazade,
Capriccio Espagnol and the
Russian Easter Overture specifically for them. Rimsky-Korsakov was asked for advice and guidance not just on the Russian Symphony Concerts, but on other projects through which Belyayev aided Russian composers. "By force of matters purely musical I turned out to be the head of the Belyayev circle", he wrote. "As the head Belyayev, too, considered me, consulting me about everything and referring everyone to me as chief". In 1884 Belyayev set up an annual
Glinka prize, and in 1885 he founded his own music publishing firm, through which he published works by Borodin, Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov at his own expense. To select which composers to assist with money, publication or performances from the many who now appealed for help, Belyayev set up an advisory council made up of Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov. They would look through the compositions and appeals submitted and suggest which composers were deserving of patronage and public attention. The group of composers who now congregated with Glazunov, Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov became known as the
Belyayev circle, named after their financial benefactor. These composers were nationalistic in their musical outlook, as The Five before them had been. Like The Five, they believed in a uniquely Russian style of classical music that utilized folk music and exotic melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements, as exemplified by the music of Balakirev, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Unlike The Five, these composers also believed in the necessity of an academic, Western-based background in composition—which Rimsky-Korsakov had instilled in his years at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Compared to the "revolutionary" composers in Balakirev's circle, Rimsky-Korsakov found those in the Belyayev circle to be "progressive ... attaching as it did great importance to technical perfection, but ... also broke new paths, though more securely, even if less speedily ..."
Increased contact with Tchaikovsky , 1893 In November 1887, Tchaikovsky arrived in Saint Petersburg in time to hear several of the Russian Symphony Concerts. One of them included the first complete performance of his
First Symphony, subtitled
Winter Daydreams, in its final version. Another concert featured the premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov's Third Symphony in its revised version. Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky corresponded considerably before the visit and spent a lot of time together, along with Glazunov and Lyadov. Though Tchaikovsky had been a regular visitor to the Rimsky-Korsakov home since 1876, this was the beginning of closer relations between the two. Within a couple of years, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, Tchaikovsky's visits became more frequent. During these visits and especially in public, Rimsky-Korsakov wore a mask of geniality. Privately, he found the situation emotionally complex, and confessed his fears to his friend, the Moscow critic Semyon Kruglikov. Memories persisted of the tension between Tchaikovsky and The Five over the differences in their musical philosophies—tension acute enough for Tchaikovsky's brother Modest to liken their relations at that time to "those between two friendly neighboring states ... cautiously prepared to meet on common ground, but jealously guarding their separate interests". Rimsky-Korsakov observed, not without annoyance, how Tchaikovsky became increasingly popular among Rimsky-Korsakov's followers. This personal jealousy was compounded by a professional one, as Tchaikovsky's music became increasingly popular among the composers of the Belyayev circle, and remained on the whole more famous than his own. Even so, when Tchaikovsky attended Rimsky-Korsakov's
nameday party in May 1893, Rimsky-Korsakov asked Tchaikovsky personally if he would conduct four concerts of the
Russian Musical Society in Saint Petersburg the following season. After hesitation, Tchaikovsky agreed. While his sudden death in late 1893 prevented him from fulfilling this commitment in its entirety, the list of works he had planned to conduct included Rimsky-Korsakov's Third Symphony.
Increasing conservatism; second creative drought In March 1889, Angelo Neumann's traveling "
Richard Wagner Theater" visited Saint Petersburg, giving four cycles of
Der Ring des Nibelungen there under the direction of
Karl Muck. he was astonished with Wagner's mastery of orchestration. He attended the rehearsals with Glazunov, and followed the score. After hearing these performances, Rimsky-Korsakov devoted himself almost exclusively to composing operas for the rest of his creative life. Wagner's use of the orchestra influenced Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration, beginning with the arrangement of the
polonaise from Mussorgsky's
Boris Godunov that he made for concert use in 1889. Toward music more adventurous than Wagner's, especially that of
Richard Strauss and later
Claude Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakov's mind remained closed. He would fume for days afterwards when he heard pianist
Felix Blumenfeld play Debussy's
Estampes and write in his diary about them, "Poor and skimpy to the nth degree; there is no technique, even less imagination." This was part of an increasing musical conservatism on his part (his "musical conscience", as he put it), under which he now scrutinized his music and that of others as well. By 1901 he would write of growing "indignant at all [of Wagner's] blunders of the ear"—this about the same music which caught his attention in 1889. In 1892, Rimsky-Korsakov suffered a second creative drought, led to a medical diagnosis of
neurasthenia. After making third versions of the musical tableau
Sadko and the opera
The Maid of Pskov, he closed his musical account with the past; he had left none of his major works before
May Night in their original form.
1905 Revolution In 1905, demonstrations took place in the St. Petersburg Conservatory as part of the
1905 Revolution; these, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, were triggered by similar disturbances at
St. Petersburg State University, in which students demanded political reforms and the establishment of a
constitutional monarchy in Russia. "I was chosen a member of the committee for adjusting differences with agitated pupils", he recalled; almost as soon as the committee had been formed, "[a]ll sorts of measures were recommended to expel the ringleaders, to quarter the police in the Conservatory, to close the Conservatory entirely". Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that he felt someone had to protect the rights of the students to demonstrate, especially as disputes and wrangling between students and authorities were becoming increasingly violent. In an open letter, he sided with the students against what he saw as unwarranted interference by Conservatory leadership and the Russian Musical Society. Just before the dismissal was enacted, Rimsky-Korsakov received a letter from one of the members of the school directorate, suggesting that he take up the directorship in the interest of calming student unrest. "Probably the member of the Directorate held a minority opinion, but signed the resolution nevertheless," he wrote. "I sent a negative reply." Partly in defiance of his dismissal, Rimsky-Korsakov continued teaching his students from his home. Not long after Rimsky-Korsakov's dismissal, a student production of his opera
Kashchey the Immortal was followed not with the scheduled concert but with a political demonstration, Due in part to widespread press coverage of these events, an immediate wave of outrage against the ban arose throughout Russia and abroad; liberals and intellectuals deluged the composer's residence with letters of sympathy, and even peasants who had not heard a note of Rimsky-Korsakov's music sent small monetary donations. Eventually, over 300 students walked out of the Conservatory in solidarity with Rimsky-Korsakov. The political controversy continued with his opera
The Golden Cockerel. Its implied criticism of monarchy, Russian imperialism and the
Russo-Japanese War gave it little chance of passing the censors. in the
Alexander Nevsky Monastery In April 1907, Rimsky-Korsakov conducted a pair of concerts in Paris, hosted by impresario
Sergei Diaghilev, which featured music of the Russian nationalist school. The concerts were hugely successful in popularizing Russian classical music of this kind in Europe, Rimsky-Korsakov's in particular. The following year, his opera
Sadko was produced at the
Paris Opéra and
The Snow Maiden at the
Opéra-Comique. In 1908, he died at the age of 64 in his Lubensk estate near
Luga (modern day
Plyussky District of
Pskov Oblast), and was interred in
Tikhvin Cemetery at the
Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg, next to Borodin, Glinka, Mussorgsky and Stasov. ==Compositions==