Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (Russian: Михаил Иванович Глинка, romanized: Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil ɨˈvanəvʲɪdʑ ˈɡlʲinkə]; 1 June [O.S. 20 May] 1804 – 15 February [O.S. 3 February] 1857) was the first Russian composer to become well-known in Russia. He is often seen as the starting point of Russian classical music. His musical works greatly influenced other Russian composers, especially the group called The Five, who created a unique style of Russian music.

Early life and education

Mikhail Glinka was born in the village of Novospasskoye, near the Desna River in the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now part of the Yelninsky District in Smolensk Oblast). His father was a wealthy army captain who retired from service, and his family had a long history of loyalty to the tsars. Many family members had an interest in culture. His great-great-grandfather was a nobleman from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, named Wiktoryn Władysław Glinka of the Trzaska family. He was given land in the Smolensk Voivodeship. In 1655, Wiktoryn converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and was renamed Yakov Yakovlevich. He kept ownership of his lands under the tsar.

Mikhail was raised by his paternal grandmother, who was very protective and spoiled him. She gave him sweets, wrapped him in furs, and kept him in a room that was always 25 °C (77 °F). Because of this, Mikhail became very worried about his health and later hired many doctors. He often fell for untrustworthy healers. The only music he heard during his childhood was the sound of church bells and folk songs from peasant choirs. The church bells used a dissonant chord, which made Mikhail’s ears used to harsh harmony. His nurse sometimes sang folk songs, but the peasant choirs used a style called podgolosochnaya, which involved improvised dissonant harmonies below the melody. This influenced Mikhail to move away from the smooth harmonies of Western music.

After his grandmother died, Mikhail moved to his maternal uncle’s estate, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) away. There, he heard his uncle’s orchestra, which played music by composers like Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Around age ten, he listened to a clarinet quartet by Finnish composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell, which deeply affected him. Years later, he wrote, “Music is my soul,” recalling this experience. His governess taught him Russian, German, French, and geography. He also learned piano and violin.

At age 13, Glinka went to Saint Petersburg to attend a school for noble children. He studied Latin, English, and Persian, and learned about mathematics and zoology. His musical experiences expanded greatly. He had piano lessons with John Field, an Irish composer known for nocturnes, who lived in Saint Petersburg. Later, he studied with Charles Mayer and began composing music.

After finishing school, his father wanted him to work in the Foreign Office, and he became an assistant secretary in the Department of Public Highways. His job was light, allowing him to live a life of a musical amateur. He attended social events and composed many songs, including melancholy romances that pleased wealthy music lovers. His songs from this time are some of the most interesting parts of his early work.

In 1830, a doctor advised Glinka to travel to Italy with tenor Nikolai Kuzmich Ivanov. They traveled slowly through Germany and Switzerland before settling in Milan. There, Glinka studied at a conservatory with Francesco Basili. He found counterpoint difficult and disliked it. After three years in Italy, listening to singers, meeting famous people like Mendelssohn and Berlioz, and romancing women with his music, he became unhappy with Italy. He realized his life’s goal was to return to Russia, write music in a Russian style, and create for Russian music what Donizetti and Bellini had done for Italian music.

On his return, he traveled through the Alps and stopped in Vienna, where he heard Franz Liszt’s music. He spent five months in Berlin, studying composition with Siegfried Dehn. During this time, he wrote a piano duet called Capriccio on Russian Themes and an unfinished symphony titled Symphony on Two Russian Themes.

When Glinka learned of his father’s death in 1834, he left Berlin and returned to Novospasskoye.

Career

While in Berlin, Glinka fell in love with a talented singer. He wrote six songs for her called Six Studies for Contralto. He planned to return to her, but his sister’s German maid did not have the proper papers to travel with him. Because of this, Glinka gave up his plan and his love for the singer. He went north to Saint Petersburg instead. There, he reunited with his mother and met Maria Petrovna Ivanova. They married after a short time, but the marriage ended quickly because Maria was not kind and did not care about Glinka’s music. His early feelings for her inspired a part of his opera A Life for the Tsar (1836). However, his kind nature became harsh because of his wife and mother-in-law’s constant criticism. After the marriage ended, Maria married someone else, and Glinka moved in with his mother, then with his sister, Lyudmila Shestakova.

A Life for the Tsar was Glinka’s first great opera. It was originally called Ivan Susanin. The story takes place in 1612 and follows Ivan Susanin, a Russian peasant who sacrifices his life to save the Tsar by leading Polish soldiers away from him. Tsar Nicholas I was interested in the opera and suggested changing the title. The opera was a success when it premiered on December 9, 1836, under the direction of Catterino Cavos, who had written an opera on the same subject in Italy. The Tsar gave Glinka a ring worth 4,000 rubles for his work. During the Soviet era, the opera was performed under its original title, Ivan Susanin.

In 1837, Glinka was appointed as the teacher of the Imperial Chapel Choir, earning 25,000 rubles per year and living at the court. In 1838, the Tsar asked Glinka to travel to Ukraine to find new choir members. Glinka found 19 boys, and the Tsar gave him an extra 1,500 rubles for this.

Glinka then began his second opera, Ruslan and Lyudmila. The story, based on a tale by Alexander Pushkin, was created quickly by Konstantin Bakhturin, a poet who was drunk at the time. Because of this, the opera’s story is confusing, but the music is better than in A Life for the Tsar. The overture includes a musical scale associated with the villainous dwarf Chernomor, who has kidnapped Lyudmila, the daughter of the Prince of Kiev. The opera includes Italian-style singing and ballet scenes, but Glinka’s use of folk music is his greatest achievement. Much of the music comes from Eastern traditions. The opera premiered on December 9, 1842, but was not well received at first. Later, it became popular.

After Ruslan and Lyudmila was poorly received, Glinka felt sad for a year. His mood improved when he traveled to Paris and Spain. In Spain, he met Don Pedro Fernández, who became his secretary and companion for the last nine years of his life. In Paris, Hector Berlioz performed parts of Glinka’s operas and wrote a positive article about him. Glinka admired Berlioz’s music and decided to write orchestral pieces called fantasies pittoresques. From 1852 to 1854, Glinka lived quietly in Paris, often visiting botanical and zoological gardens. He then moved to Berlin, where he died suddenly on February 15, 1857, after catching a cold. He was buried in Berlin, but later his body was moved to Saint Petersburg and reburied in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.

Glinka started a new direction in Russian music. Before Glinka, music in Russia came from Europe. For the first time, music that was specifically Russian appeared in Glinka’s operas. These operas often used historical events, but they were presented in a realistic way.

Alexander Serov was the first to notice this new direction in music. He was later joined by his friend Vladimir Stasov, who explained the trend. Composers of "The Five" later developed this style further.

Modern Russian music critic Viktor Korshikov wrote: "Russian musical culture would not have developed without three operas—Ivan Susanin, Ruslan and Lyudmila, and The Stone Guest. Ivan Susanin is an opera where the people are the main character; Ruslan is a mythical, deeply Russian story; and in The Stone Guest, drama is more important than the beauty of sound." Two of these operas—Ivan Susanin and Ruslan and Lyudmila—were written by Glinka.

Glinka’s work, along with that of the composers and artists he inspired, helped create a unique Russian artistic style that is important in world culture.

Legacy

After Glinka died, people began to argue strongly in music newspapers about which of his two operas was better, especially between Vladimir Stasov and his former friend Alexander Serov. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky once said that Glinka's orchestral piece Kamarinskaya (1848) was "the seed that grew into a big tree" of later Russian symphonic music.

In 1884, Mitrofan Belyayev started an annual award called the Glinka Prize. Early winners of this prize included Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, César Cui, and Anatoly Lyadov.

Outside Russia, several of Glinka's orchestral works have been quite popular in concerts and recordings. In addition to the well-known overtures from his operas (especially the very lively overture to Ruslan), his major orchestral works include the symphonic poem Kamarinskaya (1848), which uses Russian folk songs; and two Spanish pieces, A Night in Madrid (1848, 1851) and Jota Aragonesa (1845). He also wrote many art songs, piano pieces, and some chamber music.

A less well-known work, Glinka's Patrioticheskaya Pesnya, was believed to have been written for a contest to create a national anthem in 1833. In 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Russia adopted it as the anthem for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which was the only Soviet republic without its own anthem at the time. After the Soviet Union and the Russian SFSR ended, the anthem remained unofficially used until it was officially chosen as Russia's national anthem in 1993. It stayed as the national anthem until 2000, when it was replaced by the Soviet anthem with new lyrics.

Three Russian conservatories are named after Glinka:

• Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory (Russian: Нижегородская государственная консерватория им. М.И.Глинки)
• Novosibirsk State Conservatory (Russian: Новосибирская государственная консерватория (академия) им. М.И.Глинки)
• Magnitogorsk State Conservatory (Russian: Магнитогорская государственная консерватория)

A Soviet astronomer named Lyudmila Chernykh discovered a minor planet in 1973 and named it 2205 Glinka in his honor. A crater on Mercury is also named after him.

A street in Berlin called Glinkastraße was named after him. During the George Floyd protests, there was a plan to rename the nearby Berlin U-Bahn station Mohrenstraße to "Glinkastraße." The plan was canceled because of reports that Glinka may have held antisemitic views.

In September 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, a street in Dnipro, Ukraine, that was named after Glinka was renamed to honor Queen Elizabeth II.

In popular culture

The exciting opening music from Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila is used as the theme song for the popular U.S. television comedy series Mom. The show's creators chose this music because its quick and complicated style matches the characters' efforts to stop harmful habits and manage everyday challenges.