Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–1857) is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music, the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country. Born to a wealthy family near Smolensk, he was raised by an overprotective grandmother and heard little music beyond village church bells and folk songs in his early childhood, an experience that later shaped his ear for dissonant, non-Western harmony. He studied piano in Saint Petersburg, briefly with the Irish composer John Field, before travelling to Italy and Germany, where he studied counterpoint and composition. Returning to Russia, he composed his two great operas, “A Life for the Tsar” (1836) and “Ruslan and Lyudmila” (1842), both drawing on Russian history, folklore, and folk melody. He died in Berlin in 1857 following an illness.

Glinka’s fusion of Western compositional technique with Russian folk material created a distinctly national musical style that directly inspired the group of composers known as “The Five” (Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin) and shaped the course of Russian symphonic and operatic music. Tchaikovsky called Glinka’s orchestral work Kamarinskaya “the acorn from which the oak” of later Russian symphonic music grew. His Valse-Fantaisie, composed originally for piano and later orchestrated, remains one of his most performed concert works and has been widely transcribed, including for classical guitar.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Glinka