Mikhail Glinka. Second part (of 3) about this Father of Russian music.
In the beginning of his existence as a composer Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) took in all the music he heard like a musical sponge. We can hear Haydn, Mozart and Field in his early works. During a stay in Italy he wrote music à la Donizetti and Bellini.He was autodidact and he only decided to take composition lessons when he was thirty. His teacher is Berlin advised him to specifically write Russian music. That was something new and fitted in the times of the romanticism. With hearth and soul Glinka devoted himself to this task; he made Russian folk music whenever he could and wrote the first real Russian opera.He has had an enormous influence on the generation composers after him, under which Rimski-Korsakov, Borodin and Tsjaikovski. That is why he is known as the father of Russian music.
