MICHAEL IVANOVICH

See also:

• GLINKA, FEDOR NIKOLAEVICH (1788-1849)
• MICHAEL IVANOVICH GLINKA (1803-18s7)
• GLINKA, S
• GLINKA, SERGY NIKOLAEVICH (1774-1847)

GLINKA (1803-18s7)  , Russian musical composer, was born at Novospassky, a village in the Smolensk government, on the and of June 1803 . His early life he spent at home, but at the age of thirteen we find him at the Blagorodrey Pension, St Petersburg, where he studied music under Carl Maier and John Field, the Irish composer and pianist, who had settled in Russia . We are told that in his seventeenth year he had already begun to compose romances and other minor vocal pieces; but of these nothing now is known . His thorough musical training did not begin till the year 183o, when he went abroad and stayed for three years in Italy, to study the works of old and modern Italian masters .. His thorough knowledge of the requirements of the voice may be connected with this course of study . His training as a composer was finished, under the contrapuntist Dehn, with whom Glinka stayed for several months at Berlin . In 1833 he returned to Russia, and devoted himself to operatic composition .