Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Rimsky-Korsakov came to composition as a naval officer, his childhood passion for the sea fed by books and his brother's stories; that love may have seeded Sadko and Scheherazade. A member of The Five, he initially pursued a nationalistic Russian style rooted in folk song and orientalist color, rejecting Western methods. But in 1871, newly appointed professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, he undertook three years of rigorous self-teaching to master the techniques he'd once dismissed, fusing them with the influences of Glinka and later Wagner. As Inspector of Naval Bands he deepened his…