Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov trained as a naval officer and was still serving when he joined the nationalist circle around Balakirev. Appointed to the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1871, he taught himself harmony and counterpoint a step ahead of his own students, and became the outstanding orchestrator of his generation, with a textbook on it to follow. He wrote fifteen operas, The Snow Maiden, Sadko and The Golden Cockerel among them, and edited or completed a great deal of other men's music: Borodin's Prince Igor, and the Boris Godunov whose smoothed orchestration carried Musorgsky into the repertory. Igor Stravinsky was his pupil.