A nation creates music - the composer only arranges it.

In 1830 at the recommendation of a physician Glinka decided to travel to Italy with the tenor Nikolay Ivanov. "Music is my soul" he was to write many years later recalling this experience. He was buried in Berlin but a few months later his body was taken to Saint Petersburg and reinterred in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.

Glinka's compositions were an important influence on future Russian composers notably the members of The Five who took Glinka's lead and produced a distinctive Russian style of music. February 3] 1857) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country and is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music.