Mikhail Glinka - Legacy

Legacy

After Glinka's death the relative merits of his two operas became a source of heated debate in the musical press, especially between Vladimir Stasov and his former friend Alexander Serov.

In 1884 Mitrofan Belyayev founded the "Glinka Prize", which was awarded annually. In the first years the winners included Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Cesar Cui and Anatoly Lyadov.

Outside Russia several of Glinka's orchestral works have been fairly popular in concerts and recordings. Besides the well-known overtures to the operas (especially the brilliantly energetic overture to Ruslan), his major orchestral works include the symphonic poem Kamarinskaya (1848), based on Russian folk tunes, and two Spanish works, A Night in Madrid (1848, 1851) and Jota Aragonesa (1845).

Glinka also composed many art songs, many piano pieces, and some chamber music.

A much lesser work that received some attention in the last decade was Glinka's "The Patriotic Song", supposedly written for a contest for a national anthem in 1833; the music was adopted as the national anthem of Russia during 1990–2000.

Three Russian conservatories are named after Glinka:

• Nizhny Novgorod State Conservatory (Russian: Нижегородская государственная консерватория им. М.И.Глинки)
• Novosibirsk State Conservatory (Russian: Новосибирская государственная консерватория (академия) им. М.И.Глинки)
• Magnitogorsk State Conservatory (Russian: Магнитогорская государственная консерватория)

Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh named a minor planet 2205 Glinka in his honor. It was discovered in 1973. A crater on Mercury is also named after him.