Nikolai Tcherepnin

Nikolai Nikolayevich Tcherepnin (Russian: Николай Николаевич Черепнин; May 15 [O.S. May 3] 1873 – 26 June 1945) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He was born in Saint Petersburg and studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He conducted for the first Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

Nikolai Tcherepnin was born in 1873 to a well-known and wealthy physician of the same name. The elder Nikolai moved in elite circles of artists including Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Modest Mussorgsky. Young Nikolai's mother died when he was a baby, and when his father remarried, was replaced by an ambivalent stepmother. As a child, Nikolai's father beat him regularly and enforced a general code of strict discipline.

At his father's insistence, Nikolai earned a law degree, though during this time he composed steadily. In 1895 he graduated with his degree in law from the University of Saint Petersburg. In 1898, he earned a degree in composition under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and a degree in piano under K.K. Fan-Arkh. His talents and high family status earned him a job as the orchestral teacher at the Court Chapel in 1899. For six years he taught there before returning to the St. Petersburg Conservatory to teach there. During his 13-year tenure (from 1909 onward as professor) he taught many notable students, including Sergei Prokofiev, Aleksandr Gauk, Yuri Shaporin and Lazare Saminsky.

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