Alexander Grechaninov

Aleksander Grechaninov (Александр Гречанинов), born Moscow 1864, was a Russian composer, piano teacher and folksong collector. His early, conventional, compositions did much to earn him the admiration of his teacher and friend Rimsky-Korsakov, and ultimately won him an annual pension granted by the Tzar in 1910. His more controversial, broad tonal liturgical works offended much of Russian Orthodoxy and he moved, first to France in 1925 and then to the United States, where he died in 1956.