A reflective or dream-like melody, a prelude filled with bittersweet melancholy, the surrender to a nationalist impulse: all are quintessential Chopin. In his short life, Frédéric Chopin moved from the fashionable salons of Paris into history, as one of the greatest composers of mus

Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov spent most of his boyhood in a military school -- a naval school, to be exact. Once in the navy, however, he seemed more inspired by music than by mastheads. While on his first tour, he wrote a symphony that was refined and performed less than one year afte