Text Box:  31. This composer yet another Russian. He lived from 1844 to 1908…64 years. His name is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Talk about a self-taught guy who made a great musical success of himself!!! He started his adult life as an officer in the Russian Navy and eventually became a teacher at a music conservatory. At first, he was so ill prepared in terms of knowledge, that he was always just one chapter in the book ahead of his students. His capacity to learn was extraordinary, though, and he went on to write two music texts in harmony and orchestration that became standards for Russian music students. On the CD you heard his most famous work, as far as people in the West are concerned. It is called the Flight of the Bumble Bee and was written in 1900. It was part of his opera, The Legend of Tsar Saltan, in which a prince is transformed into a bumble bee and stings his hated aunts…that’s A U N T S. Goulding ranks Rimsky-Korsakov as #42.