Composer. A transitional figure in Russian music, he helped bridge the divide between the romantic and modern eras. Gretchaninov was born in Moscow. He claimed he did not see a piano until he was 14 because his parents, semi-literate shopkeepers, expected him to take over the business, and it was not until 1881 that he secretly began taking courses with Anton Arensky at the Moscow Conservatory. Following nine years of piecemeal study, Arensky declared he was hopeless as a musician. Gretchaninov then moved to St. Petersburg and found a more sympathetic teacher in Rimsky-Korsakov, who gave him financial support and helped launch his career. The 1894 premiere of his Symphony No. 1 established his fame. He returned to Moscow in 1896 and ten years later succeeded the late Arensky as professor of composition at the Conservatory. In 1910 Czar Nicholas II awarded Gretchaninov an Imperial pension for his liturgical music, though the composer's relations with the Russian Orthodox Church were far from smooth. He went against traditional practice by adding orchestral forces to the choir in sacred pieces, and the ROC had his opera "Sister Beatrice" (from a play by Maeterlinck, 1912) banned as blasphemous. He had an even rougher time after the 1917 Revolution, when he was branded a "bourgeois reactionary" by the new regime and his music went unperformed. With help from an American patron he moved to Paris in 1922 and enjoyed renewed prosperity among the emigre community there. He finally settled in New York City at the start of World War II, becoming a US citizen in 1946. When he died at 91, Gretchaninov was the last important representative of the Russian Romantic School. Among his 200 compositions are the Symphonies 2 through 5 (written between 1908 to 1936), four string quartets (1893 to 1929), concertos for Cello (1895), Violin (1932) and Flute (1938), the opera "Dobrinya Nikitich" (written for Chaliapin, 1903), entertainment and instructional pieces for children, and a large body of religious music, including 44 complete Orthodox liturgies and settings of the Roman Catholic Mass. In his last major opus, the "Messa Oecumenica" (1943), Gretchaninov attempted a religious-philosophical statement by blending Eastern Orthodox and Catholic settings.