Late nineteenth century Russian music was dominated by the opera and ballet in the "public" realm and by songs, especially the romance, in the "private" musical world of both the salon and the humbler parlor. The preëminence of lyrical-based forms meant that the more abstract realm of chamber music was there less actively cultivated than in the rest of Europe. Although Tchaikovsky was not the first Russian composer of chamber music, he made a significant contribution to the genre with his three string quartets and the Souvenir de Florence string sextet. Anton Stepanovich Arensky (1861-1906) has been called the "spiritual son" of Tchaikovsky, although his composition studies were pursued with Rimsky-Korsakov in St. Petersburg. Nonetheless, his association with Tchaikovsky in Moscow (Arensky joined the faculty of the Conservatory there as professor of harmony and counterpoint in 1882 and remained for twelve years) brought him deeply under the influence of the elder composer. Arensky's own passive nature and dissolute lifestyle (he was apparently both a drinker and a gambler from his early years) diluted his undoubted creative gifts into those of a 'minor' composer. Dennis D. Rooney © 1990