Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed his first symphony on the deck of the clipper ship Almaz during a nearly three-year naval deployment, without knowing the names of the chords in his head. Born in 1844 in Tikhvin to a naval family, he was an indifferent piano student until Mily Balakirev drew him into The Five, the self-taught nationalist circle that rejected conservatory training. This episode follows the improbable moment in 1871 when the St. Petersburg Conservatory offered the 27-year-old officer a professorship despite his inability to harmonize a chorale or conduct.

We cover the three years he stopped composing to secretly drill counterpoint and fugues on Tchaikovsky's advice, the critical role of his wife Nadezhda Purgold as teacher and critic, and Borodin's mockery that he had become a bespectacled German academic. We trace his recove ...