Russian-American composer, teacher and conductor.

He was born on October 13, 1864 in Moscow and passed away on January 3, 1956 in New York. His parents were shopkeepers, and he began to study piano as a teenager. While attending secondary school, he also sang in an amateur choir at a Moscow church. From 1881 to 1890 he attended the Moscow Conservatory, studying piano with Nikolai Kaškin and Vasily Safónov, counterpoint with German Laroš and Nikolai Gubert, harmony and fugue with Anton Arensky, and musical forms with Sergei Taneyev. Later, from 1890 to 1893, he attended Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's composition classes at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, submitting the cantata "Samson" (1893) as his final project. In 1891 he married the pianist Vera Ivanovna, and the following year he composed "Concierto obertura en Re menor".

Gretchaninov's "Cuarteto de cuerda nº 1, op. 2" (1893) won the first prize in the chamber music competition sponsored by Mitrofan Belyayev in Saint Petersburg. During these years, he composed several works for the chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1895, his "Sinfonía nº 1, en Si menor" (1894) was conducted by Rimsky-Korsakov, his former teacher. The following year he returned to Moscow, and in 1903 his opera "Dobrynya Nikitich" (1895-1901) premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre. That same year, he was named vice-chairman of the music section of the Ethnographic Society at the University of Moscow and began teaching piano. From 1906 he taught at the Gnessin State Musical College and at the Berckmann School, composing for and conducting children's choirs at both institutions.

Gretchaninov wrote the song cycle "Les fleurs du mal" in 1909, based on Charles Baudelaire's poetry. He premiered his second opera, "Sestra Beatrisa" (1908-1910) and, in 1912, married Maria Grigrievna, his second wife. He composed several pieces of religious music, including "Domestic Liturgy" for soloists, choir and orchestra which he presented in 1918. In 1925 he moved to Paris, where he continued to teach and conduct. Since 1928 he travelled to New York every year to give recitals; in the meantime, he composed works like "Missa Oecumenica" (1936) and "Missa Festiva" (1937). In 1939, he participated in the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and moved to the United States. There he focused on writing pieces for piano: his "Symphony No. 4" (1927) premiered in 1941, and he later published an opera titled "The Marriage" (1946) and "Missa Sancti Spiritus" (1943) for choir and organ. He received an honorary doctorate from the New York College of Music in 1951 and published his autobiography, "My Life", in 1952. The composer Manuel de Falla was one of his musical contacts outside of Russia.