Anton Stepanovich Arensky (Russian: Антон Степанович Аренский) (July 12, 18… Read Full Bio ↴Anton Stepanovich Arensky (Russian: Антон Степанович Аренский) (July 12, 1861 – February 25, 1906), was a Russian composer of Romantic classical music, a pianist and a professor of music.

Arensky was born in Novgorod, Russia. He was musically precocious and had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by the age of nine. With his father and mother, he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1879, where he studied composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

After graduating from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1882, Arensky became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his students there were Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Gretchaninov.

In 1895 Arensky returned to Saint Petersburg as the director of the Imperial Choir, a post for which he had been recommended by Mily Balakirev. Arensky retired from this position in 1901, spending his remaining time as a pianist, conductor, and composer.

Arensky died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in in Perkijarvi, Finland. It is alleged that drinking and gambling undermined his health.