Source Wikipedia:
Alexander Alexandrovich Ilyinsky (b. 12 Jan. Jul. / 24 Jan. 1859greg. in Tsarskoye Selo; † 23 Feb. 1920 in Moscow) was a Russian Soviet composer and university teacher.
Ilyinsky was the son of a doctor and began playing the piano and writing music at the age of seven. He attended the 1st St Petersburg Military Gymnasium and participated in the music evenings as a pianist and composer. After graduating from the gymnasium in 1877, he served in the artillery of the Imperial Russian Army until 1879.
From 1881 to 1884, Ilyinsky studied counterpoint, fugue, free composition and orchestration in Berlin with Woldemar Bargiel at the Königliche Akademische Hochschule für ausübende Tonkunst. His piano teachers were Natanael Betcher and Theodor Kullak. He also heard lectures in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Berlin.
In 1885, following Karl Davidov's advice, Ilyinsky graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory as an external freelance artist. He now taught piano (1885-1899) and music theory (1885-1897) at the Music-Drama School of the Moscow Philharmonic Society in Moscow. In 1896 he was appointed full professor and opened his own piano class. Stepan Smolenski characterised him as a typical German technician. He was editor of the foreign and Russian sections of the biographical dictionary of composers from the 4th to the 20th centuries, published in Moscow in 1904.
In 1905, Ilyinsky became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory and remained there after the October Revolution until his death. His students included Pavel Senitsa, the brothers Vasily and Victor Kalinnikov, Nikolai Golovanov, Alexander Dzbanovsky, Alexander Nikolsky, Konstantin Zvedov, Alexander Alexandrov, Pavel Chesnokov and Alexander Medtner.
In 1915, the 10th symphony concert of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra was held in Moscow, conducted by Ilyinsky and N. A. Fedorov, with works by Ilyinsky and Tchaikovsky.
Ilyinsky died in Moscow and was buried in the Novodevichy cemetery.
