the art songs possess a delicate beauty. While they yield in overt lyricism to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, otherwise they reserve their place in the standard repertory of Russian singers. Rimsky-Korsakov also wrote a body of choral works, both secular and for Russian Orthodox Church service. The latter include settings of portions of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (despite his own atheism).Abraham, Studies in Russian Music, 288 Legacy Transitional figure The critic Vladimir Stasov, who along with Balakirev had founded The Five, wrote in 1882, "Beginning with Glinka, all the best Russian musicians have been very skeptical of book learning and have never approached it with the servility and the superstitious reverence with which it is approached to this day in many parts of Europe." This statement was not true for Glinka, who studied Western music theory assiduously with Siegfried Dehn in Berlin before he composed his opera A Life for the Tsar. It was true for Balakirev, who "opposed academicism with tremendous vigor," and it was true initially for Rimsky-Korsakov, who had been imbued by Balakirev and Stasov with the same attitude. One point Stasov omitted purposely, which would have disproved his statement completely, was that at the time he wrote it, Rimsky-Korsakov had been pouring his "book learning" into students at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory for over a decade. Beginning with his three years of self-imposed study, Rimsky-Korsakov had drawn closer to Tchaikovsky and further away from the rest of The Five, while the rest of The Five had drawn back from him and Stasov had branded him a "renegade". Richard Taruskin wrote, "The older he became, the greater was the irony with which Rimsky-Korsakov looked back on his kuchkist days." When the young Semyon Kruglikov was considering a future in composition, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the future critic, About a talent for composition ... I can say nothing as yet. You have tried your powers too little ... Yes, one can study on one's own. Sometimes one needs advice, but one must study ... All of us, that is, I myself and Borodin, and Balakirev, and especially Cui and Mussorgsky, did disdain these things. I consider myself lucky that I bethought myself in time and forced myself to work. As for Balakirev, owing to his insufficient technique he writes little; Borodin, with difficulty; Cui, carelessly; and Mussorgsky, sloppily and often incoherently. Taruskin points out this statement, which Rimsky-Korsakov wrote