ALEXANDER SERGEIEVICH TANEYEV  

Alexander Sergeyevich Taneyev was the uncle of Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev, a musician whose activities are very much better known today through his association with Tchaikovsky, at first as a pupil and then as a friend and colleague, with Rachmaninov and other Russian musicians in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Alexander Sergeyevich has fared worse at the hands of posterity. Six years older than his nephew, he was born in Petrograd in 1850 and after graduating from the University there pursued a career of considerable distinction in the government service, rising to the position of director of the Imperial Chancellery.

He had received musical training, having taken lessons from Reichel in Dresden, and from Petrov and Rimsky-Korsakov at home.