Sasha Tcherepnin, a tall boy for his age, was a familiar figure at the St. Petersburg Conservatory fifty-odd years ago, as he was seen walking down the corridors accompanied by his father Nicolas Tcherepnin, professor of composition and conducting, teacher of a generation of Russian composers, and himself a composer of stature. Paradoxically, it was Sasha's mother, not his father, who gave him his first music lessons. As soon as he learned to manipulate the piano keys, he began making up tunes of his own. There was so much music lying around the house that he picked up the rudiments of notation intuitively. He learned notes and the Russian alphabet at the same time. Now, at seventy, he cannot even remember when he could not read Russian words or musical notes.