Alexander Egorovich Varlamov was a 19th-century composer, singer, teacher, conductor, and one of the founding fathers of the genre of the Russian art song. He is recorded as being one of the first Russian creators to devise a technical process of singing in his monograph, Polnaya Shkola Penia - The Complete School of Singing He was also the notable father of Russian, 20th-century Actor Konstantin Varlamov and the great-grandfather of 20th-century composer Alexander Vladimirovich Varlamov. His art songs were famed for their Russian motives and authentic capture of everyday experiences. So much so that many of his songs were immortalized in literature by notable Russian and American Authors and Playwrights such as N. Gogol, I. Turgenev, and J. Galsworthy.

Alexey Nikolayevich Verstovsky was a Russian composer, musical bureaucrat and rival of Mikhail Glinka.