rimsky-korsakov was born near novgorod, 18 march 1844, and died in lybensk, near st petersburg, 21 june 1908. he is best known for his operas, orchestral music and songs. he was brilliant at writing music for orchestras and wrote an excellent book about orchestration. he loved to write music about fairy-tale stories and legends. his best-known work is "scheherazade", an orchestral piece which describes in music the stories told by scheherazade in the book of "one thousand and one nights". he also completed or re-orchestrated several works by modest mussorgsky which had been left unfinished.