Yuri Sergeevich Sakhnovsky[a] (September 25, 1866 – April 2, 1930)[1] was a Russian composer, conductor, and music critic.
[2] Sakhnovsky came from a well-off family and was known as a "bon vivant (he weighed 260.lbs) handsome, brilliant and wealthy".
[3] Sakhnovsky studied chant with Stepan Vasilevich Smolensky, to whom Sergei Rachmaninoff dedicated his Vespers, though Sakhnovsky later turned to a more "lush" style of choral writing.
In later life Sakhnovsky was active more as a critic than a composer.
Particularly notorious were his attacks on Alexander Scriabin's music as "decadent" from 1911-1914.