WIKI: As with A Life for the Tsar, Ruslan employs some aspects of Russian folk music; it is also noted for imaginative use of dissonance, chromaticism, and Eastern elements. Of particular consequence is the use of the whole tone scale for the first time in Russian music. It is particularly associated thematically with Chernomor and, as a result, became so popular among Russian composers for suggesting evil or ominous personages or situations, that even today Russian musicians refer to the whole tone scale as gamma Chernomora, or "Chernomor's scale".

 

The rollicking overture is one of the best-known orchestral showpieces in the West and known for being a nightmare for bassists. An orchestral feature of act 1 is the use of piano and harp to suggest the timbre of the gusli. Glinka's debt to Western operatic models is abundantly apparent in Farlaf's Rondo, a Russian emulation of Figaro's "Largo al factotum" from Rossini's The Barber of Seville.