Tikhon Khrennikov was the youngest of ten children, born into a family of horse traders, in the town of Yelets in the Russian province of Lipetsk in central Russia. His family started to teach him the guitar and mandolin. When he was nine he started learning the piano, and when he was 13 he started composing. Three years later he was sent to the Gnesin Academy of Music, studying with the composer Mikhail Gnesin. In 1932 he went on to the Moscow Conservatoire. He studied composition with Vissarion Shebalin and piano with the famous teacher Heinrich Neuhauss who was later the teacher of Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter.