Mikhail Gnessin

Mikhail Fabianovich Gnessin (or Gnesin; ; 2 February 18835 May 1957) was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher. His grandfather Y’shayah was also a famous singer and Badchen (wedding entertainer) in Vilnius. Each of the Gnessin children appears to have possessed musical talent, and Gnessin’s three elder sisters, Evgenia, Elena and Maria, all graduated with distinction from the Moscow Conservatory. His sisters went on to found the Gnessin State Musical College (now the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music), an elite music school in Moscow in 1895. and others, the Society for Jewish Folk Music. During this period Gnessin continued to take part in Socialist activities, teaching music to factory workers at workmen’s clubs. Just prior to the Revolution, Jewish music and musicians in Russia were experiencing a nationalist boom. Figures such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Stasov were actively encouraging the establishment of such a school…both Tsarist and Soviet authorities were not too happy about this development, and gave grudging permission for the folk side of Jewish culture to be established, rather than an openly Jewish nationalist compositional movement. Paradoxically, the number of Jewish