Mikhail Gnessin

Mikhail Fabianovich Gnessin (Russian: Михаил Фабианович Гнесин; sometimes transcribed Gnesin; 2 February [O.S. 21 January] 1883 – 5 May 1957) was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher. Gnessin's works The Maccabeans and The Youth of Abraham earned him the nickname the "Jewish Glinka".

Gnessin was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, the son of Rabbi Fabian Osipovich Gnessin and Bella Isaevna Fletzinger. 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.

Gnessin studied from 1892 to 1899 at the Rostov Technical Institute. In 1901, he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov and Anatoly Lyadov. In 1905 he was expelled for taking part in a student strike during the Revolution of 1905. He was reinstated the following year. In 1908 his early work Vrubel won the Glinka Prize. That same year he helped found, along with Lazare Saminsky 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.

Among Gnessin's other early works was a 'symphonic fragment' (his Op. 4), based on Shelley's poem Prometheus Unbound. But much of his work at this time, and in the future, was associated with Jewish traditional musical styles which had become increasingly popular in Russia prior to 1914.

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