Gnesin composer biography

The works of Gnesin, in which Russian and Jewish musical traditions are intertwined, are written under the influence of Russian modernism, French impressionism, as well as Jewish and Yiddish folk music. Although Mikhail Gnesin was not directly pursued by any of the regimes, he was subjected to pressure from both Nazi and Soviet anti -Semitism. Gnesin was the only Soviet Jewish composer, which was forbidden by the Nazis.

The piano trio of Mikhail Gnesin "In memory of our dead children", op. Born in Rostov-on-Don, in a musical family, Gnesin entered the Rimsky-Korsakov composition class along with Igor Stravinsky and Maximilian Steinberg in the St. Petersburg State Conservatory in the year after he was refused the Moscow Conservatory because of the Jewish quota. While studying at the conservatory, Gnesin took part in revolutionary activities.

In the year, he helped to establish the "Society of Jewish Folk Music", the purpose of which was to develop a Jewish national music school. Since the year, the composer began to deliberately use Jewish and Yiddish musical traditions in his works, he went twice to Palestine in and, in search of creative inspiration. After the Russian revolution of the year, Jewish art and music began to develop rapidly, and Gnesin experienced the most productive period in his work.

Among his works are the string quartet "Variations on the Jewish folk theme", "Symphony fantasy in the Jewish style", "Song about the ancient homeland", so. Song works on works of Russian poetry, such as "Three Jewish Songs" to the words of Russian poets, op. Gnesin experienced pressure from growing anti -Semitism in the X and was inclined to leave Russia, fearing for the future of Jews in his country.

Despite the fact that he was a rather respected composer and teacher as a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory with the years, he was attacked by the Russian Association of Proletarian musicians RAPM and was accused of reactionary formalism and bourgeois nationalism. His brother was executed in the year, accused of anti -Bolshevism, two Gnesin's friends were also executed in the end of the 10ths.

The composer was forced to stop the popularization of Jewish music and refuse to work on the opera in the Yiddish about the uprising of the bar-Kokhba. The son of Gnesin, Fabi, was ahead of his father in Tashkent, but, unfortunately, died before the composer arrived. The piano trio "In memory of our dead children" is a one -part composition for piano, violin and cello. It is romantic in style and does not include obvious Jewish musical passages.

Gnesin initially wanted to name the play by the requiem, but he was forced to remove this term. In Russia, they knew well about the persecution of Jews by the Nazis, especially after the mass execution of Soviet Jews in Ukraine, but a taboo was imposed on the theme of the Holocaust. The initial Trio theme is a solo violin pizzicato, which is a direct quote from the famous Yiddish song "Once Lature Jew lived." Amol Iz Geeng a Yidele, in which the son and wife of the protagonist die.

The composer deliberately chose this quote, Gnesin wrote about this to his sister in the year, possibly as a hint of Jewish sacrifices in order to circumvent Soviet censorship. Not concretized initiation - "our dead children" - allowed officials to consider this work as a monument to Soviet non -Jewish victims. As for Gnesin himself, it is likely that his trio mourns the collective death of both Soviet and specifically Jewish children, as well as the personal loss of his son Fabia.

The second theme of the play, as mentioned by Gnesin in a footnote to the score, is based on the melody that Fabiy wrote when he was eight years old.

The development of this topic, as the composer wrote, received a new interpretation by displaying personal sorrow. During the execution, the trio was handed out a program containing the following words of the composer: the author sought not only to reflect our common sadness for our children, students, young friends who died in battles for their homeland, who were tormented by the enemy in the occupied cities who died in the situation of evacuation.

The author wanted to restore the appearance of these young people in the memory of the audience - alive, young - from childhood dreams and games, from youthful inadmissible love and aspirations for exploits - to genuine first achievements and sudden death. This explains the fact that in this work, along with the pages of elegic and tragedy, many pages of extremely bright.

The episodes related in this play to the poetry of children's experiences the first side of the sonata are built on the topic composed by the author of the author Fabi Gnesin, now dead, when he was only eight years old. The trio was not published and absent in the concert repertoire, despite the recent statement of researchers that this is the first significant Soviet composition about the Holocaust of War's time.

The double meaning, embedded in the content, is possible until recently prevented the trio from a musical work dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust.In the years, the composers, including Alexander Veprik and the musicologist-folklorist Moishe Beregovsky, were arrested and sent to the Gulag on charges of cosmopolitanism, formalism and anti-Soviet bourgeois nationalism.

Gnesin, despite the risk of arrest due to participation during the war in discussions about the creation of the Jewish Republic, opposed repressors and entered into a dispute with Zhdanov on these issues. The composer managed to avoid persecution, but the authorities threatened to close the department of the composition of the State Musical School. Gnesin now the Russian Music Academy.

Gnesins, which was founded by the sisters of the composer in the year and in which Gnesin himself worked. The composer was forced to resign and transfer business to his student Aram Khachaturian. In the year, Gnesin was subjected to public condemnation, but he again managed to avoid repression, this time, possibly because of the death of Stalin, which came in the same year.

In the year in Moscow, the composer died.