Michal Josef Gusikov (2 September 1806 - 21 October 1837) was a klezmer

Klezmer

Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...

 who gave the first performances of klezmer music to West European concert audiences on his 'wood and straw instrument'.

Gusikov and his instrument

Gusikov was born to a family of klezmer musicians in Shklov (now in Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

). Originally brought up to play the flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

, like his father, a weakness of the lungs forced him to seek a different specialisation. In 1831 he constructed what he called a wood and straw instrument, essentially a xylophone

Xylophone

The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...

 laid out like a cimbalom on a soundboard

Sounding board

A sound board, or soundboard, is the surface of a string instrument that the strings vibrate against, usually via some sort of bridge. The resonant properties of the sound board and the interior of the instrument greatly increase loudness over the string alone.The sound board operates by the...

 made from rolls of straw

Straw

Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry stalks of cereal plants, after the grain and chaff have been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has many uses, including fuel, livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and...

 which allowed a loud resonance. There is debate whether this instrument was invented by Gusikov himself, or by his contemporary Samson Jakubowski. On this instrument Gusikov developed an extraordinary virtuosity, and in 1834 gave concerts in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

 and Odessa

Odessa

Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

.

He was heard in a concert in Odessa by the Polish

Poles

thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...

 violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist Karol Lipinski

Karol Lipinski

Karol Józef Lipiński was a Polish virtuoso violinist and composer.-Life:Lipiński was born in Radzyń Podlaski. In 1810 he became the first violin and two years later the conductor of the opera orchestra at Lwów . In 1817 he went to Italy in the hope of hearing Niccolò Paganini...

, and with the support of Lipinski and the poet Lamartine

Alphonse de Lamartine

Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...

 undertook a concert tour of Western Europe, from 1835 onwards. The concerts, at which Gusikov appeared in traditional Jewish gabardine

Gabardine

Gabardine is a tough, tightly woven fabric used to make suits, overcoats, trousers, uniforms, windbreakers, and other garments. The fibre used to make the fabric is traditionally worsted wool, but may also be cotton, texturized polyester, or a blend. Gabardine is woven as a warp-faced steep or...

 and was generally accompanied by his relatives on bass and violins, were an extraordinary success; in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 he was so popular that a coiffure was named after him, imitating his payot

Payot

Payot is the Hebrew word for sidelocks or sidecurls. Payot are worn by some men and boys in the Orthodox Jewish community based on an interpretation of the Biblical injunction against shaving the "corners" of one's head...

. Gusikow played improvisations both on traditional Jewish and klezmer melodies and also on the popular opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 tunes of the time. Other locations where he played included Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 and Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

.

Opinions of his music

Many professional Jewish musicians were highly impressed by Gusikov. Ferdinand Hiller

Ferdinand Hiller

Ferdinand Hiller was a German composer, conductor, writer and music-director.-Biography:Ferdinand Hiller was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, where his father Justus was a merchant in English textiles – a business eventually continued by Ferdinand’s brother Joseph...

 wrote him a recommendation to Giacomo Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...

. Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

 wrote to his family in 1836:

'I am curious to know whether Gusikow pleased you as much as he did me. He is quite a phenomenon; a famous fellow, inferior to no virtuoso in the world, both in execution and feeling; he therefore delights me more with his instrument of wood and straw than many with their pianofortes.'

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

, on the other hand, was more dismissive, calling Gusikov a 'Paganini

Niccolò Paganini

Niccolò Paganini was an Italian violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer. He was one of the most celebrated violin virtuosi of his time, and left his mark as one of the pillars of modern violin technique...

 of the Boulevard

Boulevard

A Boulevard is type of road, usually a wide, multi-lane arterial thoroughfare, divided with a median down the centre, and roadways along each side designed as slow travel and parking lanes and for bicycle and pedestrian usage, often with an above-average quality of landscaping and scenery...

s' whose 'gift, one might say his genius' would have been better applied to 'inventing an agricultural instrument' whereas his 'talent, being misguided, has produced nothing but musical inanities.'

Gusikov attracted the admiration and friendship of the musicologist François-Joseph Fétis

François-Joseph Fétis

François-Joseph Fétis was a Belgian musicologist, composer, critic and teacher. He was one of the most influential music critics of the 19th century, and his enormous compilation of biographical data in the Biographie universelle des musiciens remains an important source of information today...

, who wrote a long article about him, based on their discussions in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

, in his musical dictionary.

Death

Exhausted by his tour, Gusikov died of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 in Aachen

Aachen

Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...

, his last days embittered by the alleged theft of his precious instrument from his lodgings.

Only one piece of music written by Gusikov has survived, a setting of the Jewish hymn Shir Hama’alot (Psalm

Psalms

The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...

126).

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ed. Stanley Sadie (1980), ‘Guzikow, Michal Jozef’
• Francois-Joseph Fétis, ‘Biographie universelle des musiciens’ (in French), 2nd edition, Paris, 1870.
• Franz Liszt, ‘Lettres d’un bachelier ès musique’, tr. Charles Suttori, London, 1989
• Felix Mendelssohn, ‘Letters of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’, tr. Lady Wallace, London, 1883
• Joachim Stuschewsky, ‘Haklezmorim, toledotayhem, orekh hahayim. v’yistrotayhem’ (in Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1959.

Other references

• Rita Ottens and Joel Rubin, 'Klezmer-Musik' (in German), Munich, 1999.