Mikhail Fabianovich Gnessin (Russian: Михаил Фабианович Гнесин; sometimes transcribed Gnesin; 2 February [O.S.

[1] In 1901, he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov and Anatoly Lyadov.

[1] That same year he helped found, along with Lazare Saminsky, Lyubov Streicher,[6] 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.

[1] 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.

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 performers within Russian culture was huge, and included many world-famous names.

[9] In return for a nominal fee students were provided classes in theatre history, commedia dell'arte, Scenic Movement, and practical music and speech.

He dressed as an Orthodox Hebrew, but at the same time was identified with radically anti-sectarian political and social views.

[1][14] During the latter visit he "secluded himself for a few months in the wild mountain scenery of Bab al Wad," where he composed the first act of his opera The Youth of Abraham.

[1] The position of Jews in the Soviet Union has always been a difficult one in that, unlike other ethnic minorities, Jewish culture has never received official backing, except in the 1920s...For example, the five volume History of Music of the Peoples of the USSR gives information on very small ethnic minorities, while the Jews, number around three million, are ignored.

[8]Gnessin was forced to abandon both his "progressive tendencies" and his interest in music with "an overtly Jewish theme".