re: Gusikow's music

[Joel E. Rubin <rubin...>]

On 11 March, Pete Rushefsky wrote:

what I believe is the only surviving known Gusikow tune on both his album
with Andy Statman as well as the Khevrisa album European Wedding Music.  It
is a setting of Shir HaMaalot.
Interestingly, Idelsohn (in his Thesaurus of Jewish Music-- can't remember
if in the cantorial or Hasidic book) documents a string quartet version of
the piece.

Joel Rubin responds:

Gusikow's setting of Shir Ha Ma'alot -- a zemerl, not a klezmer piece -- was
published in Bernstein, A. M. (1958). "Musikalisher Pinkas": A Collection of
Zemirot and Folk Melodies compiled by Hazzan A. M. Bernstein (1866-1932)
Vilna. (New York: Cantors Assembly of America). [original edition:
Bernstein, A. M. (1927) Muzikalisher pinkes: Nigunim-zamlung fun yidishn
folks-oytser. (Vilna: Vilner yidishe historish-etnografishe gezelshaft af
dem nomen fun Sh. An-Ski)]. According to Eric Mandell, it was still being
sung as recently as 1937, although most people did not know its origins by
that time. 

Regarding the recent Gusikow thread, still the most reliable source on
Gusikow's life and music is Sadan, D. (1947). Ha-menagen ha-mufla: Chai
Yosef Michel Guzikov u-svivehem (The Great Player: Joseph Michael Gusikov
and His Environment). (Tel Aviv: M. Newman). It was written by Dov Sadan, an
important professor and pioneer of folklore studies in Israel. Sadan
completed the work around 1937 with the help of a number of European
scholars, most of whom perished in the Shoah. Gusikow is not such an unknown
figure as Alex Jacobowitz would make out. There is an entry on Gusikow in
Encyclopedia Judaica (published 1970-71) by the late Bathya Bayer which
lists a number of resources on him, including the Shir HaMaalot setting, and
a number of encyclopedias have had listings on him over the years, including
Riemann and Fetis. Rita Ottens' and my book, "Klezmer-Musik" contains one
chapter on Gusikow (pp. 157-170) which both summarizes some of the known
facts about him as based largely on Sadan, and attempts to place Gusikow in
his cultural, historical and religious perspective. I understand that Joshua
Horowitz has written an article on Gusikow, but I don't know if it has been
published yet and I haven't read it. Gusikow was an important klezmer in the
Mogilev/Shklov region during his youth in Russia. It is not clear to what
extent, if at all, he performed "klezmer" on stage in his later career.

Some of Pedotser's works are published in Beregovski (Syracuse University
Press, 2001), as performed or notated by his students. One of his most
well-known pieces is Ahavo Rabboh, which has been recorded in a number of
settings, including as a solo for cimbalom by Kalman Balogh on my
"Beregovski's Khasene" CD. An excerpt of a version for solo violin by one of
Pedotser's students is on the CD produced by the Vernadsky Library in Kiev
as transcribed from a wax cylinder made during the An-ski expeditions. There
is at least one classical setting of it by one of the St. Petersburg
composers (recorded by clarinetist Dieter Kloecker with string quartet), and
a snatch of it is played on banjo(!) on one of the Epstein Brothers hasidic
recordings from the late 1960s/early 1970s.


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