Born in Shklov (now Sklou, Belarus) to a family of musicians, Michael Joseph (Mikhl Yosef, also Yekhiel Mikhl) Guzikov made inroads for traditional klezmer musicians into broader European music with his performances on the tsimbl, a variety of xylophone. The instrument remained popular in itinerant bands in Europe from the High Middles Ages until the early nineteenth century, when it caught on among bourgeois composers for use in symphony orchestras. Guzikov himself attracted the attention of Felix Mendelssohn and other renowned composers on his tours of the Russian Empire and Europe.
Yeshurun sings, when in him it sees a delicate beauty in the bloom of her youth
playing the lyre in her bosom’s embrace, her song gladdening the sorrowful heart.
A charming doe [even] without kohl…
Madame Butterfly [Impassively, her eyes narrowing]:Speak concerning marriage once more, you die! [She fans herself. Suzuki salaams and backs quickly toward the door. Madame Butterfly claps her hands…
For a half-millennium the Jew, rejected by the world, had secluded himself within ghetto walls, unconcerned with what lay without. But the day came when the world…