Gustav Heinrich Neuhaus (German: Gustav Heinrich Neuhaus, рус. Густав Вильгельмович Нейгауз), (*10 May 1847, Kalkar, Kingdom of Prussia - 1938, Moscow, USSR) was a German, Ukrainian and Soviet music teacher, father of the pianist Heinrich Neuhaus.
Biography
Gustav Heinrich Neuhaus was born on 10 May 1847 in the town of Kalkar in the Rhineland to Wilhelm Neuhaus, the owner of a handicraft piano factory, and his wife, Gertrude Maria Gottfring.
He studied piano at the Cologne Conservatory. Until 1869, Gustav's teacher was the composer Ernst Rudorf, and later the director of the conservatory Ferdinand Hiller.
After graduating in 1870, on Hiller's advice, he spent another year improving his skills in Berlin and then moved to Vienna. Here he received permission to practice piano making and refinement techniques at the famous Bezendorf factory. On the recommendation of his former teacher, Gustav moved to Sevastopol, where he worked as a piano and German teacher in the family of Princess O. A. Shirinska-Shikhmatova.
In the following years, Gustav Neuhaus first lived in Shikhmatova's estate in Manuylivka, Poltava province, and in 1872 moved to Yelisavethrad, where he earned money by giving home music lessons.
In the 1870s, Neuhaus planned to return to Germany. He was invited to the position of concertmaster and conductor of the musical society in the town of Recklindshausen, but due to the lack of prospects and a low salary of 360 marks per year, the musician refused the offer. Instead, during 1876-1878, he performed at educational events and musical evenings in Yelisavethrad, where he made a name for himself as a pianist and became close to the Polish community, in particular the Szymanowski family.
In addition to teaching, he wrote manuals on teaching methods, composed romances, and translated Nekrasov's works into German. In 1875, Gustav Neuhaus married Marta (Olga) Mykhailivna Blumenfeld, with whom he would live for 62 years. At that time, he completed a collection of chamber music and vocal works and a vocal cycle called Lieder aus der Jugendzeit (Songs of Youth) based on poems by German Romantic poets, which he dedicated to his wife. The cycle was published by K. Hochstein's publishing house in Heidelberg in the late nineteenth century.
Gustav Neuhaus created a new system of note recording and improved the design of the arc piano keyboard. In 1882, in Berlin, he published a brochure entitled Das Pianoforte mit konkav-radiärer Klaviatur und konzentrischer Anschlaglinie (The Piano with a Curved Radial Keyboard and Concentric Striking Line), which explained the features and advantages of the proposed innovations.
In the 1880s, Neuhaus created a new system of music notation. Its main principle was to coordinate the parallelism of the image and real sound production. The system was consolidated by the publication of the practical manual "The Natural Notation System" (Das natürliche Notensystem) in 1906 in Bochum.
In 1899, with the support of Mykola Rimsky-Korsakov, Felix Blumenfeld and Oleksandr Glazunov, G. V. Neuhaus opened his own music school in Yelisavethrad. For 32 years, the educational process at the school was constantly under the control of the musician himself; the school was considered the best in the city. His son Heinrich Neuhaus studied here, as well as famous musicians Yaroslav Ivashkevych, Karol Shymanovskyi, and Julius Maitus. Gustav Neuhaus had contacts with the Russian composer Anatolii Liadov.
In 1921, Neuhaus joined the teaching staff of the 1st Soviet Music School, which lasted for 11 months, and the music trade school, where he worked for two years as a member of the teaching staff.
In 1931, at the request of his son, Gustav Neuhaus left his teaching career in Ukraine and moved to Moscow, where he met the family of Boris Pasternak.
He died between 21 August and 30 October 1938 in Moscow.
Famous students
Blumenfeld Felix Mikhailovich
Ivashkevych Yaroslav
Maitus Yulii Serhiiovych
Neuhaus Heinrich Gustavovich
Neuhaus Nataliia Gustavivna
Rozumovska Vira Kharytonivna
Shymanovskyi Karol
