Russian seven-string guitar

In the early 1830s, the virtuoso guitarist Mikhail Timofeyevich Vysotsky, a former serf of Kheraskov as well as a composer and educator, was giving concerts in Moscow. He was one of the greatest representatives of the Moscow school of guitar and composed several works for the guitar, notably variations on folk themes. Impressed by Vysotsky’s music, Lermontov wrote the poem “Sounds”:

What sounds are these! Motionless, I listen
To the sweet sounds;
I forget eternity, heaven, earth,
My own self.
Almighty! What sounds are these! Greedily
My heart seizes them,
As a cheerless traveler in the desert
Seizes a drop of living water!

The students of Moscow University took guitar lessons from the famous guitarist. Lermontov may have done that, too.