Transcript Jan Ladislav Dussek - Jacob Stevens E

Jan Ladislav Dussek
 Born in 1760 in Caslav, Bohemia
 Died in 1812 at the age of 52
 Composed forty piano sonatas; eighteen piano
concertos; nearly ninety accompanied keyboard
sonatas; chamber music; several works with harp. He
also composed vocal works, including an opera (The
Captive of Spillberg,1798) and a Solemn Mass (1811).
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duguKeOazK4&feature=related
Upbringing
 His parents were both musicians.
 Father (Jan Josef) was an organist and composer,
Mother (Veronika) was a harpist
 He was taught piano (age 5) and how to play the organ
(age 9) as a child.
 He attended the Jesuit elementary school in Iglau and
grammar school in the mining town of Kutna Hora.
 Went on to study at Charles University in Prague for
two years.
Employment
 Employed as an organist and music teacher 1780-82 in
the Netherlands
 Soon after began his career as a piano virtuoso in
Berlin in 1784, Mainz (1785) and St. Petersburg (1786).
 After implicated in a plot against the Empress
Catherine II, he went to Paris from 1786 to 1789
 He fled Paris in 1789 for London
Family
 1792 he married Sofia the
daughter of the music
publisher and composer
Domenico Corri.
 Around 1800 his firm
became bankrupt and he
fled to Hamburg leaving
family and debtors behind.
Later years
 After a series of concerts in his native country, he
entered the service of Prince Louis Ferdinand as an
unsalaried pianist.
 Louis Ferdinand died in the battle of Saalfeld in 1806.
On the occasion of Louis Ferdinand’s death, Dussek
composed perhaps his best-known piano sonata
"Elegie harmonique sur la mort de Prince Louis
Ferdinand de Prusse"op. 61
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW62rOpMr1M&feature=relmfu
Later years
 The composer and pianist Jan
Václav Tomasek mentions that
Dussek was the first pianist to
place the piano sideways on the
concert podium
 In 1807 he returned to Paris
where he remained until his
death, partly from his obesity.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4AGOCWU
hL0&feature=relmfu
References
 http://radiomelasudas-beaumarchais.blogspot.com/2011/01/jan-ladislav-dussek-sonatain-f-sharp.html
 http://members.klosterneuburg.net/handerle/COMPOSER.HTM
 http://www.hoasm.org/XIIC/Dussek.html\
 http://www.classical-composers.org/comp/dusik
 http://sdems.blogspot.com/2012/04/death-of-harpsichord-and-beheading-of.html
 http://www.oocities.org/vienna/strasse/3239/Dusik.jpg