Dussek, Jan Ladislav (1760–1812)

Bohemian (Czech) composer and pianist. A virtuoso pianist, his compositions, which include over 40 piano sonatas and about 18 piano concertos, often display technically challenging passages, by the standard of his day. Composing more fully textured (and often more harmonically adventurous) music than most of his contemporaries, Dussek foreshadowed many of the musical developments of the 19th century. He was one of a group of composers known as the London Pianoforte School.

Dussek was an accomplished pianist at the age of five and an organist at nine. He was educated at a Jesuit College and Prague University, where he read theology. He had shown early promise, and in about 1779 went to the Netherlands, where he held organ posts at Malines and Bergen-op-Zoom. He gave up his organist's career about 1782, and won great success in Amsterdam and The Hague as a pianist and composer. Concert tours took him to Hamburg (where he studied with C P E Bach), Berlin, and St Petersburg, where he entered the service of Prince Radziwill, spending the next two years on the latter's estate in Lithuania. He played before Marie Antoinette in Paris in 1786, and after a visit to Italy returned there in 1788. At the French Revolution he fled to London, where he first appeared at one of Salomon's concerts in 1790. In 1792 he married the singer and pianist Sophia Corri (1745–1847), and joined his father-in-law's firm of music publishers. The business failed, and in 1800 he went to Hamburg to escape his creditors. More travels followed. He was with Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia 1803–06, then in the service of the Prince of Isenburg and, finally, Talleyrand.

His piano music uses the instrument in a novel and congenial way. His sonatas show many striking anticipations of later composers; his influence on Beethoven was particularly important.

Works Stage incidental music for The Captive of Spilburg (London, 1798) and Sheridan's Pizarro (both with Kelly).

Orchestral three overtures and serenade for orchestra.

Church music Mass (1811).

Chamber three string quartets; about 65 sonatas with violin or flute.

Piano two piano quartets, piano quintet, about 20 piano trios; about 12 sonatas for piano duet, sonata for two pianos; about 18 piano concertos, about 32 sonatas, about 25 rondos, about 20 sets of variations, various miscellaneous pieces.