Books and Journals
SKU: UT.QC-4
Edited by Roberto Illiano
and Rohan H.
Stewart-MacDonald.
Paperback (Soft Cover).
Quaderni Clementiani.
Essays by Jean-Pierre
Bartoli, Alan Davison,
Therese Ellsworth, Erik
Entwistle, Jeremy
Eskenazy, Michaela
Freemanova, Stephan D.
Lindeman, Rudolf Rasch,
Renato Ricco, Jeanne
Roudet, David Rowland,
Massimiliano Sala, Laure
Schnapper, Rohan H.
Stewart-MacDo. Classical.
Books and Journals. 568
pages. Ut Orpheus #QC 4.
Published by Ut Orpheus
(UT.QC-4).
ISBN
9788881094783. 6.5 x 9.5
inches.
Saggi di
Jean-Pierre Bartoli, Alan
Davison, Therese
Ellsworth, Erik
Entwistle, Jeremy
Eskenazy, Michaela
Freemanová, Stephan D.
Lindeman, Rudolf Rasch,
Renato Ricco, Jeanne
Roudet, David Rowland,
Massimiliano Sala, Laure
Schnapper, Rohan H.
Stewart-MacDonald, Marie
Sumner
Lott
The
career of Jan Ladislav
Dussek (1760-1812) was
notable for its
peripateticism. Starting
out in his native Bohemia
Dussek spent periods of
time in Germany and the
Netherlands, settling in
London for about ten
years in the 1790s,
progressing to Hamburg
and ending his days in
Paris. Although his
activities centred on the
piano, like so many
musicians of his day
Dussek branched out from
performing and composing
to encompass teaching,
publishing and instrument
retail, with varying
success. A plethora of
reviews and biographical
accounts attest to
Dussek’s renown
throughout Europe as a
pianist and composer,
particularly when it came
to sensitive and
cantabile playing; and he
interacted with some of
the most eminent
musicians, artists and
political figures of his
time. Dussek’s
reputation declined
sharply in the nineteenth
century, however, and
with the exception of
isolated revivals of his
work, for instance in
London in the
mid-nineteenth century,
he has remained on the
verge of obscurity in the
minds of many musicians
and music-lovers until
the present day: even his
well-known innovation of
placing the piano
sideways-on to the
audience to display his
striking profile is often
mistakenly attributed to
Franz Liszt. Although
Dussek has provided the
subject of a number of
student dissertations
over the years, in the
published literature he
has largely been
restricted to cameo
appearances or brief
entries in historical
surveys.
The
bicentennial anniversary
of Dussek’s death
provides a fitting
occasion for bringing
together scholars from
all parts of the world to
produce the first
multi-author,
multi-lingual study of
the composer. Several
chapters deal with
aspects of
Dussek’s biography
and iconography that
receive only sparse
treatment elsewhere;
others survey the
different branches of his
output, including the
piano sonatas, the piano
concertos, the chamber
music with and without
harp and the three String
Quartets, Op. 60, which
are currently enjoying a
revival via recordings
and a new edition.
This book has two
fundamental aims. One is
to stimulate renewed
interest in, and debate
about, a less than
celebrated – one
might say unjustly
neglected –
figure. The other aim is
to approach
Dussek’s
multi-facetted,
geographically diverse
career as an interface
between ourselves and the
music business at the
beginning of the
nineteenth century, whose
complexity and
vicissitudes emanated
from the sociological
dynamics and political
events with which Dussek
was, to an almost unique
degree, inextricably
associated. The highs and
lows of Dussek’s
career, the surviving
contemporary accounts of
Dussek the performer and
composer, and the letters
he exchanged with
colleagues in several
nations vividly portray
the struggles of a
worldly, ambitious,
versatile and extremely
perspicacious musician
striving to carve out a
place of eminence and
material security for
himself. This meant
negotiating the complex
progression, underway at
this point in history,
from the patronage system
to the emergence of the
artist as a socially and
financially autonomous
entity.
David McCaulley
