t in his first undertaking with Longman &
Broderip; but Dussek was unsuccessful, and left England, so it is
said, to avoid his creditors. There is, indeed, a letter written by
Dussek from Hamburg, dated 12th June, 1801, to Clementi, and apart
from the curious spectacle of these two pianists in commercial
correspondence with each other, the letter is of interest, in that it
belongs to a period of Dussek's life concerning the details of which
there is some uncertainty.[85] Dussek, it may be mentioned, does not
ever appear to have returned to London. In 1803 he became attached to
Prince Louis Ferdinand, to whom he offered advice in pianoforte
playing and composition. There is another letter extant of Dussek's
written in the same year in which that Prince fell on the battlefield
of Saalfeld (13th October, 1806), and this also we will give, as we
believe, like the one above, it has never been published.[86] The
catalogue of Dussek's works, in Sir G. Grove's _Dictionary of Music
and Musicians_, mentions three quartets for strings (Op. 60: in G, B
flat, and E flat), most probably the works referred to in the second
letter.

Dussek, born in the year 1761, studied first with his father J.J.
Dussek, and in his twenty-second year received further instruction
from Emanuel Bach; he soon enjoyed great fame as an executant.
Tomaschek, himself a pianist of note, thus speaks of him in his
autobiography:--

"There was, in fact, something magical about the way in which Dussek,
with all his charming grace of manner, through his wonderful touch,
extorted from the instrument delicious and at the same time emphatic
tones. His fingers were like a company of ten singers, endowed with
equal executive powers, and able to produce with the utmost perfection
whatever their director could require. I never saw the Prague public
so enchanted as they were on this occasion by Dussek's splendid
playing. His fine declamatory style, especially in _cantabile_
phrases, stands as the ideal for every artistic performance--something
which no other pianist has since reached."

The above quotation refers to a concert given at Prague in 1804.

There is, unfortunately, great confusion in the opus numbers of
Dussek's works; and, moreover, it is difficult, if not impossible, to
give the dates either of composition or publication. Breitkopf &
Haertel have published more than fifty sonatas, but we shall only refer
to some of the more important ones. Dussek, like al