An important contemporary of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, the composer-pianist Jan Ladislav Dussek was born on February 12, 1760, in the small town of Czaslau, Bohemia. Music was a very important part of life of the Dussek family: his father Jan Joseph was a well-known organist and composer - who instructed his son at the age of five on the piano and later the organ - his mother Veronika an accomplished harpist, his brother Franz Benedikt an organist and composer, and his sister Katerina was a singer and pianist. Dussek died March 20, 1812, at the age of only 52 years in Talleyrand's Palace in St.Germaine-en-Laye. - Frederick Marvin