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homepageComposer/harpist/singer/pianist, Sophia Corri Dussek's life was a lot more interesting in the more colorful (and downright scandalous) sense than the biographical entries in any music encyclopedia or dictionary might indicate. However, that matter will be dealt with later in this short article. For some younger women, it would be very bizarre to discover that there was a time when women would find it expedient to publish their creative work under their husband's name in order to guarantee that it would be published. Such is the case with some of the harp compositions of Sophia Corri Dussek.
Born in 1775 in Edinburgh, Sophia Corri was immersed in music, for not only were both of her parents musicians, but her four other siblings had careers in music. Her early music instruction was under her father's direction. Domenico Corri was a composer, teacher, and at least for a time, a successful music publisher in both Edinburgh and London. Domenico Corri had a history of establishing business enterprises which, although good ideas and successful at first, often failed left him in financial difficulties. Clearly, Mr. Corri was what we would characterize today as an idea man, but not entirely successful when it came to carrying through the idea and maintaining the brainchild. Sophia's mother, a singer, was a former pupil of her father's.
In 1790, the acclaimed performer and composer Jan Ladislav Dussek moved to London and began a career there as a performer, composer and teacher. The then fifteen-year-old Sophia Corri became his piano and harp student. In addition to studying with Dussek, Sophia studied voice with prominent voice teachers Marchesi, Viganoni and Cimador. In that same year, Sophia made her debut as a public performer in London. She and Dussek were on a number of the same concert programs during that year. The musicologist H. C. Robbins Landon intimates that by 1791, the sixteen-year-old Sophia had already fallen in love with Dussek, who by this time was thirty years old, not quite twice her age. [H.C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Worksm vol. 3: Haydn in England 1791-1795 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), p. 86.] Of particular note, is a review of Sophia Corri's vocal performance on 15 April of 1791 printed in The Gazetteer. Although complimentary to Sophia, the criticıs style would set any modern day woman's teeth on edge:
According to a brief announcement appearing 3 September 1792 in The Times (London), Jan Ladsislav Dussek and Sophia Corri were married a few days earlier on 31 August 1792 at St. Anne's Church, Westminster. Somewhere between 1797 and the end of 1799 a daughter, Olivia, was born to the couple.
After their marriage, Dussek entered into a partnership with Sophia's father. Sometime around 1794, Domenico Corri took his son-in-law into his music publishing business. Corri, Dussek & Co. was to publish some Haydn songs and Haydn's String Quartets Opp. 71 and 74. [Charles Humphries William C. Smith, Music Publishing in the British Isles (London: Cassell, 1954), p. 118.] Understandably, they also published great amounts of Dussek's music, including some of his harp music.
Jan and Sophia maintained an active concert life, but all was apparently not well in their union, for marital problems reached a climax in 1796. Personal diaries were the veritable gossip column of the day, and one such diary belonging to the wife of a portrait painter who had done the Dussek's portraits in 1795, records a story of Sophia's attempt to leave Jan that following year. Madame Danloux's informant was a house guest of the Dussek's, one Laurette d'Alpy. According to d'Alpy, Sophia had become enamored with a man named Gentil. When Dussek was invited to eat with the piano maker Broadwood, Sophia decided to take advantage of his absence and run away. She asked Jan for some money to repair her harp and presumably sent the instrument away in its case. However, the harp was not in her case. All her clothes and meaningful possessions were there, instead. After Jan's departure, Sophia called a carriage and left a note informing Jan that she was having dinner with a friend. Somehow, Dussek suspected something was amiss when he found the note. Apparently, Sophia was not very successful in masking her interest in another man, for Dussek and his father-in-law hurried to Gentil's house, ascertained from the suspected lover that Sophia was hiding out in a small town sixteen miles from London and planned to sail for Hamburg where Gentil would meet her later. [Le Baron Roger Portalis, Henry-Pierre Danloux, peintre de portraits et son journal l'emigration (1753-1809) (Paris: Pour la Societe des Bibliophiles Francois, 1910), p. 239-40, cited in Howard Allen Craw, "A Biography and Thematic catalog of the Works of J.L. Dussek, (1760-1812))," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1964), p. 87-88.] Matters became even more unpleasant when Dussek and Domenico Corri found Sophia hiding away in a locked room in the little town.
Along with his concert activities in 1799, Dussek published a number of harp compositions: three harp sonatas (Op. 2), six sonatinas for harp, a sonata for harp (or piano) with violin and cello (Op. 37), and a duo for harp and piano with two or three French horns (Op.36). The authenticity of the three solo harp sonatas (ironically the harp works for which he is best known to date) has come into question. We will return to that mystery presently.
Over several years prior to 1800, Corri, Dussek & Co. had been failing slowly, which was historically true to form for any business ventures involving Domenico Corri. Not even Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's librettist, who had rented Corri's shop to store his stock of some twelve thousand books, upon being induced to enter into their partnership, could extricate them from their decidedly adverse financial circumstances. In the end, Dussek fled his creditors, escaping to Hamburg. Corri, who was not so fortunate, experienced the hospitality of London's Newgate prison for a short time, and Da Ponte was stuck paying off the debts. [Lorenzo Da Ponte, Memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte, trans. by Elizabeth Abbott, ed. and annot. by Arthur Livingston, (New York: Orion Press, 1959), p. 168.] In his hasty departure from London, Dussek forgot something rather important: his wife and child. There is no evidence that Jan ever saw Sophia and Olivia again, although there was some correspondence between them. [Stanislav Klima, "Dussek in England," The Monthly Musical Record 90 (January-February 1960): 140.]
On all accounts, Sophia Corri Dussek emerged relatively unscathed from the incident and a marriage based on teenage infatuation. She didn't curtail her career as a performer following her husband's flight to Hamburg. She evidently became a more popular and accomplished musical figure, as the account from the Morning Chronicle of 26 March 1800 makes apparent:
The Morning Chronicle also reports that Sophia was a principal vocalist in Salomon's presentation of Haydn's Creation in the Great Rooms at King's Theatre on 21 April 1800. [Ibid., 15 April 1800, cited in Landon, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, vol. 4, Haydn: The Years of 'The Creation' 1796-1800, p. 576.]
Sophia composed a number of works for the pedal harp. RISM (Repertoire Internationale des Sources Musicales) credits her with six harp sonatas, three sets of airs arranged in various ways for the harp, and a German waltz arranged as a rondo for the harp. [Repertoire Internationale des Sources Musicales, Series A: Einzeldrucke vor 1800 (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1971-81), 2: 502] Pazdirek lists three more compositions for solo harp, all of which are contemporary popular tunes arranged as rondos. [Universal Handbuch der Musikliteratur (Wien: Pazdirek and Co., 1904-1910?); reprint ed. Hilversum: Frits Knuf, 1967, 3: 928.] In addition, she wrote at least two sonatas, one for piano or harpsichord with accompaniment for violin or German flute, and the other for piano with violin accompaniment. [RISM, A/2/502.]
However, the only compositions for harp of Sophia Corri Dussek's well known to harpists today was for many years attributed to her husband, Jan Ladislav. The Opus 2 sonatas were first published in 1799 by the Pleyel firm; the authorship is ambiguous, as the title page merely indicates the opus is ³by Dussek." [Copies of this edition are located in the Biblioteque Nationale, Paris, and in the Biblioteca del Conservatorio "Giacomo Rossini," Pesaro, Italy.] A later edition of these same three sonatas was published by Corri, Dussek & Co. bearing Sophia's name on its title page. [A copy of this edition may be found in the British Library, London.] When comparing these sonatas to other sonatas actually by Johann Ladislav Dussek, a number of compositional inconsistencies appear to make the theory that Sophia actually did pen these sonatas extremely plausible. It seems unlikely that Jan Dussek would want to pass off three of his well-established sonatas under his wife's name. On the other hand, having, having finally at her disposal her husband's and father's publishing house, and further having become an accomplished musical figure in her own right, Sophia could publish works later under her own name without fear of a publisher's rejection. [Suzanne Carey LeRoy Moulton, "The Works for Solo Harp by Jan Ladislav Dussek, (1760-1812)," Master's Thesis, Kent State University, 1982), p. 57]
To reinforce this hypothesis, two other compositions whose first editions bear only the composer's surname were later published by Monzani and Hill (London) under Sophia Dussek's name. Those two works in question are the Notturno russe and the Trois airs favoris avec variations pour la harpe. [Ibid.]
Following Dussek's death in 1812, Sophia remarried. It is reported that she married a violist named Moralt. They lived in Paddington, where Sophia started a music school. Sophia Corri Dussek died in London in 1847. Sophia and Jan's daughter, Olivia, grew up to be a pianist, organist, and not surprisingly, a harpist. She published a handful of compositions for harp during her lifetime.
The published literature tells us considerably more about women who played harp in the nineteenth century than about those who composed for the instrument and the study of their works. Sophia Corri Dussek was one of those early pioneers whose contribution to the repertory for the pedal harp still remains only partially explored.
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Copyright January 4, 1997, Suzanne L. Moulton Gertig,
University of Denver
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