Gusikow, Michael Joseph

GUSIKOW, Michael Joseph, an artist of rare musical faculty—‘a true genius’ says Mendelssohn—born of poor Jewish parents and of a family which had produced musicians for more than a century, at Sklow in Poland, Sept. 2, 1806. He first played the flute and tympanon, a kind of dulcimer. At the age of 17 he married, and a few years after discovered that weakness of the chest would not allow him to continue playing the flute. He thereupon took up the...