A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Gusikow, Michael

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. 3, 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 Strohfiedel, an instrument of the dulcimer kind, composed of strips of fir on a framework of straws, which he improved and increased in compass. Upon this he attained extraordinary facility and power. In 1832 he and four of his relatives began a long tour, through Odessa—where he was heard by Lamartine; Kiew—where he was much encouraged by Lipinski; Moscow, and thence to south and north Germany, Paris, and Brussels. He travelled in the dress and guise of a Polish Jew—long beard, thin, pale, sad, expressive features—and excited the greatest applause by his astonishing execution and the expression which he threw into his unlikely instrument. Mendelssohn heard him at Leipzig, and called him 'a real phenomenon, a killing fellow (Mordkerl); who is inferior to no player on earth in style and execution, and delights me more on his odd instrument than many do on their pianos, just because it is so thankless …… I have not enjoyed a concert so much for a long time' (and see the rest—Letter Feb. 18, 1836). But it wore him out; he was laid up at Brussels for long, and died at Aix la Chapelle, Oct. 21, 1837, adding another to the list of geniuses who have died shortly after thirty. (See Fétis, who saw much of him.)

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