Petrovich Bissing
Petrovich Bissing, born Peter Bissing, was an American violinist and music teacher. He was born in 1871 in Yekaterinenstadt, Russian Empire, the son of Justus Bissing, a German colonist. In 1875, the Bissing family left the Volga region for the United States with two other families and, in 1876, founded the German settlement of Katharinenstadt in Kansas, named after the colony they had left.
Bissing began studying music in Katharinenstadt on a four-octave hand organ made by his father. From the age of eight he studied the violin, later attending the Chicago Musical College and the Kansas City Conservatory, where he studied with François Boucher. From 1880 he performed with four of his brothers in a wind band, becoming its director in 1894.
In 1901 he founded a music school in Hays. He travelled to Prague in 1903 to develop his performing and teaching skills under Otakar Ševčík, returning to the United States in 1906 to revive the school. Around this time he adopted the name Petrovich Bissing. In 1914 he moved to Chicago, initially teaching privately and, from the late 1910s, teaching at the Chicago Musical College. His best-known student was the jazz violinist Eddie South. In 1914, he published the instructional manual Cultivation of the Violin Vibrato Tone.
Alongside his performing and teaching, Bissing designed musical instruments. In 1909 he invented the dolcette, an instrument combining characteristics of the piano and harp. Fifty examples were made by his brother, Justus Bissing Jr., an engineer and architect, but the manufacturing venture failed financially. Five instruments survived; one was acquired by the Kansas Historical Museum in 1925.
Bissing died on November 30, 1961.