The Clementi School is named from Muzio Clementi (1752–1832), the “Father of the Pianoforte.” He was a composer of piano pieces, especially of sonatas which are still of musical value. Who of us has not studied Clementi’s sonatinas? Besides being a great player, a teacher and a composer, Clementi published a work called Gradus ad Parnassum, piano studies, a form which sprang up because of the need to develop a technic for the new instruments when the piano was young.
Clementi, at fourteen, went to England, where he lived all his life and became interested in the making of pianos. He was associated with the firm of Clementi and Company, later Collard and Collard, and it is said that he gave the Broadwoods much advice in the making of their “grand” piano. So we see Clementi as a founder of piano technic, and an instrument maker! He lived eighty years, during the last years of Handel and Scarlatti, and he survived Beethoven, Schubert and Weber. It is said that Mozart took a theme from a Clementi sonata for one of his operas. His pupils were quite famous: John B. Cramer, the composer of many important piano studies still in use; Johann L. Dussek, one of the first to invent and write down finger exercises, and there were many others.
There were two schools with Clementi at the head of one, and Mozart, of the other. With Hummel, a pupil of Mozart, the Classic School closed, and then Clementi’s ideas came to the fore in the new Romantic School.
The New Romantic School
One of the earliest of these new Romanticists was John Field, who was born in Ireland, visited London, had quite a career in Russia and foreshadowed Chopin in his playing. Then there was Ferdinand Ries, son of Beethoven’s early friend and teacher, Franz Ries; but the most famous of this period were Ignaz Moscheles and Frederick Kalkbrenner, a fluent composer and writer of studies. He was the first pianist to teach Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum.
Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) was a Bohemian and from about 1815, the most brilliant pianist in Germany, France, Holland and England. He was Mendelssohn’s teacher. Chopin wrote three études (studies) on an order from Moscheles. He is a very important figure in the growing up of piano music.
Carl Czerny (1791–1857) was another very important pianist and one of the few pupils of Beethoven. He was a follower of Hummel and Clementi and won great fame as a teacher in Vienna, where he lived. He wrote a great many pieces, about a thousand in all, making many arrangements of orchestral works and many piano studies, which we still use today. Beethoven encouraged him to make a piano version of his Fidelio. Czerny was the teacher of many able musicians.
Frederick Chopin, you will find out later (Chapter 24) changed piano music from the bravura to a poetic and deeper style. His touch and tone were so enchanting that he created a completely new fashion in piano playing which has not been lost. (See page [322].)
Clara Schumann (1819–1896), the wife of Robert Schumann, was the leading woman pianist of the day, in fact, of many days.
In the times of Mozart and of Liszt, improvising (before audiences and at parlor entertainments), was very popular and a part of a musical education; around 1795, after the Paris Conservatory was founded, it seemed to die out. However, organists today often improvise while waiting for the church service to begin. Dupré, one of the famous French organists, who has played in the United States, improvises whole sonatas on given themes.