About Muzio Clementi

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) was a classical composer, and acknowledged as the first to write specifically for the piano. He is best known for his collection of piano studies, Gradus ad Parnassum. Clementi was born in Rome on 24thJanuary 1752, the first of seven children, to Nicolò Clementi, a highly respected silversmith and Roman by heritage, and Magdalena Kaiser, who was Swiss. His musical talent became clear at an early age: by the age of seven he was in musical instruction, and was such a good student that by the time he was nine he had gained a position as a church organist. In 1766, Sir Peter Beckford (1740-1811), a wealthy Englishman and cousin of the eccentric William Beckford, took an interest in the boy's musical talent, and struck a deal with Nicolò to take Muzio to his estate of Steepleton Iwerne, just north of Blandford Forum in Dorset, where Beckford agreed to provide quarterly payments to sponsor Muzio's musical education. In return for this education, he was expected to provide musical entertainment at the estate. It was here that he spent the next seven years in devoted study and practice at the harpsichord. His compositions from this early period, however, are few, and they have almost all been lost. In 1770, Clementi made his first public performance as a pianist. The audience was very impressed with his playing, beginning what at the time was one of the most successful concert pianist careers in history. In 1774, Clementi was freed from his obligations to Peter Beckford, and he moved to London, where among other accomplishments he made several public appearances as a solo harpsichordist at benefit concerts for a singer and a harpist, and served as "conductor" -- from the keyboard -- at the King's Theatre, Haymarket for at least part of this period. His popularity grew in 1779 and 1780, due at least in part to the popularity of his newly-published Opus 2 Sonatas. His fame and popularity rose quickly, and he was considered by many in musical circles to be the greatest piano virtuoso in the world. Clementi started a European tour in 1781, when he travelled to France, Germany, and Austria. In Vienna, Clementi agreed with Emperor Joseph II to enter a musical duel with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for the entertainment of the Emperor and his guests. Each performer was called upon to improvise and perform selections from his own compositions. The ability of both these composer-virtuosi was so great that the Emperor was forced to declare a tie at the Vienese court that day on 24th December 1781. On 12th January 1782, Mozart wrote to his father: "Clementi plays well, as far as execution with the right hand goes. His greatest strength lies in his passages in 3rds. Apart from that, he has not a kreuzer's worth of taste or feeling - in short he is a mere mechanicus" (Latin for automaton or robot). In a subsequent letter he even went so far as to say: "Clementi is a charlatan, like all Italians. He marks a piece presto but plays only allegro". Clementi's impressions of Mozart, by contrast, were all rather enthusiastically positive. But the main theme of Clementi's B flat major sonata captured Mozart's imagination, and ten years later he used it in the overture to his opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). This so embittered Clementi that every time this sonata was published, he made certain that it included a note explaining that it had been written ten years before Mozart began writing Di Zauberflöte. A likely reason that these later works were not published in Clementi's lifetime is that he kept revising and tinkering with them. Starting in 1782, and for the next twenty years Clementi stayed in England playing the piano, conducting, and teaching. Two of his students attained a fair amount of fame for themselves: Johann Baptist Cramer and John Field (who, in his turn, would become a major influence on Frédéric Chopin). Clementi also began manufacturing pianos, but in 1807 his factory was destroyed by a fire. That same year, Clementi struck a deal with Ludwig van Beethoven, one of his greatest admirers, that gave him full publishing rights to all of Beethoven's music. His stature in music history as an editor and interpreter of Beethoven's music is certainly not less than as being a composer himself (although also criticised for some less docile editorial work, e.g., making harmonic "corrections" to some of Beethoven's music). That Beethoven in his later life started to compose (mostly chamber music) specifically for the British market might have been related to the fact that his publisher was based there. In 1810, Clementi ceased his concerts to devote all of his time to composition and piano making. On 24th January 1813, in London, Clementi, who with a group of professional musicians, banded together to put matters right, founded the Philharmonic Society of London, which became the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1912. In 1830 he moved to live outside Lichfield and then spent his final, less exciting years in Evesham, where he died at the age of seventy-eight on 10th March 1832, . He was buried at Westminster Abbey. He had been married three times. Clementi is best known for his collection of piano studies, Gradus ad Parnassum, to which Debussy's piece Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum (the first movement of his suite Children's Corner) makes playful allusion. Similarly his sonatinas would remain a must for piano students everywhere. Erik Satie, a contemporary of Debussy, would spoof these sonatinas (specifically the sonatina op. 36 no 1) in his Sonatine Bureaucratique. Clementi composed almost 110 piano sonatas. Some of the earlier and easier ones were reissued as sonatinas after the success of his Sonatinas op. 36, and continue to be popular practice pieces in piano education. His sonatas are rarely performed in public concerts, largely because they are seen as nonchallenging educational music. Some of Clementi's sonatas are more difficult to play than those of Mozart, who wrote in a letter to his sister that he would prefer her not to play Clementi's sonatas due to their jumped runs, and wide stretches and chords, that he thought might induce injury. In addition to the piano solo repertoire, Clementi wrote a great deal of other music, including several recently pieced together, long worked on but slightly unfinished symphonies that are gradually becoming accepted by the musical establishment as being very fine works. While Clementi's music is hardly ever played in concerts, it is becoming increasingly popular in recordings. Mozart's most evident lack of respect for Clementi (and perhaps Italians in general) has led some to call them "arch rivals." But the animosity was not as far as we know reciprocated by Clementi, and in any case Mozart's letters are full of irreverent jibes which he never expected to become public. Russian pianist Vladimir Horowitz developed a special fondness for Clementi's work after his wife, Wanda Toscanini bought him Clementi's complete works. Horowitz even compared some of them to the best works of Beethoven. The restoration of Clementi's image as an artist to be taken seriously is not least due to his efforts.