Muzio Clementi

Muzio Clementi was born in Rome on 23 January 1752, the son of a silversmith. Very precocious, he studied organ, singing and counterpoint and at thirteen became organist of a Roman church. In 1766 a wealthy Englishman passing through, Peter Beckford, cousin of the famous writer William Beckford, heard him play and offered to take him to England to complete his education. In exchange the boy would play for him. His father agreed: Clementi spent seven years on Beckford’s estate in Dorset.

In this isolated countryside he practised the harpsichord alone up to eight hours a day, studying the works of Bach, Handel, Domenico Scarlatti and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. There he acquired an extraordinary technique. In 1774, released from his engagement, he moved to London, where he was first harpsichordist and conductor at the King’s Theatre. In 1779 the publication of his Op. 2 Sonatas made him famous: these brilliant pieces, with their octaves and double notes, demanded a new virtuosity.

In 1780 he set off on a great European tour: Paris, where he played for Marie Antoinette, then Strasbourg, Munich and Vienna. On 24 December 1781 Emperor Joseph II staged a friendly “duel” at the Hofburg between Clementi and the young Mozart. The two pianists improvised, played their own works and sight-read sonatas. The emperor declared a draw. Clementi admired Mozart, but Mozart, in a letter to his father, was more scornful, calling him a tasteless “mechanic”. Yet Mozart later borrowed a theme of Clementi’s for the overture to The Magic Flute.

Back in London, Clementi became the most sought-after piano teacher in the city, with pupils such as John Field, Johann Baptist Cramer and later Giacomo Meyerbeer. In the 1790s he went into business, becoming a partner in a music publishing and piano-making firm that would become “Clementi & Co.”. His sturdy, high-quality pianos were sold all over Europe. It was also in 1797 that he published his six Sonatinas Op. 36, still played by every young pianist.

From 1802 to 1810 he made a long European tour, partly with his pupil John Field, whom he presented as a virtuoso while having him sell his pianos. They went as far as St Petersburg, where Field settled. In 1807 in Vienna Clementi met Beethoven and obtained the English publishing rights to several of his works, including the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto. Beethoven thought highly of Clementi’s sonatas and recommended them to his pupils.

Clementi composed about a hundred piano sonatas, symphonies — which he revised at length and which were never published in his lifetime — and teaching works. Between 1817 and 1826 he published his Gradus ad Parnassum, a collection of a hundred studies summing up all his knowledge of the piano, from technical exercises to concert pieces. He is often called “the father of the piano”, as he was one of the first to write truly for that instrument rather than the harpsichord.

In 1830 he retired to the country, first to Staffordshire and then to Evesham in Worcestershire, where he died on 10 March 1832, aged eighty. He was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. His influence on piano teaching remains immense. In 1908 Claude Debussy paid him a mischievous tribute with Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, which opens his Children’s Corner by gently poking fun at pupils’ tedious exercises.