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Updated: June 4, 2025
Development of the Technique of the Piano, culminating in Clementi.
So the two musicians fought a musical duel, in which they played at sight the most difficult works, and improvised on themes selected by the imperial arbiter. The victory was left undecided, though Mozart, who disliked the Italians, spoke afterward of Clementi, in a tone at variance with his usual gentleness, as "a mere mechanician, without a pennyworth of feeling or taste."
He was exceedingly particular about arpeggio work, and insisted upon the repetition of every note and passage until all harshness and roughness of tone were eliminated. "Is that a dog barking?" he was known to exclaim to an unlucky pupil whose attack in the opening arpeggio of a Clementi study lacked the desired quality. A very independent use of the thumb was prescribed by him.
Spohr, the violinist, met Clementi and Field at the Russian capital, and gives the following amusing account in his "Autobiography": "Clementi, a man in his best years, of an extremely lively disposition and very engaging manners, liked much to converse with me, and often invited me after dinner to play at billiards.
As far as a musician of such unique and colossal genius as Beethoven could be influenced by preceding or contemporary artists, his style as a piano-forte player and composer was more modified by Clementi than by any other. He was wont to say that no one could play till he knew Clementi by heart.
Muzio Clementi was born at Rome in the year 1752, and was the son of a silver worker of great skill, who was principally engaged on the execution of the embossed figures and vases employed in the Catholic worship.
He wrote some of the most valuable studies ever written, but no one would think of demanding a pupil to play all of the Czerny studies, any more than the student should be compelled to play everything that Loeschhorn, Cramer and Clementi ever wrote.
Heller is indispensable, so melodious and musical. Arthur Foote's studies, Op. 27, are very useful; also MacDowell's, Op. 39 and 46. Sometimes I use a few of Cramer's and the Clementi 'Gradus, though these seem rather old-fashioned now. "For more advanced pupils I find Harberbier, Op. 53 especially applicable; there is beautiful work in them.
He prosecuted his studies with great zeal under the ablest masters, and his genius for composition as well as for playing displayed a rapid development. By the time Clementi had attained the age of fourteen he had composed several contrapuntal works of considerable merit, one of which, a mass for four voices and chorus, gained great applause from the musicians and public of Rome.
When he first used the piano, he practiced on the imperfect and feeble Silbermann instrument. When he died, the magnificent instruments of Erard, Broadwood, and Collard, to the latter of which his own mechanical and musical knowledge had contributed much, were in common vogue. Such was the career of Muzio Clementi, the father of piano-forte virtuosos.
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