Muzio Clementi

[stormx]

Hi !! 

I beleive Clementi is somewhat underated as a composer 
Usually, he is referred just as "that guy who wrote some boring sonatinas for beginners"...

I beleive he was a very talented composer.
Even his sonatinas are not dull at all. And his piano sonatas, in my opinion, are comparable to Mozart or Haydn ones.

What do you think?

[bernhard]

I agree.

And so did Beethoven. He thought Clementi piano sonatas were superior to Mozart's. He also gave his students Clementi's works.

Moreover Clementi was the teacher of John Field, who eventually moved to Russia, inveneted the Nocturne and created the Russian school of piano playing. One of the reasons I think the Russian school should be renamed the "Italian-Irish School of Piano playing" .

(The Irish mafia: they will make an offer you cannot understand. )

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[musicsdarkangel]

Clementi was known to be a better virtuoso than Mozart.


Mozart was bitter to him, they had a duel, and Clementi complimented Mozart even though he had played better, and Mozart made some snyde remark.

Kind of funny.

He taught many great students.

Yeah, considering the time he lived, I agree, he is underrated.

[thalbergmad]

I agree as well, I have just finished the Sonata in F sharp minor Op25 No2. It is truly a beautiful Sonata. As good as anyhting Mozart wrote he says nervously.

Horowitz was a fan as well and recorded the above as well as some others.

Clementi was one of the first musicians to make a good deal of money and died a rich man. He wasn't very nice to poor old Field and made him work long hours playing his pianos to prospective buyers.

[Barbosa-piano]

 I think Clementi is a great composer that has been ignored for a great deal of time. His Sonatinas are masterpieces, and his Gradus ad Parnassum is a superb set of technical Etudes. Even Chopin gave Clementi's material for his students to study, such as the Gradus ad Parnassum and Preludes and Exercises. Some of Clementi's Octave Etudes can be very challenging. Beethoven did the same to his students, as Bernhard said previously. In the book Piano Notes, Charles Rosen says that Mozart thought Clementi was a charlatan, "although he admited that Clementi knew how to play rapid passages in thirds (Mozart solved the problem of his own inferiority in this respect by never writing such pasages)..."
 
Another quote:  The most accurate description of Beethoven's regard for Clementi's music can be found in the testimony of his assistant, Anton Schindler, who wrote the following: "He {Beethoven} had the greatest admiration for these sonatas, considering them the most beautiful, the most pianistic of works, both for their lovely, pleasing, original melodies and for the consistent, easily followed form of each movement. Beethoven had but little liking for Mozart's piano music, and the musical education of his beloved nephew was confined for many years almost exclusively to the playing of Clementi sonatas." (Beethoven as I Knew Him, ed. Donald M. MacArdle, trans. Constance S. Jolly, Chapel Hill and London, 1966).

This site contains very interesting information on Clementi:
http://www.classicalenthusiast.com/clementi.htm

It also describes how Clementi had an impact on the composers of his time.

Another site that is worth reading: http://www.carolinaclassical.com/clementi/index.html

I still find great use in Clementi's works, and I think he is a great composer that should not be forgotten.

Mario Barbosa

[jeremyjchilds]

I don't like Clementi.. he was greedy, and exploited poor young field..