Musio Clementi - 'Evesham's composer'

Worcester and Malvern share Edward Elgar and in Evesham we lay claim to Mozart's contemporary and rival, Musio Clementi...

Muzio Clementi was a celebrated British (of Italian birth) classical composer, pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor and piano manufacturer. He is credited with being the first to write specifically for the piano. He is best known for his piano sonatas, sonatinas and his collection of piano studies, Gradus ad Parnassum. Nineteenth century enthusiasts called Clementi ‘the father of the pianoforte’, ‘the father of modern piano technique’, ‘the father of Romantic pianistic virtuosity’ and numerous other offspring. These judgments have become overshadowed as Clementi slipped into obscurity.

In his heyday, the European reputation of Muzio Clementi was second only to Joseph Haydn as a symphonist. Unlike his celebrated contemporaries, however, Clementi wrote primarily for the piano, as reflected in his catalogue of 110-plus sonatas and other piano works. He was taught first by his father and then by Sir Peter Beckford, a wealthy English voyager.

He was influenced by Domenico Scarlatti's harpsichord school, by Haydn's classical school and by the stile galante of Johann Christian Bach. He soon became known as one of the great piano virtuosi, touring numerous times from London (where he had lived for many years) throughout Europe. He taught keyboard technique and developed a piano method in use today. Esteemed as a teacher, his students included some of the leading lights of the day: John Field, Johann Baptist Cramer and Ignaz Moscheles. Many others, including Giacomo Meyerbeer, Friedrich Wilhelm Kalkbrenner, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Carl Czerny, attended courses which he held in Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Prague, Rome and Milan.

Clementi not only produced his own brand of pianos but was also a music publisher. It was thanks to this activity that many compositions by contemporary (and earlier) artists have stayed in the record. His genius for self-promotion, as well as a considerable talent as a composer, made Clementi sought after by the aristocrats of his day.

Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi (baptized Mutius Philippus Vincentius Franciscus Xaverius) was born in Rome on 24th January 1752 and baptized in the local church of S. Lorenzo in Damaso. He was the eldest of the seven children of Nicolo Clementi (1720–1789) a noted silversmith, and Madalena, née Caisar (Magdalena Kaiser), who was Swiss. His father soon realized his son’s musical talent, and by the time the boy was seven had arranged private musical instruction for him. By the time that he was nine he was sufficiently proficient to be offered a position as church organist at the Chiesa di St Lorenzo in Damaso.

Meanwhile, he had begun formal musical studies three years earlier with a relative, Antonio Baroni, maestro di cappella at St Peter’s basilica. At the age of seven he commenced studies with the organist Cordicelli, and later studied voice with Giuseppe Santarelli. A few years later, probably at 11 or 12, he was given counterpoint lessons by Gaetano Carpani, and by 13 he had already composed an Oratorio, Martitio de’ gloriosi Santi Giuliano, and a mass. When he was 14, in January of 1766, he became organist of the parish San Lorenzo in Dámaso.

In 1766, Sir Peter Beckford (1740-1811) a wealthy Englishman and cousin of the novelist William Thomas Beckford, twice Lord Mayor of London, visited Rome. He was impressed by the young Clementi's musical talent, and negotiated with Nicolò to take Clementi to his estate, Steepleton Iwerne, north of Blandford Forum in Dorset, England, where Beckford agreed to provide quarterly payments to sponsor Muzio's musical education. In return, he was expected to provide musical entertainment at the manor. For the next seven years Clementi lived, performed, and studied at the estate in Dorset. His compositions from this early period were few, and have almost all been lost.

In 1770 Clementi made his first public performance as an organist. The audience was reported to be impressed with his playing, thus beginning one of the outstandingly successful concert pianist careers of the period.

In 1774, Clementi was freed from his obligations to Peter Beckford. During the winter of 1774–1775 he moved to London, making his first appearance as a harpsichordist in a benefit concert on 3rd April 1775. There he made several public appearances as a solo harpsichordist at benefit concerts for two local musicians, a singer and a harpist, and served as conductor (from the keyboard) at the King's Theatre (Her Majesty's Theatre), Haymarket, for at least part of this time. His popularity grew in 1779 and 1780, due largely to the run-away sales of his newly-published Opus 2 Sonatas. His fame rose quickly, and there was enthusiastic talk in musical circles that he was the greatest piano virtuoso of the day, possibly of all times.

Clementi started a European tour in 1781, travelling to France, Germany, and Austria. In Vienna, he agreed to enter a musical duel with Mozart for the entertainment of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and his guests. On 24th December 1781, at the Viennese court, each performer was called upon to improvise and perform selections from his own compositions. The ability of both was so considerable that the Emperor declared a tie. 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, Mozart wrote: ‘Clementi is a charlatan, like all Italians. He marks a piece presto but plays only allegro’. Clementi's impressions of Mozart, by contrast, were enthusiastic and filled with praise. Much later, the pianist Ludwig Berger recalled: ‘Until then I had never heard anyone play with such spirit and grace. I was particularly overwhelmed by an adagio and by several of his extempore variations for which the Emperor had chosen the theme, and which we were to devise alternately’.

The main theme of Clementi's B-Flat Major sonata (op. 24, no. 2), however, captured Mozart's imagination. Ten years later, in 1791, Mozart 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 Zauberflöte. Clementi's admiration for Mozart, obviously not reciprocated, was reflected in a large number of transcriptions he made of Mozart's music, among which is a piano solo version of the ‘Zauberflöte’ overture.

From 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 took over the firm Longman and Broderip in 1798 at 26 Cheapside, initially with a James Longman, who left in 1801. Clementi also had offices at 195 Tottenham Court Road from 1806. The publication line, 'Clementi & Co, & Clementi, Cheapside' appears on a lithograph, 'Music' by W Sharp after J Wood, circa 1830s.

Clementi also began manufacturing pianos, but in March, 1807, the warehouses occupied by Clementi's new firm were destroyed by a fire, resulting in a loss of about forty thousand pounds. But the man's courage was indomitable. That same year, he struck a deal with Ludwig van Beethoven, one of his greatest admirers, that gave him full publishing rights to all of Beethoven's music in England. His reputation as an editor and interpreter of Beethoven's music is at least as great as his reputation as a composer, although he has been criticized for some less docile editorial work, such as making harmonic corrections to some of Beethoven's scores. That Beethoven, in his later life, started to compose chamber music specifically for the British market may have been related to the fact that his publisher was living in London.

In 1810, Clementi stopped concertizing in order to devote his time to composition and piano making. On 24th January 1813 Clementi, together with a group of prominent professional musicians in England, founded the ‘Philharmonic Society of London’, which became the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1912. In 1813 Clementi was appointed a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Music.

Meanwhile, his pianoforte business had flourished, affording him an increasingly elegant lifestyle. As an inventor and skilled mechanic, he made important improvements in the construction of the piano, some of which have become standard in instruments to this day.

At the end of 1816 Clementi made another trip to the continent to present his new works, particularly at the Concerts Spirituels in Paris. He returned to London in June 1818, after stopping off in Frankfurt. In 1821 he once again returned to Paris, conducting his symphonies in Munich and Leipzig. In London he was becoming widely acclaimed as a symphonist: in 1824 his symphonies were featured in five of the six programs at the 'Concerts of Ancient and Modern Music' at the King's Theatre.

In 1826 Clementi completed his very large collection of keyboard studies, Gradus ad Parnassum, and set off for Paris with the intention of publishing the third volume of the work simultaneously in Paris, London and Leipzig. After staying in Baden and most likely making another visit to Italy, he returned to London in the autumn of 1827.

On 17th December 1827, a large banquet was organised by Johann Baptist Cramer and Ignaz Moscheles in his honor at the Hotel Albion. Moscheles, in his diary, says that on that occasion Clementi improvised at the piano on a theme by Handel. In 1828 he made his last public appearance at the opening concert of the Philharmonic Society; and in 1830 he retired from the Society.

Clementi moved outside Lichfield, Staffordshire, in 1830, and spent his final years in Evesham. He died on 10th March 1832, after a short illness. He was 80 years old. On 29th March 1832, he was buried at Westminster Abbey. Accompanying his body were three of his famous students: Johann Baptist Cramer, John Field and Ignaz Moscheles. He had been married three times and is said to have had four children.