Muzio Clementi

Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi (23 January 1752 – 10 March 1832) was an Italian composer, virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer who was mostly active in England.

Encouraged to study music by his father, he was sponsored as a young composer by Sir Peter Beckford, who took him to England to advance his studies. Later, he toured Europe numerous times from his long-standing base in London. It was on one of these occasions, in 1781, that he engaged in a piano competition with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Influenced by Domenico Scarlatti's harpsichord school and Joseph Haydn's classical school and by the stile Galante of Johann Christian Bach and Ignazio Cirri, Clementi developed a fluent and technical legato style, which he passed on to a generation of pianists, including John Field, Johann Baptist Cramer, Ignaz Moscheles, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and Carl Czerny. He was a notable influence on Ludwig van Beethoven and Frédéric Chopin.

Clementi also produced and promoted his own brand of pianos and was a notable music publisher. Because of this activity, many compositions by Clementi's contemporaries and earlier artists have stayed in the repertoire. Though the reputation of Clementi was exceeded only by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Gioachino Rossini in his day, his popularity languished for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi (baptised Mutius Philippus Vincentius Franciscus Xaverius) was born in Rome in the Papal States on 23 January 1752, and baptised the following day at San Lorenzo in Damaso. He was the eldest of the seven children of Nicolò Clementi, a silversmith, and Madalena, née Caisar (Magdalena Kaiser). Nicolò soon recognised Muzio's musical talent and arranged for private musical instruction with a relative, Antonio Baroni, the maestro di cappella at St Peter's Basilica.

At the age of seven, Clementi began studies in figured bass with the organist S. Giovanni Cardarelli, followed by voice lessons from Giuseppe Santarelli. A few years later, probably when he was 11 or 12, he was given counterpoint lessons by Gaetano Carpani [ca]. By the age of 13, Clementi had already composed an oratorio, Martirio de' gloriosi Santi Giuliano e Celso, and a mass. When he was 14, in January 1766, he became organist of the parish church of San Lorenzo in Dámaso.

In 1766 Sir Peter Beckford, a wealthy Englishman, nephew of William Beckford (twice Lord Mayor of London, and father of the novelist William Beckford), visited Rome. He was impressed by the young Clementi's musical talent and negotiated with his father to take him to his estate, Stepleton House, north of Blandford Forum in Dorset, England. Beckford agreed to provide quarterly payments to sponsor the boy's musical education until he reached the age of 21. In return, he was expected to provide musical entertainment. For the next seven years, Clementi lived, performed, and studied at the estate in Dorset. During this period, it appears, Clementi spent eight hours a day at the harpsichord, practising and studying the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, George Frideric Handel, Arcangelo Corelli, Domenico Scarlatti, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Bernardo Pasquini. His only compositions dated to this period are the Sonatas Op. 13 and 14 and the Sei Sonate per clavicembalo o pianoforte, Op. 1.

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.