About
Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi was an Italian-born English composer, pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer.
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 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, Beethoven and Rossini in his day, his popularity languished for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Music
Piano works
As a composer of classical piano sonatas, Clementi was among the first to create keyboard works expressly for the capabilities of the piano. He has been called "Father of the Piano".
Of Clementi's playing in his youth, Moscheles wrote that it was "marked by a most beautiful legato, a supple touch in lively passages, and a most unfailing technique." Domenico Scarlatti may be said to have closed the old and Clementi to have founded the newer school of technique on the piano.
Debussy's piece "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum" (the first movement of his suite Children's Corner) makes playful allusion to Clementi's collection of Etudes Gradus ad Parnassum.
Clementi composed almost 110 piano sonatas. Some of the earlier and easier ones were later classified as sonatinas after the success of his Sonatinas Op. 36. Erik Satie, a contemporary of Debussy, would later parody these sonatinas (specifically the Sonatina Op. 36, No. 1) in his Sonatine bureaucratique. However, most of Clementi's sonatas are more difficult to play than those of Mozart, who wrote in a letter to his sister that he would prefer her not to play Clementi's sonatas due to their jumped runs, and wide stretches and chords, which he thought might ruin the natural lightness of her hand.
Symphonic works
Clementi's symphonies are less well known. Though many of his manuscripts have been lost, autograph portions of his unpublished symphonies, which include everything from sketches to complete movements, are in the Library of Congress and the British Museum. From these autographs, scholars have been able to reconstruct four symphonies. Clementi also published two symphonies as Op. 18 in 1787, the first in B-flat major and the second in D major. Clementi successfully performed his symphonies in London and other cities in Europe, predominantly from 1813 to 1828. Based on performance reports, scholars estimate that he composed approximately twenty symphonies in total during his life. Clementi used the theme to "God Save the King" in his Symphony No. 3 in G major, often called the "Great National Symphony", cataloged as WoO. 34.
In 2002, for the 250th anniversary of his birth, scholars published new research about Clementi's life and works. Ut Orpheus is publishing the 61-volume set of Clementi's complete works, which will include new editions of his symphonies.