Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
- Piano Concerto in C (c.1790) [Sonata No.3, Op.33]
Performers: Gino Gorini (1914-1989, piano); Orchestra Da Camera Dell'Angelicum;
Alberto Zedda (1928-2017, conductor)
Further info: Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) - Overture & Symphony No.1
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English composer, keyboard player and teacher, music publisher and piano
manufacturer of Italian birth. The oldest of seven children of Nicolo
Clementi (1720-1789), a silversmith, and Magdalena, née Kaiser, Clementi
began studies in music in Rome at a very early age; his teachers were
Antonio Boroni (1738-1792), an organist named Cordicelli, Giuseppi
Santarelli (1710-1790) and possibly Gaetano Carpani. In January 1766, at
the age of 13, he secured the post of organist at his home church, S
Lorenzo in Damaso. In that year, however, his playing attracted the
attention of an English traveller, Peter Beckford (1740-1811), cousin of
the novelist William Beckford (1760-1844) and nephew of William
Beckford (1709-1770), twice Lord Mayor of London. According to Peter
Beckford’s own forthright explanation, he ‘bought Clementi of his father
for seven years’, and in late 1766 or early 1767 brought him to his
country estate of Steepleton Iwerne, just north of Blandford Forum in
Dorset; here the young musician spent the next seven years in solitary
study and practice at the harpsichord. His known compositions from the
Rome and Dorset years, written before the age of 22, are few: an
oratorio and possibly a mass (neither survives) and six keyboard
sonatas. It was apparently in 1774 that Clementi, freed from his
obligations to Beckford, moved to London. His first known public
appearances were as solo harpsichordist at benefit concerts for a singer
(Bonpace) and a harpist (Jones) in spring 1775. By 1780 he embarked
upon a tour of the European continent, performing before royalty and
engaging in friendly competitions with colleagues such as Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart. By 1783 he had returned to London, although in the next
years he traveled to Paris, Switzerland, and Italy.
In 1790 he had established himself in London, where he began a secondary
career as a publisher and fortepiano builder, as well as a sought-after
teacher. In 1802 he toured Europe to gain business for his enterprises,
including signing Ludwig van Beethoven to publish that composer’s
works. After 1810 Clementi made four further visits to the Continent,
two of them extended. The purpose of these visits, for the most part,
was to present his orchestral music to European audiences. In 1816-17 he
presided over performances of his symphonies at the Concert Spirituel
in Paris, and in 1822 he conducted three more at the Gewandhaus in
Leipzig; these latter can be identified among the symphonies for which
autograph fragments survive in the Library of Congress. But the aging
composer’s persistent efforts to make his mark as a symphonist were
hardly a success. For after 1824 his works disappeared from the concert
stage in England and elsewhere, forced out this time, in large part, by
Beethoven’s symphonies. As in his earliest days as a composer, Clementi
was still at his best in keyboard music. His large-scale sonatas op.50,
though probably nearly complete by 1805, appeared in 1821, and the three
volumes of his Gradus ad Parnassum – a monumental compendium of his
work from all periods – were published in 1817, 1819 and 1826. In 1830
Clementi retired from his firm, and at about this time he and his family
moved to Lichfield, Staffordshire. Soon after they moved once more,
some distance to the south, to Evesham in Worcestershire. There Clementi
drew up his will on 2 January 1832; on 10 March, after what was
described as a brief illness, he died at the age of 80. His funeral on
29 March filled Westminster Abbey, and he was buried with great ceremony
in the cloisters.
