Carl Czerny
(born February 21, 1791, Vienna, Austria—died July 15, 1857, Vienna),
Austrian pianist, teacher, and composer known for his pedagogical works for the piano.
Divertissement de concert, Op 204
He studied piano, first with his father, Wenzel Czerny, and later with Ludwig van Beethoven and knew and was influenced by Muzio Clementi and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. He began teaching in Vienna at age 15; among his pupils were Franz Liszt and Beethoven’s nephew, as well as other celebrated pianists. His published compositions number nearly 1,000 and include ingenious arrangements for eight pianos, four hands each, of two overtures of Gioachino Rossini.
Czerny’s lasting influence, however, was in his piano studies, which were greatly esteemed by teachers for generations to come. These include the School of Velocity, the School of Virtuosity, and the School of the Left Hand. These exacting sets of graded exercises were still being widely used in the early 21st century. Czerny also left a valuable essay on performing the piano sonatas of Beethoven. He published an autobiographical sketch, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (1842; “Memories from My Life”).
In 1801, Wenzel Krumpholz, a Czech composer and violinist, scheduled a presentation for Czerny at the home of Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven asked Czerny to play his Pathétique Sonata and Adelaide. Beethoven was impressed with the 10-year-old and accepted him as a pupil. Czerny remained under Beethoven's tutelage until 1804 and sporadically thereafter. He particularly admired Beethoven's facility at improvisation, his expertise at fingering, the rapidity of his scales and trills, and his restrained demeanour while performing. Czerny maintained a relationship with Beethoven throughout his life, and also gave piano lessons to Beethoven's nephew Carl.
Pianistically, as the teacher of Theodor Leschetizky, Stephen Heller, Sigismond Thalberg, and of course, Franz Liszt, Czerny is the ancestor of all the greater and lesser piano virtuosi of the first half of the 19th century.
Czerny composed a very large number of pieces (more than a thousand pieces and up to Op. 861). Czerny's works include not only piano music (études, nocturnes, sonatas, opera theme arrangements and variations) but also masses and choral music, symphonies, concertos, songs, string quartets and other chamber music. The better known part of Czerny's repertoire is the large number of didactic piano pieces he wrote, such as The School of Velocity and The Art of Finger Dexterity. He was one of the first composers to use étude ("study") for a title.
It is interesting to note that in his first two piano sonatas, Carl Czerny adds a fifth movement, a fugue, as a look backwards to the roots of classicism. The first Sonata predates Beethoven's use of the Fugue in his piano sonatas but the second was written after Beethoven's Hammerklavier with the magnificent fugue in the final movement. Can it be that Czerny inspired Beethoven's use of this ultimate in contrapuntal textures in the latter's works in sonata form?