How music grew, from prehistoric times to the present dayPeyser, Ethel R. (Ethel Rose)
History
How music grew, from prehistoric times to the present day
Peyser, Ethel R. (Ethel Rose)
Music -- History and criticism; Musicians
OTHER “CANNED” MUSIC
Then we have the phonographs and radio. These cannot be considered
instruments in the same way as the player piano and reproducing piano,
but are invaluable means of musical education and are doing, with the
player piano, a marvelous work in introducing people to the great music
of the world. Of course, it depends upon the way all these music
carriers are used, for if you have poor music on them, it will mean
nothing to you, but if you hear the “wear evers” on them, you will have
a touch of heaven in your life, forever.
PIANISTS COME TO VIEW
As an outcome of the work of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, the piano
appeared because of the need of a more powerful instrument than the
harpsichord and clavichord. At this time there were two particular
schools of piano playing,—the Viennese, light and delicate in tone, and
the English school, producing a more solid and more brilliant tone.
The principal pianists of the Viennese school were Johann Hummel, who,
as a boy of seven, was a pupil of Mozart, Franz Duschek, Mozart and
Pleyel. Later Beethoven himself appeared, the profound pianist in this
group, but also an advocate of Clementi’s methods.
The Clementi School is named from Muzio Clementi (1752–1832), the
“Father of the Pianoforte.” He was a composer of piano pieces,
especially of sonatas which are still of musical value. Who of us has
not studied Clementi’s sonatinas? Besides being a great player, a
teacher and a composer, Clementi published a work called _Gradus ad
Parnassum_, piano studies, a form which sprang up because of the need to
develop a technic for the new instruments when the piano was young.
Clementi, at fourteen, went to England, where he lived all his life and
became interested in the making of pianos. He was associated with the
firm of Clementi and Company, later Collard and Collard, and it is said
that he gave the Broadwoods much advice in the making of their “grand”
piano. So we see Clementi as a founder of piano technic, and an
instrument maker! He lived eighty years, during the last years of Handel
and Scarlatti, and he survived Beethoven, Schubert and Weber. It is said
that Mozart took a theme from a Clementi sonata for one of his operas.
His pupils were quite famous: John B. Cramer, the composer of many
important piano studies still in use; Johann L. Dussek, one of the first
to invent and write down finger exercises, and there were many others.
There were two schools with Clementi at the head of one, and Mozart, of
the other. With Hummel, a pupil of Mozart, the Classic School closed,
and then Clementi’s ideas came to the fore in the new Romantic School.
THE NEW ROMANTIC SCHOOL
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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