Beyond The Art of Finger Dexterity

Eastman Studies in Music

Ralph P. Locke, Senior Editor
Eastman School of Music
Additional Titles on Nineteenth-Century European Music

Berlioz: Past, Present, Future Musicking Shakespeare: A Conflict of

Edited by Peter Bloom Theatres
Daniel Albright
Berlioz: Scenes from the Life and Work
Edited by Peter Bloom Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth
Century to Debussy
European Music and Musicians in Jeremy Day-O’Connell
New York City, 1840–1900
Edited by John Graziano The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of
His Song Texts and Selected Letters
French Organ Music from the Revolution (Revised Second Edition)
to Franck and Widor Edited by Margaret G. Cobb
Edited by Lawrence Archbold
and William J. Peterson Schubert in the European Imagination,
Volume 1: The Romantic and Victorian
Historical Musicology: Sources, Methods, Eras
Interpretations Volume 2: Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Edited by Stephen A. Crist and Scott Messing
Roberta Montemorra Marvin
Schumann’s Piano Cycles and the Novels
Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis
of Jean Paul
Night: The Heathen Muse in European
Erika Reiman
Culture, 1700–1850
John Michael Cooper The Substance of Things Heard: Writings
about Music
Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris
Paul Griffiths
World’s Fair
Annegret Fauser Wagner and Wagnerism in Nineteenth-
Century Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic
The Musical Madhouse
Provinces: Reception, Enthusiasm, Cult
(Les Grotesques de la musique)
Hannu Salmi
Hector Berlioz
Translated and edited by Alastair Bruce
Introduction by Hugh Macdonald

A complete list of titles in the Eastman Studies in Music Series,

in order of publication, may be found at the end of this book.
Beyond The Art of
Finger Dexterity
Reassessing Carl Czerny
EDITED BY DAVID GRAMIT

UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER PRESS

Copyright © 2008 by the Editor and Contributors

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

First published 2008

University of Rochester Press

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ISBN-13: 978–1–58046–250–1
ISBN-10: 1–58046–250–2

ISSN: 1071–9989

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Beyond the art of finger dexterity : reassessing Carl Czerny / edited by

David Gramit.
p. cm. — (Eastman studies in music, ISSN 1071-9989 ; v. 53)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-250-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-58046-250-2
1. Czerny, Carl, 1791–1857—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Music—19th century—History and criticism. 3. Piano—
Performance—History—19th century. I. Gramit, David.
ML410.C99B48 2008
786.2092—dc22
2007037309

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

This publication is printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Foreword xi
Franz A. J. Szabo
Acknowledgments xiii
David Gramit
Introduction 1
David Gramit

1 Carl Czerny and Post-Classicism 11

Otto Biba
2 Czerny’s Vienna 23
Alice M. Hanson
3 Carl Czerny’s Recollections: An Overview and an
Edition of Two Unpublished Autograph Sources 34
Attilio Bottegal
4 A Star Is Born? Czerny, Liszt, and the Pedagogy of Virtuosity 52
James Deaville
5 The Veil of Fiction: Pedagogy and Rhetorical Strategies in
Carl Czerny’s Letters on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte 67
Deanna C. Davis
6 Carl Czerny: Beethoven’s Ambassador Posthumous 82
Ingrid Fuchs
7 Playing Beethoven His Way: Czerny and the Canonization of
Performance Practice 108
James Parakilas
8 Carl Czerny and Musical Authority: Locating the
“Primary Vessel” of the Musical Tradition 125
George Barth
vi ❧ contents

9 Carl Czerny, Composer 139

Anton Kuerti
10 Carl Czerny’s Mass No. 2 in C Major: Church Music and the
Biedermeier Spirit 145
John Wiebe
11 Carl Czerny’s Orchestral Music: A Preliminary Study 159
Douglas Townsend
12 Not Just a Dry Academic: Czerny’s String Quartets in E and D Minor 179
Marie Sumner Lott
13 Czerny and the Keyboard Fantasy: Traditions, Innovations, Legacy 202
Michael Saffle
14 The Fall and Rise of “Considerable Talent”: Carl Czerny and the
Dynamics of Musical Reputation 229
David Gramit

Appendix: Musical Autographs by Carl Czerny in the

Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien: A Checklist 245
Otto Biba
List of Contributors 263
Index of Names 269
Index of Works 275
Illustrations
Musical Examples
7.1 Beethoven, Sonata quasi una fantasia, Op. 27,
no. 2, mvt. 1, mm. 1–50 118
8.1 Beethoven, Rondo in B Flat, WoO 6, mm. 249–61,
Beethoven’s and Czerny’s versions 126
8.2 Beethoven, Rondo in B Flat, WoO 6, fortepiano part,
mm. 191–92, Beethoven’s and Czerny’s versions 128
8.3 Mozart, “Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge,” K. 596 (1791),
Mozart’s and Czerny’s versions 129
10.1 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Kyrie, mm. 9–13 148
10.2 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria, mm. 199–205 148
10.3 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria, mm. 80–88 150
10.4 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Kyrie, mm. 32–54, harmonic outline 151
10.5 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Kyrie and Gloria, opening themes 152
10.6 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria and Credo, fugue themes 153
10.7 Mass No. 2 in C Major, “Osanna” theme from Sanctus and
Benedictus 153
10.8 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria, mm. 278–86, theme 154
10.9 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Credo, mm. 1–3 and Agnus dei,
mm. 107–9, choral theme 154
10.10 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Agnus dei, mm. 91–93 154
10.11 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria, mm. 24–29, harmonic reduction 155
10.12 Mass No. 2 in C Major, Credo, mm. 33–37, harmonic reduction 156
11.1 C-Minor Symphony, Op. 780, mvt. 1, mm. 1–11 162
11.2 C-Minor Symphony, Op. 780, mvt. 1, mm. 67–76 165
11.3 C-Minor Symphony, Op. 780, mvt. 1, mm. 157–62 166
11.4 C-Minor Symphony, Op. 780, mvt. 2, mm. 1–4 167
11.5 D-Major Symphony, Op. 781, mvt. 1, pp. 20–21 169
11.6 D-Major Symphony, Op. 781, mvt. 4, pp. 132–33 170
11.7 D-Major Symphony, Op. 781, mvt. 4, pp. 142–43 171
11.8 Overture in C Minor, Op. 142, mm. 1–10 174
11.9 Overture in C Minor, Op. 142, mm. 132–37 174
viii ❧ list of illustrations

11.10 Overture in E Major, mm. 1–12 175

12.1 Opening of Scherzos, E-Minor and D-Minor quartets 181
12.2 E-Minor Quartet, mvt. 1, mm. 125–64 184
12.3 E-Minor Quartet, mvt. 2, mm. 16–25 193
12.4 D-Minor Quartet, mvt. 4, mm. 72–91 194
12.5 E-Minor Quartet, mvt. 4, mm. 59–64 195
12.6 D-Minor Quartet, mvt. 1, mm. 154–57 196
12.7 D-Minor Quartet, mvt. 1, mm. 250–57 197
12.8 D-Minor Quartet, mvt. 4, mm. 54–66 198
13.1 Prelude No. 2 from Czerny, Präludien, Cadenzen,
und kleine Fantasien, Op. 61 207
13.2 Czerny, Fantaisie, Op. 27, mm. 182–90 209
13.3 Czerny, Fantaisie, Op. 27, mm. 129–34 210
13.4 Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, mm. 21–25 212
13.5 Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, mm. 45–49 212
13.6 Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, mm. 63–67 212
13.7 Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, mm. 304–26 214
13.8 Czerny, “Gustave” Fantasy, Op. 360, mm. 1–23 216
13.9 Czerny, Bijoux à la Sontag, Op. 678, “Don Juan
(Andante),” mm. 1–4 217
13.10 Liszt, Réminiscences de Don Juan, mm. 69–72 217

Figures
6.1 Testimonial for Carl Czerny with Beethoven’s signature 84
6.2 Covers of Brahms’s copies of separately published
chapters of Carl Czerny, Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500, vol. 4 87
6.3 Brahms’s annotations to Czerny’s text, Pianoforte-Schule 89
6.4 Carl Czerny’s letter to Heinrich Albert Probst, Vienna,
September 22, 1829 92
6.5 Announcement of Czerny’s arrangements of
Beethoven’s symphonies 93
6.6 Beethoven, Rondo in B Flat, WoO 6, mm. 77–87,
Beethoven’s autograph and Czerny’s arrangement 97
8.1 Czerny’s “Remarks on Refined Taste in Embellishments,”
School of Practical Composition, 1:88 131

Tables
10.1 Czerny, Mass No. 2 in C Major, key relationships between
movements 151
12.1 Overview of movements, E-Minor and D-Minor quartets 180
12.2 Form of the first movement, E-Minor Quartet 183
12.3 Form of the first movement, D-Minor Quartet 187
12.4 Form of the finale, E-Minor quartet 189
list of illustrations ❧ ix

12.5 Form of the finale, D-Minor Quartet 190

13.1 Czerny, Fantaisie, Op. 27, form 208
13.2 Czerny, “Puritani” Fantasy, Op. 247, form 211
13.3 Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, form 213
13.4 Czerny, “Gustave” Fantasy, Op. 360, form 215
Foreword
The international symposium at which some of the chapters in this volume were
first vetted was part of a major musical festival mounted by what was then the
Canadian Centre for Austrian and Central European Studies, and is now the Wirth
Institute Centre for Austrian and Central European Studies of the University of
Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Presented in seven concerts over four days in June
2002, the event was the first major music festival devoted entirely to the nineteenth-
century Austrian composer and teacher, Carl Czerny (1791–1857). Our Institute’s
project was undertaken in conjunction with the Society of the Friends of Music of
Vienna, the Francis Winspear Centre for Music in Edmonton, and the Edmonton
Symphony Orchestra. The Carl Czerny Music Festival was under the overall artistic
direction of the internationally renowned Austrian-Canadian pianist, Anton Kuerti.
Kuerti, widely considered to be among the world’s foremost interpreters of
Czerny’s piano music, also performed as a soloist and as a participant in several of
the chamber music ensembles.
Czerny—the student of Beethoven and the teacher of Liszt—is known to gen-
erations of piano students as the composer of innumerable etudes, studies, and
technical exercises that have been used for almost two centuries as aids to learn-
ing. What few people realize, however, is that Czerny was an important composer
in his own right. Some of his nonpedagogical works, which have only recently
come to light, have fascinated and astonished music critics. As a result, it is now
increasingly clear that Czerny did not lack for invention, craft, or emotion; that
he is, in fact, an unjustly neglected major late Classical and early Romantic com-
poser. Some of Czerny’s most impressive compositions, however, were never pub-
lished, and it was for this reason that our institute, together with Kuerti and the
director of the Archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, Otto Biba,
selected a series of unpublished Czerny manuscripts for world premiere per-
formances at the festival. These included the Violin Sonata in A Major from
1807, five unpublished songs (including Czerny’s version of “Der Erlkönig”)
from 1811–12, the Overture in E Major from 1838, the Mass in C Major from
1839, the String Quartet in E Minor from 1850, and the Symphony in G Minor
from 1854.
These world premiere performances along with other major Czerny works
that received their first modern performances at the festival certainly created an
xii ❧ foreword

entirely different image of the composer’s compositional achievements than the

one generally prevalent among many musicians and the concert-going public,
and many of the chapters of this volume have been informed by these revelatory
presentations. From the catalogue of musical autographs by Czerny contained
in the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien that Biba provides
at the conclusion of this volume, it will be evident that many more works of this
caliber remain to be discovered and performed. Naturally, we hope our insti-
tute’s Czerny project played a small role in giving momentum to an increased
interest in the “unknown Czerny,” and that many more of the unpublished
works will see the light of day and be heard by music-lovers throughout the
world in the years ahead.
The Czerny Festival, which started as a brainchild of Anton Kuerti, would not
have been possible without the assistance of numerous individuals. In the first
instance we are indebted to the former Austrian ambassador to Canada, His
Excellency, Walther G. Lichem, who first suggested that Kuerti’s idea could be
brought to fruition by our institute. Furthermore, without the assistance and
invaluable insights of Otto Biba this festival could hardly have been mounted.
We are, of course, indebted to all of the performers who made the festival such
a success and allowed both scholars and the public to hear the unexplored
genius of Czerny. In addition to Kuerti, these included Yarra Tal, Andreas
Groethuysen, Stéphane Lemelin, and Wonny Song, piano, Erika Raum, violin,
Thomas Wiebe, cello, André Moisan, clarinet, Gerald Onciul, horn, Marnie
Giesbrecht, organ, Benjamin Butterfield, tenor, Jolaine Kerley, soprano, Joy-
Anne Murphy, mezzo-soprano, Paul Grindlay, bass-baritone, the St. Lawrence
String Quartet, the Czerny Festival Chorus, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra,
and the conductors Grzegorz Nowak and Leonard Ratzlaff. The success of the
conference associated with the festival owes much to the indefatigable labors of
David Gramit, who has also undertaken the task of editing the current volume.
Above all, our institute is indebted to the generosity of the late Manfred Wirth,
without whose financial support neither the festival nor the conference would
have been possible.
—Franz A. J. Szabo
Director, Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies
University of Alberta
Acknowledgments
It is my pleasure to add my thanks to Franz Szabo, not only for his unswerving
support of the Czerny Festival and conference, but also for his continued inter-
est in and support of the production of this book. In addition, thanks are due to
Ralph Locke and the book’s anonymous readers at the University of Rochester
Press, whose comments and suggestions have resulted in a far more interesting
and valuable volume. I am also grateful to Jennifer Caines and Deanna C. Davis
for work on preparation of the typescript, to Ondrej Goliáš for his skillful prepa-
ration of musical examples for chapters 9, 12, 13, and 14, to Susan Cook for
timely bibliographic assistance, and to Katie Hurley and the production team at
the University of Rochester Press, who have gone out of their way to make the
production of this book efficient and even painless. Finally, I am deeply grateful
to all of the authors who contributed to the book, and particularly to those who
presented at the 2002 conference and have had the grace and patience to tol-
erate the long process through which the book was not only assembled but also
grew to include considerably more than those original papers.
—David Gramit
Introduction
David Gramit
And should it ever happen that a history of nineteenth-century music
opened with the remark, “On 20 February 1791 Carl Czerny was born,”
this would involve less the transmission of a fact than an announcement
that a roundabout and tortuous argument was about to begin in ex post
facto justification of such an obviously grotesque placing of emphasis.
Carl Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History

Carl Dahlhaus’s brief mention may seem a singularly inauspicious way to begin
a volume of essays devoted to Czerny. And yet, his choice of Carl Czerny to lead
off a self-evidently preposterous approach to the history of nineteenth-century
music neatly reveals Czerny’s paradoxical situation in the received history of
European music. Dahlhaus’s strategy is clear enough: in order to demonstrate
the rhetorical practices implicit in music-historical narrative, he places an icon
of insignificance in the rhetorically crucial opening position of an imagined his-
tory. Just to make certain that there would be no mistaking this strategy, he pre-
ceded his turn to Czerny by another music-historical fact, one whose status as
significant is to be understood as unimpeachable: “On 19 October 1814 Franz
Schubert composed his ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade.’ ”1 Czerny, then, serves as a
foil, simultaneously representing historical inadequacy and warning against ill-
conceived attempts by historians to engage in “obviously grotesque” revisionism.
Not just any mediocrity, however, would do in this position. In order for the ref-
erence to succeed, Dahlhaus needed more than an obscure name; he needed a
name that was familiar enough to represent obscurity. And to do so, whether in a
sudden burst of inspiration or after prolonged reflection, an inspired choice—
Carl Czerny—came to mind.
Why did Czerny work so effectively in this role? First, his name accomplishes
something that few others in the history of classical music would: recognition
not only by scholars of the Kleinmeister of the period, but by virtually everyone
with more than a passing familiarity with that musical tradition—but that famil-
iarity is not based on any reputation as a great composer. So firmly established
and enduring was Czerny’s name that early in the twentieth century, Willa
2 ❧ introduction

Cather could also use it as a kind of self-evident shorthand, albeit of a more pos-
itive sort. Cather’s Song of the Lark chronicles a diva’s rise from small-town obscu-
rity through her unique strength of character and determination, and those
qualities are foreshadowed in the book’s opening pages: the first suggestion of
serious musical interest—or indeed, of any music at all—that the reader encoun-
ters is the passing observation that among the comforting objects that meet the
eye of the near delirious eleven-year-old protagonist, Thea Kronberg, in her fam-
ily’s parlor is “Czerny’s ‘Daily Studies’ which stood open on the upright piano.”2
As Cather was well aware, Czerny’s ubiquitous piano etudes have ensured famil-
iarity, if rarely affection, from countless pianists since his lifetime. He has come
to stand for diligence, technical facility, and manual dexterity—qualities very
nearly diametrically opposed to the ineffable genius conventionally associated
with compositional greatness.
But Dahlhaus’s hypothetical history invokes more than a famous but famously
noncreative name. It specifies a date, thereby calling to mind the musical era in
which Czerny existed, and thus also the towering figures against which he has
been compared when evaluated as anything but a pedagogue: born in Vienna in
the year of Mozart’s death there, while Haydn resided there as a revered master,
the year before the young Beethoven arrived there from Bonn, and only six
years before Schubert’s birth there, Czerny faced the stiffest local competition
imaginable in a contest for enduring musical significance, and the utter absence
of any of his music in the canon carries with it an unmistakable implication: not
only did Czerny not win, place, or show, he apparently failed to finish the race
at all. Add to this the knowledge—not, to be sure, as familiar as Czerny’s exer-
cises, but familiar enough to students of the canonic composers—that Czerny
studied with Beethoven and taught Liszt, and the image of a musician who could
at best be considered an also-ran is apparently complete.
This received history, which made Dahlhaus’s choice of Czerny so apparently
unexceptionable, is precisely what this collection sets out to question, through a
multifaceted reassessment of Czerny, his context, his accomplishments, and his
legacy. Our collective argument—and one, we hope, neither roundabout nor
tortuous—is that both the assumptions and the knowledge on which Czerny’s
historical positioning has been based are limited enough to result in significant
distortions. Reassessment reveals a figure who, far from being a cooperatively
insignificant icon of mediocrity, made important contributions to nearly every
aspect of musical life in the early nineteenth century: not only in pedagogy, but
also in editorial work, publication, music history, and, perhaps most unexpect-
edly but remarkably of all, composition in the serious vein in which he long
seemed so signally unmemorable. And furthermore, the nature of his activity in
a number of these areas ultimately contributed to his obscurity as much as it did
to the success of the larger enterprise of serious music.
The argument can proceed from two not necessarily easily compatible posi-
tions. Both of these, I hasten to acknowledge, originate well before the present
introduction ❧ 3

volume, both in general and with respect to Czerny in particular. The first, and
the most plainly applicable to Czerny, disputes the assumption that music history
is exclusively or even primarily the history of canonically recognized great works
of musical art and their creation. A diverse variety of musical subfields—includ-
ing, with no claim to completeness or hierarchical ordering, ethnomusicology,
popular music studies, feminist scholarship, and some strands of a “new” musi-
cology now surely approaching middle age—have long argued, pace Dahlhaus
and many others, that approaching music as a practice rather than an assembly
of works, far from impoverishing our understanding, enriches it immeasurably
and, to put the matter more bluntly, corrects it. As far as Czerny is concerned, this
course correction is most apparent in the pioneering work of Grete Wehmeyer,
whose Carl Czerny und die Einzelhaft am Klavier (Carl Czerny and Solitary
Confinement at the Piano) drew attention not only to the variety of Czerny’s
activities, including his serious compositions, but also, as its title and even more
its subtitle (oder Die Kunst der Fingerfertigkeit und die industrielle Arbeitsideologie [or,
“The Art of Finger Dexterity” and the Ideology of Industrial Labor]) intimates,
to the relationship between the quotidian musical activities with which Czerny is
most closely associated and basic values and practices of society as a whole.3 All
the contributions to this volume are indebted to both her example and the foun-
dation she has established for renewed study of Czerny. From this perspective,
understanding music implies understanding the myriad ways in which people
engage in and conceptualize musical activities, from the most mundane to the
most rarefied, and the ways in which those activities and ideologies shape their
conceptions of who they are, individually and collectively. And from this per-
spective, a person like Czerny, who not only quite literally shaped the activities
and the bodies of countless pianists during his lifetime and beyond, but also,
through his editorial work and advocacy, particularly for Beethoven, fundamen-
tally shaped the way European culture conceived of the nature of art music,
indeed becomes a figure of major significance.
The second approach to arguing for Czerny’s significance aligns much more
closely with traditional values of work-centered music history but points out that
the exclusion of his music from the canon occurred not through critical
appraisal and rejection but through simple ignorance. Due to circumstances
that Otto Biba in particular discusses in his contribution to this volume, the pub-
licly available music that shaped Czerny’s reputation during his lifetime and for
long thereafter did not include a great many of his works in “serious” genres like
the Mass, the symphony, or the string quartet. These survived primarily in man-
uscript and are now housed in the Archives of the Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde in Wien. They are “works that have no history,” to an even greater
extent than the long-forgotten Neapolitan operas of Czerny’s contemporary
Rossini, to describe which Philip Gossett coined that phrase.4 Rossini’s operas
have indeed fallen into obscurity, but they were at least publicly performed; in
the case of Czerny, many works have to the best of our knowledge received their
4 ❧ introduction

premieres only in recent decades, and still more have yet to be performed. Once
heard, however, those works prove remarkably engaging. The result, as I trace in
the final chapter of this volume, has been a reappraisal of Czerny the composer,
a reappraisal to which several other chapters contribute in greater musical detail
than has yet been available. That reappraisal has gained momentum as a result
of scattered individual performances and a body of commercially available
recordings that has swelled significantly over the past two decades; it has culmi-
nated, for the time being at least, in the event at which many of the chapters in
this volume originated, the first music festival devoted to Czerny, held at the
University of Alberta in June 2002 and organized by the Canadian Centre (now
the Wirth Institute) for Austrian and Central European Studies in collaboration
with the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. The self-perpetuating cycle of
visibility leading to performances and recordings, leading in turn to critical
reception and further enhanced visibility, is belatedly under way for Czerny.5 A
gap of some two centuries between creation and reception means that these
works will indeed never have the historical influence that Czerny’s other activi-
ties did, but they are at last becoming available as a part of the concert
repertoire.
I will have occasion below to reconsider the potential tensions between these
two directions from which Czerny can be approached, but in at least one
respect, they intersect: whether implicitly or explicitly, any historical reassess-
ment that focuses on a previously neglected figure demands a consideration of
sources that have previously attracted little attention. To assert that documen-
tary study is linked to a positivist avoidance of significant critical questions would
not only be dogmatic, but hamper a truly critical undertaking by ensuring that
the received documentary record, selected on the basis of precisely the unten-
able assumptions and ignorance that fostered Czerny’s neglect, remained
unchallenged. Nearly every chapter that follows therefore directs attention to
documents or music that have received little or no previous scrutiny, but several
sections merit special mention in this respect. One of the few areas of Czerny
research that has been relatively well developed is the study of his autobio-
graphical recollections, which have long been available in both English and
German.6 Attilio Bottegal’s study, however, goes farther, providing not only a
close survey of the origins and interrelations of all of Czerny’s extant writings
about his life but also editions and translations of two of those documents, one
of them an extended account of his youth that has previously appeared only in
excerpts. Ingrid Fuchs’s chapter on Czerny as an advocate for Beethoven also
takes as its primary concern the careful and complete establishment of the doc-
umentary record, and given the pivotal importance that Beethoven quickly
assumed in the European musical tradition, it is not surprising that her contri-
bution is one of those that has been most valuable to other contributors to the
present volume. Finally, with respect to Czerny’s music, the appendix kindly
prepared by Otto Biba provides for the first time in print a full record of the
introduction ❧ 5

autograph scores held in the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in

Wien. By making clear the sheer breadth of music that remains to be explored,
the appendix provides a concluding invitation to continue the project in which
this volume participates through further musical and critical exploration.
The varying perspectives from which Czerny is revealed as a figure of interest
have led to a volume in which authors of an unusually diverse variety of back-
grounds have contributed chapters that vary widely in style, methodology, and
priorities. In addition to the text-critical and documentary approaches I have
already mentioned, contextual and biographical studies coexist with stylistic and
formal analyses, intensive exchanges on questions of performance practice, and
critical cultural studies. In several instances, authors’ positions leave them in
open or implicit conflict with the views of others. I have not attempted to impose
an artificial harmony or mandate a unified view of Czerny or his legacy, but
rather viewed these disagreements as the beginning of a long-overdue discussion
in which differences are to be expected. Indeed, the existence of controversy
around Czerny is one more sign that he is more relevant to understanding his
musical culture and our own than we have previously realized.
The collection begins with studies that testify to renewed interest in Czerny
the composer, but indirectly, by laying the groundwork for musicological evalu-
ation in ways that have long been applied to Czerny’s more renowned contem-
poraries. The questions are familiar, but asking them of Czerny leads to new
perspectives on him and his era. Since the nineteenth-century beginnings of
musicology as an academic discipline, along with interest in a composer’s music
has come interest in the composer’s life and its context—the topic of the first
chapters in this volume.7 The cultural and musical context of Czerny’s compo-
sitional accomplishment itself is Otto Biba’s focus. His outline of the Viennese
musical world after Beethoven and Schubert reveals not only why Czerny and
many others found that light, “brilliant” compositions were far more viable in
the musical market than serious works, but also how both that market and neg-
ative critical reception of Czerny’s early compositional efforts may have con-
signed Czerny’s later efforts at serious composition to the unpublished obscurity
from which only a few have only recently begun to emerge. The result is perhaps
the most fully developed sketch of Czerny’s character yet to have been written.
To an extent that is unusual for musicians of Czerny’s period, Czerny’s own
autobiographical writings form the basis for much of our factual knowledge of
his life and for a great deal of his received image. Both Alice M. Hanson’s and
Attilio Bottegal’s contributions proceed from that starting point, albeit in dif-
ferent directions. As I discussed above, Bottegal’s chapter clarifies the nature of
that documentary basis and the relationships among Czerny’s various accounts
and the history of their reception, as well as providing a critically edited text of
one of the more significant of those sources. Hanson, however, proceeds out-
ward from the sources. Beginning with Czerny’s own periodization of his life,
she provides for each period what Czerny’s account conspicuously omits: a sense
6 ❧ introduction

of the social and cultural setting in which his life unfolded and of the political
events that transformed Vienna, its empire, and the European world during his
lifetime. In the process, both the limits on Czerny’s biographical conception and
the breadth of his musical involvements become clear.
The following two chapters deal with the activity with which Czerny has long
been most closely associated, piano pedagogy. Both James Deaville and Deanna
C. Davis, however, point out that although Czerny as teacher is a time-worn
image, the significance of his activity in this area, and indeed the cultural and
musical place of pedagogy in general, has not yet received critical attention pro-
portionate to its familiarity.8 Deaville focuses on accounts of Czerny’s relation-
ship with his most famous pupil, Franz Liszt. Exploring the cultural significance
of pedagogy itself at the professional level, he teases out evidence of conflict and
tension in that pedagogical relationship, signs of a fundamental rupture in the
pedagogy of musical virtuosity located between master and pupil. Davis begins
at the opposite end of Czerny’s pool of students, with the largely forgotten and
predominantly female amateur students who were the target of the pedagogical
publications of Czerny and many others. Offering a critical reading of Czerny’s
Letters to a Young Lady on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte, she notes both the pres-
sure they exerted on their target audience to conform to expectations of ama-
teurism and domesticity and the potentially subversive impact of their continual
exhortations to diligence and distinguished musical achievement.
Czerny’s pedagogical works are by far the most familiar evidence of his lasting
impact on the Western musical tradition, but he has also been influential—and
to an extent far greater than has usually been recognized—on the shaping of
what we conceive that tradition to be, in large part because of his role in trans-
mitting and shaping the interpretation of the music of his classical predecessors
and contemporaries. This role in particular is examined by Ingrid Fuchs, James
Parakilas, and George Barth. All three are united by a realization that our under-
standing of Viennese classical music and its performance—especially that of
Beethoven—has been shaped in fundamental ways by Czerny’s mediation, but
given the differing approaches of these authors, it is not surprising that they
diverge considerably in their conclusions. From the historical perspective pur-
sued by Fuchs—the documentary implications of which I discussed above—
Czerny’s enormous commitment to representing Beethoven to posterity and the
sheer breadth of his contribution make clear that he is one of the central figures
responsible for the conception of Beethoven that still dominates the classical
music world.
When we turn to more specific issues of the performance of the music of
Beethoven and other composers of the period, however, Czerny’s legacy, while
unquestionably deeply influential, can be understood in very different ways, as
the conflicting positions taken by Parakilas and Barth demonstrate; at issue,
finally, is the nature of interpretative authority and the means by which a per-
formance achieves legitimacy. For Barth, Czerny (albeit not without contradiction)
introduction ❧ 7

prescribes a path to a consistent, fundamentally unchanging conception of a

musical essence that leaves considerable freedom in details of interpretation.
For Parakilas, it is precisely the mystified claim to an authoritative conception
that has stifled genuine freedom of performance. In both readings, however,
Czerny’s testimony is revealed as pivotal, and these two considerations of his
impact lay bare a fault line within contemporary approaches to performance
and interpretation.
As I noted above, to argue for Czerny’s significance on the basis of his activity
as a pedagogue or his role in establishing both the canon of classical music and
crucial aspects of attitudes toward its performance demands modifying the view
that music’s history is to be equated with the history of composers, compositions,
and style. In other words, it requires us to recognize the historical impact of
activities with which Czerny has long been associated, but whose constitutive role
in creating the culture of classical music has received little attention. Most of the
remaining essays presented here, however, focus attention on the aspect of his
musical activity that has been ignored or even denigrated: his composition of
music in serious genres. Here reassessment focuses on an individual and his
accomplishment within the paradigm of a culture of great musical works rather
than on analyzing or raising alternatives to that paradigm. And as the opening
of Davis’s chapter notes, the enthusiasm to which reassessing Czerny’s music
gives rise can expose the tensions between these two modes of rethinking; her
account of the dismissal of Czerny’s innumerable female piano students and
their repertoire in favor of focusing attention on the canon-worthiness of his
serious music reveals that the split between elite and mass musical cultures to
which Czerny’s music itself fell victim is not yet as irrelevant as some accounts of
postmodernity would have it. One of the goals of this volume, however, is to
argue by example that recovering a remarkable body of eminently concert-wor-
thy music need not preclude critical reflection on the origins and values of the
culture in which it exists. Indeed, without that reflection, we would be left with
no means of accounting for nearly two centuries of neglect of Czerny’s music,
while failing to take seriously this recovery project would distort any evaluation
of the history and dynamics of the musical culture in which it is occurring.
One of the results of the history of that culture is an enormous scholarly and
critical literature on the works that constitute the canon. Needless to say, how-
ever, for the works of Czerny, there are no Nottebohms, Toveys, or Kermans to
draw on or respond to; this obvious but crucial point makes the project of dis-
cussing Czerny’s music very different from that of continuing the discourse on
the works of one of his famous contemporaries. Because of the unfamiliarity of
the music under discussion here, characterizing it and situating it in relation to
its contemporaries, both famous and obscure, are crucial first steps.
Performances and recordings have begun to raise Czerny’s profile; the discus-
sions of Czerny’s music found here respond to that discovery by providing the
essential beginnings of a critical assessment.
8 ❧ introduction

To provide those beginnings, I have been particularly fortunate to benefit

from the assistance not only of musicologists keenly interested in Czerny but also
of performers and critics, some of whom have already been instrumental in rais-
ing Czerny’s profile. One of the crucial actors in that process has been Anton
Kuerti, whose chapter describes his surprise and delight at discovering in Czerny
a distinguished alternative to standard repertoire. That discovery has led him to
take a leading role in promoting Czerny as a composer; his account incisively
surveys the remarkable breadth of Czerny’s output. This is by no means a case
of uncritical advocacy, for Kuerti’s intimate familiarity with both Czerny and the
canonic repertoire allows him to assess Czerny’s weaknesses as well as his
strengths. His survey also reveals that Czerny’s musical abilities were by no
means limited to music for the keyboard. This point receives further support in
the next chapters. In a study of Czerny’s Mass No. 2, choral conductor John
Wiebe provides a close examination of a single work far removed from the
instrument on which Czerny’s reputation was built. No more than Kuerti does
he shy away from acknowledging musical weak points, but he situates the Mass
between the demands of practical church music and the cultural imperatives of
the Biedermeier in a way that not only begins to characterize Czerny’s distinc-
tive voice but also reveals the sphere in which what might appear as limitations
were in fact careful responses to a specific environment.
Another longtime advocate for Czerny, Douglas Townsend, whose edition of
one of Czerny’s overtures made it long one of the composer’s very few accessi-
ble orchestral works, brings yet another perspective to bear, that of an active
composer and music critic. For Townsend, surveying several major orchestral
works, Czerny’s position in relation to the canonic repertoire is of primary inter-
est—a perspective that will prove crucial to the composer’s ultimate place in cur-
rent concert life. Particularly sensitive to nuances of texture and orchestration,
he situates Czerny between his classical forbears and the romantic style that he
sometimes anticipated and lived to see fully developed. Marie Sumner Lott’s
examination of two of Czerny’s string quartets returns to a musicological per-
spective. Her comparative approach includes not only the canonic composers
but Czerny’s equally (or sometimes even more) obscure contemporaries in
chamber music composition, but she too reveals a composer balanced between
the classicistic and the progressive.
Michael Saffle’s chapter maintains this section’s focus on composition, but it
also returns to several issues touched on above: Czerny’s relationship to received
tradition, his legacy to Liszt, and his activity in a genre whose recognition as an
element of serious musical culture has often been tenuous. Saffle situates
Czerny’s activity as a composer of keyboard fantasies, demonstrating not only
that Czerny contributed essentially to its continuation and to Liszt’s piano works
both within and beyond the fantasy narrowly construed, but also that that very
activity contributed to the obscurity to which Czerny (and to some extent even
Liszt) was consigned during his lifetime, and even more completely after his
introduction ❧ 9

death. And so we have come full circle: examination of Czerny the composer
leads finally to the roots of the forgetting of that role, not because of any defi-
ciency of talent, but rather because of the associations of the most visible areas
in which he exercised that talent. In the final chapter, I take a closer look at the
process of evaluation as it has operated from Czerny’s lifetime to the present. A
survey of responses to Czerny as a composer traces the history of the particular
evaluations that fixed his reputation as a creative mediocrity until the last
decades of the twentieth century. But because of the breadth of Czerny’s activi-
ties, encompassing not only the safely classical but also the unashamedly popu-
lar and commercial, such a survey of responses also reveals ways in which diverse
fields of musical activity and their respective ideologies have constituted the
shifting ground on which musical reputations have been and continue to be
constructed and revised. The present volume, then, is a continuation of a
process that has been under way since Czerny’s first public appearance.
There is little danger that Czerny’s birthday will compete with the date of the
composition of “Gretchen” for top billing in any future history of nineteenth-
century music. Even Czerny’s most enthusiastic advocates claim a considerably
more modest position for him as a rediscovered composer, and the belatedness
of his serious works’ coming to public awareness means that they will have lost
the chance of even a peripheral influence on the course of compositional devel-
opment. Nonetheless, few figures within those histories to come will have had so
powerful an impact in so many areas of musical life, for better or for worse, and
it would be even more difficult to find another who combines that degree of
broad influence on musical practices with the level of compositional mastery
that performers and audiences are discovering in his long-forgotten works. Our
understanding of the period has not, perhaps, been revolutionized, but we may
have succeeded in robbing it of an all-too-convenient symbol of insignificance.
The dedicated musician, shrewd businessman, and self-effacing character who
emerges from the discussions that follow would perhaps have been pleased with
this more balanced acknowledgment of his multifaceted accomplishments.

Notes
1. Carl Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, trans. J. B. Robinson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), 42.
2. Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 10–11.
3. Grete Wehmeyer, Carl Czerny und die Einzelhaft am Klavier oder Die Kunst der
Fingerfertigkeit und die industrielle Arbeitsideologie (Kassel: Bärenreiter; Zurich: Atlantis
Musikbuch-Verlag, 1983). See also Wehmeyer, “Czerny,” Die Musik in Geschichte und
Gegenwart, 2d ed., ed. Ludwig Finscher, Personenteil 5 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994),
221–34.
4. Philip Gossett, “History and Works That Have No History: Reviving Rossini’s
Neapolitan Operas,” in Disciplining Music: Musicology and Its Canons, ed. Katherine
10 ❧ introduction

Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992),

95–115.
5. For a critical assessment of the music performed at the Edmonton Czerny
Festival, see Leslie Kandell, “Czerny (Without Tears): Edmonton Festival Looks
beyond the Etudes,” American Record Guide 64, no. 6 (November/December 2002):
31–32.
6. Carl Czerny, “Recollections from my Life,” trans. and ed. Ernst Sanders, Musical
Quarterly 42 (1956): 302–17; Carl Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed. Walter
Kolneder, Sammlung Musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 46 (Baden-Baden:
Valentin Koerner, 1968), 7–29.
7. On the relation of biography to the musicological enterprise, see Jolanta T.
Pekacz, “Memory, History, and Meaning: Musical Biography and Its Discontents,”
Journal of Musicological Research 23 (2004): 39–80; and Pekacz, ed., Musical Biography:
Towards New Paradigms (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006).
8. The most extended study of Czerny’s pedagogical activity and influence
remains Wehmeyer, Carl Czerny, esp. 85–180. See also James Parakilas, “A History of
Lessons and Practicing,” in Parakilas et al., Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with
the Piano (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 135–52.
Chapter One

Carl Czerny and Post-Classicism

Otto Biba

“What would have happened, if . . .” is not a question that meets scholarly stan-
dards. But nevertheless, permit me to begin this scholarly contribution with the
following question: What would have happened if Schubert had completed the
symphony he drafted in October and November of 1828—in other words,
immediately before his death? Even more: what if it had then immediately
become musical common property? How would the history of music in the nine-
teenth century have progressed?
Pointless questions. Schubert did not complete this symphony, whose drafts
anticipate almost everything of importance in the development of nineteenth-
century music up to Gustav Mahler. It did not become musical common prop-
erty; the existence of these drafts has only become known since 1978. The
history of music was thus spared this radical leap from Schubert to Mahler; it was
able to develop slowly, and the question as to what would have happened with
Schumann or Brahms is superfluous.1
All the same, this pointless and unscholarly question can point out one fact
quite clearly, and that is why we allow it here: the chain of individuals who cham-
pioned (often radical) innovation in music in Vienna from preclassicism to
Franz Schubert, and who were allowed to do so because they were thanked
rather than blamed for those innovations, was broken with Schubert’s sudden
death. Like nowhere else, for some three generations, exponents of the avant-
garde had lived in Vienna—although naturally not everything that was com-
posed here belonged to the avant-garde. Experiments were made; new things
were done. But only up to Schubert’s last symphonic draft.
The last two exponents of the avant-garde were Beethoven and Schubert—
despite all their differences, we name them together here. By the 1820s at the
latest, Beethoven became a monument whose oeuvre was respected as a whole,
even if individual works were not always understood. Although Schubert was per-
formed much more frequently and was much more present on the musical
scene than we have long been led to believe, those of his works that were too
12 ❧ otto biba

unusual were not able to find acceptance. To give only one example: the first
public performance of his “Great” C-Major Symphony on March 12, 1829, at a
“Concert Spirituel” in Vienna (after a private performance in 1827) was effec-
tively ignored; it was passed over in such silence that to this day the legend can
still circulate that this symphony was only discovered by Robert Schumann in
Vienna in 1838 and then performed for the first time under Mendelssohn in
Leipzig in 1839.2
So until 1827 or 1828, there were two composers in Vienna who held high the
banner of musical progress. And then there were none. With their death, the
national policy of the Austrian state chancellor of the time, Prince Clemens von
Metternich—the principle of preservation and persistence—in effect spread to
music, and for a remarkably long time: until Brahms appeared in Vienna.
Metternich believed that the peace established for Austria and Europe as a
whole by the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15, after the long and dire times of
the Napoleonic wars, could only endure if every change to the present situation
was absolutely prevented: persist in the current political and social conditions
and thereby preserve peace as well as prosperity. Both make the population
happy; every change, even if it is called progress, could entail the danger of
bringing about new misfortunes. In theory, such considerations of national pol-
icy might even seem plausible, but in practice they inevitably led to the revolu-
tions of 1848.
In literature, severe censorship prevented any truly progressive thought, or
even any thought just termed progressive, any critical comment, any question-
ing of given facts, any change in the status quo. Musical works as well had to be
presented to the censorship authorities before publication; however, as far as we
know they intervened only in texted works, not in the music itself. Nevertheless,
the general mood was such that progress in music was only sought in very few
individual works by a few composers, or by the two musical loners Beethoven
and Schubert. For the time being—although this was to change as 1848 drew
near—the population had no objection to Metternich’s policy of preservation
and persistence, and there was even less criticism of the consequences this men-
tality had for the arts. After the important turning point of the Congress of
Vienna (originally quite a positive event), Vienna became a stronghold of
“Klassizismus” in the arts in general and in music in particular. In German,
“Klassizismus” means the perpetuation of principles of style that have been rec-
ognized as “classical,” in other words, as exemplary. These could come from
Haydn or Mozart, or a little bit later (in the thirties) from Beethoven or even
Schubert. There was no general belief in progress. Soon after 1815, innovations
were tolerated only if they were by Beethoven; the difficulties he, too, had in this
connection are well-known, and even a genius such as Schubert was at first able
to gain acceptance for his innovations only with difficulty.
This persistence and preservation in music, this musical “Klassizismus” (post-
classicism) led to epigonism—and here I use a term that is today almost always
carl czerny and post-classicism ❧ 13

employed in a negative sense as a simple description, without any evaluative con-

notation. Even if one or the other new harmonic turn of phrase does appear
between 1828 and 1862—in other words, between Schubert’s death and
Brahms’s first arrival in Vienna—nothing really new was composed, or at least
no composition with really new features was brought before the public. The rea-
son for this last distinction will be clear when I come to Carl Czerny. For the first
time in many years, then, after 1827 or 1828, there was no outstanding compo-
sitional personality in Vienna. Musical life flourished as before, and even
became richer and more active in some respects. But it had lost its curiosity, joy,
and interest in progress; already after 1815, only remnants of those qualities
persisted.
The typical Viennese friend and consumer of music of the period between
Schubert and Brahms was recognized as characteristic of the city by Karl
Landsteiner, its astute portraitist:

If possible he attends a concert or at least one musical performance every day. . . . If he

doesn’t go to the opera in the evening [public concerts were more or less generally not
held in the evening, but at midday] he organizes a little musical soirée in his apart-
ment. He himself plays the viola if need be and sings the first tenor or the second bass,
depending on circumstances. Incidentally, he is more a theoretician than a practi-
tioner, as he says himself. But he knows everything that relates to music, knows all the
more or less well-known works of musical art. . . . He knew Beethoven and knows a lot
of anecdotes about him. Schubert had been to school with him (he says), a fact of
which he is quite proud. . . . He prides himself on having heard all the important mas-
terpieces of musical art. . . . If The Magic Flute or Fidelio are being performed at the
opera, he assumes a solemn mien. He quietly says: “A festive day for us—musicians!”
Mozart’s Requiem moves him to tears and Beethoven’s great Mass makes him emo-
tionally ill with excitement. He knows all Schubert’s lieder by heart and sings them to
himself when he takes a walk. 3

Landsteiner was himself born only in 1835; his naturally somewhat ironic
description makes clear that this typical consumer of music, one of the genera-
tion molded by Metternich’s ideas, only listens to a new work in the opera or the
concert hall if it was preceded by considerable publicity, and that in the concert
hall he has a passion for Beethoven and Mozart or for comparisons with them.
Alice Hanson’s contribution to this volume provides more detailed informa-
tion about life in Vienna in Carl Czerny’s time, but these short and quite basic
preliminary remarks about the political, social, and thus also the artistic situa-
tion in Vienna at the time Carl Czerny created his works are necessary in order
to attempt to explain Carl Czerny’s fate as a composer.
The Wunderkind Carl Czerny was marveled at and recognized as a pianist and
as a composer. But when Czerny as an adult tried to go his own way as a com-
poser, he quite evidently encountered difficulties. His own way? It even seems to
me that what was accepted when Beethoven did it was not appreciated if Czerny
was the author. Beethoven apparently enjoyed a kind of fool’s privilege—I have
14 ❧ otto biba

already mentioned that he and Schubert were respected as “loners” of the avant-
garde—but what they were allowed to do was not allowed to everyone.
I will provide only a few examples. In 1822, Czerny was rebuked by a critic (as
were many contemporary composers) for writing enharmonic changes in his
Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 7; for instance, he lets a G be followed by an A. Even
Johann Georg Mattheson’s Vollkommener Kapellmeister of 1739 was cited: “Only a
bungler may sin against orthography.”4 That Joseph Haydn had used such
enharmonic changes forty years before did not matter. In 1822, this was evi-
dently progressiveness not permitted to a young composer presenting his first
piano sonata. It was also criticized “that the author at some points writes paral-
lel octaves, apparently quite intentionally, and quite ugly-sounding ones, with
suspensions that are sharp and shrill, and he really does overdo passing tones
and appoggiaturas.”5 That he “sometimes modulates rather sharply” is barely
tolerated.6
In 1827, in a review of Czerny’s Opus 83, the romance from Sir Walter Scott’s
“The Lady of the Lake” for voice and piano, we can read: “The harmonically
sharp passing notes in the short postlude of every stanza seem . . . inappropriate
to us.”7 In the same year, an overture by Carl Czerny was such a fiasco in a con-
cert of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde that the parts for the orchestra were
thrown away immediately after the performance because the organizers were
sure that the work would never be performed again. And why this rejection?
Because Czerny—thus the critics—“tries to compose in Beethoven’s style.”8 But
what Beethoven is permitted is permitted to no one else.
Czerny had more luck with his new piano trio in this year; it had its first per-
formance on April 25, 1827, in a subscription concert of the Schuppanzigh
Quartet with the composer at the piano. What was praised about the work was
that it was clear and intelligible and uncommonly rewarding for the players and
the public.9 So what does one want in the concert hall? No surprises, please, and
nothing that could cause difficulties to the listener in understanding the music.
Certainly nothing daring. And when was this said so clearly? Not even a month
after Beethoven’s death. I have purposely selected these examples from the year
1827, because, as I noted above, this year constitutes a turning point. No suc-
cessor of Beethoven—as a progressive avant-garde composer—is wanted for the
time being, and any further development beyond him even less. What
Beethoven had done was his own affair, and was now concluded. Some works by
Beethoven that appeared incomprehensible had already caused enough suffer-
ing, and much of Schubert could only be taken note of with a shake of one’s
head. One expects fewer difficulties when consuming the music of other com-
posers, and most definitely no problems, not even anything unusual. Carl
Czerny, the critics and the public learned, can offer that. And that is what they
want to hear from him.
Czerny had been following these expectations of the public as well as of the
critics for quite a while anyway, and did so even more consistently in the future.
carl czerny and post-classicism ❧ 15

He offered the public what it wanted from him and held back everything that
could bother it.
The highest compliment in this respect appeared in the Leipzig Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung as early as 1828. Its editor, Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, wrote this
of him: “Herr Czerny is without any doubt one of the composers who are exceed-
ingly well-liked by a large part of the musical public.”10 Only one composer, he
continues, is liked by the public as well as Czerny: Rossini. Does what applies to
Rossini apply as well to Czerny?

The crowd is as a rule most vividly affected by that which is most to its liking. It must
thus be that which is in keeping with the times that these darlings of the day are able
to represent so skillfully. And so it is with these two. In what, now, does this consist? The
oppression of days not long gone by felt by most, the burden still felt by some, has
brought most people to seek light recreation that diverts the spirit from the serious side
of life after their occupation full of cares; they prefer to be numbed, as it were, by an
agreeable sensual stimulus so that they forget unpleasant reality for a short while with-
out reflection of any kind.11

Here, “in keeping with the times” means not only relevant to the present but
also modern. And the chosen music for the times is that which relieves the
oppression of days not long gone by—the more than twenty years of war in
Europe that ended with the Congress of Vienna in 1815—and the worries of
everyday life in the present: “Even a deeper feeling [expressed by music] that
gives rise to thoughts only too easily and quickly leads to immersion in them,
seems wearisome to them. . . . It is considered an exertion, and exertions have
been endured long enough.”12 Nobody understands that better than Rossini
and Czerny, and nobody can better offer the public the music it wants than these
two. These sentences, written in 1828, perfectly document the artistic effects
and analogies of Metternich’s political maxims, which he formulated for all of
Europe and the observation of which he strictly supervised in Austria.
Czerny now definitely avoided confronting the public with works that were too
demanding; he offered the public what it expected of him and let his works that
were termed problematical be considered youthful transgressions; he was happy
to be deemed a fashionable composer and thereby became not only a famous
man but also a very rich one. His reputation was built on pleasing music that led
hearers to forget all their cares, and on didactic works that helped everyone
reach the educational ideal that the mastery of playing the piano was taken to be.
In the thirties, people slowly became used to Beethoven’s more complicated
works as well. His style was no longer considered to be utterly and uniquely avant-
garde. This also allowed Czerny to come forward with one or the other work in
Beethoven’s vein, but then again no one wanted him to continue Beethoven,
although he was esteemed and recognized as an apostle of Beethoven.13
However, Czerny also wrote works that move on from Beethoven, that con-
tinue in his path, works that are not only agreeable but also stirring and thought
16 ❧ otto biba

provoking. These are works that anticipate developments we know only from the
second half of the nineteenth century (e.g., effects of instrumentation in his sec-
ond piano concerto from the year 1812) or that show him as a Viennese
Mendelssohn or Schumann (as in some of his string quartets). But he did not pub-
lish such works. We have no evidence that they were performed, and if so, not
in public. Their autograph scores were found in his estate and came (following
his last will) into the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. For
about ten or fifteen years, the musical public has become increasingly interested
in them. They are performed, published, and recorded on CDs all over the
world. The Czerny Festival at which the present chapter was first presented as a
paper included several such works, not published by Czerny but found in his
estate, and the contrast between these and a selection of works that are pleasant,
on the one hand, and didactic, on the other hand—the works that Czerny’s con-
temporaries knew and esteemed—is truly remarkable.14
So Czerny presents himself to us as a composer with two faces. One is that with
which he had success with his contemporaries, and the other is the one his con-
temporaries did not know or did not want to know. In other words, mainly the
face of those works that were found in his estate.
Was Czerny an opportunist? Did he deny or hide his actual artistic ambition
and cater to the spirit of the times? I must certainly answer both questions in the
negative. Every composer wants to have success, wants to make himself known to
the public and to be heard; he is thus a child of his social environment. It was
for this reason that Czerny wrote his pleasing and classicistic works. Besides
these, he also wrote works for his own sake, works that he could not expect to be
public successes: l’art pour l’art. In these works, he also shows us a certain pro-
gressiveness. After 1848, when new, even revolutionary, things had their place in
music again, indeed were sought after, he could have put them before the pub-
lic again. And he did with a few examples. But by then he was already an old
man, already labeled with a certain role in public. He would have been the last
person of whom anything new would have been expected. Perhaps he now also
suffered from the handicap that Vienna now had no suitable publisher. Vienna
had lost its formerly dominant position in European music publishing after
around 1830. The music publishing houses that still existed there around 1850
had degenerated into insignificance. Already in the thirties and forties, Czerny
had increasingly moved first to Leipzig and then to London to find publishers,
even for his pleasant and marketable works.
So Czerny was a fashionable composer—but fashionable does not mean pro-
gressive. This is by no means evil, and Czerny ought not to be blamed for it. But
he was also a composer of artistically more ambitious works that were not taken
note of by the public, or barely so. For instance, in 1836, the Leipzig Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung seemed astonished to learn that Czerny had also written
orchestral works; he was only known as a composer for the piano.15 Czerny was
thus, remarkably, one of the few well-known composers in musical history who
carl czerny and post-classicism ❧ 17

composed not only for specific purposes of performance or publication but also
for the desk drawer. And it is precisely the works composed for the desk drawer
that interest us in particular today. (They can almost always be recognized by
their lack of an opus number.)
Nothing suggests that this made him unhappy. This may be connected with
his modest character: he never forced himself on the public or presented him-
self there. In those days, it was expected that performers as well as composers
organized concerts themselves and presented their musical skills or their newest
compositions there. Beethoven did so regularly, as did almost all the composers
and pianists of that generation. Even Schubert, who did not want to, was per-
suaded by friends to hold such a self-organized composition concert in 1828,
the year of his death. Only Czerny never appeared as the organizer of his own
concert, either as a composer or as a pianist. He was also not able to conduct, an
ability that was expected of every composer in those days; perhaps this was one
more reason not to organize composition concerts himself.16
Czerny lived during the Biedermeier, and his entire personality was typical of
that period. Originally, “Biedermeier” was the contemptuous retrospective des-
ignation of somebody who had completely conformed to Metternich’s maxims.
It became common after 1848, used to evoke the traits required in that era:
quiet, avoidance of public self-presentation, satisfaction with the status quo,
modesty, and contentment with things as they are and as one has them. Travel
was also suspicious in a political system devoted to quiet, preservation, and per-
sistence, and here too Czerny conformed. He left Vienna only three times in all:
in 1836 he traveled to Leipzig, in 1837 to Paris and London—it is not hard to
see that these three destinations were cities in which he now found his most
important publishers—and in 1846 his destination was the Austrian part of
Upper Italy, presumably because of his contacts with publishers in Milan.17 It is
also typical of such a Biedermeier personality that he did not travel alone. He
undertook the trip to Paris and London, where he played piano four hands
together with Her Majesty the Queen, with the famous Viennese piano manu-
facturer Conrad Graf; he went to Upper Italy with the Viennese Court
Kapellmeister Gottfried Preyer.18
It is unanimously reported that Czerny also had further “Biedermeier” traits:
he was never to be seen on the street unless he was on his way to his piano stu-
dents.19 He was never seen at engagements of social importance.20 While he did
hold a musical salon from 1816 to 1823 every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.,
and thus had friends for making music and guests around him, he was never
seen in other salons. 21 He had no conspicuous pastimes, but very many books;
he was very well-read and had a generally admired musical as well as general
education.22 He always dressed very correctly, but in an old-fashioned way.23 Only
once did he change: in 1819, when he fell in love. He had modern clothing
made, bought jewelry24 and even a riding horse in order to be able to ride to the
home of his beloved, who lived at some distance from him. But after a few weeks,
18 ❧ otto biba

she indicated to him that his hopes were futile. Czerny sold the horse and
dressed as before.
This is not a personality from whom the public would expect avant-garde
music. Whoever dresses and lives like that must surely find the traditional, the
existing, to be pleasant. He is, in short, predestined for the musical post-classicism
that audiences wanted. When the young Czerny’s few attempts to pursue other
paths had no success, he modestly acceded to the wishes of the public.
When his great love did not accept him, he cast aside the modern clothing
intended for her and again adopted old-fashioned dress. The love for this
adored one presumably still had a place in his heart, but he kept these feelings
to himself. When the public did not appreciate modern aspects of his music, he
catered to it with classicistic, or, in other words, retrospective, music. He obvi-
ously also had in his heart the unshakable artistic feeling that he was able to, per-
haps even had to, write other music as well, but he kept this music mainly to
himself even when it was written down.
In an obituary of Czerny in 1857, Josef Klemm wrote somewhat mockingly:
“He composed piano études à la Clementi and Charles Mayer, fugues à la S.
Bach, quartets à la Mozart, masses à la Haydn, and besides these again pot-
pourris over popular operatic melodies of every kind.”25 What he wrote à la
Czerny was not retrospective at all, but the industrious musician and musical
journalist Klemm knew nothing of this. In 1857, post-classicism had become
completely unfashionable, and everything new was being sought in music, but
there was not yet anyone in Vienna who could truly offer that. Czerny, who had
been considered only a classicist, had become uninteresting, a curiosity of days
gone by.
The obituary of Czerny by Leopold Alexander Zellner, musician, writer, edi-
tor of a music journal, and a few years later general secretary of the Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde in Wien, is written with slightly more love and understanding.
At least he knows and mentions that there are supposedly a large number of
compositions in Czerny’s estate of which the public has no knowledge. But he
found it more important to explain how Czerny’s great productivity of the pleas-
ant works for which he was known and famous could allegedly be explained:

He was seldom working on fewer than three or four works at the same time. On one
desk, for example, he would draft the Gloria of a mass, when he was finished with the
page, he would not wait until it dried in order to continue his drafting, but went to a
second desk to continue a piano étude, from there to a third, where he, for example,
completed the last page of an operatic potpourri. During this time, the page of the
score of the mass had dried, so he continued his Gloria, then to do the same with the
étude.26

If true at all, this anecdote represents just one side of Czerny’s productivity; the
other manifests itself in many autographs of his unpublished works in the estate,
which are working scores that clearly show that they were not created in this way.
carl czerny and post-classicism ❧ 19

Perhaps the renaissance of Carl Czerny discernible all over the world in recent
years can be explained by the fact that we have come to mistrust labels in every
field of art; we have recognized that an artist cannot be characterized by a
catchword. Moreover, the occupation with the art of music—and only this art—
was determined for a long time by the idea that the only important and inter-
esting composers were those who had broken with tradition and invented
something new. Today, the roles, the importance, and the tasks of composers are
seen in a more differentiated way.
All of this makes it possible for us to see Carl Czerny too in a more differenti-
ated way: not only as a composer of didactic piano works, for which he has never
been forgotten, but also as a composer of vocal, chamber, and orchestral music;
not one-sidedly as a famous historic pianist with a certain place in the history of
interpretation practice, or as a meritorious student of Beethoven.27 We can also
better separate and judge the different levels of style in Czerny’s work; placed in
a broader context, his compositional development and persistence find an
explanation that is as convincing as it is fascinating. His post-classicism docu-
ments in exemplary fashion a political and social phenomenon in the music his-
tory of these times, one that has received far too little notice in the musicological
literature. His progressive but mainly unpublished works fill the gap between
Schubert and Brahms in Viennese music history. For all these reasons, our schol-
arly and practical occupation with Carl Czerny is of real importance.

Notes
1. For a consideration of this problem from another point of view see Otto Biba,
“Johannes Brahms und das Wiener Musikleben in seiner Zeit,” in Johannes Brahms:
Quellen-Text-Rezeption-Interpretation. Internationaler Brahms-Kongreß Hamburg 1997, ed.
Friedhelm Krummacher and Michael Struck (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1999),
57–69.
2. Otto Biba, “Franz Schubert und die Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien,”
in Schubert-Kongreß Wien 1978, ed. Otto Brusatti (Graz, Akademische Druck- und
Verlagsanstalt, 1979), 23–36. Otto Biba, “Die Uraufführung von Schuberts Großer
C-Dur-Symphonie in Wien 1829. Ein glücklicher Aktenfund im Schubert Jahr,”
Musikblätter der Wiener Philharmoniker 51 (1997): 287–91.
3. Karl Landsteiner, Das Babel des Ostens: Bilder aus dem Wiener Leben (Würzburg:
Leo Woerl, 1871), 158–59: “Er wohnt, wenn es möglich ist, täglich einem Konzerte
oder doch wenigstens irgendeiner Musikaufführung bei. . . . Geht er abends nicht in
die Oper, so veranstaltet er eine kleine musikalische Soirée in seiner Wohnung. Er
selbst spielt zur Noth die Bratsche und singt, je nach Umständen, den ersten Tenor
oder den zweiten Baß. Uebrigens ist er, wie er selbst sagt, mehr Theoretiker als
Praktiker. Aber er weiß Alles, was sich auf die Musik bezieht. . . . Er hat den
Beethoven noch gekannt und weiß eine Menge Anekdoten von ihm. Schubert war
sein Schulgenosse und darauf thut er sich sehr viel zu Gute. . . . Er rühmt sich, alle
berühmten Meisterwerke der Tonkunst schon gehört zu haben.
20 ❧ otto biba

“. . . Wird im Operntheater die Zauberflöte oder Fidelio aufgeführt, dann nimmt

sein Gesicht einen feierlichen Ausdruck an. Er sagt leise: Ein Festtag für uns—
Musiker!’ Mozarts Requiem rührt ihn zu Thränen und Beethovens große Messe
macht ihn krank. Schuberts Lieder kann er alle auswendig und trällert sie vor sich
hin, wenn er spazieren geht.”
4. Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 24 (1822): 384: “Noch wünschte
Ref[erent] . . . die Vermeidung selbst des einzigen auf S. 37. vorkommenden
Verstoßes gegen die Orthographie. Man sieht zwar wohl ganz deutlich, dass H[er]r
Cz[erny] absichtlich so schrieb, aber falsch ist und bleibt es und schlimm obendrein,
wenn auch manche neuere, selbst grosse Componisten, aus sonderbarer Laune, bey
enharmonischen Modulationen es ähnlich machen. . . . Das barsche Wort des alten
Mattheson’s (wahrscheinlich in seinem vollkommenen Kapellmeister, den man jetzt
ziemlich vergessen hat, obgleich mancher Kapellmeister noch recht viel aus dem
originellen Werke lernen könnte) ‘nur ein Stümper darf gegen die Orthographie
sündigen’ verdient daher wohl Beherzigung. Dass übrigens diese Exspectoration
weniger dem H[er]rn Cz[erny] als Andern gilt, sey hier noch zum Ueberfluss
bemerkt.”
5. Ibid., col. 383: “Zu tadeln aber ist, dass der Verf[asser] an einigen Stellen
offenbar ganz absichtlich Octaven, und zwar recht übelklingende, macht, mit
Vorhalten, nämlich scharf und grell distonirenden und mit durchgehenden und
Wechselnoten es doch wirklich allzu weit treibt.”
6. Ibid.: “Im Einzelnen ist zu loben, dass der Verf[asser] wenn er auch zuweilen
etwas scharf modulirt, es doch nie aufs Gerathewohl thut, sondern immer mit guter
Absicht, kunstgerecht und ohne grell zu werden, dass manche gute ungewöhnliche
Harmonieen und Harmonieenfolgen hin und wieder erscheinen.”
7. Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 29 (1827): 212: “Die harmonisch-scharfen
Durchgangsnoten in dem kurzen Nachspiele jeder Strophe scheinen uns in dieser
einfachen Schreibart nicht am rechten Orte zu seyn.”
8. Ibid., col. 99: “Eine neue Ouverture von Carl Czerny wurde gegeben. Der
Verfasser ist gegenwärtig en vogue als Clavier-Componist, und wahrlich nicht mit
Unrecht. Hier hat er jedoch eine Selbständigkeit verleugnet, und in Beethovens Styl
zu dichten sich bemüht; in wie fern solches gelang, oder auch nur gelingen konnte,
wird ihn wohl der Erfolg gelehrt haben.”
9. Ibid., col. 234: “Es ist höchst brillant, dabey sehr klar, verständlich, und für die
Spieler ungemein dankbar gehalten; . . . H[er]r Carl Czerny ist mit Recht allgemein
beliebt und geschätzt, so zu sagen: in der Mode. Ref[erent] selbst gehört zu seinen
wärmsten Verehrern; darum drängt es ihn aber, eine wohlgemeinte Besorgniss
auszusprechen. Wohl mag es schmeichelhaft seyn, als fruchtbringender Autor
verehrt zu werden, so wie kein vernünftiger Mensch den sich mehrenden Ertrag
seines Fleißes verachtet. Wer aber die Novitäten wie Nüsse vom Baume schüttelt,
jeden Monat einige in die Welt schickt, spielt ein seinem Rufe Gefahr drohendes
Spiel; denn alles kann ja nicht gleich gehaltvoll seyn, und, selbst ein unversiegbares
Productions-Vermögen angenommen, so wird doch das Publickum durch
Uebersättigung lau, und allzuhäufige Waaren fallen im Preise.”
10. Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 30 (1828): 233: “H[er]r Czerny gehört ohne
allen Zweifel unter die Componisten, die einem großen Theile des musikalischen
Publicums ausnehmend gefallen.”
11. Ibid., col. 233–34: “Die Menge wird in der Regel nur von dem am lebhaftesten
ergriffen, was den Neigungen derselben gerade am meisten zusagt. Es wird also das
carl czerny and post-classicism ❧ 21

Zeitgemässe seyn, was solche Lieblinge der Zeit sich geschickt anzueignen wussten.
Und so ist es auch mit Beyden. Das für die Meisten Drückende nicht lange entflo-
hener Tage, ja für Manche noch fortdauernd Lastende hat die Mehrzahl dahin
gebracht, dass sie nach ihren sorgenvollen Beschäftigungen eine leichte, das
Gemüth vom Ernst des Lebens abziehende Erholung suchen; sie ziehen es vor, sich
durch einen gefälligen Sinnenreiz gewissermaassen zu betäuben, damit sie auf kurze
Zeit ohne alles Nachdenken die unangenehme Wirklichkeit vergessen.” Concerning
the comparison of Czerny and Rossini, the article reports that: “Czerny ist unter den
Clavier-Componisten eben das, was Rossini unter den Opern-Componisten ist. Wer
aber, wie die beyden Männer, das Publicum so aufzuregen und für sich zu gewinnen
versteht, muß nothwendig irgend etwas wesentlich Gutes empfangen und ausge-
bildet haben, denn das völlig Leere ergreift Niemanden.”
12. Ibid., col. 234: “Selbst ein tieferes, bleibenderes Gefühl, das nur zu leicht
Gedanken erweckt und sie bald wieder in sich selbst versenkt, scheint ihnen beschw-
erlich; . . . man achtet es für Mühe, die man schon über die Maasse zu haben
wähnt.”
13. See the chapter by Ingrid Fuchs in this volume.
14. It was a pleasure for me to inform the festival about such works and to offer
the possibility to put them on the program.
15. Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 38 (1836): 231: “Niemals hat es sich getroffen,
dass wir zur Aufführung einer Ouverture oder irgend eines dem vollen Orchester
allein zugehörigen Werkes dieses Componisten gekommen wären. Es würde uns
daher Freude machen, den viel thätigen Mann auch in dieser Wirksamkeit kennen
zu lernen.”
16. Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 30 (1828): 31 (Czerny was conducting one of
his masses during a church service in the Augustiner-Hof-Pfarrkirche in Vienna):
“Der Autor weiß besser sein Instrument zu behandeln, als er sich aufs Dirigiren ver-
steht. Wenn ein Unfall geschehen wäre, was einigemale nahe daran war, so hätte er
nur sich selbst, einzig und allein, die Schuld davon beyzumessen gehabt.”
17. Ferdinand Luib, “Karl Czernys Nekrolog,” Wiener Theaterzeitung 51 (1857): 705:
“1836 machte er eine Erholungsreise nach Leipzig, 1837 nach London und Paris, und
1846 in die Lombardei. Seitdem hat er seine Vaterstadt nicht mehr verlassen.”
18. Leopold Alexander Zellner, “Carl Czerny †” Blätter für Musik, Theater und Kunst
3 (1857): 230.
19. Ibid.: “Czerny, der nie auf der Straße zu sehen war, außer wenn von einer
Lection zur andern ging.”
20. Eugène Eiserle, “Carl Czerny. Eine biographische Skizze,” Neue Wiener Musik-
Zeitung 6 (1857): 141: “. . . nur der Komposition gewidmet, was ihm gleichsam
Lebensbedürfniß geworden, und zwar um so mehr, da er unverheirathet war, weder
Geschwister noch Verwandte hatte, auch an der Geselligkeit keinen Antheil nahm.”
21. Luib, “Karl Czernys Nekrolog,” 705: “Um seinen Schülern Gelegenheit zu
geben, ihre Fähigkeiten vor Zuhörern zu zeigen, begann er 1816 in der geräumigen
Wohnung seiner Eltern (in der Krugerstraße) musikalische Zirkel zu veranstalten,
welche anfänglich blos von den Eltern und Verwandten der sich Producirenden,
bald aber von einer zahlreicheren Gesellschaft (meist aus höhern und hohen
Ständen) besucht wurden. . . . Diese musikalischen Zirkel fanden jeden Sonntag
Vormittag von 10 bis 1 Uhr Statt, und dauerten ununterbrochen bis 1823 fort, in
welchem Jahre sie Czerny jedoch der zunehmenden Krankheit seiner Mutter wegen,
aufgeben mußte.”
22 ❧ otto biba

22. Zellner, “Carl Czerny †,” 230–31, reports: “. . . die so gänzlich abgeschlossene,
jede Zerstreuung und Zeitvergeudung meidende Lebensweise, wie sie Czerny sein
Leben lang geführt hat . . . er selbst hatte außer seiner Liebhaberei für Bücher,
soviel wie gar keine Bedürfnisse”; and Luib, “Karl Czernys Nekrolog,” p. 705 notes
that: “. . . außer seinem Fache, in welchem er gewiß einen europäischen Ruf sich
errungen hat, ausgebreitete Kenntnisse besaß, daß er ein in jeder Beziehung mit
dem intellectuellen Standpunkt unserer Zeit befreundeter Mann war.”
23. Ibid., 230: “. . . ein kleines betagtes schmächtiges Männchen, mit goldener
Brille, tief in das Haupt gedrücktem Hut, der runden Schnupftabakdose in der
Hand, sorgfältig aber nach etwas altmodischem Schnitt gekleidet.”
24. Ibid.: “Sein ganzes Wesen war verändert, der Schneider mußte elegantes
Gewand, der Juwelier Ringe und Ketten liefern.”
25. Without title, Monatsschrift für Theater und Musik 3 (1857): 402.
26. Zellner, “Carl Czerny †,” 230.
27. That the subject of Czerny and Beethoven is more complex, deeper, and more
interesting than the Beethoven literature has tried to make us believe up to now, is
the topic of the chapter by Ingrid Fuchs in this volume.
Chapter Two

Czerny’s Vienna
Alice M. Hanson

Most of what we know about Carl Czerny’s life comes from his memoirs (1842).1
Written in retrospect when he was a retired but well-known music teacher and
composer, the recollections function more as a bildungsroman (biographical
novel) than as a real history. They focus on those who shaped his education, his
career, and his teaching methods. As a Viennese insider he regularly drops
names of the famous personalities he knew, especially Beethoven and Liszt. He
also deems himself qualified to evaluate certain eras as “golden ages” and to
label critical style changes in Beethoven’s music. That his writing says so little
about his milieu and the turbulent political events that surrounded his life may
testify to his narrow, professional intent. But it may also have been a calculated
move to ensure that his memoirs could be published, since in the prerevolu-
tionary Austria of 1842, censors could have banned any observation that strayed
from official stances on current events. Czerny lived in Vienna alongside a sur-
prising number of important musicians, writers, artists, and actors. The wealth
of research on their lives and works coincides with numerous examples of nine-
teenth-century Viennese travel literature and extensive Austrian archival infor-
mation from the period. My work draws on all of these and seeks to provide the
wider context of Czerny’s life. Throughout, I have used the composer’s own
dates and periodization, adding only an extra period to cover his last years.

First Period (1791–1806)—Birth to Age Fifteen

Austria’s “Enlightened” emperor Joseph II died the year before Czerny’s birth
and was succeeded by his brother Leopold II, who undid many of his reforms.
Leopold died in 1792, after only two years on the throne, and the crown passed
to his son Franz II. Early in his reign, postrevolutionary France became the
empire’s principal antagonist, as Napoleon emerged first as a military leader
and then as a new emperor. By 1805 his forces defeated the Austrian army,
24 ❧ alice m. hanson

occupied Vienna, and thus ended the Holy Roman Empire. Franz II became
Franz I, Emperor of Austria.
Although Czerny’s origins were far removed from the elevated circles of inter-
national politics, these events would shape the circumstances in which he lived
his early years. Carl’s father Wenzel was a Bohemian-born musician who had
delayed his musical career by first serving a fifteen-year term in the artillery divi-
sion of the military because his parents were poor.2 In 1784 he met his future
wife Maria Ruzitschka in Brünn (Moravia). Their move to Vienna in 1786 was a
part of waves of Czech and Slovak influxes that brought more than 6,000 new
inhabitants into the city each year.3 They first lived in Leopoldstadt (on the
Waggasse)—a northern Viennese suburb with concentrations of Jewish and
Bohemian families and comparatively inexpensive housing. Carl was born there
on February 21, 1791, and baptized the same day in the local Roman Catholic
parish church, St. Leopold.
Six months later, Wenzel Czerny moved his family to Poland after he received
a twelve-year contract to teach piano at the estate of a provincial aristocrat.4 But
the political problems accompanying the impending third partition of Poland
between Russia, Austria, and Prussia sent them back to Vienna in 1795, where
they again settled in Leopoldstadt.
Vienna’s population in 1793 was about 270,000, with about 50,000 people liv-
ing in the inner city.5 The city’s architecture and twelve-foot-high walls with
guarded gates reflected its old-fashioned past, but modern concerns about the
spread of liberal ideas and revolution brought new restrictions to city life.
Austria’s secret police were enlarged and reorganized, and in 1795 censorship
laws were extended. Under the new laws, published dedications, lithographs,
maps, playing cards, drawings, inscriptions on houses and gravestones were now
censored by state authorities.6 In 1800–1801, for example, Austrian censors
banned certain new German Romantic literature, including Ludwig Tieck’s
Romantisiche Dichtung and Friedrich Schlegel’s novel Florentin, as well as a new
edition of Friedrich Schiller’s Maria Stuart.7
But if—indeed perhaps because—literary and intellectual activity were stifled,
these were times of growth for music and the music business in Vienna.
Beethoven settled in the city in 1792, bringing with him new musical styles and
challenging ideas. New piano factories were established by Johann Andreas
Streicher (in 1794) and Conrad Graf (in 1804). New music publishing houses
opened, including Cappi (in 1796) and Haslinger (1801).8 A prominent role in
this activity was also played by immigrant musicians like the Czernys. Carl’s mem-
oirs suggest that his family’s social and musical lives revolved around fellow
Bohemian musicians such as Johann Wanhal, Joseph Lipavsky, and Abbé Joseph
Gelinek (present at Carl’s baptism).9
In this setting little Carl, who still spoke only Czech, began learning to play the
piano from his father. The nine-year-old boy debuted at a summer Augarten con-
cert in 1800 playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C Minor, K. 491. These concerts,
czerny’s vienna ❧ 25

held outdoors in the public gardens in Leopoldstadt since around 1782, fea-
tured a mostly amateur orchestra playing symphonies and concerti. Since
Mozart premiered a number of his works here, it probably seemed fitting that
the young boy play one of the master’s works in a more informal, public set-
ting.10 In the same year, a compatriot, court theater violinist Wenzel Krumpholz,
introduced Carl to Beethoven, with whom Czerny then studied piano until
1802. According to eyewitness accounts, Carl and his father comprised only a
tiny fraction of the Viennese population engaged in music lessons. Beethoven
wrote to his friend Gottlob Wiedebein in 1804 that “Vienna is swarming with
teachers who try to make a living by giving lessons.” Indeed, Czerny biographer
Grete Wehmeyer asserts that around 1,600 piano teachers were active in Vienna
at this time, compared to fewer than 500 doctors.11
By 1805 Carl’s piano skills had progressed so rapidly that he contemplated
making a concert tour, a standard career-developing move for up-and-coming
virtuosi of the day. However, he cancelled the plans because, as his memoirs sug-
gest, his parents were too old to make the trip and the “warlike conditions of the
time” made travel too uncertain.12 This is one of the rare instances in which
external events seem to have been so dramatic that they encroached even on
Czerny’s recollection of his career; perhaps he was referring to the Battle of
Austerlitz at which Napoleon defeated the Austrian and Russian forces, or to the
uncertainty following the Peace of Pressburg, through which Austria lost the
Tyrol and all its Italian possessions. But also in 1805 Beethoven thought enough
of his talents to ask him to prepare a piano transcription of Leonore. By 1806 Carl
approached musical maturity, performing Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto and
publishing his first opus—a variation concertante for piano and violin based on
a tune by his friend Krumpholz, for which he earned 60 florins—a considerable
amount if compared with the 90 florins Beethoven himself had received for a
piano sonata two years before.13

Second Period (1806–18)—Age Fifteen to Twenty-seven

Czerny’s “second period,” which includes his early years as a professional

teacher and composer, occurred against the (again largely unmentioned) back-
drop of continued political and social turmoil. Still embroiled in Napoleonic
wars, Austrian forces again fought and lost to the French, who bombarded and
occupied Vienna for the second time during 1809 and 1810. But eventually,
Napoleon’s defeat brought a very different invasion of Vienna: the Congress of
Vienna of 1814 and 1815, which attracted a glittering array of political leaders
and their entourages to the city, both for the political restructuring of Europe
and for hours of musical entertainment. Prince Clemens Metternich, Austria’s
foreign minister, dominated the negotiations of the Congress and subsequent
Austrian political and social policies. As part of his “system” he chose Count
26 ❧ alice m. hanson

Joseph Sedlnitsky to lead the police in their crackdown on suspected revolu-

tionaries. Secret police and spies were said to be everywhere, and punishments
were severe. For example, a person involved in a duel (if he lived and was
caught by the police) could receive a sentence of twenty years in chains.
Members of outlawed secret societies could spend three days to six months in
jail. Children caught begging on the street could be jailed for up to a month,
and those picked up for public drunkenness (first offense) could receive
twenty-five lashes.14
During the difficult war years, Vienna’s population had fallen to 224,000,
among whom 8.52 percent were foreign born.15 Mortality rates soared: between
1800 and 1810, an average 71 out of 1,000 people (ca. 7 percent) died before
their twenty-fourth birthdays. Devastating inflation in 1811 led to the state’s
bankruptcy in 1816 and a severe devaluation of the currency.
But this also was an era of new associations founded by a partnership of nobles
and members of the middle class. For example, in 1810, responding to the
humanitarian needs in the city, a number of Viennese aristocratic women and
wealthy wives of businessmen organized the Damenverein for relief work. In
1812 the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society for the Friends of Music) was
founded to promote the “elevation of all branches of music” and to sponsor
annual society concerts and smaller musical evening entertainments. By 1816 the
society formed its own conservatory. Musical styles and tastes were also changing,
for while this period began with a performance of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation,
presented in 1809, by 1816 Schubert premiered his Erlkönig. Two years later
Beethoven finished his monumental new Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106.
Czerny’s memoirs once again suggest a life on which such events made little
conscious impression, although he was certainly familiar with the musical devel-
opments of the time. By age fifteen he had learned the French, Italian, and
German languages and was tutored in some literature and natural science.16 He
also had the opportunity to observe and absorb the piano technique and music
of pianist/entrepreneur Muzio Clementi of London, who came to Vienna in
1810 to meet Beethoven. During these years, Carl increasingly turned away from
performance and toward piano pedagogy. By 1815 he claims to have given
twelve lessons a day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.—a rigorous schedule he maintained
for twenty-one years. Like his father, he arranged Sunday home concerts, during
which he presumably performed all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas from memory.
During this time Beethoven entrusted his nephew Karl to Czerny for piano les-
sons. In 1816 the Czerny family took in the young piano virtuoso Anna
(Ninnete) de Belleville as a boarder and student. Her prowess and touring three
years later improved her teacher’s reputation.17 In addition, Carl continued to
compose, publishing opus numbers 3–5 in London by 1818. Accordingly, he
raised his fees, and the living conditions of his family improved, allowing them
to move to a more fashionable inner city district and to rent a more desirable
second floor apartment.18 Czerny claims that they could even afford to take
czerny’s vienna ❧ 27

summer vacations in Baden, a resort town southwest of Vienna also frequented

by Beethoven.

Third Period (1818–42)—Age Twenty-seven to Fifty-one

Czerny’s “third period” marked his establishment as a leading figure in

Viennese—and European—musical life, and it also corresponds to years of
rapid change in Viennese society. Political historians usually refer to this era as
the “Restoration,” but cultural historians call it “Biedermeier,” after the fictional
schoolmaster Gottlieb Biedermeier (i.e., a god-loving common man) featured in
a series of satirical Viennese newspaper articles around 1857. The name con-
noted a smug, self-satisfied outlook on life and bourgeois tastes in art.
The repressive practices of the Metternich regime continued; indeed,
Austrians experienced increased governmental regulation and restrictions. For
example, the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 banned student fraternities and cur-
tailed students’ opportunities to study abroad. The police action taken against
the Italian revolutionary Carbonari during the 1820s, as well as the forced disso-
lution of the humorous literary society, the Ludlamshöhle, in 1826, illustrate a
growing worry about external and internal threats to the state.19 While this last
action bespeaks a paranoia that was surely counterproductive, alienating the lit-
erary leaders of Austrian society, others may have been more warranted, at least
from the perspective of a regime whose primary concern was political stability.
The July Revolution in Paris in 1830 was followed by a Greek war for independ-
ence from Turkey—an uprising followed by young English Romantics like Lord
Byron and Shelley and equally ardent Austrian writers like Johann Senn, a close
friend of Franz Schubert; Senn was eventually exiled from Vienna, ending his
life in Innsbruck in the same year that Czerny, apparently untroubled by any
such political concerns, died in Vienna.
Vienna began this period with a population of about 260,000 (1820) and
ended it with approximately 470,000 (in 1840), a growth of about 42 percent.20
Life expectancy for a Viennese man was thirty-six to forty years, and for a
woman, forty-one to forty-five years. Because the Danube River and the city’s sys-
tem of dealing with sewage were not yet controlled, periodic epidemics were
common. Scarlet fever took 565 lives in 1820 and cholera killed about 2,000
Viennese in 1831. But lung disease was the worst epidemic: by 1840, forty-six out
of every thousand died from tuberculosis, pneumonia, and other chronic lung
ailments.21 One source even claims that in 1828, half of all the children born
died before the age of twenty.22
Manufacturing industries grew and prospered during this era. Thanks to the
introduction by C. G. Hornbostel of mechanical looms for the making of silk
after 1816, silk and velvet textiles boomed. Later cotton and linen production
made Vienna the largest industrial city in Austria.23 The city also became a
28 ❧ alice m. hanson

center for the building of machines—especially, after 1830, those powered by

steam.
Eyewitnesses repeatedly report that in Vienna social class and its distinctions
were highly defined and clearly observed during the composer’s lifetime. As an
independent piano teacher and composer, Czerny would have fit somewhere
between the so-called Bildungsbürgertum—the educated middle class (such as
professors and government officials)—and the Kleinbürgertum or petty bour-
geoisie (small business owners, butchers, bakers, and the like). The latter class
was the one in which musicians were traditionally included, but Czerny’s finan-
cial success as a pedagogue and composer placed him in circumstances more
like those of the former. Czerny and his family continued to live in the inner city
on Krugerstrasse, presumably until his parents’ deaths, when Carl moved near
the Carlskirche and finally to apartments on the Petersplatz.24 As a child he had
also had some contact with Austrian aristocrats like Prince Lichnofsky, who
requested that he play almost daily for him, and with young Count Eugen
Czernin, who allowed him to sit in on his private tutorials and meet with other
young aristocrats for evening discussions.25 He later gave piano lessons to a num-
ber of young aristocrats, such as Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, and taught
members of the so-called second society (made up of wealthy banking and
wholesalers’ families, many of them Jewish), whose salons were open to foreign
visitors and artists of distinction.
Czerny no doubt had plenty of opportunity to see Vienna’s lowest class of cit-
izens, who in 1840 made up about 70 percent of the city’s population, includ-
ing laborers, servants, and scores of destitute.26 Some of the composer’s
biographers sneer at his bourgeois Bienenfleiss (bee-like industry) in seeking out
students and turning out so many piano compositions in popular, money-
making genres, but his zeal may also have been motivated by the specter of a
quick and easy slide into poverty, amply illustrated by Vienna’s itinerant, beggar
musicians on many street corners and courtyards.
During this period—the prime of his life—Czerny fell in love with a girl called
“Resi,” judging from a passionate letter to her that was found in his papers only
after his death; but he never married.27 In that, however, he was by no means alone.
Statistics from the period show that many Austrian men did not marry, and if they
did, it was not until they turned thirty years old.28 Marriage restrictions established
by the government and the Catholic Church (the “Ehe Consens Gesetze”) con-
cerning minimal levels of education and earnings before marriage frustrated the
plans of many couples, who then simply lived together in common law marriages.
However, their children, as well as the offspring of those born to other hapless, sin-
gle women, were deemed as illegitimate by the state. In 1830, 40 percent of all the
births in Vienna were illegitimate—a figure that rose to 50 percent by 1847.29
Czerny’s “third period” also coincides with a flurry of important musical
events in Vienna. During the 1820s there were premieres of Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony and sections of the Missa Solemnis in 1824 and Schubert’s sole public
czerny’s vienna ❧ 29

concert in 1828. German and Italian operatic rivalries grew heated. In 1823 the
contrast was clear, for in September Rossini’s Semiramide was first performed in
Vienna with tumultuous success, while in October Weber’s new German grand
opera Euryanthe failed.
Musical crazes and relief concerts reflected the tastes of emerging new audi-
ences. For example, in 1828 the arrival of the first giraffe to Vienna inspired
fashion, dances, and songs à la giraffe. That same year Paganini presented vir-
tuosic violin concerts during which overwhelmed Viennese audiences cheered,
fainted, and coined new words.30 In response to a terrible flooding of the
Danube River in March 1830, which killed seventy people and left many home-
less, many benefit concerts were arranged to help the victims. For such an event,
Czerny arranged themes from Rossini’s Semiramide for sixteen pianists (eight
duets); the arrangement was played by young Viennese aristocrats.31
By the 1830s Vienna’s musical institutions and coterie of resident composers
changed. For example, moves to organize a professional philharmonic orches-
tra finally succeeded in 1842, with Otto Nicolai conducting the new ensemble.
The next year the government allowed the formation of a Männergesangverein
(men’s singing society). Such venerable composers as Antonio Salieri died in
1825, as did Beethoven in 1827 and Schubert the year after. (By 1832 Czerny
had also lost both his parents.)
During these years Czerny’s teaching and compositions gained wide recogni-
tion. In the spring of 1822 the father of Franz Liszt arranged for lessons for his
son at the usual rate of 2 florins per hour—a bargain compared to the virtuoso
Hummel, who charged 10 florins for the same length of time. Once Czerny
worked with this young, undisciplined but talented student, however, he refused
to accept any payment at all.32 A petition for a special scholarship, written by
Antonio Salieri, allowed the Liszt family to move to an apartment near his piano
teacher’s so he could take lessons every day.33
Czerny carefully planned Liszt’s Viennese piano debut, fearing what might
result from too great a success so early in the young virtuoso’s career. Liszt there-
fore debuted with performances in the knowledgeable, staid, and private salons
of the vice president of the Society for the Friends of Music, Raphael
Kiesewetter, and in the home of Joseph Hochnagel, an official in the War
Ministry.34 Only then, in December 1822, did he perform in public. The next
year Czerny introduced the young pianist to Beethoven, who was suitably
impressed. The Liszts soon left Vienna to make their fortunes in Paris, against
his teacher’s urgings.
By 1827, the English musician Edward Holmes confirms that Czerny had an
international reputation. Holmes’s travel memoirs claim that “Mr. Czerny is a
supreme pianoforte teacher and composer, and all his opinions on the subject
of his instrument are received as canon.”35 Present at Beethoven’s large funeral,
Holmes also reported seeing Czerny among the torchbearers, wearing full
mourning and white roses and lilies on his arms.
30 ❧ alice m. hanson

A young Frederic Chopin also attested to Czerny’s importance in the Viennese

musical scene when he first arrived in the city in August 1829. In letters back to
Poland, Chopin noted that the famous teacher paid him many compliments and
that the two played four-hand piano works together. To his parents, he wrote that
“Czerny is more sensitive than any of his compositions,” but to a friend he was
more overtly critical: “He’s a good fellow. But nothing more—I value Klengel’s
acquaintance more than I do that of poor Czerny. (Hush.)”36 Chopin’s second
stay in Vienna began in December 1830. He again visited Czerny but had less
patience with the teacher’s pedantic questions (“Have you worked diligently?”)
and his compositions. He noted in a letter, “Vienna’s oracle in the manufacture
of musical taste, has never yet used a Polish melody for variations.”37
By 1836, at the age of forty-five, Czerny gave up his hectic teaching schedule
in order to compose more music. Some of the works from both before and after
this decision were clearly topical, such as Op. 146, a “Marche funebra sulla
morte di L. v. Beethoven” (solo and duet); Op. 237, the “Entrance March for the
opening of the Hungarian Diet, Sept. 13, 1830” (solo, duet); and Op. 238, a
“Coronation March for Ferdinand King of Hungary, Sept. 28, 1830” (solo,
duet). Many of his important theoretical and pedagogical piano “schools” also
date from this period. For example, his School of Extemporaneous Performance, Op.
200, appeared in 1829, and about ten years later he finished his Complete
Theoretical Piano School (1839). In between he prepared a five-volume edition of
Anton Reicha’s Theoretical Works on Harmony, Melody, Counterpoint, and Dramatic
Composition, which was published by Schott in 1834.38
In 1836 Czerny went to Leipzig, the first of his travels outside of Austria.39 The
next year he visited Paris, at about the same time that Franz Liszt devised a con-
cert variation, Hexameron, based on a theme from Bellini’s I Puritani, in which
each variation imitates the styles and gestures of the day’s leading pianists,
including Thalberg, Pixis, Herz, Chopin, Czerny, and, of course, Liszt himself.
Czerny then traveled to London, where he played four-hand piano works with
young Queen Victoria and presumably made business agreements with the
music publisher Cocks & Co.

Fourth Period (1842–57)—Age Fifty-one to Sixty-six

Czerny wrote the second version of his memoirs in 1842 at the age of fifty-one,
but since he lived another fifteen years, I have designated the years that
remained in his life as his “fourth period.” By 1845, Vienna’s population was
440,000, but it had risen by another 140,000 just four years later.40
Approximately 19 percent of the population was Bohemian-born; the influx that
had brought Czerny’s family to the city a half century before had continued.
During the first six years of this period, called Vormärz or pre-March by polit-
ical historians, living conditions in Vienna deteriorated noticeably.41 Inflation,
czerny’s vienna ❧ 31

the increasing displacement of workers by machines, and a number of poor har-

vests left many poor, jobless, and hungry. By 1847 soup kitchens were set up serv-
ing around 6,000 portions of Rumford soup a day to the needy.42 The lack of
housing and wages led to increasing numbers of crimes and suicides. In that
year tuberculosis, now called the “Viennese sickness,” infected an estimated 60
percent of the city’s population.
Such conditions helped bring about the cataclysm that rocked Vienna—and
much of Europe—in March 1848. Begun first by 4,000 students and spreading
to workers, the revolution at first seemed remarkably successful; for about seven
months the uprising prevailed in barricaded streets, as Emperor Ferdinand abdi-
cated in favor of Franz Joseph and Metternich fled the country. Czerny could
have witnessed the mass demonstrations, the burning of factories, the burst of
literature from the free presses (though again he makes no mention of these
developments). And he would also have been aware of the counterrevolutionary
forces led by Commandant Windischgrätz, who crushed the resistance by the
end of October and helped to execute the rebel leaders.
Closer to Czerny’s closely circumscribed world, Vienna’s musical leaders
changed again as Johann Strauss Jr. debuted at Dommayer’s Café in 1844 and
quickly became the next waltz king. Another heated Italian/German operatic
rivalry began with the Viennese premieres of Verdi’s Rigoletto (in 1852) and Il
Trovatore (in 1854) and Wagner’s Lohengrin (in 1858) and Tannhäuser (in 1859).
Performing organizations became increasingly professional, including the
Philharmonic Orchestra of the Society for the Friends of Music.
Czerny continued to reap the rewards of his life’s work. A thankful Franz Liszt
dedicated to him his Three Concert Etudes in 1848 and four years later requested
his permission to publish his piano transcription of Beethoven’s Leonore. In 1846
he traveled to Lombardy, presumably to arrange for a new publisher. In 1852
Liszt asked him to meet the young historian Otto Jahn, who was collecting mate-
rials for a Beethoven biography.
Czerny died on July 15, 1857, and is now buried in the section of Vienna’s
Zentralfriedhof reserved for notable Viennese citizens. He left a sizable inheri-
tance of over 100,000 florins, which he divided among the Society for the
Friends of Music, the Tonkünstler Society, the Deaf-Mute Institute, and the reli-
gious order of the Barmherzige Brüder. He donated his music library of over
3,000 volumes, including Beethoven autographs, and his two Bösendorfer
pianos to the Friends of Music.
It seems fitting that the year following Czerny’s death, Vienna’s old walls were
torn down to make way for the Ringstrasse—a radical break with the past in favor
of progress and modernity. For just as Czerny was closely associated with the
musicians of Napoleonic and prerevolutionary Vienna, so too his once fashion-
able, modern compositions were becoming obsolete. However, his piano meth-
ods and recollections about Beethoven’s performance practice, as well as the
legions of his students who in turn conveyed his rigorous training to their
32 ❧ alice m. hanson

students, have created a legacy that survives today, and his “serious” composi-
tions, many of them products of his later years and most still unpublished, have
only recently begun to be discovered.

Notes
1. For a modern edition, see Carl Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed.
Walter Kolneder, Sammlung musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 46 (Baden-
Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1968). This edition includes extensive notes and an index
of Czerny’s complete works. For an English translation of the Erinnerungen, see
Czerny, “Recollections from My Life,” trans. and ed. Ernst Sanders, Musical Quarterly
42 (1956): 302–17.
2. Grete Wehmeyer, “Czerny,” Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2d ed., ed.
Ludwig Finscher, Personenteil 5 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994), 219.
3. Michael John and Albert Lichtau, Schmelztiegel Wien: Einst und Jetzt: Geschichte
und Gegenwart von Zuwanderung und Minderheiten: Aufsätze, Quellen, Kommentare
(Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1993), 18.
4. Czerny, “Recollections from My Life,” 303.
5. [J. Friedl,] Vertraute Briefe zur Charakteristik von Wien (Görlitz, 1793), 100.
6. Adolph Wiesner, Denkwürdigkeiten der oesterreischischen Zensur vom Zeitalter der
Reformation bis auf die Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Adolph Krabbe, 1847), 284–85.
7. Alice M. Hanson, Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985), 40–47; “Verzeichnis der vom Januar 1798 bis Mai 1802 mit
Verbot belegten Bücher” (Wr. Stadt Bibliothek B-6075).
8. Johann Slokar, Geschichte der oesterreichischen Industrie (Vienna: F. Tempsky,
1914), 626.
9. Wehmeyer, “Czerny,” 222; Czerny, Erinnerungen, 304–5.
10. Robert Spaethling, ed., Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life (New York: Norton,
2000), 312.
11. Beethoven’s letter to Wiedebein is cited in Ludwig van Beethoven, Letters of
Beethoven, ed. Emily Anderson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), 109. Wehmeyer,
“Czerny,” 222.
12. Czerny, Erinnerungen, 311.
13. Ibid., 312.
14. P. E. Turnbull, Oesterreichs soziale und politische Zustände (Leipzig: J. J. Weber,
1840), 122, 124, 126.
15. Winfried Bammer, Beiträge zur Sozialstruktur der Bevölkerung Wiens, PhD diss.,
University of Vienna, 1968, 300, 100.
16. Czerny, Erinnerungen, 311.
17. Ibid., 312–13.
18. Beethoven wrote a letter to Czerny in the summer of 1816 addressed to 1068
Krugerstrasse. Beethoven, Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg,
vol. 3 (Munich: Henle Verlag, 1996), no. 942.
19. Hanson, Musical Life, 55–60.
20. Ernst Zenker, from Die Wiener Revolution (1897), in Freiheit, schöner
Götterfunken: Die Revolution in Wien 1848 (Vienna: Verein für Arbeiterbewegungen,
1998), 8.
czerny’s vienna ❧ 33

21. Johann Pezzl, Beschreibung von Wien, 8th ed (Vienna: Rudolf Sammer, 1841),
17.
22. Adolph Schmidl, Wien wie es ist (Vienna: Carl Gerold, 1837), 16.
23. Robert Waissenberger, Vienna in the Biedermeier Era 1815–48 (New York:
Mallard Press, 1986), 90; Joseph Ehmer, “Produktion und Reproduktion in der
Wiener Manufakturperiode,” in Wien im Vormärz, ed. Felix Czeike, Forschungen und
Beiträge zur Wiener Stadtgeschichte 8 (Vienna: Kommisionsverlag Jugend und Volk,
1980), 107–13.
24. Anton Ziegler, Addressenbuch von Tonkünstler, Dilettanten, Hof-, Kammer, Theater-
und Kirchen-Musikern, Vereine . . . (Vienna: Anton Strauss, 1823), 8; and Beethoven,
Briefwechsel, vol. 5, no. 1895. Otto Biba, director of the Archives of the Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde in Wien, kindly informed me of the other later apartment loca-
tions in a letter of July 12, 2002.
25. Czerny, Erinnerungen, 309, 311.
26. Michael Hahn, Die Unterschichten Wiens im Vormärz, PhD diss., University of
Vienna, 1984.
27. Wehmeyer, “Czerny,” 222.
28. [Anton Freiherr] v. Baldacci, Tafeln der Statistik der Österreich-Ungarn Monarchie
(April 1829), microfilm held at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 14. See also
Ehmer, “Produktion und Reproduktion,” 12.
29. Turnbull, Oesterreichs soziale und politische Zustände, 150, 152; Bammer, Beiträge
zur Sozialstruktur, 9; Ehmer, “Produktion und Reproduktion,” 16.
30. Hanson, Musical Life, 106–8.
31. Ibid., 84.
32. Czerny, Erinnerungen, 314–16.
33. Alan Walker, Franz Liszt. Vol. 1: The Virtuoso Years 1811–1847 (London: Faber
& Faber, 1983), 72–75.
34. Hanson, Musical Life, 122–24.
35. Edward Holmes, A Ramble among the Musicians of Germany [1828] (New York:
Da Capo Press, 1969), 126.
36. Frederic Chopin, Chopin’s Letters, ed. Henryk Opienski and trans. E. L.
Voynich (New York: Vienna House, 1973), 66, 61.
37. Ibid., 142.
38. See the list of Czerny’s works published by Cocks & Co. in 1860 and reprinted
in Czerny, Erinnerungen, 55–76; Wehmeyer, “Czerny,” 234.
39. Czerny, Erinnerungen, 316; Wehmeyer, “Czerny,” 222. Surprising assertions
have been made recently by Liszt biographers Iwo and Pamela Zaluski in The Young
Liszt (London: Peter Owen, 1997). Besides claiming that Czerny’s apartment was
overrun with cats (32), they say that his “agoraphobia precluded travel” (33–34).
Unfortunately they provide no corroborating evidence.
40. Franz Raffelsberger, ed. Allgemeines Geographisch-statistisches Lexicon aller öster-
reischischen Staaten (Vienna, 1845); Bammer, “Beiträge zur Sozialstruktur.”
41. Roman Sandgruber, “Indikatoren des Lebensstandards in Wien in der ersten
Hälfte des 19ten Jahrhunderts,” in Wien im Vormärz, ed. Felix Czeike, Forschungen
und Beiträge zur Wiener Stadtgeschichte 8 (Vienna: Jugend und Volk, 1980), 63.
42. Zenker, Die Wiener Revolution, 11.
Chapter Three

Carl Czerny’s Recollections

An Overview and an Edition of Two
Unpublished Autograph Sources
Attilio Bottegal

Carl Czerny’s Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben has long been familiar, both from its
use by authors memorializing Beethoven and as the principal source of infor-
mation on Czerny’s own life. It has appeared in modern editions in both English
and German.1 In accordance with a relatively widespread custom of his age, how-
ever, Czerny also left a variety of other testimonies to posterity. In what follows,
I trace these seven other accounts in an attempt to clarify their status and inter-
relationship. After this chronological overview and some reflections on what the
memoirs reveal (and conceal) about Czerny, the two previously unpublished
autobiographical documents (nos. 2 and 3, below) are presented in both a
German edition and in English translation.

The Sources

1. The first testimony dates to 1824, when Czerny replied to the advertise-
ment sent to Leipzig’s Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung by Eberhard von
Wintzingerode, who was planning to expand Ernst Ludwig Gerber’s
Tonkünstler-Lexicon.2 Czerny provided his own biographical contribution,
accompanied by a list of his compositions published up to that time. This
“autobiographical letter” was published by Friedrich Schnapp in 1941 in
the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik on the occasion of the one-hundred-fiftieth
anniversary of Czerny’s birth.3
carl czerny’s recollections ❧ 35

2. The second testimony, dated October 22, 1830, is a short, handwritten

autobiography, barely two pages long, conserved at the Staatsbibliothek in
Berlin.4 The essential information contained in it corresponds substan-
tially to that subsequently provided by Czerny. It was Georg Schünemann
who pointed out this manuscript in 1939: “little more than a page long,
[it] contains information on the principal dates of his life and on the 248
works published up to that point in time. ‘I dedicate the evening hours to
composing,’ he adds, ‘those left free after my teaching activities.’ ”5
In 1958, Donald W. MacArdle cites Schünemann inaccurately and
reports that in the latter’s article “this [the autobiography] is described as
being little more than a single page long giving the principal dates of
Czerny’s life and listing the 248 works that he had composed up to the
date of writing.”6 In reality, the manuscript does not provide the list of the
works published up to that time, but only indicates their number, which is
given as 248. Czerny had written the list of his own compositions six years
earlier, for Wintzingerode (see the discussion of source no. 1, above).
MacArdle’s later references to the publication of such an autograph,
taken from Theodor von Frimmel’s contribution in Beethoven Forschung in
1916, clearly represent a misinterpretation.7 In fact, Frimmel refers to the
first publications of Czerny’s autobiography, namely the Erinnerungen, but
certainly not to the brief manuscript in Berlin: “This [his autobiography]
was partially published twice (in Zellner’s ‘Blätter für Theater und Musik’
and in C. F. Pohl’s ‘Jahresbericht des Konservatoriums der Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde in Wien’) and frequently cited.”8 As if that were not
enough, Frimmel is also inaccurate with regard to the year of publication,
which is 1870 as opposed to 1873.9
3. The third testimony consists of Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen aus der Zeit
meiner Kindheit und Jugend, an autograph that Czerny never published,
which can be found in the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde
in Wien. The manuscript is composed of a double sheet with two separate
sheets inside. Of the eight pages in total, the last two are blank. It is to be
found in a folder that also contains the autograph of Czerny’s Ableben by
Leopold von Sonnleithner; the manuscript headed “Czerny,” compiled by
Carl Ferdinand Pohl for the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie; and three edi-
tions of the Hamburger Theater-Chronik of 1834 with a contribution by
Eugène Eiserle on Czerny.10
Comparing the Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben with Meine musikalischen
Erinnerungen aus der Zeit meiner Kindheit und Jugend raises the question of
chronology (Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen aus der Zeit meiner Kindheit
und Jugend is not dated). The theory put forward until now by those who
have considered both testimonies11 sees Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen
as a preliminary draft of Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben. I nevertheless con-
sider plausible the hypothesis that the Erinnerungen could be a complete
36 ❧ attilio bottegal

but brief biography, while Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen might be the

first chapter (Kindheit und Jugend) of a new, more detailed version of
Czerny’s autobiography, which was never completed. No matter how it was
conceived, however, Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen is not simply an
incomplete version of the better known autobiography. Although there is
substantial duplication, this previously unpublished text provides several
passages not found in the Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben or any other mem-
oir, and in the context of an ongoing reevaluation of Czerny, Meine
musikalischen Erinnerungen can contribute to a more nuanced understand-
ing of Czerny’s life and personality (see “Czerny’s Memoirs, Czerny’s
Roles, and Czerny’s Personality,” below).
4. The fourth document dates to 1845 and consists of an article by Czerny on
his relationship to Beethoven between the years 1801 and 1826, written
for August Schmidt’s Wiener Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung.12 Schmidt had issued
an appeal to Viennese who had known Beethoven and been on friendly
terms with him, because, as he noted, he was contributing with his own tes-
timonies to an unprecedentedly complete and accurate biography of the
great composer.
5. In 1852, on the other hand, it was Otto Jahn whom Czerny provided with
a series of anecdotes as well as information exclusively about Beethoven:
the autograph is in Berlin’s Staatsbibliothek and represents the fifth testi-
mony.13 Jahn had intended to use this information for the biography of
Beethoven that he was planning; however, they were published for the
first time, incomplete, by Friedrich Kerst in his Erinnerungen an
Beethoven.14
6. The sixth document is an account analogous to the preceding one, writ-
ten for Robert Cocks, one of Czerny’s publishers, and published in the
1852 edition of Cocks’s Musical Miscellany.15
7. The final record is Czerny’s testament, drawn up by Leopold von
Sonnleithner on June 13, 1857. Czerny entrusted his faithful friend with
his last will, which demonstrated his great generosity; he left everything he
owned to his housekeeper and her brother, to the Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde in Wien, to charitable organizations and religious congre-
gations. The entire text of Czerny’s testament was published by the maga-
zine Signale in 1857.16

Czerny’s Memoirs, Czerny’s Roles, and

Czerny’s Personality

As mentioned above, Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen aus der Zeit meiner Kindheit
und Jugend includes material not found in other sources. At first glance, it might
appear that this material simply supplements the sketchy information found in
carl czerny’s recollections ❧ 37

the Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben without substantially altering our understanding
of Czerny. For instance, with regard to his father’s home and his own date of
birth, he specifies that: “[Wenzel] lived in Leopoldstadt in a corner house in
Waggasse (now no. . . . ), in which I was born on 20 February 1791; on the fol-
lowing day (21 February) I was baptised by the parish priest Päßmeier in the
parish church of St. Leopold. Abbé Gelinek and Abbé Ferdinandi, two famous
contemporary pianists, were present at my baptism.”17
Similarly, Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen provides a more expansive account
of visits of fellow countrymen to the Czerny home. These are simply mentioned
in the Erinnerungen: “From birth, I was surrounded by music, thanks to the fact
that my father would study assiduously (Clementi, Mozart and Kozeluch in par-
ticular) or receive visits from notable musicians, our fellow-countrymen, such
as Wanhall, Gelinek, Lipavsky, etc.”18 In this alternative version, however, we
read: “Gelinek, Lipavsky, Wannhall often visited us, partly due to their friend-
ship with my father and partly because my mother, a good cook, entertained
friends in spite of our very modest circumstances, offering every now and again
Bohemian desserts which she knew how to cook divinely. They were all cheer-
ful, youthful people, just like my father; music was nearly always played, and
already as a child I had the good fortune to listen to these accomplished maes-
tros. Sometimes, I had to play for them and they were generous with their direc-
tions and advice. Moreover, they believed I demonstrated a great deal of
talent.”
If such passages begin to provide an almost idyllic vision of a happy musical
household in the midst of a larger network of support provided by fellow immi-
grant musicians, they are balanced by other unique passages revealing the lim-
its of Czerny’s education and the harsh manner of his father. Czerny tells of his
mother’s concern about his limited knowledge of the German language even at
the age of seven, due to the fact that only Czech was spoken in his family. In a
decisive, military tone (“militärische-barschen Manier”), Wenzel responded to
the protests of his wife, young Carl’s mother: “What of it! He will always have the
chance to learn it, now he has to study the pianoforte! Once he has become a
maestro, he will be able to dedicate himself to whatever kind of useless nonsense
he wants to.” The same rough edges appear when Czerny discusses his father’s
military career: “His rank in the army and his frankness made him a lot of ene-
mies, who demonstrated their resentment with the customary methods:
intrigue, lies, and so on. As a result of some of this malevolence, my career too
was later disrupted; to compensate for this, however, we often found unexpected
defenders and friends without actually looking for them.” In all of these passages
Czerny situates his family in a network of personal relationships that was clearly
crucial, but which will likely never be susceptible to complete reconstruction; his
references to any negative impact of “malevolence” on his career are particularly
and characteristically unspecific. Still, that brief remark offers a rare moment of
insight into a personality not only highly attuned to parental and environmental
38 ❧ attilio bottegal

influence, but also quietly evaluative of the trajectory of a carefully developed

professional career.
Perhaps the most characteristic feature of such remarks is that personal reve-
lation seems to emerge despite Czerny’s determination to maintain control of a
matter-of-fact account. The same is true of the very end of the document, an
apparently unrelated appendix dedicated to the State of Piano Music in the Years
1790–1800:

In this period, the fortepiano was still little used. The keyboard instruments used up to
that time (harpsichords and clavichords) were still predominant and most of the usual
teachers were completely inadequate and even lamentable, even for the most normal
of life’s circumstances. There was not yet much evidence of dilettantism among the
middle classes, where one contented oneself with popular songs played on small
spinets. Virtuosity and brilliant style are scorned for the most part only by those who
had not mastered them or who, with the passing of time, have lost them. Just like the
weak of stomach regard savory dishes with resentment and disgust.

One would hardly imagine from this brief, almost cryptic statement that it
described the decade during which Beethoven, Czerny’s own teacher, estab-
lished himself as Vienna’s leading virtuoso; indeed, it suggests how distinct the
musical world of the court-connected virtuoso was from that of the minor musi-
cians among whom Czerny was born. But even after he had to some extent
bridged those worlds by becoming one of the master’s leading pupils, the dis-
juncture shows no sign of having reached Czerny’s awareness. Instead, he
focuses on a development with which he could indisputably associate himself:
the origin and spread of virtuosity and the brilliant style of performance. After
a culinary image that aligns his style with adventure (and seems again to hint at
resistance), Czerny seems on the verge of writing a defense of the brilliant style.
We will never know with certainty why the manuscript breaks off here, but it is
again typical of the self-consciously modest pedagogue whose most ambitious
compositions were consigned to obscurity that the moment of revelation was
permanently abandoned.
These observations relate specifically to Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen, but
the glimpses of Czerny’s personality that emerge from them are broadly conso-
nant with the contributions of Alice Hanson and Otto Biba elsewhere in this col-
lection. In addition, they connect to the aspect of Czerny’s biography that has
long been of greatest interest to musicologists (as Ingrid Fuchs documents in
chapter 6): Czerny’s firsthand information and the accounts that he provides
concerning Beethoven have significantly enriched the biographical literature on
Beethoven. Nonetheless, in the Erinnerungen of 1842, Czerny makes no further
references to Beethoven after 1815, that is, after the latter entrusted his nephew
Karl to him for piano lessons. The article for Schmidt’s Allgemeine Wiener Musik-
Zeitung (no. 4) is also unrevealing about this later period: even the death of the
maestro, preceded by a long, harrowing period of agony, goes unmentioned,
carl czerny’s recollections ❧ 39

and Czerny makes only a fleeting reference to a last handshake two days prior to
Beethoven’s death. There is no doubt, however, that Czerny enjoyed
Beethoven’s friendship and esteem, as numerous pages of Beethoven’s corre-
spondence demonstrate.
Some of this sketchiness, as well as the abrupt conclusion of the Erinnerungen,
surely derive from the fact that they are, so to speak, an “incomplete work” that
would have needed revision, completion, and harmonization before publica-
tion, a process that Czerny never undertook. This might have required a literary
interest and a familiarity with narrative that he probably lacked. But above all,
Czerny’s personal reticence and ambivalence was likely again at play: although
he was quite willing to describe how favorably Beethoven and others viewed his
abilities, directly exploiting his role as a friend of the great man was a vanity he
would not allow himself in his own life story. Thus, although he never
begrudged providing his recollections to anyone who asked for them, he pre-
ferred never to draw attention to himself in order to cause a sensation, as he him-
self wrote to Robert Cocks in 1852.
Czerny’s autobiographical legacy, then, like so much else about him, is curi-
ously ambivalent: while his accounts of Beethoven are carefully conceived, rela-
tively polished, and clearly intended for posterity, the documents that focus on
Czerny himself are either incomplete (like the Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben
and Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen) or extremely terse (like sources 1 and 2,
above); they reveal as much by what they omit as by what they state. We are left,
in the end, with a figure who seems quite happy to be seen when securely placed
in one of his acceptable roles, but far less comfortable with the awkward possi-
bility of being glimpsed outside those roles.

Czerny’s Unpublished Autobiographies:

Notes on the Editions

As I have already noted, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben is the most important of
Czerny’s writings, and the richest in information. Nonetheless, Czerny’s other
two autobiographical accounts, until now only indirectly referred to, merit being
made available in editions prepared according to modern editorial criteria:
Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen aus der Zeit meiner Kindheit und Jugend, and the
brief autobiography of 1830.19 Uncertainty about the relative dates of the first
two of these texts as well as the substantial differences between them have led to
the abandonment of the idea of a genetic edition for both texts, one that would
have aimed at emphasizing the evolution of the memoirs in the stratification of
the two versions. The edition that follows, then, treats both of these unpublished
works as independent texts, reproducing them in a transcription as faithful as
possible to his autographs.
40 ❧ attilio bottegal

In accordance with the customs of his day, Czerny uses two types of italic letter-
ing: the usual German one and the Latin one. The first is used most frequently; the
second is reserved for foreign words (generally in Latin, Italian, and French) or for
proper nouns. In my edition, Roman type identifies the usual German script,
whereas italics identify Latin lettering. As far as capital letters are concerned, where
they are not clearly distinguishable, modern capitalization has been preferred. The
horizontal doubling sign, generally placed over the “m,” has been replaced by the
corresponding letter. Double hyphens of separation have been substituted, in
accordance with modern printing methods, by simple hyphens. The two periods
placed as abbreviations have been reduced to a single character. Customary abbre-
viations (u.a., u.s.w., z.B. etc.) have been retained, with the exception of “u,” which
is always replaced by “und.” Other abbreviated forms have been expanded within
square brackets (e.g., Manus[cri]pt). The oblique lines with colons /: . . . :/, used
as parentheses, have been replaced by conventional parentheses. The archaic
spelling (e.g., bey, Clavier, Concerte, Theil, etc.) and vocabulary (e.g., Compositour,
Themas, etc.) have been retained, as have inexactitudes and spelling mistakes,
which are followed by [sic] in the transcription. Erasures and superscriptions,
whether of words or of fragments of phrases crossed out by the author, have been
reconstructed. Only in two cases, in which the crossed-out words are completely
illegible, have they been indicated with one x for each presumed canceled letter.
Doubtful interpretations, owing to imprecise, confused calligraphy in some pas-
sages, are indicated by means of a question mark between square brackets [?].
The distribution of the text on the manuscripts does not present a regular,
logical distribution, and therefore the narrative content does not correspond to
the changing of paragraphs. I have attempted to indicate the sense of the text
with indentations and spacing between one paragraph and another.
Taken as a whole, Czerny’s German, which as he himself testified was not his
mother tongue but rather a language learned and studied when he was young
(along with Italian and French), appears complex and elaborate; it is character-
ized by structurally redundant forms, typical of the 1800s, when subordinate
clauses recurred with a higher frequency than is now customary. The vocabulary
is not rich, indeed the opposite, but it could not be described as being limited
or elementary.
Notes in the English translation provide brief explanatory references to the
persons mentioned. When the name of those mentioned is identifiable, it
appears in the notes in its complete form, followed by the dates of birth and
death, the profession, and a basic biographical profile. I have attempted to ver-
ify the circumstances and events described by comparing them with other biog-
raphical sources. Czerny’s information is on the whole reliable.
The autobiographical notes of 1830 were not the source of any particular
problems, due in part to their brevity, but nevertheless, they turned out to be
equally useful in putting into context the development of Czerny’s teaching and
composing activities.
carl czerny’s recollections ❧ 41

Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, folder 10907/134

Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen aus der Zeit
meiner Kindheit und Jugend
von
Carl Czernÿ

Mein Vater, Wenzl [sic] Cz. 1750 in einem böhmischen Städtchen geboren,
ward als Sänger Knabe in einem Kloster bey Prag erzogen, wo er ziemlich
gründlich die Musik lernte, und dabey die ersten Schuljahre im lateinischen, etc.
durchmachte. Als das Kloster aufgehoben ward, mußte er, als mittelloser
Jüngling von ungefähr 17 Jahren, zum Militär, wo er die ersten 5 Jahre bey der
Infanterie, die letzten 10 Jahre bey der Artillerie, also durch 15 Jahre fehlerfrey
diente als Gemeiner diente und hier auf seinen Abschied erhielt. Um 1784
lernte er in Brünn, wo er Klavieruntericht [sic] gab, meine Mutter kennen,
welche damals im Dienste eines K. Hofraths stand. Er heirathete sie um 1786
und zog mit ihr nach Wien mit einem Empfehlungsschreiben jenes Hofraths an
Gluck, der damals am Rennweg im eigenen Hause wohnte, aber schon, vom
Schlage gelähmt, meinem Vater (der durch ihn Lectionen zu erhalten hoffte)
nicht mehr nützen konnte.
Mein Vater, der damals der deutschen Sprache sehr unvollkommen mächtig
war, erzählte mir oft, daß er mit Gluck nur böhmisch gesprochen habe, indem
dieser sich in derselben Sprache wie ein geborner [sic] Böhme fertig ausdrückte.
Ein Beweis daß Gluck seine ganze Erziehung in Böhmen erhielt. Meinem Vater
gelang es indessen, nach und nach einige Klavierschüler zu erhalten, und sich
und meine Mutter, wenn auch kümmerlich genug, auf diese Weise zu ernähren.
Er wohnte damals in der Leopoldstadt, das Eckhaus in die Wag-gasse, (jetzt
Nr. . . . ) wo ich 1791 am 20 Febr geboren ward, und den Tage darauf (21 Febr)
in der Pfarr Kirche zu St. Leopold von dem Hrn Pfarrer Päßmeyer getauft wurde.
Bey meiner Taufe waren auch Abbé Gelinek, und Abbé Ferdinandi zugegen, 2 damals
berühmte Pianisten. Nach der Versicherung meiner Mutter soll ich als Kind fast
nie geweint haben, wohl aber stets sehr lustig gewesen seyn.

Mein Vater, als geborner [sic] Böhme, hielt sich natürlicherweise zu seinen
Landsleuten, welche in Wien damals in musikalischer Hinsicht eine große Rolle
spielten. Darunter waren vorzüglich:
Hofkapellmeister Kozeluch, als Clavier Componist sehr beliebt und geachtet.
Übrigens ein stolzer nicht sehr umgänglicher Character. Feind Mozarts.
Abbé Gelinek. Ein kräftig glänzender Clavirist [sic], dessen Variationen um 1795
anfingen, die beliebtesten Compositionen für die Dilettanten zu seyn. Er hatte als
der gesuchteste Clavierlehrer in den vornehmsten Häusern und als Componist
sich ein sehr bedeutendes Vermögen erworben.
J. Wanhall. Ein sehr gründlich gelehrter und dabey eben so fruchtbarer als
angenehmer Tonsetzer. Seine ernstern Werke (Sonaten, Fugen, etc.) sind leider in
42 ❧ attilio bottegal

Vergessenheit gerathen, da er später nur leichte Sachen für Anfänger schrieb.

In frühern Jahren soll eine Liebschaft in Italien sein Gehirn durch längere Zeit
angegriffen haben. Ich kannte ich [sic]20 als einen gutmüthig freundlichen alten
Mann, der mir, wenn ich ihm etwas leidlich vorspielte, immer eine kleine Münze
schenkte, so arm er auch in seinen letzten Jahren war.
Jos. Lipavsky. Ein wahrer Bravourspieler und trefflicher Organist, so wie auch
(besonders in Fugen) ein sehr gründlich geistreicher Tonsetzer. Vorzüglich
machte ihn sein bewunderes würdiges Avista-spielen berühmt, indem ihm nichts
unmöglich oder zu schwer schien.
Abbé Ferdinandi. Dieser starb noch während meiner Kindheit. Er soll eben so
meisterhaft gespielt haben wie Gelinek und Lipavsky aber dabey delicater und
zarter. Eine Sonate die ich noch im Manus[cri]pt von ihm besitze ist ungefähr in
Dusseks Styl geschrieben.
Rafael, ein zarter lieblicher Spieler und eben solcher Componist, auch auf der
Orgel ausgezeichnet.
Ruziczka. Hoforganist, den ich nie sah.
Die damals berühmten Klaviermacher Schanz und Bohak waren ebenfalls
Böhmen.

Vom 4ten Jahr meines Alters (1795) wohnten meine Eltern in der
Leopoldstadt, Sperlgasse, im Hause des Doktor Wurm, Nr. 209. Von den 5
Häusern welche die Fronte vis-à-vis vom Sperl bilden, ist es das mittlere. Hier
wohnten wir bis um das Jahr 1812, also durch ungefähr 16 Jahre. Gelinek,
Lipavsky, Wannhall besuchten uns oft, theils aus Freundschaft für meinen Eltern
Vater, theils aber auch, weil meine Mutter, als gute Köchin, ungeachtet unsrer
sehr beschränkten Umstände, doch sie bisweilen mit böhmischen Mehlspeisen,
die sie trefflich zu bereiten wußte, die Freunde bewirthete. Alle waren sehr
heitre lustige Gesellen, wie auch mein Vater, und es wurde fast immer musiziert,
wobey ich schon als Kind das Glück hatte, diese tüchtigen Meister oft zu hören.
Bisweilen mußte ich ihnen vorspielen und es fehlte von ihnen nicht an guten
Winken und Rathschlägen. Denn sie glaubten in mir viel Anlagen zu finden.
Der Erwerb meines Vaters bestand übrigens nur in ziemlich wohlfeilen
Lekzionen, im Klavierstimmen, Bekielen der damals noch häufigen Kielflügel,
Reparieren der nach und nach sich mehr in Gebrauch kommenden Fortepiano,
Noten abschreiben und ähnlichen musikalischen Geschäften.

Ich sprach damals nur böhmisch, da sowohl meine Eltern, wie die obigen sie
besuchenden Freunde immer böhmisch sprachen. Erst in meinem 6ten xxx oder
7ten Jahr fing ich an, das Deutsche zu radebrechen. Wenn meine gute Mutter
plagte daß ich, schon 8 Jahre alt, noch nicht lesen und schreiben könne, so
pflegte mein Vater in seiner militärisch-barschen Manier zu antworten: “Ey, das
lernt er an jeder Thür.” (nach einem böhmischen Sprichworte)—“Klavierspielen
soll er gut lernen! Wenn er da Meister ist, so ist alles andre unnützes Larifari!”—Auch
carl czerny’s recollections ❧ 43

wendete er alle häusliche Musse dazu an, mich zu üben, und darbte sich
manches ab, um für mich Musikalien anzuschaffen. Namentlich mußte ich, (da
ein freundlicher Klaviermacher uns 2 Kielflügel geborgt hatten) die Mozart-
schen Violin Sonaten fleissig spielen, indem mein Vater auf dem andere [sic]
Flügel die Violinstimme accompagnirte, um mir Takt und Fertigkeit anzugewöh-
nen. In seiner Unterrichtsmethode hatte mein Vater praktischen Sinn, und
gesunde verständige Ansichten.
Meine beyden Eltern hatten, bey sehr einfacher Bildung, zwey Eigenschaften
die sich stets bewährten: Rechtlichkeit und gesunden Menschenverstand.
Mit 8 Jahren spielte ich schon ziemlich fertig alle Mozartschen Klavierwerke
(auch die Concerte) vieles von Cle Clementi, Kozeluch, Pleyel, etc. und nie fühlte
ich mich glücklicher, als wenn ich Lipavsky oder Wanhall Fugen spielen hörte.
Lipavsky trug die Seb. Bachschen Meisterhaft vor.
Ehe ich noch Buchstaben schreiben lernte, fing ich schon an Noten zu
kritzeln, und meine ersten Versuche waren Fugenthema, Melodien, xxx
schwierige Passagen, etc.
Der geehrteste und bewunderteste Componist für das Clavier war damals
Clementi, und alle Obengenannte studierten vorzugsweise seine Sonaten. So auch
mein Vater, der die meisten auswendig, und recht gut vortrug. Clementis Werke
umtönten mich also schon von der Wiege an.

Die militärische Gradheit und oft alzu heftige Aufrichtigkeit meines Vaters
machte ihm viele Feinde, welche oft ihren bösen Willen durch die gewöhn-
lichen Mittel: Cabalen, Verleumdungen, etc. beweisen. Durch manche dieser
Übelwollenden wurde auch später meine eigene Laufbahn gestört, wogegen
sich aber auch oft unerwartet und ungesucht freundliche Beschützer und
Gönner fanden.

Kozeluch Gegner des Beethoven, sowie noch später Tomaschek.

Ein sehr würdiger Geistlicher, Vater Virgilius Stross, unterrichtete mich in

Auernhammer, Kurzböck

Spieß Cramer Lafont. etc. Es ist eine pedantische Ungerechtigkeit wenn man
solche populäre Schriftsteller [?] als Geschmacksverderber bezeichnet. Im
Gegentheil sind sie es, welche der Geschmack am die Neigung zum Lesen bey
der Menge erwecken, und dadurch ein Bedürfniß der Unterhaltung schaffen,
welches später [?] xxx.
Zustand der Claviermusik in den Jahren von 1790 bis 1800
In diesem Zeitraum war das Fortepiano noch sehr wenig im Gebrauch. Die bis
dahin üblichen Tasteninstrumente (Kielflügel und Clavicorde) waren noch
immer vorherrschend, und die gewöhnlichen Clavierlehrer waren meistens
44 ❧ attilio bottegal

steife jämmerlich Harker und Trommler, so wie auch war durch die der geme-
insten Lebensweise berüchtigt. Der Dilettantism war noch wenig in die mittlern
Stände gedrungen, wo man auf kleinen Spinetten sich mit Gassenhauern
begnügte.
Die Bravour und das brillante Spiel wird meistens nur von Jenen geschmäht,
welche derselben nicht mächtig sind, oder sie im Alter verloren haben. So betra-
chtet wie man bey schwachem Magen manche wohlschmeckende Speise mit
Aerger oder Widerwillen ansieht.

Ich habe nie meine Comp. jemand vorgespielt und mußte daher so schreiben,
daß sie auch ohne Produktion vom Publikum etc.
Auernhammer, Kurzböck, Eberl, Wölfl, Sterkel, Stadler

Musical Recollections from my Childhood and Youth

by
Carl Czerny

My father, Wenzel Czerny,21 who was born in a Bohemian village in 1750, was
educated as a choirboy in a monastery near Prague, where he learned music
rather thoroughly and completed his first years at school in Latin, etc. When
the monastery was dissolved, being a 17-year-old youth without any means, he
had to enter the armed forces, where he served the first 5 years with the
infantry and the last 10 years with the artillery, that is 15 faultless years as a pri-
vate, after which he was discharged. In 1784 in Brünn,22 where he was giving
piano tuition, he met my mother, who at that time was in the service of a royal
privy councillor. He married her in 1786 and moved with her to Vienna with a
letter of recommendation written by that privy councillor for Gluck, who lived
at that time in Rennweg in his own house, but who, being paralyzed after suf-
fering a stroke, was no longer able to help my father (who had hoped to have
lessons from him).
My father, whose knowledge of German was very incomplete at that time,
often told me that he only spoke Czech with Gluck, while the latter expressed
himself fluently in the same language like a native Bohemian. Proof that Gluck
received his entire education in Bohemia. Meanwhile, my father gradually suc-
ceeded in acquiring several piano pupils, thus providing for himself and my
mother in this admittedly scanty manner. At that time, he lived in Leopoldstadt
in a corner house in Waggasse (now no. . . . ), in which I was born on 20
February 1791; on the following day (21 February) I was baptised by the parish
priest Päßmeier in the parish church of St. Leopold. Abbé Gelinek23 and
Abbé Ferdinandi, two famous contemporary pianists, were present at my bap-
tism. According to my mother, I hardly ever cried as a child, but was always very
cheerful.
carl czerny’s recollections ❧ 45

My father, of Bohemian origin, was naturally very close to his fellow-country-

men, who at that time played a significant role in Vienna’s musical world.
Among these, the following were first-rate:
Court kapellmeister Kozeluch,24 highly esteemed and appreciated as a com-
poser for the pianoforte. As for the rest, of a haughty and not very sociable dis-
position. Mozart’s adversary.
Abbé Gelinek. Brilliant pianist whose variations, in around 1795, started to be
the most popular compositions for amateurs. As a much sought-after teacher at
the homes of the noblest families and as a composer, he accumulated a consid-
erable fortune.
J. Wanhall.25 Composer of profound learning and as productive as he was
agreeable. His first works (sonatas, fugues, etc.) have unfortunately fallen into
oblivion, as he later wrote only simple compositions for beginners. In the early
years, an Italian passion must have captured his mind for a certain period. I knew
him as a good-natured, friendly old man who, when I performed something quite
well for him, would always give me a small coin, as poor as he was in his final years.
Jos. Lipavsky.26 True virtuoso and excellent organist, as well as an ingenious
composer, particularly of fugues. His impressive sight-reading made him
extraordinarily famous, nothing appearing impossible or too difficult for him.
Abbé Ferdinandi.27 This man died during my childhood. He is said to have
played in a magisterial manner just like Gelinek and Lipavsky, but more finely
and delicately. One of his sonatas, which I still possess in handwritten form, is
composed in a style similar to Dussek’s.
Rafael,28 a fine and delightful performer, is also well-known for his composi-
tions for the organ.
Ruziczka.29 Court organist whom I never saw.
The famous piano makers of the day, Schanz30 and Bohak,31 were also
Bohemians.

From the 4th year of my life (1795), my parents lived in Sperlgasse in

Leopoldstadt, in the house of Doctor Wurm, number 209. Of the 5 houses con-
stituting the front vis-à-vis the Sperl, it is the middle one. We lived here until 1812,
that is for about 16 years. Gelinek, Lipavsky, and Wannhall often visited us, partly
due to their friendship with my father and partly because my mother, a good cook,
entertained friends in spite of our very modest circumstances, offering every now
and again Bohemian desserts, which she cooked divinely. They were all cheerful,
youthful people, just like my father; music was nearly always played, and already as
a child, I had the good fortune to listen to these accomplished maestros.
Sometimes, I had to play for them and they were generous with their directions
and advice. Moreover, they believed I demonstrated a great deal of talent.
My father earned his living with rather low-priced lessons, piano tuning,
quilling of the then still popular harpsichord, repairing the ever more fre-
quently used fortepiano, copying music, and similar musical occupations.
46 ❧ attilio bottegal

At that time, I spoke only Czech, since my parents, as well as the above friends
who visited them, always spoke Czech. Not until the sixth or seventh year of my
life did I begin to speak broken German. Whenever my mother worried that I
could neither read nor write at the age of 8, my father used to answer in his
decisive, military tone: “What of it! He can pick that up anywhere. What he
needs to learn is how to play the pianoforte! Once he has become a maestro,
he will be able to dedicate himself to whatever kind of useless nonsense he
wants to.” He also used all his spare time at home to practice with me and
denied himself many things in order to procure music for me. In particular, I
had to play Mozart’s Violin Sonatas diligently (since a friendly pianomaker had
lent us 2 harpsichords), while my father accompanied me with the violin part
on the other instrument in order to impress upon me rhythm and fluency. My
father’s teaching methods contained practical sense and healthy, intelligent
opinions.
With their very simple education, my parents had two characteristics that
always held good: honesty and common sense.
At the age of 8, I already played all of Mozart’s piano works (including the
concertos) in a rather accomplished manner, a lot of Clementi, Kozeluch,
Pleyel, etc. and was at my happiest listening to Lipavsky or Wanhall playing
fugues. Lipavsky was a masterful performer of those of Sebastian Bach.
Before learning how to write letters, I began to scribble notes, and my first
efforts were fugue themes, melodies, difficult passages, etc.
The most highly honored and admired composer for the piano at that time
was Clementi, and all of the above-mentioned studied his sonatas by preference,
as did my father, who knew most of them by heart and performed them very
well. I was therefore surrounded by Clementi’s works from birth.
My father’s military rectitude and his all-too-harsh frankness made him a lot
of enemies, who demonstrated their resentment with the customary methods:
intrigue, lies, and so on. As a result of some of this malevolence, my career too
was later disrupted; to compensate for this, however, unexpected and unlooked-
for defenders and friends often appeared.

Kozeluch adversary of Beethoven, and later also Tomaschek.32

A very dignified priest, Father Virgilius Stross, taught me in [. . .]

Auernhammer,33 Kurzböck34

Spieß Cramer Lafont. etc. It is a pedantic injustice when such popular writers are
accused of ruining people’s taste. On the contrary they are the ones who awaken
the public’s taste for reading and thus create a requirement for entertainment
[. . .]

State of Piano Music in the Years from 1790 to 1800

carl czerny’s recollections ❧ 47

In this period, the fortepiano was still little used. The keyboard instruments
used up to that time (harpsichords and clavichords) were still predominant and
most of the usual teachers were completely inadequate and even lamentable,
even for the most normal of life’s circumstances. There was not yet much evi-
dence of dilettantism among the middle classes, who contented themselves with
popular songs played on small spinets.

Virtuosity and brilliant style are scorned for the most part only by those who
had not mastered them or who, with the passing of time, have lost them. Just as
the weak of stomach regard savoury dishes with resentment and disgust.

I have never played my compositions to anyone and have therefore had to

write in such a way that even without performance, they [. . .] by the audience
[. . .]
Auernhammer, Kurzböck, Eberl,35 Wölfl,36 Sterkel,37 Stadler38 they [. . .]

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musiksammlung, Mus. Ms.

Autogr. Theor. Czerny, K. 1

Carl Czerny

Ich bin in Wien, den 21 Febr. 1791 geboren.

Mein Vater, ein geborner [sic] Böhme, aber seit 1785 in Wien als Klavierlehrer
ansässig, hat mich von Kindheit zur Musik bestimmt, und selber unterrichtet.
Sehr früh mußte ich alle Clavierwerke alter Autoren (Händel, Bach, etc.) so
wie Mozarts, Clementis, vorzüglich dann aber, mit besonderer Neigung, die eben
erscheinenden Beethovenschen, studieren, und ich erinnere mich schon seit
dem 7ten Jahr meines Alters zu componieren versucht zu haben. Da ich damals
auch fast alle damaligen theoretischen Werke durchstudieren mußte, so
erlangte ich im Schreiben bald Fertigkeit.
Im 14ten Jahr fing ich an Unterricht im Fortepiano zu geben (seit 1805) und bis
jetzt ist das meine Hauptbeschäftigung.
Seit 1818 fing ich an meine Compositionen herauszugeben, und wurde bald
durch die Verleger hierin zu vielem Fleiß aufgemuntert. Mein Aufenthalt war
stets Wien, mein Geburtsort.
Bis zu diesem Augenblick sind von mir 248 Werke öffentlich erschienen theils
Pf solo, theils 4 mains, mit accomp. auch für Orchester, etc. Vieles, für Kirche,
Gesang und Orchester, liegt noch im Manus[cri]pt.
Zum Componieren verwende ich die Abendstunden, welche mir meine
Unterrichtsbeschäft[ig]ung übrig lasst.

Carl Czerny mp
48 ❧ attilio bottegal

Carl Czerny

I was born in Vienna on 21 February 1791.

My father, a native Bohemian, but resident in Vienna since 1785 as a piano
teacher, destined me for music from childhood and taught me himself.
From an early age, I had to study all the piano works of the early composers
(Handel, Bach, etc.) as well as those of Mozart and Clementi, but mainly and
with particular relish those of Beethoven which were just appearing, and I
remember trying to compose from the seventh year of my life. As I had to study
my way through almost all of the theoretical works at that time, I soon became
skilled at writing.
In my fourteenth year, I started giving fortepiano lessons (from 1805 on) and
that is my main occupation to this day.
In 1818 I began publishing my compositions and was soon encouraged to
great industry by the publishers. I have always resided in Vienna, my birthplace.
To date, 248 of my works have been published, some for solo pianoforte, some
for 4 hands, with accompaniment also for orchestra, etc. Many, for the church,
choir and orchestra, are still in manuscript.
I dedicate the evening hours to composing, those left free after my teaching
activities.
Carl Czerny mp
Vienna 22 October 1830

Notes
1. The Erinnerungen are partially published in: Carl Ferdinand Pohl, Jahres-Bericht
des Konservatoriums der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (Vienna, 1870), 3–9;
Signale für die musikalische Welt 28, no. 59 (1870): 929–33; Friedrich Kerst, Die
Erinnerungen an Beethoven (Stuttgart: Julius Hoffman, 1913), 39–46; Georg
Schünemann, “Czernys Erinnerungen an Beethoven,” Neues Beethoven Jahrbuch 9
(1939): 48–54; Carl Czerny, Über den richtigen Vortrag der sämtlichen Beethoven’schen
Klavierwerke: nebst Czerny’s “Erinnerungen an Beethoven,” ed. Paul Badura-Skoda
(Vienna, Universal Edition, 1963), 10–13; Carl Czerny, “Carl Czerny in eigener
Sache: aus Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben,” Musik und Bildung 12, no. 11 (1980):
690–93. Complete editions are: Carl Czerny, “Recollections from My Life,” trans. and
ed. Ernst Sanders, Musical Quarterly 42 (1956): 302–17 (in English translation); Carl
Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed. Walter Kolneder, Sammlung
Musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 46 (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1968),
7–29.
2. See Intelligenz-Blatt zur allgemeinen musikalischen Zeitung 9 (1824): 58–59.
3. See Friedrich Schnapp, “Ein autobiographischer Brief Carl Czernys aus dem
Jahre 1824,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 108 (1941): 89–96.
4. Carl Czerny, Carl Czerny, Manuscript, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer
Kulturbesitz, Musiksammlung, Mus. ms. autogr. theor. Czerny, K. 1.
carl czerny’s recollections ❧ 49

5. “nur wenig mehr als eine Seite lang. Er berichtet über die Hauptdaten seines
Lebens und über seine ‘bis zu diesem Augenblick’ erschienenen 248 Werke. ‘Zum
Componieren,’ sagte er, ‘verwende ich die Abendstunden, welche mir meine
Unterrichtsbeschäftigung übrig lasset.’ ” Georg Schünemann, “Czernys Erinnerungen
an Beethoven,” Neues Beethoven Jahrbuch 9 (1939): 47–48.
6. Donald W. MacArdle, “Beethoven and the Czernys,” Monthly Musical Record 87
(1958): 133.
7. “According to Theodor von Frimmel, ‘Über Karl Czerny,’ Beethoven Forschung
(1916): 98–102, this was published in 1873 in Zellner’s ‘Blätter für Theater und
Musik’ and also that same year in the ‘Jahresbericht des Konservatoriums der
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien.’ ” Ibid.
8. Theodor von Frimmel, “Über Karl Czerny,” Beethoven Forschung (1916): 99.
9. “Diese [seine Autobiographie] ist 1873 zweimal auszugsweise abgedruckt (in
Zellners Zeitschrift: ‘Blätter für Theater und Musik’ und in C. F. Pohl: ‘Jahresbericht
des Konservatoriums der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien’) und sonst an vielen
Stellen ausgenutzt worden.” Carl Ferdinand Pohl, Jahres-Bericht des Konservatoriums der
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (Vienna, 1870).
10. Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, folder 10907/134. Eiserle’s
article appeared as Eugène Eiserle, “Charakterbilder künstlerischer Zeitgenossen: VII.
‘Carl Czerny,’ ” Hamburger Theater-Chronik 7, no. 23–25 (1834): 89–90, 93–94, 98–99.
11. Robert Haas in 1957 in: Robert Haas, “Karl Czerny,” Musica 11 (1957):
382–83 and Grete Wehmeyer in 1983 in: Grete Wehmeyer, Carl Czerny und die
Einzelhaft am Klavier oder Die Kunst der Fingerfertigkeit und die industrielle Arbeitsideologie
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1983), 10.
12. Carl Czerny, “Carl Czerny über sein Verhältnis zu Beethoven vom Jahre 1801
bis 1826,” Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung 5, no. 113 (1845): 449–50.
13. Carl Czerny, Anekdoten und Notizen über Beethoven, Manuscript, Berlin,
Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Musiksammlung, Mus. ms. autogr. theor.
Czerny K. 2.
14. Friedrich Kerst, Die Erinnerungen an Beethoven, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Julius
Hoffman, 1913), 47–61.
15. It was republished in Carl Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed. Walter
Kolneder, Sammlung Musikwissenschaftliche Abhandlung, 46 (Baden-Baden: Valentin
Koerner, 1968), 42–54.
16. Signale für die musikalische Welt 15, no. 32 (1857): 331–33.
17. See Carl Czerny, Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen aus der Zeit meiner Kindheit
und Jugend, below.
18. “Schon in der Wiege umgab mich Musik, da mein Vater damals fleissig
(besonders Clementi’s, Mozart’s, Kozeluch’s etc. Werke) übte, und ihn auch viele durch
Musik bekannte Landsleute, wie Wanhall, Gelinek, Lipavsky u.a. besuchten.” Carl
Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed. Walter Kolneder, 7.
19. See note 4.
20. The second ich must be a mistake: it should be ihn.
21. Wenzel Czerny (1752–1832). Piano teacher and tuner, organist, oboist, and
singer. See Grete Wehemeyer, “Czerny, Wenzel,” Die Musik in Geschichte und
Gegenwart, 2d ed., ed. Ludwig Finscher, Personenteil, vol. 5 (Kassel: Bärenreiter,
2001), 220.
22. German name of Brno, now in the Czech Republic.
50 ❧ attilio bottegal

23. Josef Gelinek (1758–1825). Czech composer, pianist, and piano teacher. He
had personal contacts with Mozart and Haydn and was a friend of the young
Beethoven. See Milan Poštolka, “Gelinek, Josef,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, 2d ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001) 9: 636.
24. Johann Antonin Kozeluch (1738–1814). One of the most important
Bohemian composers in the second half of the eighteenth century. See Milan
Poštolka, “Kozeluch, Johann Antonin,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, 2d ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001) 13: 851–52.
25. Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739–1813). Bohemian composer, violinist, and
teacher, active in Vienna. Czerny refers to Vanhal’s travels in Italy from May 1769 to
September 1771: he spent about a year in Venice, then traveled to Bologna,
Florence, Rome, and elsewhere. See Paul R. Bryan, “Vanhal, Johann Baptist,” The
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London:
Macmillan, 2001) 26: 254–58.
26. Josef Lipavsky (1772–1810). Czech composer and pianist. Although he wrote
some chamber and orchestral works, as well as songs and Singspiele, most of his
works are for piano solo. See Milan Poštolka, “Lipavsky, Josef,” The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan,
2001) 14: 734.
27. Franz Ferdinandi (1752–?). Czech pianist, organist, and composer. He lived
and taught in Prague. See Franz “Ferdinandi, Franz,” Musikalisches Conversations-
lexicon, vol. 3 (Leipzig: List & Franke, 1873), 490.
28. Probably Ignaz Wenzel Rafael (1762–99). Composer, also famous for his voice
and his organ playing; otherwise Czerny could have meant his son: František Karel
Rafael (ca. 1795–1864), author of the Singspiel Strašidlo v mlejne¤. See Jir¤ i Vyslouz¤ il,
“Brünn,” Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2d ed., ed. Ludwig Finscher, Sachteil,
vol. 2 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), 190.
29. Wenzel Ruzicka (1757–1823). Imperial court organist and professor of har-
mony in Vienna. Piano teacher of Franz Schubert.
30. Johann Schantz. Lived in Vienna, where he was active ca. 1780–90. He called
himself “Bürgler. Orgel und Instrument Macher,” which probably includes harpsi-
chords and clavichords. See Donald H. Boalch, Makers of the Harpsichord and
Clavichord 1440–1840, ed. Charles Mould (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 166.
31. Johann Bohak. Clavichord maker. See Boalch, Makers of the Harpsichord and
Clavichord, 19.
32. Václav Jan Kr¤ titel Tomášek (1774–1850). Bohemian composer and teacher.
See: Kenneth DeLong and Adrienne Simpson, “Tomášek, Václav Jan Kr¤ titel,” The
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London:
Macmillan, 2001) 25: 557–60.
33. Josepha Barbara Auernhammer (1758–1820). Austrian pianist and composer.
She studied with Leopold Kozeluch and with W. A. Mozart, with whom she fell in
love. He dedicated his Sonatas for Piano and Violin K269 and K376–80/374d–f, 317d,
373a to her. Auernhammer corrected the proofs of several of Mozart’s sonatas, and
her performances with him were enthusiastically described. She composed mainly
piano music, particularly variations, which are marked by a comprehensive knowl-
edge of pianistic technique and an artistic use of the instrument. See Rudolph
Angemüller and Michael Lorenz, “Auernhammer, Josepha Barbara,” The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan,
2001) 2: 166–67.
carl czerny’s recollections ❧ 51

34. Magdalene von Kurzböck. Eighteenth- to nineteenth-century Austrian pianist

in Vienna. She was considered a virtuoso of her instrument and is also thought to
have composed piano pieces and songs. Haydn dedicated his Piano sonata, in E-flat
(H.16/52) to her. See “Kurzböck, Magdalene von,” International Encyclopedia of
Woman Composers, 2d ed., ed. Aaron I. Cohen, vol. 1 (New York and London: Books
& Music [USA], 1987), 388.
35. Anton Eberl (1765–1807). Austrian pianist and composer. See A. Duane
White, “Eberl, Anton,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., ed.
Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001) 7: 847–48.
36. Joseph Wölfl (1773–1812). Austrian pianist and composer, studied with W. A.
Mozart and Michael Haydn. He lived in Warsaw, Vienna, Paris, and London. See
Ewan West, “Wölfl, Joseph,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed.,
ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001) 27: 510–12.
37. Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel (1750–1817). German composer, pianist, and
organist. See Theodor Wohnhaas, “Sterkel, Johann Franz Xaver,” The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan,
2001) 24: 363–64.
38. Probably Maximilian Stadler (1748–1833). Austrian organist and composer,
lived in Vienna from 1796 to 1810 and again from 1815. See “Stadler, Abt
Maximilian,” Beethoven Briefe Gesamtausgabe CD-ROM (Munich: G. Henle Verlag,
1998).
Chapter Four

A Star Is Born?
Czerny, Liszt, and the Pedagogy of Virtuosity

James Deaville

The discourse of musical virtuosity has attracted a good deal of attention in the
past decade.1 Even monographs about nineteenth-century music that are not
ostensibly about virtuosity prominently invoke it, as Lawrence Kramer did in the
cover to his recent book Musical Meaning.2 Although each study takes a different
approach in exploring the topic (for example, linguistic for Susan Bernstein,
philosophical for Jane O’Dea, visual for Richard Leppert, and personal for Mark
Mitchell), all authors seem to agree that virtuosity has been undervalued in
scholarship. It is nevertheless surprising to discover that scholars have failed to
look at a fundamental paradox of virtuosity, its construction as simultaneously a
manifestation of “natural talent” and the product of “proper” mechanistic train-
ing. By ignoring the question surrounding the acquisition or pedagogy of virtu-
osity, cultural commentators have missed the basis for many of the tensions
surrounding the practice.3
It is these tensions that I would like to explore in this chapter, as they play
themselves out in the relationship between Liszt and his only professional piano
teacher, Carl Czerny.4 What interests me are not so much the biographical

For their assistance in preparing this chapter, I wish to thank Michael Saffle (Virginia
Tech), David Gramit (University of Alberta), Otto Biba (Archiv, Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde in Wien), and Evelyn Liepsch (Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Stiftung
Weimarer Klassik, Weimar). I also thank Franz Szabo of the Canadian Centre for
Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta for giving me the
opportunity to explore Czerny through participation in the Carl Czerny
International Symposium in June 2002.
a star is born? ❧ 53

details of Liszt’s ten-month period of study with Czerny between early 1822 and
1823, but rather how this relationship fits within the discourse of virtuosity at
the time, the pedagogical practice of apprenticeship and the transcendental ide-
ology of mastery, Czerny’s and Liszt’s constructions of self, and posterity’s posi-
tioning of Czerny and Liszt. Ultimately, I would like to demonstrate how the
answers to the question of whether Liszt the star was born or made reflect impor-
tant shifts in the cultural and social climate of the day and in turn helped shape
cultural work then, since then, and now.
To get to the root of the role Czerny played in Liszt’s virtuosity, it is important
to come to an understanding of the nature of private musical instruction at the
time. Unfortunately, no studies exist that deal with this aspect of music educa-
tion, even though it has served as the initial and principal means of training for
professional musicians from the eighteenth century to the present.5 Of course,
once a larger market for musical performance opened up in the early nine-
teenth century, not only did the demand for private instructors increase, but so
too did the seriousness of lessons. The ability to play or sing may have continued
to belong to the upbringing of every respectable member of the middle and
upper classes, but given the success of a Kalkbrenner or Liszt, just to mention
two names that were in the air, many a parent wondered if they did not have a
Wunderkind under their own roof. The method of teaching was based on the
master/apprentice model of learning a trade, which has carried on until the
present, although different historical periods and individual pupils and teachers
have treated that relationship with varying degrees of strictness. It stands to rea-
son that such a method would apply most strictly to budding virtuosi who stud-
ied under masters of their instrument, rather than pupils who were learning an
instrument (including voice) to round out their cultivation.
At the time Adam Liszt entrusted the piano instruction of his son to one of
the most renowned teachers in Vienna of his day, musical virtuosity was in a state
of flux. As Susan Bernstein has noted,

Historical change in the dual evaluation of virtuosity, turning from cheerful mastery to
deceptive mockery, can be seen in the short interval between Mozart (1756–91), the
virtuoso universally hailed as genius and prodigy, and Paganini (1782–1840), the first
really professional virtuoso, a technician made popular in part by rumors of possession
by the devil evident in his uncanny mastery of his instrument.6

Although Bernstein overstates the benignity with which virtuosity was prac-
ticed and accepted in the eighteenth century, there can be no doubt that the
emergence of Romanticism at the turn of the century in German-speaking lands
brought about a change in the discourse of virtuosity. Johann Friedrich
Reichardt’s comments about virtuosi from the Berlinische Musikalische Zeitung of
1805 could stand for an entire epoch of caution toward a musical practice that
threatened nature, order, and control:
54 ❧ j a m e s d e av i l l e

Granted that our artists and virtuosi rightfully want to elevate themselves above that
which is common and daily, some of them go to the other extreme, also transcending
the boundary of nature and truthfulness. In order to be out of the ordinary, to be new
and striking, they make artifice of art and even depart from the natural laws of senti-
ment [Empfindung].7

Thus, while Reichardt grants virtuosi a legitimate place within musical interpre-
tation, he objects to their artificial excess, which transcends nature. If we read
further, we see how his notion of the virtuoso is rooted in eighteenth-century
concepts of performance detail (ornamentation and tempo) rather than roman-
tic assessments of the performer’s character (whether hero, charlatan, angel, or
demon):

In order to demonstrate striking originality, their artistry is extravagant in ornaments

and mannerisms to the level of loathsomeness, they distort the most beautiful and sim-
plest melodies into caricatures, they exaggerate expression to the point of the most
repugnant affectation. The calm, steady flow of Empfindung, which makes itself felt in
the [work’s] rhythmic, metrical motion, is broken by such virtuosi with the greatest
recklessness.8

Writing in 1840, Gustav Schilling presents different expectations of the virtuoso:

“The virtuoso should not only [play] the notes but also reveal and at the same
time demonstrate the spirit residing within a composition.”9
It is this fundamental transformation of the virtuoso from a technician to an
interpreter, from a prosodist to a poet, from a reproducer to a producer, and
from a set of fingers to a personality, that was facilitated by cultural and social
shifts during the first three decades of the nineteenth century.10 The emergence
of the “romantic” virtuoso had such divergent contributing factors as the privi-
leging of instrumental music, the new emphasis on individual subjectivity in the
experience of the musical art work, the newfound role of artist as model and
hero, the opening up of bourgeois public sphere, and the pervasive discourse of
organicism.
Richard Leppert has pointed out how the virtuoso’s role and activities were
rooted in a series of paradoxes, including “artist and businessman, inspired
superhuman and machine, utterly sincere in character and calculatingly manip-
ulative, authentic and fake.”11 We have already seen a paradox embedded within
Reichardt’s comments: the virtuoso is supposed to transcend the boundary of
the normative, yet must remain within the realm of that which is natural.
Reichardt expressed it this way:

No one will deny that speeding and slowing of tempo . . . will have a strong effect in
many passages . . . , but now these means of expression seem to be applied extremely
arbitrarily, and they . . . disturb the beautiful organic unity of the music.12
a star is born? ❧ 55

This tension between that which is natural, or “organic,” and that which exceeds
nature would become the basis for the debate over virtuosity throughout the
nineteenth century and indeed, the twentieth. On the one hand, we have the
position expressed in the Berliner Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of 1824, possibly
by editor Adolf Bernhard Marx himself, who validates virtuosity as a result of seri-
ous effort and practice (hence training) and justifies and even welcomes “a vir-
tuosic piece [with] little pure artistic content . . . as an unquestionably faithful
document of its maker and that which he has created from his instrument and
his fingers (or lips, etc.).”13 This remarkable legitimation of the practice stands in
stark contrast to the critique of virtuosity by Johann Jakob Wagner, published in
the Leipziger Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of 1823: “In place of a performance
that subjects external presentation to feeling [Gemüth], we get a presentation that
chases after that which is rare, moreover strange and bizarre, through meager
and cold observation of that which is correct.”14 Implicit within this debate is the
paradoxical question of whether virtuosity, like genius, is inborn (i.e., natural or
organic) or inbred (a result of training). While the discussion of that question
may not have been in the forefront of journalistic writing, students and teachers
of the time had to negotiate the issue and the resultant tensions. And here is
where we pick up the thread of Vienna, Czerny, and Liszt.
Czerny’s Vienna came to know the new keyboard virtuosity through the per-
formances of Hummel, Kalkbrenner, and Moscheles, to name the main fig-
ures.15 The activities of this generation, which opened “a new world” to Czerny,
had so naturalized the early practice of virtuosity—according to Czerny, featur-
ing “new splendid difficulties, . . . a purity, elegance, and tenderness of per-
formance, and . . . a tastefully composed fantasy”16—that Viennese critic
Friedrich August Kanne could make the following recommendation to up-and-
coming virtuosi in 1822:

If a virtuoso wants to show his best in public, ingratiating melodies must nicely alter-
nate with difficulties and become more interesting toward the end, through a height-
ening of the composition, so that it seems to the audience as if the artistic abilities of
the performer increased by the minute.17

F. A. Wendt went so far as to report in the Viennese Allgemeine musikalische

Zeitung of 1822 that “virtuosity . . . has not only been carried to its greatest
extreme in most recent times . . . , but through it the pinnacle in the develop-
ment of instrumental music in general has been attained.”18 Thus even within
the musical press there was support for a certain practice of virtuosity, which was
regarded as having beneficial effects upon the public. In Vienna, an anonymous
writer observed in 1823 how “virtuosi have had a very significant influence upon
the education of the masses, having awakened so many talents who have been
able to make major progress in all types of virtuosity through excellent instruc-
tion.”19 It is clear from this use of the term that virtuosity here still means a level
56 ❧ j a m e s d e av i l l e

of technical skill or mastery that would be accessible to diligent learners. Indeed,

Czerny scholar Grete Wehmeyer points out how “the idea of becoming a piano
virtuoso was inherent in every child’s education at the piano at the time [and]
the way to that [goal] was through hours of practice.”20
Czerny’s own attitudes toward virtuosity and the teaching of it become evident
through his autobiography, his letters to Adam Liszt, and his pedagogical works
themselves. The autobiography, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, was written in
1842, according to his own marginal notation.21 In it, Czerny recounts his life in
detail to 1821–22, emphasizing his relationship to Beethoven and Liszt, the for-
mer as performer-composer, the latter as virtuoso. It is hardly coincidental that
Czerny wrote about his “training” of Liszt in 1842, when the world-renowned
performer was at the peak of his career. Autobiographical documents are self-
serving by definition, and certainly Czerny could gain in stature as personal
acquaintance of the two most noted musical figures of the nineteenth century,
in one case as keeper of the knowledge, in the other as maker of the artist. Of
course, the Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben was never published during Czerny’s
lifetime, so all we can do is speculate regarding his intentions.
Whatever its motivation, the 1842 autobiography is an important source for
tracing Czerny’s position on virtuosity. Writing in retrospect, after the Paganini
and Liszt “revolution,” Czerny distanced his own past as performer from virtu-
osic practice, since his parents were too old to accompany him on tours, the war
was disruptive to travel, and—most significant for this study—his playing “always
lacked that brilliant and well-prepared charlatanry that is in large part so neces-
sary for traveling virtuosi. . . . Brilliance on the piano was still in its infancy at the
time.”22 Here we can read one side of Czerny’s attitude toward virtuosity, namely,
skepticism of self-display and showmanship. Reviews of Czerny’s relatively few
public performances after 1805 certainly stressed those same features that dis-
tinguished the virtuosity of Hummel: purity and brilliance. Thus Czerny showed
little understanding for the new direction in virtuosity that his erstwhile pupil
Liszt would help to introduce; even in the midst of Lisztomania, Czerny would
remain true to the values of his own training and teaching, while still taking
credit for the accomplishments of his student.
Given his position on virtuosity, it should not surprise us that Czerny was not
the most sympathetic auditor when Adam Liszt brought his eight-year-old son
Franzi to the teacher in August 1819.23 In his memoirs, Czerny described the
lad’s appearance as “pale” and “sickly looking,” his posture as “swaying about on
the stool as if drunk,” and his playing as “irregular, untidy, confused,” with no
proper concept of fingering.24 Yet master Czerny recognized talent in young
Liszt, a talent given by nature: “one saw that Nature herself had formed a
pianist.” Here was a chance for proper pedagogy to make a “true” virtuoso of the
youth, for nature to be disciplined and controlled, and for Czerny to tame this
excessive body.25 In this context it is significant to observe that, with the under-
standing that the family would soon relocate to Vienna, Czerny gave the boy
a star is born? ❧ 57

scales and related exercises to practice: the master could direct the pupil even
in his absence.26
It was not until early 1822 that the family actually took up residence in
Vienna and Franz began lessons with Czerny. As documented in the teacher’s
memoirs, the young Liszt was his most eager, ingenious, and industrious pupil,
qualities that well suited what Czerny himself acknowledged as the dry, mechan-
ical training he enforced in the first months, which the eleven-year-old
Wunderkind naturally resisted.27 Again, the autobiography reveals to us the tech-
nical details of Czerny’s pedagogy: teach all scales in a variety of tempi and
teach rhythmic strictness, beautiful articulation and tone, proper fingering,
and correct musical declamation through the sonatas of Clementi. Czerny says
he turned after several months from the mechanical rules to music of Hummel,
Ries, Moscheles, and later Bach and Beethoven, in order to “allow [Liszt] to
grasp the spirit and character of these various composers.”28 For Czerny, it was
also important to develop Liszt’s gifts of sight-reading and improvising, which
Zsuzsa Domokos has established as a key element in Czerny’s pedagogy.29 That
Czerny was more than just a teacher to Liszt is evident through the close rela-
tionship between teacher and pupil, or shall I say master and apprentice: the
lessons were daily, Liszt and his father lived on the same street as the Czerny
family, and the boy was adopted by Czerny’s parents as a member of the family.
Clearly, Czerny was not just providing his top student instruction in technique
or even expression, but was also modeling for him a particular life for the piano
and virtuosity, invoking the apprenticeship model of creating a master in one’s
own image.
Thus it should not surprise us to learn of Czerny’s disappointment over what
he considered to be Liszt’s premature departure, after only ten months of
instruction (in comparison, Theodor Döhler spent six years under Czerny’s tute-
lage),30 and at that, for what Czerny thought to be Adam Liszt’s lust for pecu-
niary gain.31 (Indeed, Adam’s letters to the master are filled with reports of
Franzi’s popular and pecuniary successes in Paris, unaware of the discomfort this
might have caused the former teacher.) We could say that, for Czerny, the young
apprentice did not allow the master to complete his training and pass on the
fullness of his legacy to his most promising student. Czerny’s disappointment is
clear in the following, final passage about Liszt in the memoirs, a passage that
Walker’s account of Liszt’s training omits:

In Paris . . . he certainly received much money, but lost many years, since his life as well
as his art took a false direction. When I traveled to Paris sixteen years later (1837), I
found his playing rather confused and dissolute in every aspect, despite his tremendous
bravura. I believed I could give him no better advice than to undertake tours through
Europe, and when he traveled to Vienna one year later, his genius took on new life.
With the unbounded applause of our sensitive public his playing soon took on that bril-
liant yet clearer direction, through which he so distinguishes himself in all of the world.
However, I am still convinced that if he had continued the studies of his youth for a few
58 ❧ j a m e s d e av i l l e

more years in Vienna, he would have justified all of the high compositional expecta-
tions that one rightfully had of him at the time.32

In essence, Czerny lost his control and as a result the pupil lost his, reverting to
the undisciplined style of his early youth in the deleterious atmosphere of deca-
dent Paris. Yet Wanderjahre belonged to the apprenticeship model of training,
even for a virtuoso. And for Czerny, Liszt regained his sensibility as virtuoso away
from Paris, in the cleansing artistic environment of Vienna (although he still
missed the mark as composer). This paragraph seems to be the manifestation of
a master teacher who was concerned about what he had unleashed upon the
world under his own name.
These conflicted responses to his progeny—great ability, but undisciplined
passion—show up in Czerny documents from the 1820s: on the one hand, in an
autobiographical notice from 1824 for a new edition of Gerber’s Tonkünstler-
Lexikon, Czerny mentions Liszt above all other pupils;33 on the other, he
attempted to direct Liszt’s training through pointed comments in letters to
Adam Liszt from 1824 and 1825. These documents substantiate Czerny’s peda-
gogy of virtuosity: he admonished Adam to have his son study and continue to
practice, not to let him be confused by excessive praise, and above all to make
him consider that, “if one can awaken momentary enthusiasm through youthful
fire and striking improvisation, nevertheless masterful, perfect, rhythmically
solid performance of classical compositions will guarantee a much more lasting
fame.”34 Later he warned the father that the son would have to moderate his pas-
sion and speed. More specifically, Czerny sent Liszt his three Allegri di Bravura
with the recommendation that he play them in “proper tempo and with all
purity and ease of expression,” not forgetting the metronome.35 In response,
Adam reported how “his current playing would earn your applause. He plays
purely and with expression and his mechanics are at a high level; I still have him
practice scales and etudes with a metronome, and do not deviate from your prin-
ciples.”36 Czerny did assure Adam that his son had achieved what no one of his
age had previously mastered, although the boy would be well advised to eschew
Paris in favor of Vienna, which “for the musical artist (especially pianist) is to be
considered to a certain extent as the final, highest authority, and a judgment
made here is recognized throughout the entire world as competent. The spirit
of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven. . . . so ennobled taste and artistic sensibility that
even the most tenacious Rossini-ism cannot destroy it.”37
Czerny’s conception of virtuosity was clearly rooted in his identity as a master
teacher who preserved a Viennese cultural legacy and a way of passing it on to
apprentice students. As we see from his later pedagogical publications, he
believed that virtuosity could be attained through industry and practice, when
methodically pursued.38 Wehmeyer notes that, while Georg Simon Löhlein’s late
eighteenth-century Clavier-Schule stressed genius over industry, Czerny consid-
ered hard work and practice “as the only guarantees for success.”39 Czerny stated
a star is born? ❧ 59

in the foreword to his Vierzig tägliche Studien, Op. 337 (1835), that his exercises,
repeated measure by measure, up to thirty times each measure, were for the pur-
pose of “attaining and maintaining virtuosity.”40
As a result, the talented young Liszt posed the teacher a problem. Liszt’s
unruly body, his ultimate failure to submit to the control required by Czerny’s
training, threatened to undermine his relationship with the master—indeed,
when he extended his memoirs in 1842 to include Liszt, Czerny was still smart-
ing from Liszt’s giving in to the “dark side of the force.” Is it possible that Czerny
began publishing pedagogical works that were intended to lead the student
toward virtuosity—“true” virtuosity—as a result of his work with Franzi? In 1825,
he edited with new forewords two important historical piano methods, and
Czerny’s first piano method of his own devising appeared in 1827 as Opus 139.
These works and their successors by Czerny from the 1830s and 1840s fixed a
legacy of a pedagogy of virtuosity at a time when the virtuoso as unbridled per-
sonality was emerging on the European scene, first through Paganini, and later
through Liszt.41
Wehmeyer remarks that “Czerny prescribed to piano players ‘labor’ [Arbeit]
on their instrument, at a time in Europe when activity and labor were declared
to be the highest values for bourgeois life.”42 This perceptive statement presents
half of one of the paradoxical meanings anchored by the virtuoso: while the vir-
tuoso was figured at times as a machine, he/she was also seen as playing the role
of inspired superhuman, as Leppert and others have observed.43 Liszt embodied
this paradox, which brought together the two sides of his virtuosity, natural tal-
ent and acquired ability. The critical responses to his virtuoso performances and
tours of the 1830s and 1840s would divide along this fault line: was Liszt a nat-
ural genius or a calculating charlatan?44 And more significantly for the culture
of his times, did he represent the natural privilege of aristocracy or the self-made
ideal of the bourgeoisie? Of course, there is no objectively correct answer, and
while we might feel that we can reconcile (or ignore) the nature-nurture debate
in light of his later development, Liszt apologists have pressed the issue into
their own service.
In closing, let us take a look at how posterity has positioned Liszt’s studies with
Czerny to accomplish its own cultural work. Eager to press the legitimation of
Liszt’s virtuosity through his genealogy and training, his earliest biographers,
that is, those from the virtuoso years, took pains to establish a fruitful influence
from Czerny. Here is what J. W. Christern wrote in the first German-language
biography of Liszt, from 1841: “Carl Czerny . . . oversaw the piano playing of the
lad. He could not have been better provided for with regard to technique, and
those who know how many fine and solid players emanated from that
school . . . will be able to measure fully the relationship between teacher and
student and the most detailed and rewarding studies that he underwent.”45 One
generation later, after Liszt had departed from the concert stage and had
become one of the standard-bearers for the New German School in the 1850s,
60 ❧ j a m e s d e av i l l e

Czerny (and the virtuoso years in general) were impediments to Liszt’s progres-
sive status and thus written out of his life. This we see in Franz Brendel’s
Geschichte der Musik, where the virtuosity of Paganini and Liszt is a fully organic,
natural phenomenon of spirit and not of empty or artificial technique, and
where Czerny is seen as a representative of the decline of virtuosity.46 Toward the
end of his life, the bases for a Liszt hagiography were being established by Lina
Ramann and others: now it was a matter of establishing Liszt’s genius inde-
pendent of other forces and biographical factors, which meant further devalu-
ing the studies with Czerny and discrediting any contribution Czerny might have
made in “creating Liszt.” For example, Ramann wrote the following in the first
volume of her biography: “The actual essence of the boy was not understood by
Czerny. The man of mechanics and form could never understand a being so
opposite to him, neither as a child nor as a man.”47 In his editorial reading of a
prepublication draft of the book, Liszt made a note on this passage in red pen-
cil, with the words “nicht ganz richtig.”48 Given her self-awareness, it is not sur-
prising that Ramann let her original passage stand in the published version of
the book.49 The trope of Czerny as “purveyor of dry technique,” which has sur-
vived to the present, found much support within the New German school
despite Liszt’s personal indebtedness to his master. In most recent times, biog-
raphers like Alan Walker have made an attempt to restore Czerny to his “proper”
role, as first important recognizer of Liszt’s genius, as intermediary between
Beethoven and Liszt, as teacher who established a solid basis for Liszt’s virtuos-
ity, and as lifelong friend and valued colleague. Yet here we miss the tension in
that relationship, between the impetuous genius and the methodical peda-
gogue, here we lack Czerny’s final, mildly complaining paragraph about Liszt,50
here we do not find the delightful mythical stories about Liszt’s disobedience to
Czerny’s control, such as the time (according to Ludwig Rellstab) that the lad
“himself wrote out false fingerings and then complained to his father about the
teacher who expected him to do such wrong things.”51 Finally, my own position
cannot escape interrogation: I would like to regard this aspect of Liszt’s life as
irreconcilable and paradoxical as every other one, a product of Liszt’s delight-
fully fragmented self.
So, Liszt’s studies with Czerny have been appropriated for diverse cultural
work about him at different historical moments, whether to validate (or invali-
date) his virtuoso activities, to establish Liszt as natural genius, or to create an
unproblematic Liszt-Bild. I see the “episode” with Czerny as reflecting the sig-
nificant changes in German culture and society during the first three decades
of the nineteenth century, manifested in musical culture in part through the
shift in the nature and role of the virtuoso. We cannot smooth away the tensions
and “clean up” the Czerny–Liszt relationship without losing the transitional
nature of the relationship and historical period. Indeed, it is just the rupture
represented by Liszt’s untimely departure from Czerny that makes this seem-
ingly minor biographical detail so important. This break in the pedagogy of
a star is born? ❧ 61

virtuosity should mark for us in retrospect a turning point in Liszt’s life and
even the dawning of a new era in musical subjectivity, for both performers and
audiences.

Notes
1. Recent titles include: Susan Bernstein, Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century:
Performing Music and Language in Heine, Liszt, and Baudelaire (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1998); Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004); David Gramit, Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and
Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770–1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002), 139–43; Kevin Kopelson, Beethoven’s Kiss: Pianism, Perversion, and the Mastery of
Desire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Lawrence Kramer, “Franz Liszt
and the Virtuoso Public Sphere: Sight and Sound in the Rise of Mass
Entertainment,” in Kramer, Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), 68–99; Richard Leppert, “Cultural
Contradiction, Idolatry, and the Piano Virtuoso: Franz Liszt,” in Piano Roles: Three
Centuries of Life with the Piano, ed. James Parakilas (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1999), 252–81; Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-
Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998); Mark Mitchell, Virtuosi: A Defense and a (Sometimes Erotic) Celebration of Great
Pianists (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Jane O’Dea, Virtue or
Virtuosity? Explorations in the Ethics of Musical Performance (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 2000); Jim Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work: The Transcendental Studies of
Liszt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
2. The cover features the famous caricature series by János Jankó, “Franz Liszt at
the Piano,” from Borsszem Jankó (April 6, 1873).
3. Gramit, Cultivating Music, does provide an introduction to the growing contro-
versy over virtuosity in the first half of the nineteenth century (139–43).
4. Although the standard monographs about Liszt all devote several pages to his
studies with Czerny (see below), no one publication has been exclusively devoted to
this episode in Liszt’s life.
5. Even the new editions of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Die
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart lack entries or discussions devoted to private
instruction in music. Gramit, Cultivating Music, has an insightful chapter on the
teaching of singing in German elementary schools (“Education and the Social Roles
of Music,” 93–124), which also occasionally touches upon private instruction, such
as in the case of Karl Friedrich Zelter (120).
6. Bernstein, Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century, 12.
7. “Indem sich unsre Künstler und Virtuosen mit Recht über das Gemeine und
Alltägliche erheben wollen, gerathen einige von ihnen auf das andre Extrem, auch
über die Gränze der Natur und Wahrheit hinauszugehen. Um nicht gewöhnlich zu
seyn, um neu und frappant zu erscheinen, künsteln sie an der Kunst, und verlassen
selbst die natürlichen Gesetze der Empfindung.” [Johann Friedrich Reichardt,]
“Ueber die Eigenheit mancher Virtuosen im musikalischen Vortrage,” Berlinische
Musikalische Zeitung 1, no. 48 (1805): 187. Unless otherwise indicated, translations
are by the author.
62 ❧ j a m e s d e av i l l e

8. “Um auffallende Originalität darzustellen, verschwenden sie in ihrer Kunst

die Verzierungen und Manieren bis zum Ekel, verzerren die schönsten einfachsten
Melodien bis zur Karrikatur, und überspannen den Ausdruck bis zur widrigesten
Affektation. Der ruhige, stetige Gang der Empfindung, der sich in der rhythmischen
taktmäßigen Bewegung fühlbar macht, wird von solchen Virtuosen mit der größten
Willkühr unterbrochen” (ibid.).
9. “Der Virtuos soll nicht blos die Noten, sondern auch den inschlummernden
Geist eines Tonstücks offenbaren und gleichsam zur Anschauung bringen.” Gustav
Schilling, Lehrbuch der Musikwissenschaft (Karlsruhe: Christian Theodor Groos, 1840),
462–63.
10. Regarding these shifts, see, for example, Carl Dahlhaus, “Introduction” to
Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), 1–53 and Alexander Ringer, “The Rise of Urban Musical
Life between the Revolutions, 1789–1848,” in The Early Romantic Era, ed. Alexander
Ringer (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 1–31.
11. Leppert, “Cultural Contradiction, Idolatry, and the Piano Virtuoso,” 281.
12. “Daß Beschleunigung und Verzögerung das Tempo an manchen
Orten . . . große Wirkung thun können, wird niemand leugnen . . . , allein jetzt
scheinen diese Mittel des Ausdrucks höchst willkührlich angewandt zu werden, und
sie . . . stören den schönen organischen Zusammenhang der Musik.” Reichardt,
“Die Eigenheit mancher Virtuosen,” 187.
13. “Und hätte ein Virtuosenwerk wenig reinen Kunstgehalt, so sei es uns doch als
eine gewiss treue Urkunde über seinen Verfertiger und das, was er aus seinem
Instrumente und seinen Fingern (oder Lippen u.s.w.) gebildet hat, willkommen.”
“Recensionen,” Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 1, no. 33 (August 18, 1824):
283.
14. “An die Stelle des Vortrages, der die Darstellung dem Gemüthe unterwirft,
tritt eine Darstellung, die mit nothdürftiger und kalter Beobachtung des Richtigen,
nach dem Seltenen, ja Seltsamen und Abentheuerlichen jagt.” J[ohann] J[akob]
Wagner, “Ideen über Musik,” Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 25, no. 20 (May 14,
1823): col. 310.
15. See Alice Hanson, Musical Life in Beidermeier Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985), 100–101, for a brief discussion of virtuosity in Vienna dur-
ing this period. Czerny’s autobiography (see note 21) mentions Joseph Wölfl
(1773–1812), Abbé Joseph Gelinek (1758–1825), and Joseph Lipavsky
(1772–1810) as the leading piano virtuosi in Vienna during his early youth. For a
comparison of Kalkbrenner and Moscheles and the effects of their playing in
Vienna, see Czerny’s letter to Adam Liszt, dated Vienna, April 3, 1824, published in
La Mara [⫽ Marie Lipsius], “Aus Franz Liszts erster Jugend: Ein Schreiben seines
Vaters mit Briefen Czernys an ihn,” Die Musik 9 no. 3 (1905–6): 20–21: “Both of
them pleased, delighted the public, but did not conquer it” (21) [Beyde haben das
Publikum erfreut, ergötzt, aber nicht erobert].
16. Carl Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (1842), ed. Walter Kolneder,
Sammlung Musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 46 (Baden-Baden: Valentin
Koerner, 1968), 18.
17. “Wenn ein Virtuose sich dem Publicum zeigen will, so müssen graziöse
Melodien mit den Schwierigkeiten schön abwechseln, und gegen das Ende hin,
durch eine Steigerung des Tonsatzes interessanter werden, damit dem Zuhörer scheint,
als ob mit jeder Minute die Kunstfertigkeiten des Spielenden sich vermehrten.”
a star is born? ❧ 63

Friedrich August Kanne, “B und C,” Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, mit besonderer
Rücksicht auf den österreichischen Kaiserstaat 6, no. 8 (January 26, 1822): cols. 62–63.
18. “Was aber diese Virtuosität anbelangt, so ist sie nicht nur in der neuesten Zeit
auf ihre höchste Spitze getrieben worden . . . , sondern mit ihr ist auch der Gipfel in
der Ausbildung der Instrumental-Musik überhaupt erreicht worden.” F. A. Wendt,
“Über den Zustand der Musik in Deutschland: Eine Skizze,” Allgemeine Musikalische
Zeitung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf den österreichischen Kaiserstaat 6, no. 95 (November
27, 1822): col. 753.
19. “Diese grosse Anzahl von Künstlern und Virtuosen hat eben wieder einen sehr
bedeutenden Einfluss auf die Volksbildung gehabt, und in der grossen Masse so viele
Talente geweckt, welche durch trefflichen Unterricht eben so bedeutende
Fortschritte in aller Virtuosität machen konnten.” “Concert,” Allgemeine Musikalische
Zeitung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf den österreichischen Kaiserstaat 7, no. 7 (January 21,
1823): col. 51.
20. Grete Wehmeyer, Carl Czerny und die Einzelhaft am Klavier, oder, Die Kunst der
Fingerfertigkeit und die industrielle Arbeitsideologie (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1983), 93.
21. The autograph is preserved in the archive of the Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde in Wien, as is that of “Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen aus der Zeit
meiner Kindheit und Jugend,” which shares considerable material with the
Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben. I thank Otto Biba of the Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde for allowing access to the latter, previously unpublished document.
For an edition and translation, as well as a consideration of the relationship of the
two, see Attilio Bottegal’s contribution to the present volume.
22. “Auch fehlte meinem Spiel stets jene brillante und wohlvorbereitete
Charlatanerie, welche den reisenden Virtuosen so nötig ist. Beethovens
Kompositionen gefielen nicht, und das Glänzende war damals auf dem Fortepiano
noch in seiner Kindheit.” Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 23.
23. He was also known as “Puzzi” or “Zisy.” See Alan Walker, Franz Liszt, Vol. 1, The
Virtuoso Years 1811–1847, rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 71–73,
for a discussion of Liszt and Czerny in Vienna and the boy’s nicknames at the time.
24. “Es war ein bleiches, schwächlich aussehendes Kind, und beim Spielen wankte
es am Stuhle wie betrunken herum, so daß ich oft dachte, es würde zu Boden fallen.
Auch war sein Spiel ganz unregelmäßig, unrein, verworren, und von der
Fingersetzung hatte er so wenig Begriff, daß er die Finger ganz willkürlich über die
Tasten warf. Aber dem ungeachtet war ich über das Talent erstaunt, welches die
Natur in ihn gelegt hatte.” Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 27. The haggard
appearance is a reflection of the serious illnesses from which the young Liszt suf-
fered. See Walker, Franz Liszt, 1:78–79.
25. See Leppert, “Cultural Contradiction, Idolatry, and the Piano Virtuoso” for a
discussion and illustrations of Liszt’s body in performance.
26. Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 27–28.
27. “Nie hatte ich einen so eifrigen, genievollen und fleißigen Schüler
gehabt. . . . So schien es mir vor allem andern nötig, die ersten Monate dazu
anzuwenden, seine mechanische Fertigkeit dergestalt zu regeln und zu befestigen”
(ibid., 28). The young virtuoso had to drop his entire repertory and “unlearn” much
that he had learned.
28. “In kurzer Zeit spielte er die Skalen in allen Tonarten mit aller der meister-
haften Geläufigkeit . . . und durch das ernste Studium der Clementischen
Sonaten . . . gewöhnte ich ihn die bisher ganz mangelnde Taktfestigkeit, den
64 ❧ j a m e s d e av i l l e

schönen Anschlag und Ton, den richtigsten Fingersatz und richtige musikalische
Deklamation an, obwohl diese Kompositionen dem lebhaften und stets höchst
munteren Knaben anfangs ziemlich trocken vorkamen. Diese Methode bewirkte,
daß ich, als wir einige Monate später die Werke des Hummel, Ries, Moscheles,
sodann Beethoven und Seb. Bach vornahmen, nicht mehr nötig hatte, auf die mech-
anischen Regeln zu viel zu achten, sondern ihn gleich den Geist und den Charakter
dieser verschiedenen Autoren auffassen lassen konnte” (ibid.).
29. Zsuzsa Domokos, “Czerny hatálsa Lisztre: a fantáziálás müvészzete,” Magyar
Zene 33 (1992): 70–96 and “Carl Czernys Einfluß auf F. Liszt: Die Kunst des
Phantasierens,” in Der junge Liszt: Referate des 4. Europäischen Liszt-Symposions Wien
1991, ed. G. Scholz, Liszt- Studien 4 (Munich: Katzbichler, 1993), 19–28.
30. Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 29.
31. “Leider wünschte sein Vater von ihm große pekuniäre Vorteile, und als der
Kleine im besten Studieren war, als ich eben anfing, ihn zur Komposition anzuleiten,
ging er auf Reisen, zuerst nach Ungarn und zuletzt nach Paris und London, etc” (ibid.).
32. “In Paris . . . gewann er allerdings viel Geld, verlor aber viele Jahre, indem
sein Leben wie seine Kunst eine falsche Richtung nahm. Als ich 16 Jahre später nach
Paris kam (1837), fand ich sein Spiel in jeder Hinsicht ziemlich wüst und verworren
bei aller ungeheuern Bravour. Ich glaubte ihm keinen besseren Rat geben zu kön-
nen, als Reisen durch Europa zu machen, und als er ein Jahr später nach Wien kam,
bekam sein Genie einen neuen Schwung. Unter dem grenzlosen Beifall unseres fein-
fühlenden Publikums nahm sein Spiel bald jene glänzende und dabei doch klarere
Richtung durch die er sich jetzt in der Welt so berühmt macht. Allein ich habe die
Überzeugung, daß er, wenn er seine Jugendstudien in Wien noch einige Jahre fort-
gesetzt hätte, jetzt auch in der Komposition alle die hohen Erwartungen rechtferti-
gen würde, die man damals mit Recht von ihm hegte” (ibid.).
33. “Unter diejenigen von meinen Schülern die das Glück hatten sich bekannt zu
machen, gehört auch der junge Ungar Franz Liszt, der sich gegenwärtig in Paris
befindet.” Carl Czerny, letter to Eberhard Freiherr zu Wintzingerode, dated Vienna,
November 17, 1824; published in Friedrich Schnapp, “Ein autobiographischer Brief
Carl Czerny’s aus dem Jahre 1824,” Zeitschrift für Musik 108, no. 2 (February 1941):
94. Original letter in possession of the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Stiftung
Weimarer Klassik, Weimar.
34. “Er soll bedenken, dass, wenn man auch durch jugendliches Feuer, durch
frappantes Improvisiren einen augenblicklichen Enthusiasmus erwecken kann, doch
der meisterhafte, vollendete, taktfeste Vortrag klassischer Compositionen einen noch
dauerhaftern, bleibendern Ruhm gewährt, dessen die Welt nie überdrüssig und
gewöhnt wird.” Carl Czerny, letter to Adam Liszt, dated Vienna, April 3, 1824; pub-
lished in La Mara, “Aus Franz Liszts erster Jugend,” 22.
35. “1tens das Manuskript der 3 Allegri di Bravura . . . Selbe sind mehr brillant als
übermässig schwer und dem Franzi wird es ein Bagatell seyn sie im rechten Tempo
und mit all der Reinheit und leichten Expression vorzutragen, die ihm so sehr eigen
sind. Bey Nro. 3 empfehle ich ihm die Pedale streng genau zu beachten und das
Ganze mit viel Spektakel zu spielen. (Metronom nicht zu vergessen.).” Carl Czerny,
letter to Adam Liszt, dated Vienna, September 16, 1824; published in La Mara, “Aus
Franz Liszts erster Jugend,” 23–24.
36. “Sein dermaliges Spiel dürfte Ihren Beifall erhalten, er spielt rein und mit
Ausdruck und seine Mechanic ist auf einem hohen Grad; ich lasse ihn noch immer
Scala und Etuden beim Metronome spielen und gehe nicht ab von Ihren
a star is born? ❧ 65

Principien.” Liszt, letter to Carl Czerny, dated London, July 29, 1824; published in
“Franz Liszt auf seinem ersten Weltflug: Briefe seines Vaters, Adam Liszt, an Carl
Czerny,” in La Mara, Classisches und Modernes aus der Tonwelt (Leipzig: Breitkopf und
Härtel, 1892), 249.
37. “Dass Wien für den Musikkünstler (besonders im Fortepiano) gewissermassen
als die letzte, höchste Instanz zu betrachten sey; dass ein hier gefälltes Urteil in der
ganzen Welt . . . als kompetent anerkannt wird, und dass der Geist Mozarts, Haydns
und Beethovens und so vieler anderer, die in unsern Mauern athmeten, den
Geschmack und Kunstsinn so veredelte, dass auch der hartnäckigste Rossinismus ihn
nicht vernichten kann.” Carl Czerny, letter to Liszt, dated Vienna, April 3, 1824; pub-
lished in La Mara, “Aus Franz Liszts erster Jugend,” 20.
38. Many of his publications after Opus 150 are pedagogical in intent and char-
acter: among others, Opp. 365 (Die Schule des Virtuosen) and 834 (Die höhere Schule der
Virtuosität) are directed at potential virtuosi.
39. Grete Wehmeyer, “Czerny,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2d ed.,
Personenteil 5 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001): col. 229.
40. Ibid.
41. Hanns-Werner Heister, “Virtuosen,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart,
2d ed., Sachteil 9 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1998): cols. 1726–27.
42. “Carl Czerny verordnete den Klavierspielern ‘Arbeit’ (Pianoforte-Schule, 3. Tl.)
am Instrument in einer Zeit, als in Europa für das bürgerliche Leben Tätigkeit und
Arbeit zu den höchsten Werten erklärt . . . wurden.” Wehmeyer, “Czerny,” col. 229.
43. See Leppert, “Cultural Contradiction, Idolatry, and the Piano Virtuoso,”
272–81.
44. For sample reviews see Michael Saffle, Liszt in Germany 1840–1845: A Study in
Sources, Documents, and the History of Reception, in Franz Liszt Studies Series, no. 2
(Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1994) and Dezso⬙ Legány, Franz Liszt: Unbekannte
Presse und Briefe aus Wien, 1822–1886 (Budapest: Corvina, 1984).
45. “Carl Czerny leitete . . . das Pianofortespiel des Knaben. Für die Technik konnte
nicht besser gesorgt werden, und wer da weiß, wie viele feine und tüchtige Spieler
aus jener Schule hervorgegangen sind . . . , der wird das Verhältniß zwischen Lehrer
und Schüler und die genauesten und lohnendsten Studien, welche dieser machte,
vollkommen ermessen können.” [Johann Wilhelm] Christern, Franz Lißt. Nach seinem
Leben und Wirken aus authentischen Berichten dargestellt (Hamburg und Leipzig:
Schuberth, 1841), 11.
46. Franz Brendel, Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich, 3d ed.
(Leipzig: Heinrich Matthes, 1860), 476–84, 540–47.
47. “Nichstdestoweniger blieb das eigentliche Wesen des Knaben von Czerny
unverstanden. Der Mann der Mechanik und Form konnte eine ihm so entgegenge-
setzte Natur nie begreifen: nicht den Knaben, nicht den Mann.” Lina Ramann, Franz
Liszt: Als Künstler und Mensch, vol. 1: Die Jahre 1811–1840 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und
Härtel, 1880), 37.
48. Franz Liszt, autograph alterations to Lina Ramann, Franz Liszt als Künstler und
Mensch, vol. 1; Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Stiftung Weimarer Klassik, Weimar, Liszt-
Nachlaß, 59/350, 1.
49. For a discussion of Ramann as Liszt biographer, see Deaville, “Writing Liszt:
Lina Ramann, Marie Lipsius, and Early Biography,” Journal of Musicological Research
21 (2002): 74–95.
50. See above, and Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 29.
66 ❧ j a m e s d e av i l l e

51. “Dies erzeugte anfangs eine Mißstimmung des Knaben, und er sann auf
mancherlei Schalkstreiche, um dieser, wie es ihm schien, tyrannischen, demüthi-
genden Schule zu entkommen. So schrieb er sich selbst falsche Fingersetzungen auf
und klagte dann bei seinem Vater über den Lehrer, der so Unrichtiges von ihm ver-
lange.” Ludwig Rellstab, Franz Liszt. Beurtheilungen—Berichte—Lebensskizze (Berlin:
Trautwein, 1842), 61.
Chapter Five

The Veil of Fiction

Pedagogy and Rhetorical Strategies in Carl Czerny’s
Letters on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte
Deanna C. Davis

Perhaps because it is occurring at a time in which the general prospects for clas-
sical music seem at best uncertain, the rediscovery of Carl Czerny as a significant
and long-neglected composer of serious music understandably generates great
enthusiasm among his advocates. It is equally understandable that such enthu-
siasm may seek to minimize those aspects of Czerny’s multifaceted career that
have led to skepticism about his ability to produce music of such a high caliber.
And no aspect of that career is better known—or more of a potential liability—
than Czerny’s role as a pedagogue for amateurs, as the creator of etudes, which
have “been dispensed in doses by generations of piano teachers as though to
immunize their pupils against technical ills.”1 As the vessel through which
Beethoven’s legacy could be transmitted to Liszt, Czerny the pedagogue is
respectable; as a leading figure in the training of countless (and predominantly
female) amateur performers, however, he is something of an embarrassment.
Thus, when I asked one participant in the symposium on Czerny that accompa-
nied the festival of his music in Edmonton in 2002 about Czerny’s possible sig-
nificance among female amateur pianists, taking note of his Letters to a Young
Lady on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte (1837), the response was dismissive at best:
“they only played little songs, rondos, etc.” In other words, the amateur is unim-
portant to the rediscovered Czerny because she played unimportant music.
To anyone familiar with feminist musicology, and in particular with the work
of Marcia Citron,2 such an overt demonstration of the close link between gen-
der and the musical canon will be surprising only because it could be stated so
unselfconsciously at a musicological event in 2002. And the linkage of that attitude
68 ❧ d e a n n a c . dav i s

to pianism in particular is also longstanding. As Matthew Head points out, the

amateur pianist was traditionally associated with music that came to epitomize
the feminine connotations of amateur and domestic music making, and that
music, was, as Head notes, “almost invariably judged as inferior, or at best,
mediocre.”3 Such associations endure and are particularly problematic to
attempts to elevate any composer’s status in the world of mainstream classical
music.
Nevertheless, as Celia Applegate has recently argued, although “amateur
musicianship discourages analysis by its ordinariness,” amateur musical practices
were of great concern to early nineteenth-century music writers.4 We would do
well to take a clue from that interest and consider what those practices and the
texts that shaped them might reveal. Critical inquiry into the work of musicians
like Czerny could potentially inform our understanding not only of the peda-
gogue himself but also more generally of the role that pedagogical literature
and its practices played in forming participants in the European musical cul-
tures that produced the canonic classical repertoire. In other words, critically
examining pedagogical literature could not only reveal the ways in which it fun-
damentally shaped female subjectivity but also add greater specificity to cultural
theorizing within musicology and, in particular, to our understanding of the
bourgeois family as a significant and defining force behind broader musical and
cultural developments. In this context Czerny’s Letters to a Young Lady are indeed
relevant to a reassessment of the composer/pedagogue and his place in the
musical life of the nineteenth century.
There has already been some comment on the work. In her brief discussion
of the Letters, Alice Levine Mitchell suggests that “since we know that Czerny was
an ‘equal opportunity’ piano teacher, it is entirely possible that he was focusing
on the amateur of either sex when writing ‘letters’ to ‘ladies.’ ”5 And yet,
Czerny’s dedication to the “lady” suggests that he was attempting to distinguish
the work’s readership from the broader public. What is the underlying pre-
sumption here? Mitchell’s 1984 article predates the bulk of critical feminist
musicology; however, as we have already seen, some still hesitate to examine the
powerful ways that sex and gender affect music and its practices. James Parakilas,
though, has argued that learning to play was indeed a highly gendered activity:
“boys were trespassing into a female realm when they learned to play the piano
at all . . . , whereas girls were trespassing into a male realm when they got too
good.”6 Czerny’s Letters, Parakilas argues, “prescribes a revolutionary musical aes-
thetic that is at the same time a revolutionary method of child rearing” in which
boys and girls also learned how to fill their social roles.7
Beginning with an examination of the shape and rhetorical strategy of the
Letters, I examine one of the central tensions that surfaces in Czerny’s approach:
the potential conflict between culturally enforced limits on the role and promi-
nence of women as amateur performers, and Czerny’s apparently boundless
ambition for their pianistic accomplishment. While complicit in the social
the veil of fiction ❧ 69

construct that subjugated female musical amateurism to domesticity, Czerny’s

Letters simultaneously blur the allowable boundaries of the bourgeois family.
Conscious of the implicit danger, Czerny employs a variety of strategies to dis-
suade readers from crossing these boundaries. As a result the Letters both create
immediate implications for the imagined woman they address and perform
broader cultural work as a textual mediation of perception in which the dis-
course of power is exerted within the guise of piano pedagogy.

Women, Domestic Music-Making, and the Market

By the end of the eighteenth century the nature of the household had changed
from an economic unit to an “emotional and reproductive one.”8 With this
change the new bureaucratic elites, whose work now took place outside of the
household, used the private home as a site for the pursuit of cultivation.9
Alongside new interest in reading, discussion, and artistic appreciation in gen-
eral, music became an important part of the ideal of cultivation; the result was
an unprecedented growth in amateur music making. While both men and
women participated in musical activities in the home, the rise of amateurism in
this period had divergent “cultural” meanings; the pursuit of music in the home
carried different connotations for wives and daughters than for their husbands
and brothers.10 The ideology of domesticity, Applegate argues, “began to engulf
the female practice of music, appropriating it to the work of courtship, child
rearing, and the general maintenance of a strictly domestic harmony.”11 Already
at the end of the eighteenth century, the staged performances of marriageable
girls had become part of accepted sociability, and music itself was considered
“highly effective bait” in courtship rituals.12 Nevertheless, associations between
public performance, sexual availability, and music lingered, making the “cloak
of amateurism” and its connotations of private life and domesticity particularly
important.13
When considering the female amateur, no development is more remarkable
than the domestication of the piano. By the early nineteenth century, the piano
made its way definitively into the drawing room of the bourgeoisie, and musical
activity within the domestic realm flourished as never before. Becoming an
important aspect of female bourgeois education, the pervasive image of “lady”
at the piano denoted accomplishment and was an effective visual indicator of
bourgeois values of prosperity, cultivation, and leisure.14 The piano, however,
had other cultural implications—with the development of the Kleinfamilie
[nuclear family] new roles and responsibilities followed. Charged with providing
the family with material wealth, the father’s familial responsibilities took place
outside of the home while care for the interior (both emotional and domestic)
was the responsibility of the women. Adolescent girls were ideally suited to take
over musical tasks, through which they not only performed an important service
70 ❧ d e a n n a c . dav i s

for the family, but also developed their own wifely and mothering skills.15 The
girl at the piano, then, not only became emblematic of “daughterhood” within
the bourgeois family but also produced piano playing as a “form of moral and
emotional labor within the family.”16
The publishing boom that coincided with the growth in domestic musical
activity had important implications for the social practices of music production
and consumption, as musicians perceived an opportunity to expand the musical
market by providing a set of products that demanded each other.17 Pedagogical
treatises were among these commodities, making up a significant portion of
published literature—and pedagogy itself was rapidly gaining status as a “disci-
pline,” as it entered the domain of cultural discourse.18 Particularly remarkable
was the attention musicians and publishers paid to furnishing the needs of
female consumers: publications dedicated to the “fair sex”19 reveal not only the
intersection between the female amateur and the developing musical market
but also the development of women as a target audience. Czerny’s Letters on the
Art of Playing the Pianoforte offers a striking example of this trend.

The Letters as Letters

According to Czerny’s preface, the Letters are intended to accompany his

Pianoforte School, Op. 500; beyond that, however, he writes, it should assist in “bet-
ter comprehension and application of the rules which are contained in almost
every pianoforte school.”20 The work addresses a pupil who is a “talented and
well-educated girl of about twelve years old,” although Czerny also claims that it
“will prove of utility to pupils of every age, and in every stage of their progress.”21
This pupil, who is later identified as “Miss Cecilia,” is guided through the early
rudiments of piano playing, to more advanced subjects such as thorough bass
and extemporaneous performance. Beyond advancement of technical skills, the
treatise also offers guidance in the selection of repertoire and counsel regarding
performance before others.
To better understand the Letters and their significance demands going beyond
Czerny’s assertion that the design of the treatise simply “approximates the near-
est to verbal instruction.”22 That is, we can view them not only from a pragmatic
viewpoint that focuses on its utilitarian instructions on piano playing, but also lit-
erarily, as a work of fiction that reflects and speaks to its cultural, social, politi-
cal, personal, and historical contexts. From this perspective, the basic structure
of the work is clear: presented in the form of ten letters, it is organized to con-
vey the idea that Czerny is engaging in an ongoing exchange of letters with “Miss
Cecilia.” Throughout the course of the work he responds to her questions and
anxieties as expressed in the letters the pedagogue is presumed to have received.
Czerny’s use of an epistolary format is both a natural choice and a remarkable
one. While the letter, and, in particular, epistolary fiction, was a major phenomenon
the veil of fiction ❧ 71

well into the nineteenth century throughout Europe, there are relatively few
instances of epistolary music pedagogy.23 And yet, the letter was of particular
importance to the fragmented German intellectual community; bearing enor-
mous cultural significance, the letter was expected to serve a variety of func-
tions.24 The manual in the form of fictional letters was a significant part of this
epistolary tradition and as such served as a locus for the production of a variety
of discourses including business, government, religion, morality, family rela-
tionships, and eros.25
The epistolary format established a crucial link to Czerny’s primary audience;
the letter was a form of writing familiar to women, indeed, one with which they
were explicitly connected. Already in the 1750s, letter writing had achieved
great significance among women as part of the heightened attention paid to
their literacy within an educational mandate intended to make them better
wives and to promote a more distinctive national culture and language. Women
were encouraged to turn to letter writing as the most “appropriate form to prac-
tice these skills.”26 While the significance of letter writing as a personal and lit-
erary act is often presumed to have diminished after 1800, Lorely French argues
that, on the contrary, its importance for women grew “proportionately to the
increase in limitations placed on their social and creative freedom” by the “nat-
urally” defined roles of nineteenth-century gender ideology.27
Employing the epistolary tradition as his underlying structure suggests not only
that Czerny was deliberately creating appeal and familiarity among female ama-
teur pianists but also that he perceived both this readership and the practice of
female amateurism itself as unique. Here, however, there is a subtle difference
between the women’s epistolary tradition and Czerny’s appropriation of it. Czerny
uses the epistolary form not to encourage women’s writing but rather to silence
the one with whom he is supposed to be in dialogue: not only are “Miss Cecilia’s”
letters not included in the treatise, and thus the reader must rely on Czerny’s
“faithful” paraphrase, but her letters do not exist at all. In short, “Miss Cecilia” her-
self is Czerny’s invention, serving as a structural device for the method.
While in this respect the content of the “letters” is illusory, Thomas Beebee’s
examination of epistolary literature in Europe has shown that “fictional uses of
the letter appropriated the status and power the letter had already acquired
within other discursive practices.”28 This textual authority not only brings
greater weight to the method Czerny unfolds but also has broader implications
for the degree to which they could successfully perform cultural work. Thanks
to their autobiographical underpinnings, conveyed through the letters Czerny
“receives” and then quotes in the text, the Letters enjoy the verisimilitude of
“Miss Cecilia’s” experience. And her “letters” prove crucial to Czerny’s argu-
ment, serving as an instrument of reflection and self-critical examination before
the gaze of male authority.
The effect is a paradoxical intersection between the private body and the pub-
lic sphere of print culture; Czerny creates a scenario that performs a fictional
72 ❧ d e a n n a c . dav i s

process of subject formation in which he both envisions and prescribes the sub-
ject’s experiences by becoming her voice. Here, through her “letters,” the dis-
course of power assumes the “pleasing veil of fiction” to carry out its tasks.29 As
a result Czerny both instructs all women who employ the method in the
mechanics of piano playing and mediates their musical practice more gener-
ally.30 As Ruth Solie points out about a better-known (but likely at least initially
less widely circulated) example, Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, we here
encounter the “impersonation of a woman by the voices of male culture, a spu-
rious autobiographical act.”31

Shaping the Fictional Subject

To see how this “impersonation” functions, consider the following excerpt,

which begins with and develops from the autobiographical fiction:

You are now arrived at the epoch where the art begins to proffer you true, noble intel-
lectual pleasures, and in which the new and continually more and more beautiful com-
positions with which you will now become acquainted will give you an idea of the
inexhaustible riches and variety in music.
But do not neglect to still continue practicing, with equal or even greater zeal, the
finger-exercises, and expecially [sic] the scales in all the keys. . . . I also request you
most earnestly, while you are studying new pieces, not by any means to forget those
already learned, not even the earliest ones.
New pieces serve but little, if, on their account, the preceding ones are forgotten.
For the adroitness and expertness of the fingers, the eyes and the ears must of neces-
sity repose firmly and fundamentally on the experience, which we have already gained;
while these qualities are to be enlarged and refined by new acquisitions. If, for exam-
ple you forget a piece, which it took you three weeks to learn, these three weeks are as
good as lost. You should therefore retain, a sort of absolute property, all the pieces you
have ever learned; keep them safely, and never lend or give them away.
“Yes,” say you, “if it did not take up so much time to continue practicing what I have
already learned, and also to study new pieces.” My dear Miss, you cannot imagine what
may be effected in one single day, if we properly avail ourselves of time.32

I quote the passage at length to demonstrate the shape and flow of Czerny’s rhet-
oric. He begins with flattery, commending “Miss Cecilia” for her progress; she
has arrived at a new level by surpassing the rudimentary. Her musical experience
can now encompass both intellectual and aesthetic pleasures of music.
Characteristically, however, the discussion abruptly moves away from issues of
aesthetics to exhortation in the more familiar territory of developing and main-
taining skill. Czerny urges her not to neglect further development of her tech-
nical facility or those pieces already learned. This disciplinary reminder leads
Czerny to the statement of a general musical principle that justifies the practice
regime laid out in the previous paragraph. Its importance is highlighted by
the veil of fiction ❧ 73

setting it apart as a paragraph on its own and is further emphasized by italics.

One imagines that the recipient was to muse on the principle as though reflect-
ing upon one of the holy commandments of good and proper piano playing.
After handing down the principle of retaining pieces learned, Czerny offers
larger ideologies that support it and provide further justification for his model
of practicing. Drawing on models of property and investment, he suggests that
“Miss Cecilia’s” technical skill is augmented with new acquisitions (here, new
musical pieces learned) and that labor invested on forgotten pieces is lost—an
economy of musical production parallel to that of musical commodities in which
he himself thrived. This model of accumulation, even hoarding (“never lend or
give them away”), offers a revealing glimpse of Czerny’s psychology together
with the ideology that permitted his commercial success.
The closing of the passage is significant on two levels. First, it returns directly
to Czerny’s autobiographical fiction by imagining “Miss Cecilia’s” response to
introduce the point intended to clinch his argument. In doing so, Czerny cre-
ates a believable scenario through which he can ensure his own pedagogical effi-
cacy by asserting both the value of his instruction and the claim that her view will
be revealed as invalid—if she faithfully employs his methods. Echoing a work
ethic imposed upon Czerny within his own childhood, in which “diligence
became a habit,”33 the passage closes with the implicit precept that all obstacles
can be overcome with the appropriate diligence—an ideology that surfaces
throughout the treatise in the face of potentially overwhelming tasks. The prodi-
gious industry for which Czerny himself was known here serves as the founda-
tion of the curriculum itself.
From a broader perspective, however, more than pianistic technique is incul-
cated here. The Letters—projecting a code of representation—exercise social
control. “Miss Cecilia,” and by extension all students who employ the Letters,
not only learn the value of Czerny’s method through this “firsthand” account
but also encounter its disciplinary function. As Czerny hones a woman’s ability
to be productive and to employ her time “properly,” he maximizes her ability to
contribute to the domestic realm and participates in the policing of her time, a
policing that contributed to a “stable” society. In this way Czerny’s Letters per-
form important cultural work, since public discourse held that idle hands of a
woman were morally suspect.34 In short, Czerny’s method fills a utilitarian func-
tion by occupying and potentially even dominating a woman’s time with piano
playing, thereby easing broader social concerns while still maintaining the
appearance of bourgeois leisure.
The realism of this imagined experience is heightened by a further fiction: by
creating the suggestion that considerable time has elapsed between each of the
letters, Czerny conveys the sense that he has had continuous contact with “Miss
Cecilia” over a long period and has thereby guided her throughout the course
of her development. For example, in the first letter, Czerny lays out the “first
rudiments,” including keys, reading notes, how to sit at the piano, attention to
74 ❧ d e a n n a c . dav i s

fingering, and so on. In the second letter, at the head of which Czerny writes
“Two months later,” the reader learns of her development:

I have just received your welcome letter, and learn from it that you have already made
considerable progress in reading the notes, and that you are able to play several of the
first and easiest little pieces, somewhat slowly, perhaps, but still intelligibly.35

Here and throughout the collection, “Miss Cecilia’s” progress is conveyed

through report of letters received from her rather than by direct evaluations by
the pedagogue himself. Constructing this dialogue within the guise of “real
time” brings weight and believability to the claims of progress it lays out, and this
both reinforces Czerny’s status as a pedagogue and implies that equal diligence
will achieve equal results—thereby, finally, enhancing the commercial viability of
the Letters. Such claims of achievable progress may have been especially attrac-
tive to women who, despite lacking particular musical talent, pursued the piano
as a sign of female accomplishment and bourgeois leisure.

Technical Training in a World of Bildung

The cultural field in which these developments take place is delineated in the
opening letter, which demonstrates Czerny’s awareness of both his primary
readership and the social issues that surround the domestication of the piano. He
opens his remarks to “Miss Cecilia” by stating that the piano is suitable to every-
one—a claim that includes the broadest possible base of students. He goes on to
clarify that while playing the piano may be well suited to all, certain kinds of play-
ing are more suitable to some:

. . . for no art is more noble, nor more surely indicative of general mental cultivation
[Bildung], than music; and you know that pianoforte playing, though suitable to every-
one, is yet more particularly one of the most charming and honorable accomplish-
ments for young ladies, and, indeed, for the female sex in general. By it we can
command, not only for one’s self, but for many others, a dignified and appropriate
amusement; and, where great progress has been made, we also ensure a degree of dis-
tinction in the world, which is as agreeable to the amateur as to the professional artist.36

In this remarkably ambivalent statement, Czerny betrays the tension between learn-
ing to play the piano as a female realm and its being open to everyone. Attempting
to negotiate socially prescribed roles, he opens the possibility of a significant and
recognized achievement, even as he implicitly closes out female professionalism.
The passage also functions within Czerny’s underlying rhetorical strategy: it
legitimizes piano study, making it something that girls (or their parents) will
view as desirable, thereby reinforcing and encouraging further activity in the
area of amateur music making. While it opens by connecting piano playing with
the veil of fiction ❧ 75

the notion of broad, general Bildung, any interest in cultivation or the interior-
ity of the subject that might imply quickly recedes. Even the work’s vocabulary
reinforces this preference: far more frequently than he uses the term Bildung,
Czerny employs words that suggest an interest in craftsmanship such as
Ausbildung (training related to a specific skill) or Geschicklichkeit (skillfulness).37
His interest in Bildung extends only to its utility in supporting his specific peda-
gogical program; his real focus is the advancement of technical skill through
unrelenting diligence, an exteriorized focus on the body and practical accom-
plishment. The consummate musical craftsman ultimately shows little interest
in, or even comprehension of, the larger project of self-development, even as he
aligns his pedagogy with it.
Despite these very different priorities, however, Czerny’s Letters could not
help but function as part of the broader pedagogical project of Bildung, with its
goal of organizing new types of subjectivity.38 Because Czerny is necessarily con-
cerned with unfolding his method within the frame of bourgeois life, “Miss
Cecilia” both implicitly and explicitly learns how to fill her social role; the exte-
rior discipline internalizes a compliant subjectivity. In this way, the Letters suggest
Solie’s argument that piano playing had deep emotional significance as a means
of subject formation. “Miss Cecilia” and all those who employ the method not
only make themselves more marriageable as they develop their wifely mothering
skills, but also “absorb[ed] the essence of the larger aesthetic and emotional
realm that made [their] femininity more convincing.”39

Effort and the Ambivalent Limits of Accomplishment

Initially, then, Czerny’s method seems to comply with social rules and even situ-
ates “Miss Cecilia’s” daily practice within everyday domestic life. Early in the trea-
tise Czerny tells “Miss Cecilia”: “If, with fixed determination . . . you dedicate
daily, only three hours . . . this will assuredly enable you, by degrees, to attain a very
commanding degree of excellence, without necessarily obliging you to neglect
your other pursuits.”40 Czerny’s monitoring of her time suggests an underlying
anxiety that her focus could be inappropriately redirected in a manner that
would no longer safely fall under bourgeois leisure. Later in the work Czerny
poses a rhetorical question that implies her own recognition of her social role and
her amateur status: “To what purpose do we learn [music], but to give pleasure,
not only to ourselves, but also to our beloved parents and our worthy friends?”41
“Miss Cecilia’s” skills are for the service of others and should furnish the com-
fort of the drawing room. It is only within this context that she should “distinguish
[herself] before a large company, and [receive] an honorable acknowledgement
of [her] diligence and talent.”42 Beyond revealing Czerny’s precept that “dili-
gence” precedes “talent,” her musical role betrays the underlying tension that
runs throughout the treatise, between amateurism and professionalism. On the
76 ❧ d e a n n a c . dav i s

one hand Czerny exerts disciplinary force as he frames her musical activity for the
service of others, and on the other suggests that her musical skill can set her apart.
To counterbalance the possibility of “Miss Cecilia’s” so “distinguishing” her-
self, Czerny quickly warns of the psychological and social consequences of
improper or unsuccessful musical display: “want of success is, on the contrary, as
vexatious as tormenting and disgraceful.”43 Couched in an exhortation to dili-
gence, Czerny forewarns of the disgrace of failure, likely discouraging all but the
most talented or perhaps brazen few. The rhetorical strategy, one that runs
throughout the work, is to raise the possibility of excellence while luridly depict-
ing the dangers inherent in unveiling virtuosic talent that might exceed per-
missible boundaries.
This tension between social limits and virtuoso skill emerges again in Czerny’s
discussion of repertoire. Czerny complies with the role that music played in the
vast majority of bourgeois homes, in which the female amateur played “trivial”
music for the entertainment of herself and others. He does so by advising her
that for those occasions in which she is suddenly required to “play over some tri-
fle,” she must commit to heart many “little easy, but tasteful pieces” (and prel-
udes “in all the keys”).44 While revealing a condescending view of the musical
ambitions of the middle class, Czerny’s recommendation also equips the pianist
with practical skills needed in fulfilling her musical role: she will be able to play
and accompany others during social occasions. And yet, when discussing the
specific repertoire she should learn as part of her pianistic development, Czerny
prescribes literature from the virtuoso domain, including works by Liszt,
Thalberg, Hummel, and Kalkbrenner.45 Such repertoire from the concert stage
likely appealed to a bourgeois buying public eager for “brilliant” pieces that
reflected the virtuoso style, but the degree to which the amateur player could
successfully execute such repertoire is uncertain at best—as is its appropriate-
ness for the modest parlor pianist. Thus, although aware of the role piano play-
ing will serve within the life of the vast majority of female amateurs, Czerny is
seemingly unable to curb his methodological enthusiasm.
While grooming “Miss Cecilia” to possess skills that would seem to inappro-
priately extend beyond those whose musicianship was for the most part a reflec-
tion of social standing, Czerny may have had a specific kind of amateur in mind:
the “distinguished amateur”—one who, although maintaining her amateur sta-
tus, possessed skills nearly equal to the professional artist’s. Although certainly
there were women at this time who distinguished themselves in this way, their
implicit presence here brings about much of the work’s ambivalence: while
claiming that the treatise guides all levels of pianists, the method itself leads
inexorably to a much more exclusive amateurism.
Sensitive to these issues, Czerny carefully delimits the repertoire to which he
introduces “Miss Cecilia” by peppering his discussion with a strong disciplinary
factor. While she is encouraged to develop her technical skill, she again faces
reproach should she overestimate this skill: “Not a few who can hardly play the
the veil of fiction ❧ 77

scales in a decent manner, and who ought to practise for years studies and easy
and appropriate pieces, have the presumption to attempt Hummel’s concertos or
Thalberg’s fantasias!”46 Once again, Czerny quickly undermines peak moments of
achievement (i.e., the ability to play virtuosic repertoire): in one moment, vir-
tuoso repertoire is laid out as part of pianistic development, and in the next, the
aspiring pianist is dissuaded from attempting that very literature. Although one
reading would suggest that this disciplinary strategy sought to ensure that
women would not encroach on the male domain by becoming “too good,” this
methodological conflict also indicates how broad and complex the category
of “amateur” was. Czerny faced the challenge of unfolding the method in the
broadest manner possible while still delimiting boundaries for less proficient
players. But it is difficult to imagine that Czerny’s approach would not have dis-
couraged all but the most intrepid pianists from even attempting the challeng-
ing repertoire he suggests.
Distinguished amateurism surfaces again when Czerny tells “Miss Cecilia” that
she must be skilled in “extemporaneous performance.”47 Putting forth the cele-
brated performances of Beethoven and Hummel as models toward which to
aspire, the demand for extemporaneous performance again suggests the virtu-
oso domain in which performers distinguished themselves with the ability to
astound audiences with technical skill and brilliance. Although Czerny acknowl-
edges the benefit of talent for such display, lack thereof can be at least partially
overcome with “our own indefatigable and rationally-applied industry”48—a
claim that would have offered necessary relief for those players whose natural
propensity may have been meager. Once again Czerny’s claim that diligence
overcomes all challenges justifies his method: failure to achieve the goals he sets
forth results from a lack of industry on the part of the subject rather than the
nature of the requirements themselves or the tutelage of the pedagogue.

The Cultural Work of Czerny’s Letters

What are the broader implications of Czerny’s Letters? Recalling other didactic
uses of the letter in which fact and fiction are blurred as a means of distilling
moral guidance,49 I have suggested that the repercussions of Czerny’s epistolary
structure extend well beyond the pragmatic argument offered in his preface. As
Beebee argues, the letter’s power “lies in its verisimilitude, its ability to mimic
and reflect reality.” 50 In doing so, it helps both to record this social reality and
to constitute it. Within the intimate framework of letters to and from a twelve-
year-old girl, Czerny publicizes the private by mediating the private body within
public discourse, a practice that demonstrates once again the fundamental
feminist argument that the “personal is political.”51 Czerny’s account of “Miss
Cecilia’s” first musical experiences asserts a young girl’s pliability in the face of dis-
ciplinary power while using that representation to maximize both believability
78 ❧ d e a n n a c . dav i s

and broader pedagogical efficacy; it is precisely the ease with which Czerny
implies the universal applicability of this process that makes the Letters so unset-
tling to a contemporary reader.
Still, Czerny’s Letters are anything but univocal. As we have seen, his discipli-
nary prescriptions seek not only to ensure that the pianist will remain within the
safe bounds of the drawing room but also—and somewhat contradictorily—to
goad her to remarkable levels of technical accomplishment. As a result, Czerny
blurs the safe boundaries between amateurism and professional accomplish-
ment and between the virtuoso domain and the domestic ideal, leaving consid-
erable room for maneuver. As Mary Douglas argues, “All margins are dangerous.
If they are pulled this way or that the shape of the fundamental experience is
altered.”52 As Czerny presses these margins the female subject is potentially lib-
erated (although perhaps inadvertently), because the amateur player gains skills
far beyond the boundaries of “accomplishment.” If groomed to be an outstand-
ing pianist, a woman might venture into the public domain to demonstrate her
virtuoso skill, thereby potentially undermining ideologies of women’s “natural”
absence from the public sphere. While publication itself does not prove cultural
impact, the enduring presence of the work suggests that Czerny’s pedagogical
practice, and thus both the limits he assumed and the conflicted attitude toward
those limits that the Letters imply, remained a constituting feature of women’s
musical experience well beyond the boundaries of his own lifetime.53

Notes
1. Alice Levine Mitchell, “A Systematic Introduction to the Pedagogy of Carl
Czerny,” in Music and Civilization: Essays in Honor of Paul Henry Lang, ed. Edmond
Strainchamps and Maria Rika Maniates, in collaboration with Christopher Hatch
(New York: Norton, 1984), 263.
2. Marcia Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993), esp. 15–43.
3. Matthew Head, “ ‘If the Pretty Little Hand Won’t Stretch’: Music for the Fair
Sex in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 52,
no. 2 (Summer 1999): 244.
4. Celia Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the
St. Matthew Passion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 125–26.
5. Levine Mitchell, “A Systematic Introduction,” 264.
6. James Parakilas, “A History of Lessons and Practicing,” in Piano Roles: Three
Hundred Years of Life with the Piano (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 144.
7. Ibid., 140.
8. James Sheehan, German History: 1770–1866 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989), 538.
9. Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 137. See also Ruth Solie, “Girling at the Parlor
Piano,” in Solie, Music in Other Words: Victorian Conversations (Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 2004): 85–117.
the veil of fiction ❧ 79

10. As part of new attitudes around child rearing and the professionalization of
motherhood, for example, mothers were charged with the transmission of music to
the next generation as part of their prescribed role as providers of emotional sup-
port for the family. See Solie, “Girling at the Parlor Piano,” 101. See also David
Gramit, “Education and the Social Roles of Music,” in Gramit, Cultivating Music: The
Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770–1848 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), 93–124. Friedrich Kittler makes a parallel
observation that mothers were responsible for teaching early literacy, while at the
same time silenced in the wider world of literature and language. See “The Mother’s
Mouth,” in Discourse Networks 1800/1900, trans. Michael Metteer with Chris Cullens
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 25–69.
11. Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 137. Applegate also suggests that the decline of the
professional musician served as an ironic counterpart of the growth of the amateur
musician among women as well as men—a trend, Applegate notes, that the
Singakademie helped to initiate (137). For discussion of the close association between
domesticity, music, and women, see also Richard Leppert, Music and Image:
Domesticity, Ideology, and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and “Social Order and the
Domestic Consumption of Music,” in The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the
History of the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 63–90.
12. Solie, “Girling at the Parlor Piano,” 90.
13. Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 138.
14. See, for example, Head, “ ‘If the Pretty Little Hand Won’t Stretch.’ ”
15. Ibid. See also Karin Hausen, “Family and Role-Division: The Polarisation of
Sexual Stereotypes in the Nineteenth Century—An Aspect of the Dissociation of
Work and Family Life,” in The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family
in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee (London:
Croom Helm, 1981), 53–83.
16. Solie, “Girling at the Parlor Piano,” 95.
17. James Parakilas, “Clementi: Virtuoso and Businessman,” in Parakilas, Piano
Roles, 68.
18. I use the term “discipline” in Foucault’s sense, in which universals such as
knowledge, sexuality, the body, the self, and madness all have histories bound up
with institutional power. See, for instance, Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An
Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House, 1970); Madness and
Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York:
Random House, 1965); and The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, trans.
Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978).
19. William S. Newman, The Sonata Since Beethoven (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1969), 63. For a brief but informative discussion of the man-
ner in which female amateur pianists were targeted by publishers, see Parakilas, “A
History of Lessons and Practicing,” 144–52.
20. Carl Czerny, Letters to a Young Lady on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte, 1837; repr.
3d ed., trans. J. A. Hamilton (London: R. Cocks and Co., 1848). Translation of Briefe
über den Unterricht auf dem Pianoforte (Vienna: A. Diabelli und Comp., n.d. [1837]).
Letters to a Young Lady on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte was published as a supplement
to the four-volume Vollständige theoretisch-praktische Pianoforte Schule, op. 500, published
between 1839 and 1846.
21. Czerny, Letters, iv–v.
80 ❧ d e a n n a c . dav i s

22. Ibid., iii.

23. I am only aware of four other German music-pedagogical treatises published
in the nineteenth century that use the epistolary genre as the underlying structure:
Nina d’Aubigny Engelbronner, Briefe an Natalie über den Gesang, als Beförderung der
häuslichen Glückseligkeit und des geselligen Vergnügens: ein Handbuch für Freunde des
Gesanges, die sich selbst, oder für Mütter und Erzieherinnen, die ihre Zöglinge für diese Kunst
bilden möchten (Leipzig: Bei Vosz und Compagnie, 1803); Johanna Kinkel, Acht Briefe
an eine Freundin über Clavier-Unterricht (Stuttgart and Tübingen: J. G. Cotta’scher
Verlag, 1852); Louis Ehlert, Briefe über Musik an eine Freundin (Berlin: B. Behr’s
Buchhandlung, 1859); and Carl Reinecke, “Was sollen wir spielen,” Vom Fels zum Meer
(October 1884): 172–80. This last work, although initially published as a journal
article, was later issued as a separate reprint.
24. Thomas O. Beebee, Epistolary Fiction in Europe 1500–1850 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), 17.
25. Ibid., 20. Samuel Richardson’s tremendously influential manual on letter writ-
ing (Letters Written To and For Particular Friends, on the most Important Occasions. Directing
not only the Requisite Style and Forms to be Observed in Writing Familiar Letters; But How to
Think and Act Justly and Prudently, in the Common Concerns of Human Life [London:
Rivington, Osborn, & Leake, 1741]), for example, with its focus on social relation-
ships, cultivates more than letter writing skills; it simultaneously instructed readers
how to be social beings (ibid., 35). Richardson’s manual would influence German
writers such as Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (Briefe, nebst einer Praktischen Abhandlung
vom guten Geschmacke in Briefen [Letters, with a Practical Treatise on Good Taste in
Letters] [Leipzig: Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf, 1751]) and Johann Jakob Dusch
(Briefe an Freunde und Freundinnen über verschiedene kritische, freundschaftliche, und andere
vermischte Materien [Altona: David Iversen, 1759]).
26. Lorely French, German Women as Letter Writers: 1750–1850 (London:
Associated University Press, 1996), 51–53; quotation from 51.
27. Ibid., 48–52; quotation from 49.
28. Beebee, Epistolary Fiction, 4.
29. Ibid., 83.
30. For a discussion of the German pedagogical project and the means through
which it developed new instruments for the fashioning of subjectivity, see Dorothea
E. von Mücke, Virtue and the Veil of Illusion: Generic Innovation and the Pedagogical Project
in Eighteenth-Century Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), esp. 1–17,
161–205.
31. Ruth Solie, “Whose Life? The Gendered Self in Schumann’s Frauenliebe und
Leben,” in Music and Text: Critical Inquires, ed. Steven Scher (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 220.
32. Czerny, Letters, 27–28.
33. Carl Czerny, “Recollections from My Life,” (1842) trans. and ed. Ernest
Sanders, Musical Quarterly 42, no. 3 (July 1956): 303. For a discussion of this work
ethic and its implication for Czerny’s life, see Grete Wehmeyer, “Carl Czerny und die
Einzelhaft am Klavier,” Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 36, no. 12 (1981): 622–30.
34. See, for example, the body of conduct literature published at this time. For a
discussion of women, morality, and music as reflected in literature of the time and
music see Solie, “Girling at the Parlor Piano.”
35. Czerny, Letters, 10.
36. Ibid., 1–2.
the veil of fiction ❧ 81

37. Carl Czerny, Briefe Über den Unterricht auf dem Pianoforte. The subtitle of the
work, for example, reads: “vom Anfänge bis zur Ausbildung.” For instances within
the treatise itself see 2, 10, 25, 29, 40, 44, 45, 81, and 82.
38. Mücke’s discussion of generic innovation suggests that by the nineteenth cen-
tury new literary forms in Germany were shaped by the specific ideal of Bildung.
These emergent literary genres (among which was pedagogical literature in its vari-
ous forms), Mücke argues, function as discursive models that organize new types of
subjectivity. Mücke, Virtue and the Veil of Illusion.
39. Solie, “Girling at the Parlor Piano,” 95.
40. Czerny, Letters, 28.
41. Ibid., 36–37.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 37.
44. Ibid., 38–39. Czerny also suggests that she be able to play “rondos, pretty airs
with variations, melodies from operas . . . dance tunes, waltzes, quadrilles, marches,
&c. &c” (49).
45. Ibid., 42.
46. Ibid., 44–45.
47. Czerny’s discussion of the subject reveals the same sort of logical and system-
atic approach that has been at the fore throughout the treatise; the task of extem-
porizing is a technical challenge that must be approached like any other—with
“rational practice” (ibid., 78).
48. Ibid.
49. Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, Epistolary Bodies (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1996), 19.
50. Beebee, Epistolary Fiction, 4.
51. Joan Kelly makes this argument in her 1979 essay “The Doubled Vision of
Feminist Theory.” It is no longer possible, argues Kelly, to maintain that there are two
spheres of social reality: the private, domestic sphere of the family, sexuality, and
affectivity versus the public sphere of work and productivity. Rather, Kelly suggests,
we can envision the interconnectedness of social relationships—race, gender, sexu-
ality, class, and so forth. Joan Kelly, “The Doubled Vision of Feminist Theory”
(1979), in Kelly, Women, History and Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1984), 58.
52. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and
Taboo (London: Ark-Routledge, 1966), cited in Cook, Epistolary Bodies, 25.
53. The work’s popularity cannot be overestimated. Not only did it receive several
editions, but it was also included within method books published long after Czerny’s
death. A few instances in which Czerny’s Letters are reprinted in other treatises either
in part or whole include Nathan Richardson, Richardson’s New Method for the Piano
Forte (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1859); H. R. Palmer, Palmer’s Piano Primer (New York:
H. R. Palmer, 1885); Miller’s improved edition of Burrowes’s piano forte primer: containing
the rudiments of music, calculated either for private tuition or teaching in classes: to which is
added a guide to practice (Cincinnati: John Church Co., 1901); and J. F. Burrowes,
Burrowes’s Piano Primer: Containing the Rudiments of Music, rev. and corrected (Boston:
O. Ditson Co., 1905).
Chapter Six

Carl Czerny
Beethoven’s Ambassador Posthumous

Ingrid Fuchs

It is the year 1870—Beethoven’s hundredth birthday is being celebrated not

only in countless events but also with many publications. In the annual report of
the conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, the archivist of
the society, the Beethoven researcher Carl Ferdinand Pohl, devotes an extensive
article to the composer.1 In it, after an enthusiastic introductory homage to
Beethoven, he places a previously unknown manuscript from the archives at the
center of his comments: the 1842 “Reminiscences” of Carl Czerny, who as a con-
temporary, pupil and friend of the composer here becomes a kind of interme-
diary between Beethoven’s world and later times.
Had Carl Czerny still been alive on Beethoven’s hundredth birthday, it would
probably not have been possible to make him happier than by presenting him in
this way in the role of a witness to those times, for after Beethoven’s death, he felt
called upon to pass on to posterity an image of Beethoven that was as close to the
truth as possible: he became Beethoven’s “posthumous ambassador,” so to speak.
As signs of Czerny’s attachment, it should also be remembered that he was a
torchbearer at Beethoven’s funeral and composed the “Marcia funebre sulla
morte di Luigi van Beethoven.”2 But it was not only after Beethoven’s death that
Czerny championed the esteemed composer with commitment and enthusiasm;
although the general public often showed no true understanding of Beethoven’s
music, already during his lifetime, Czerny was his friend, helper, and apostle.
From Carl Czerny’s “Reminiscences” from the year 1842 we learn how the vio-
linist Wenzel Krumpholz had already roused Czerny’s enthusiasm for Beethoven’s
music when he was a child, how he entreated his father to get him all of
Beethoven’s available compositions, and how, when he was about ten years old, he
was finally allowed to play for Beethoven—among other things the “Sonate
beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 83

Pathétique,” Op. 53 and “Adelaide.” According to Czerny, Beethoven responded:

“The boy has talent; I myself will teach him and accept him as my pupil.”3 After a
while, however, because of time problems, the lessons were interrupted. In the
meantime, Czerny was introduced by Krumpholz to Beethoven’s friend and patron
Moritz von Lichnowsky, with whom he spent a few hours nearly every morning,
playing Beethoven’s piano works to him by heart, receiving a present every month
for that service. At one such morning audition, Beethoven, who had not seen
Czerny for two years, was also present; he was still satisfied with Czerny’s playing,
above all when he had Czerny play the “Waldstein” Sonata, Op. 53, at sight. “From
this time on,” Czerny writes in the “Reminiscences,” “Beethoven remained favor-
ably inclined towards me and treated me in a friendly way up to his last days.”4 On
December 7, 1805, Beethoven signed a testimonial (which survives in the Archives
of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien; see fig. 6.1) that confirms that Carl
Czerny “has made such extraordinary progress on the pianoforte, exceeding his
age of fourteen years; in view of this fact, and also because of his admirable mem-
ory, he is deemed worthy of all possible assistance.”5 This testimonial was possibly
intended to serve Czerny as a suitable reference in the event of a possible career
as a virtuoso, but owing to the age of his parents and because of the politically trou-
bled times, this did not happen. Czerny himself later stated that “My playing also
lacked that brilliant and well-prepared charlatanry that the traveling virtuosos gen-
erally need so much. Beethoven’s compositions did not please,” so that he could
not expect triumphs when performing them.6 So already at a youthful age Carl
Czerny turned to teaching and became one of the most sought-after piano peda-
gogues of the time; even Beethoven himself had his nephew Karl taught by Czerny
from 1816 to (presumably) 1818. In his “Reminiscences” Czerny reports that for
this reason he saw Beethoven almost daily at that time, and often heard him
“extemporize in an unforgettable manner when he was in a good mood.”7
In a contribution written for the Allgemeine Wiener Musikzeitung in 1845 Czerny
describes his relationship to Beethoven as follows: “During the first ten years, my
relationship to him was that of a pupil towards his master. During the later years,
from about 1810 on [Czerny was nineteen at that time], from my side it evolved
into the deepest esteem and most heartfelt love of the great master whose works
I studied with special partiality and always with predilection, and from his side
to the most cordial goodwill that—a rare case for him—was never clouded by
any mood.”8 It should be mentioned in passing that the surviving letters of
Beethoven to Czerny are always signed with “Your friend” or “Your true friend.”
Regarding the interpretation of Beethoven’s works, one can also read in
Czerny’s comments that “All in all, he was satisfied with my rendering of his
works and often said so. I also believe that through my long association with
him . . . I correctly grasped the spirit of his works as well as the tempo, the
humoristic nuances, etc., at that time when he was only understood by a few.”9
Czerny was evidently of the opinion that his personal relationship with
Beethoven gave him a unique ability to convey the intentions of the composer.
Figure 6.1. Testimonial for Carl Czerny with Beethoven’s signature, Vienna,
December 7, 1805. Archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien,
Briefe, Beethoven 9.
beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 85

Here, “convey” must be understood primarily in the pedagogical sense of pass-

ing on knowledge to other musicians, not as implying the function of an inter-
preter. Czerny had appeared as a soloist in Beethoven’s piano concertos a few
times, to be sure, but when Beethoven wrote to him on May 21, 1824—”Dear
Czerny, Grant me the favor of playing the adagio and rondo of my concerto in
E flat the day after tomorrow in the Großer Redouten Saal. You will bring beauty
to the entire program”10—Czerny replied very emotionally and at length (the
draft of the letter is in the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in
Wien) that he felt extremely honored but not at all able to do so; he had had to
sacrifice the best years of his life to giving instruction to support himself and his
parents instead of perfecting his playing to the degree required of a successful
piano virtuoso. Out of “unlimited respect” for Beethoven, he was afraid, he said,
of presenting this “lofty work” to the “great knowledgeable Viennese audience”
without enough time for practice beforehand.11
On the other hand, from 1816 on, Carl Czerny held “musical circles” in the spa-
cious flat in which he lived with his parents.12 These semipublic musicales took
place every Sunday morning until 1823 and were originally intended to offer his
pupils the opportunity to play before their relatives. But soon these “musical cir-
cles” were also attended by numerous other people from upper middle-class and
aristocratic society as well as by important musicians, who came not only as listen-
ers but also in order to appear beside Czerny’s pupils. Beethoven too was often
present and occasionally extemporized on the piano. Of course, compositions by
Beethoven were usually on the program, performed under the direction of
Beethoven’s pupil Czerny and sometimes even in the presence of the composer.
Among others, the Baroness Dorothea Ertmann, a friend and pupil of Beethoven,
also performed there; she was the dedicatee of the Sonata, Op. 101, which she
performed in Czerny’s “musical circle.” Czerny himself characterized this excel-
lent pianist as follows: “Among the ladies at that time . . . Baroness Ertmann was
the most outstanding player of Beethoven’s works . . . for she played his works
with great physical power completely in his spirit.”13 When he sent the presenta-
tion copy, Beethoven wrote to Dorothea Ertmann in a friendly letter that he
wanted the dedication to be understood as a proof of his “devotion to [her] artis-
tic talent as well as to [her] person.”14 Remarkably, there is a further presentation
copy of this sonata with Beethoven’s words written in his own hand; this copy, in
the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, is dedicated to none
other than Carl Czerny, in whose “musical circles” Dorothea Ertmann could pres-
ent Beethoven’s music “in his spirit” to a circle of music lovers.15
In 1842, the year in which Czerny also recorded his “Reminiscences,” the fourth
part of his great Pianoforte School, Op. 500 (The Art of Performing the Older and Newer
Piano Compositions) appeared; its second and third chapters are exclusively devoted
to Beethoven.16 As a footnote to the second chapter, “On the Correct Performance
of all of Beethoven’s Works for the Pianoforte Solo,” the “posthumous ambassa-
dor” justifies this extensive treatment as follows: “The author of this book was often
86 ❧ ingrid fuchs

asked by many people to discuss the interpretation of Beethoven’s piano works. By

now undertaking to fulfill this wish, he believes that he is competent to do so as he
enjoyed Beethoven’s instruction in playing the piano already from early childhood
(starting in the year 1801), studied all of his works with the greatest enthusiasm as
soon as they appeared, many of them under the master’s own direction, and also
enjoyed Beethoven’s friendly and instructive company until his last days.”17 And
Czerny also stated his credo in §1 of this chapter: “[Beethoven’s] piano works
tower above everything that was written for this instrument before him just as
much as up to now they have not been reached by anyone else, and as a whole they
constitute an eternal treasure of works of art for all times.”18
The roots of Czerny’s advice on the interpretation of Beethoven’s piano works
in his long relationship with the composer himself have given them particular
importance for future generations of musicians. This is proved not only by the fac-
simile edition of the pianist Paul Badura-Skoda published by Universal Edition in
1963, but also by a letter from Johannes Brahms to Clara Schumann from the year
1878, where he writes, “Czerny’s great pianoforte school is well worth reading
through. In particular also what he says about Beethoven and the performance of
these works; he was an industrious and attentive pupil.”19 These words from the
mouth of one of the most important masters of the nineteenth century, empha-
sizing Czerny’s function as an intermediary, gain even more weight in conjunction
with the fact that Johannes Brahms owned a separate edition of the two chapters
on Beethoven from Czerny’s pianoforte school; this edition came into the Archives
of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien with his estate (see fig. 6.2).20
Brahms marked several passages in blue pencil in the edition that was in his
possession: on the one hand, those passages that seemed particularly important
to him he either pointed out in the margin with a vertical line or marked “NB”
(nota bene), and on the other, he marked with question marks passages in
which he disagreed with Czerny’s interpretation:

1. p. 38: Sonata, Op. 2, no. 2, fourth movement: Brahms draws attention to

the musical example (mm. 148–49; see fig. 6.3a): “The place in the final
movement is played as follows [musical example], i.e., not with crossed left
hand, as one could believe according to the way it is written.”
2. p. 44: Sonata, Op. 10, no. 3, first movement: Brahms again emphasizes the
musical example (mm. 54–55; see fig. 6.3b): “It should be noted that in the
following place [musical example] the grace note is a long appoggiatura
and must therefore be played as an eighth note [musical example].”
3. p. 49: Sonata, Op. 26, first movement: Brahms underlines various words in
the text and places question marks in the margin:
“The first variation in the same tempo and with the same calm . . .”
“The second variation a bit more lively, (about ⫽ 92) . . .”
“The third variation at the tempo of the theme . . .”
“The fourth variation lively, (again like the second ⫽ 92) . . .”
(a)

Figure 6.2. Covers of separately published chapters of Carl Czerny, Pianoforte-

Schule, Op. 500, vol. 4: Die Kunst des Vortrags der älteren und neueren
Claviercompositionen (Vienna: A. Diabelli [1842]). Copies from the collection of
Johannes Brahms, Archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien.
a. Chapter 2; b. Chapter 3.
(b)

Figure 6.2. (continued)

beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 89

4. p. 50: Sonata, Op. 26, third movement, trio (mm. 31–34): Brahms under-
lines the indication “trem.” in the music example and marginal note:
“trem.” with two question marks (see fig. 6.3c).
5. p. 52: Sonata, Op. 28, first movement, beginning, music example: “NB”
over measures 2 and 3, again “NB” in the margin bound to an exclamation
mark, noting that the a’ in measure 3 must not be struck again (since the
phrase mark reaches to the end of m. 4; see fig. 6.3d).
6. p. 56: Sonata, Op. 31, no. 2, measure 3. “NB” next to the music example
(mm. 43–44): “The inverted mordents are executed as follows: [music
example] in that the basic notes must stand out sharply after the two small
notes” (see fig. 6.3e).21

The passages emphasized by Brahms concern piano technique itself (1), the exe-
cution of embellishments (2 and 6), questions of tempo (3)—Brahms evidently
differs from Czerny in this respect, apparently preferring a uniform tempo—the
execution of ties (5), and the addition of the tremolo indication he rightly con-
sidered nonsensical, as this is merely a simplified way of writing the thirty-second
notes that are to be executed as in the previous measure (4). All these notes and
commentaries impressively demonstrate how intensively Brahms examined not
only Beethoven’s piano sonatas but also Czerny’s performance instructions.

(a)

(b)

Figure 6.3. Brahms’s annotations to Czerny’s text: a. p. 38; b. p. 44; c. p. 50;

d. p. 52; e. p. 56.
90 ❧ ingrid fuchs

(c)

(d)

(e)

Figure 6.3. (continued)

Czerny’s interpretation of Beethoven—in particular his choice of tempos and

his use of agogics—was criticized in particular by Beethoven’s first biographer
Anton Schindler. Schindler’s jealousy of Czerny aside, however, we must not for-
get that Schindler was close to the master above all during the last years of his
life, but to a much smaller extent than he later claimed, as recent research, in
particular by Peter Stadlen and the editorial team of Beethoven’s conversation
notebooks, has proved. Czerny’s lessons with Beethoven, on the other hand,
took place twenty years earlier, so that he thus knew the composer far longer and
presumably also better.
beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 91

One of the introductory, general paragraphs from Czerny’s chapters on

Beethoven in his pianoforte school is cited here because it is of importance for
a further broad area in which Czerny helped Beethoven to disseminate his
works, namely, that of arrangement. Czerny writes in §8: “When performing his
works . . . the player must by no means allow himself any change in the compo-
sition, any addition, any abbreviation. Also, in those piano pieces that were writ-
ten in an earlier period for five-octave instruments of the time, the attempt to
use the sixth octave through additions has always proved detrimental in the
same way that all embellishments, mordents, trills, etc., that the author did not
indicate rightly seem superfluous, no matter how tasteful they may seem in their
own right. For one wants to hear the work of art in its original guise, the way the
master conceived and wrote it.”22 That Carl Czerny had not always had this opin-
ion—the pianoforte school only appeared in 1842, we must remember—is
proved by two earlier documents. One concerns an event that occurred when
the composer was still alive, and the second dates from the year 1829, two years
after Beethoven’s death. Czerny himself reported in his article written for the
Wiener allgemeine Musik-Zeitung in 1845, that at Schuppanzigh’s farewell concert
on February 11, 1816, he had permitted himself “in youthful exuberance many
a change—making passages more difficult, using the higher octave, etc.” in the
piano part of the Wind Quintet, Op. 16, for which Beethoven “severely
reproached him” in the presence of all the musicians.23 The following day,
Beethoven apologized for his violent words in a very friendly form: “you must
forgive that of an author who would have preferred to hear his work just as he
wrote it, no matter how nicely you played, incidentally . . . please be assured that
as an artist I cherish the greatest goodwill for you. . . . Your true friend
Beethoven.”24 As late as 1845, Czerny stated, “This letter more than anything
else cured me of the passion to permit myself any kind of change when per-
forming his works.”25
The second document mentioned above concerns a somewhat different area,
namely, the arrangement of piano scores; here, according to Czerny’s report,
Beethoven would have accepted certain liberties when translating orchestral
parts for the piano.26 In the autumn of 1829, Czerny’s arrangement of the com-
plete Beethoven symphonies for four-hand piano was published by Heinrich
Albert Probst in Leipzig. In a previously unknown letter of September 22, 1829,
recently acquired by the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the
arranger of Beethoven’s symphonies writes to Probst: “The advertisement of the
symphonies is, I believe, quite good, and the trust that I was always pleased to
receive from Beethoven, giving me quite a few commissions of this kind, allows
me to approve here those words, which he really said to me” (see fig. 6.4).27
Czerny is evidently referring here to a draft for the advertisement of the edi-
tion; the publisher had apparently offered it to him as a suggestion and asked
for his approval. The advertisement itself finally appeared in the Intelligenz-
Blatt of the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung on October 21, 1829, and is
92 ❧ ingrid fuchs

of particular importance for Czerny’s role as a “posthumous ambassador” (see

fig. 6.5):

Herr Carl Czerny, long famous as a composer, enjoyed Beethoven’s trust to such an
extent that for arrangements, the latter usually notified him of his compositions, and
Beethoven approved of every little liberty required by the characteristic qualities of the
pianoforte compared with those of the orchestra, as if he had indicated them himself.
“What you deem good to change is quite alright with me,” B. told Herr Czerny per-
sonally. So Beethoven was after all of the opinion that one should keep in mind the
instrument for which one is arranging and use its range in order to properly render the
expression of the composition, and that an extract from the score that is nothing but
completely slavish . . . is inappropriate. And Herr Czerny has accordingly entered into
Beethoven’s spirit with these views, and has adapted those giant works to the complete
range of our new pianofortes.28

In the contribution written in 1845 for the Wiener allgemeine Musik-Zeitung

Czerny reports that in the “musical circles” he organized, where Beethoven “was
nearly always present” and “his works were preferentially performed,” where “he
indicated the tempo,” he had “come to know [Beethoven’s] wishes exactly”; this

Figure 6.4. Carl Czerny’s letter to Heinrich Albert Probst, Vienna, September 22,
1829. Archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, Briefe, Czerny 5.
Figure 6.5. Announcement of Czerny’s arrangements of Beethoven’s sym-
phonies, Intelligenz-Blatt of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 31, no. 15 (October
1829): 59.
94 ❧ ingrid fuchs

also referred to his “symphonies, which were often performed arranged for two
pianos.”29 Carl Czerny had indeed occupied himself with the production of
Beethoven piano arrangements for two and four hands since his earliest youth.
He reports in his “Reminiscences”: “I had to make all the corrections of his
newly published works, and when his opera ‘Leonore’ was performed in 1805,
he let me arrange it for the pianoforte. It is to his comments during this work
that I owe my proficiency in arranging, which later became so useful to me.”30
The piano arrangement of Leonore was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1810
without naming Czerny.
In 1805, Czerny—who was just fourteen at that time—had also acquired
Beethoven’s art in arranging orchestral parts for piano in another, rather
unusual manner. In his “Anecdotes and Notes on Beethoven” written in 1852,
he describes the following incident: “When the French were in Vienna for the
first time in 1805, he [Beethoven] was once visited by several officers and gen-
erals who were musical and for whom he played Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride from
the score; they sang the choruses and songs, not badly at all. I asked him for the
score and at home wrote down the piano arrangement as I had heard it from
him as exactly as possible. I still own this arrangement. It is from that time that
my way of arranging the orchestral works dates, and he was always quite satisfied
with my transcription of his symphonies, etc.”31
Twenty years later, Beethoven again spoke highly of Czerny’s qualities in the
preparation of piano arrangements of orchestral works: in November 1824
Czerny had been asked by Beethoven to make a two-handed as well as a four-
handed piano score of the Overture in C Major, Op. 124.32 To the irritation of
Beethoven as well as Czerny, however, a four-handed arranged by Carl Wilhelm
Henning was published a short time later by Trautwein in Berlin. Beethoven
thereupon backed Czerny not only for economic but also for artistic reasons
and published a letter in the Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und
Mode on March 5, 1825, in which he expressly warned the public of the “totally
inappropriate four-handed piano score of my last overture, which deviates
from the original score, . . . all the more as the completely faithful two-
and four-hand piano scores written by Herr Carl Czerny . . . will shortly be
published.”33
Piano arrangements of orchestral and sometimes chamber music for two- and
four-hand piano and for two pianos were the most important medium for the
dissemination and popularization of musical works during a time when they
could not be reproduced electronically; they made it possible to hear music not
only in concert but also at home. So Carl Czerny can also be called a propagan-
dist of Beethoven in this respect; besides the already mentioned nine sym-
phonies for four-hand piano published by H. A. Probst in 1829, he also
arranged numerous other compositions of the master for the piano.34 Already
during Beethoven’s lifetime, for example, he published the Septet, Op. 20,
“arrangé en grand Duo Brillant” (1824) and “arrangé en grande Sonate pour le
beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 95

Pianoforte seul” (1825). The second movement of the Violin Sonata, Op. 47, he
published for two-hand piano under the title “Variations brillantes” (1822/23),
and he adapted the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies for two pianos. According
to a letter of Czerny, Beethoven was very satisfied with the arrangement of the
Seventh “after looking through it.”35
Remarkable are also two adaptations one might call “free,” more independent
arrangements of works by Beethoven to which Czerny gave his own opus num-
ber: the Romance for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 50 appeared as “Romance
favourite . . . arrangé en Rondeau brillant . . . à quatre mains,” Op. 44; and “Les
Charmes de l’Amitié / Das Glück der Freundschaft. Thème de L. van Beethoven
varié pour le Pianoforte,” as Czerny’s Op. 55 after Beethoven’s lied of the same
name, Op. 88. Many arrangements appeared only after Beethoven’s death and
can only be mentioned here en masse: besides all the well-known overtures, the
Egmont music, the Mass in C Major as well as several other orchestral works with
choir, chamber-music works, and lieder were adapted for two- or more often
four-hand piano and thus became available for making music at home.
Beethoven’s popular song “Adelaide,” Op. 46, can be cited as an example;
Czerny published it in a four-hand piano arrangement in 1829 in his “Second
Décameron Musical.” In this way, Czerny ensured that Beethoven’s works were
widely disseminated even after his death.
The more time passed after Beethoven’s death, the more Czerny’s authority
as a pupil and friend of Beethoven increased. When several youthful works with-
out opus numbers surfaced in Beethoven’s estate, Czerny endeavored to make
these compositions known to the public as well. In the case of the trio, WoO 38,
the autograph of which was in Schindler’s possession, Czerny signed a declara-
tion together with Anton Diabelli and Ferdinand Ries, confirming the authen-
ticity of the work and of Beethoven’s handwriting.36 In addition, besides several
other works, he published the rondo for piano with accompaniment of the
orchestra, WoO 6, which had already been written in 1793.37 Today we know
that this is a version of the original third movement of the second Piano
Concerto, Op. 19, which, as Leopold von Sonnleithner notes, was “unfinished
in Beethoven’s estate.”38 In the supplement to the “Werk-Verzeichnis” by Kinsky-
Halm, compiled by Kurt Dorfmüller, it is claimed that Czerny had published
“the piano part that was in some places only outlined by Beethoven in a consid-
erably reworked form.”39 When comparing the autograph that is in the Archives
of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien with Czerny’s first edition, one
must first note that the piano part is by no means “only outlined.”40 However, as
was often the case in the piano parts that Beethoven wrote for his own use, it was
not completely worked out, as he was in the habit of improvising when he
played.41 Czerny has, however, made a rather far-reaching expansion in the
piano part in publishing this movement, in order to increase its brilliance and
virtuosity, adding octave doublings, ornamentations, more extensive passage
work and additional cadenzas (see figs. 6.6a, b, and c).42 To what extent
96 ❧ ingrid fuchs

Beethoven would have agreed to this and whether these elaborations were made
in his spirit cannot be ascertained.
After Beethoven’s death, music writers, publishers of music periodicals, and
music researchers finally also turned to Czerny in order to question him about
Beethoven. As we have seen, Czerny had already written his “Reminiscences” in
1842—they were only published in their entirety 100 years after his death—and
subsequently returned to them again and again and also partially expanded
them. In 1845, August Schmidt, the publisher of the Wiener allgemeine Musik-
Zeitung, appealed to the public to contribute to a biography of Beethoven:
“There are still many alive in Vienna who were closer to Beethoven during his
life, and some of them even enjoyed his special affection and a close association
with him. How desirable must it therefore appear to encourage them to make
known and publish some of the great master’s traits of character.”43 Czerny
immediately felt that these words were meant for him, wrote a contribution with
various details about Beethoven, and published two letters the composer had
addressed to him.44 For the Neue Wiener Musik-Zeitung of April 14, 1853, at the
request of his friend Ferdinand Luib, Czerny compiled “Remarks on the Correct
Interpretation of Beethoven’s Symphonies,” in which several unclear passages in
the various editions are explained by means of musical examples, recalling
Beethoven’s intentions.45 In the introduction, he emphasizes his competence in
matters concerning Beethoven: “As I was almost always present at the perform-
ances conducted by Beethoven himself since the beginning of the century and
also sometimes attended the rehearsals that preceded them, and as I, in musical
respects, can still call a rather faithful memory my own, I believe that I am not
mistaken in the following information.”46
But not only Viennese music journals were interested in Czerny the
Beethoven pupil. In February 1854, Eugène Eiserle published a detailed biog-
raphy of Czerny in the Hamburger Theater Chronik within the framework of his
series “Character Studies of Artistic Contemporaries.”47 Czerny’s friend
Ferdinand Luib again collaborated and the account is based on Czerny’s hand-
written 1842 “Reminiscences,” even if some details seem slightly changed,
namely, that Beethoven’s authority as teacher is emphasized over Czerny’s inde-
pendent acquisition of various works and techniques. In 1852, Robert Cocks Jr.
published an article called “The Genius Beethoven, with Reminiscences
Communicated by Carl Czerny,” in the London periodical Cocks’s Musical
Miscellany. In the introduction, Cocks examines Beethoven’s personality and
points out the inclination of many music writers to falsify the life and work of
the master through anecdotes. He concludes his train of thought as follows:
“Carl Czerny, his friend and pupil, is almost the only surviving link to connect
the memory of Beethoven with the existing world. Himself a musician of high
pretensions and exhaustless industry, he is well qualified to estimate and to
record the character of the man at whose feet he sat.”48 Czerny published fur-
ther anecdotes and reminiscences of various biographical and musical aspects;
(a)

Figure 6.6. Beethoven, Rondo in B Flat for piano and orchestra, WoO 6: a. Beethoven’s autograph score (Archive of the
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien).
(b)

(c)

Figure 6.6. (continued) Beethoven, Rondo in B Flat for piano and orchestra, WoO 6: b. Excerpt of the piano part from the
autograph (Archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien); c. The piano part as arranged by Carl Czerny and pub-
lished by Diabelli in Vienna (pl. no. VN 3251).
beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 99

he justifies them as follows: “The publication of notices of great men on the

part of those who have survived the period, has the—certainly not reprehensi-
ble—aim to preserve such sayings and doings as would otherwise be lost for
ever.”49 In the last contribution for Cocks’s periodical Czerny concerns himself
with “the periods of Beethoven’s compositions,” classifying Beethoven’s work
into three style periods according to the degree of the master’s deafness.50
Beethoven’s complete deafness here serves as an explanation or excuse for
those late works that Czerny, like many other of his other contemporaries, did
not understand.
Finally, music researchers also turned to Carl Czerny, as, for instance, the
Beethoven researcher Gustav Nottebohm, whom Czerny among other things
informed of some details of Beethoven’s piano playing,51 or the Mozart biogra-
pher Otto Jahn, who planned a biography of Beethoven, which, however,
remained incomplete.52 Jahn was recommended to Czerny by his former student
Franz Liszt, who wrote to Czerny in September 1852: “Would you please, in
honor of the great man whom you understood and admired long before the
broad masses began to sing his praises, open up to Herr Jahn the abundance of
your reminiscences and your knowledge?”53 Czerny replied that he had “been
pleased . . . to make the acquaintance of Dr. Jahn” and would support his proj-
ect as best he could.54 He did indeed again compile reminiscences of Beethoven
for Jahn, in an aphoristic form that extended far beyond those of the year 1842.
Many details of the article published in Cocks’s Musical Miscellany are based on
this material. Jahn eventually handed these separate, loosely connected notes on
to the Beethoven biographer Anton Schindler, who made critical marginal notes
on the manuscript. These materials were finally used by Alexander Wheelock
Thayer in his massive Beethoven biography.
In 1857, the year of his death, Carl Czerny once again comes to speak of
Beethoven, in two letters directed to the publisher Julius Kistner in Leipzig—these
went to an unknown buyer in 2001 at the autograph auction held by Stargardt in
Berlin. Kistner had sent him a “photograph of the genuine bust of Beethoven” on
which Czerny now gave his opinion based on authentic knowledge: “I was lucky
enough to know Beethoven from 1799, when he was not yet thirty, until his last
days in 1827, and with my fairly good memory, it seems to me that I still see him
today in the various epochs of his life and his achievements. The portrait shows his
genuine, spiritually powerful visage and the somewhat leonine mane from the
years extending from about 1805 to 1812 before age, illness, and deafness so
severely changed his features.”55 And three months before his death, the “posthu-
mous ambassador” wrote down, presumably for the last time, his thoughts on the
master he revered so greatly, in a comparison of Franz Liszt and Beethoven:

No one can esteem and admire the great natural gifts of my friend Franz Liszt more
highly than I. His spirit is almost too versatile to concentrate in a tranquil artistic per-
spective. The tremendous digital virtuosity is dangerous in composing inasmuch as it
100 ❧ ingrid fuchs

deceives concerning many effects. In his time, Beethoven was also that virtuosic. But his
aesthetic feeling for classical form, beauty, and rhythm guided him on the correct path
to discern between the semblance and reality. . . . And then there was his prodigious
creative gift of invention!56

On the occasion of Carl Czerny’s one-hundredth birthday in 1891, the direc-

tor of the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, Eusebius
Mandyczewski, published a very detailed, but partially also rather critical, article
about Czerny in the Deutsche Kunst- und Musik-Zeitung. Unqualified approval,
however is given above all to Czerny’s reporting on Beethoven as his “posthu-
mous ambassador.” I would like to conclude with Mandyczewski’s words:

When he [Czerny] writes about Beethoven’s works, he does not fall into vague rap-
tures over their beauty; instead he shows wherein it lies and how we as performers
have to do it justice. His comments on Beethoven’s works are little noted today, or
practically not noted at all, because newer aesthetisizing explainers are “modern”
and know exactly what Beethoven was thinking with every note. That Czerny indeed
does not know, but he knows how Beethoven taught him to perform these works and
how Beethoven himself played them. Whoever wants to know that, must ask Czerny.57

Notes
1. Carl Ferdinand Pohl, “Beethoven,” in Jahres-Bericht des Conservatoriums der
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. Schuljahr 1869–1870 (Vienna: Verlag des
Conservatoriums, 1870), 3–17.
2. Carl Czerny, Marcia funebre sulla morte di Luigi van Beethoven per il Piano-Forte
solo. Op. 146 (Vienna: A. Diabelli e Comp., 1827).
3. Carl Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (1842). Original Manuscript in the
Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. First complete edition edited
by Walter Kolneder, Sammlung Musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 46
(Strasbourg and Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1968). Quotation from Kolneder’s
edition, 15: “Der Knabe hat Talent, ich selber will ihn unterrichten und nehme ihn
als meinen Schüler an.” English translation, “Recollections from My Life,” trans. and
ed. by Ernst Sanders, Musical Quarterly (1956): 302–17. Extracts first published by
Pohl in Jahres-Bericht des Conservatoriums, later by Georg Schünemann, “Czernys
Erinnerungen an Beethoven,” Neues Beethoven Jahrbuch 9 (1939): 47–74.
4. Czerny, Erinnerungen, 20: “Von dieser Zeit blieb mir Beethoven gewogen und
behandelte mich freundschaftlich bis an seine letzten Tage.” Translations are by the
author unless otherwise indicated.
5. Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, Briefe, Beethoven (A
84a), no. 9, published several times, first by Pohl in Jahres-Bericht des Conservatoriums,
9–10; not to be found in the new edition of Beethoven’s letters (Ludwig van
Beethoven, Briefwechsel. Gesamtausgabe. Band 1: 1783–1807, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg
[Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1996]). The testemonial is written by an unknown hand
and signed by Beethoven himself: “Wir Endes Unterzeichnete können dem Jünglinge
Carl Czerny das Zeugniß nicht versagen, daß derselbe auf dem Pianoforte solche sein
beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 101

14jähriges Alter übersteigende, ausserordentliche Fortschritte gemacht habe, daß er

sowohl in diesem Anbetrachte als auch in Rücksicht seines zu bewundernden
Gedächtnisses aller möglichen Unterstützung würdig geachtet werde, und zwar um so
mehr als die Eltern auf die Ausbildung dieses ihres hoffnungsvollen Sohnes ihr
Vermögen verwendet haben. Wien den 7 December 1805.”
6. Czerny, Erinnerungen, ed. Kolneder, 23: “Auch fehlte meinem Spiel stets jene
brillante und wohlvorbereitete Charlatanerie, welche den reisenden Virtuosen meis-
tens so nötig ist. Beethovens Kompositionen gefielen nicht.”
7. Ibid., 24: “[Ich] hörte ihn da oft, wenn er gut gelaunt war, auf eine mir
unvergeßliche Art phantasieren.”
8. “Carl Czerny über sein Verhältnis zu Beethoven vom Jahr 1801 bis 1826,”
Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung, no. 113 (September 20, 1845), reprinted in Czerny,
Erinnerungen, 34–38: “In den ersten 10 Jahren war mein Verhältnis zu ihm das eines
Schülers zu seinem Meister. In den späteren Jahren, ungefähr von 1810 an, gestal-
tete es sich von meiner Seite zu der tiefsten Verehrung und innigsten Liebe zu dem
großen Meister, dessen Werke ich mit besonderer Vorliebe und stets vorzugsweise
studierte, und von seiner Seite zu dem herzlichsten Wohlwollen, das—bei ihm ein
seltener Fall—nie durch irgendeine Laune getrübt wurde.”
9. Czerny, Erinnerungen, 34: “Im ganzen war er mit meinem Vortrage seiner
Werke zufrieden und sprach es oft aus. Auch glaube ich durch meinen langen
Umgang mit ihm . . . den Geist seiner Werke, so wie das Tempo, die humoristischen
Nuancierungen etc. zu jener Zeit, wo er nur von wenigen verstanden wurde, richtig
aufgefaßt zu haben.”
10. Ludwig van Beethoven, Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe, Band 5: 1823–1824, ed.
Sieghard Brandenburg (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1996), 324: “Lieber Czerny!
Erzeigen Sie mir die Gefälligkeit übermorgen im großen Redouten Saale das adagio
u. Rondo von meinem Konzert in Es zu spielen. Sie werden dadurch ⬍meine⬎ die
ganze Akademie verschönern.”
Czerny’s earlier performances of Beethoven’s concertos had been well received,
as the following reviews suggest: the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C, Op. 15 (performed
at an Augarten concert in 1806, reviewed in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 8, no.
46 [1806]: 729: “Man lobte seine [Czernys] Fertigkeit, vermißte aber Deutlichkeit,
Reinheit und Kraft.”); the Piano Concerto no. 5 in E Flat, Op. 73 (performed at the
Hofoperntheater, February 12, 1812, reviewed in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
14, no. 13 [1812]: 210: Czerny “spielte mit vieler Sicherheit und Geläufigkeit; er
zeigte, daß er es in seiner Macht habe, auch die größten Schwierigkeiten zu
besiegen. Mehr Reinheit in seinem Vortrag wäre jedoch seinem Spiel zu wün-
schen . . . ”); and the same work on April 12, 1818, in the Kleiner Redoutensaal
(reviewed in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 20 [1818]: 389: “Hr. Czerny spielte,
und ganz vortrefflich, Beethovens herrliches Klavier-Concert in Es”).
11. Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, Briefe, Czerny 65:
“Die 15 besten Jahre meines lebens habe ich, um meine Eltern und mich anständig
zu nähren, dem Unterrichtgeben hingeopfert; Composition und ⬍besonders⬎
Spiel blieben Nebensache da es mir an aller Aufmuntrung und Erleichtrung fehlte,
und besonders das letztre, [das Spiel] konnte bey den Forderungen die man jetzt an
die Virtuosen macht, unmöglich in dem Grade kultiviert werden den man von
meinen Fähigkeiten zu erwarten so gütig ist. Und nun soll ich,—nach dem ich seit
14 Jahren außer aller ⬍Übung⬎ Übung bin vor dem großen Kennerpublikum
Wiens aufzutreten, plötzlich, ohne alle Vorbereitung, kaum 2 Tage zum Exerzieren
102 ❧ ingrid fuchs

Zeit habend,—Eine der größten, durchdachtesten Compositionen von Ihnen pro-

duzieren! und noch dazu in dem gefährlichsten Lokale das für den Claviristen exis-
tirt! der große Redutensaal ist für dieß Instrument der ⬍gefährlich⬎ undankbarste
Ort, und alle Klavierspieler die bis jetzt in demselben spielten haben es
bereut. . . . Um als Virtuose aufzutreten brauche ich wenigstens 3 Monathe Zeit
mein Mechanisches wieder völlig einzuüben—die größten Claviristen unsrer Zeit
opfern die Gesundheit und ⬍ihr ganzes Leben⬎ ihre ganze Existens diesem
Zwecke, und fühlen sich glücklich wenn ⬍Sie⬎ sie dann der Kritik nur einiger-
massen Genüge leisten.” (Cf. also Beethoven, Briefwechsel. Gesamtausgabe, Band 5,
325–26). Czerny’s refusal is particularly puzzling, for he had already played the
Piano Concerto no. 5 in public at least twice (see note 10). And on April 16, 1827,
at Schuppanzigh’s “Subscription-Quartet-Concerts,” he performed this concerto
again in his own arrangement for two pianos and quartet: “Die Principalstime nebst
dem Accompagnement der Bogeninstrumente ist unverändert geblieben, dagegen
dem zweyten Pianoforte die Partie der Bläser übertragen worden” (Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung 29 [1827]: 370).
12. As reported in “Carl Czerny über sein Verhältnis zu Beethoven,” reprinted in
Czerny, Erinnerungen, 37.
13. Carl Czerny, “Anekdoten und Notizen über Beethoven,” (written for Otto Jahn
in 1852), Manuscript in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, Sign. Mus. ms. autogr.
theor. Czerny 2, published in Schünemann, “Czernys Erinnerungen,” 55–72, quota-
tion from 56: “Unter den damaligen Damen war . . . die Baronin Ertmann die tref-
flichste Spielerin der Beethovenschen Werke . . . den[n] sie spielte /: bey großer
phisischer Kraft :/ seine Werke ganz in seinem Geiste.” The following passage (56–57)
is also very informative: “Bei den übrigen damaligen Virtuosinnen /: um 1810 etc. :/
aus den höheren Ständen [. . .] war B. keineswegs beliebt. Man spielte damals Dussek,
Cramer, Prinz v. Preußen, Hummel, Clementi, Steibelt etc: als die beliebtesten Autoren
in den gebildeten Regionen.” Czernys “Anekdoten und Notzen über Beethoven” are
also published in Carl Czerny, Über dem richtigen Vortrag der sämtlichen Beethovenschen
Klavierwerke, ed. Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1963).
14. Beethoven, Briefwechsel. Gesamtausgabe, Band 4: 1817–1822, ed. Sieghard
Brandenburg (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1996), 36–37: “ein Beweis meiner
Anhänglichkeit an ihr KunstTalen[t] wie an ihre Person.”
15. Manuscript in the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien,
sign. A 22 (from the estate of Carl Czerny).
16. Carl Czerny, Pianoforte-Schule, op. 500, vol. 4: Die Kunst des Vortrags der älteren
und neueren Claviercompositionen (Vienna: A. Diabelli u. Comp., 1842).
17. Ibid., 32: “Der Verfasser dieses Lehrbuches wurde oft und mehrseitig ersucht,
den Vortrag der Beethovenschen Clavierwerke zu besprechen. Indem er es hier
unternimmt, diesen Wunsch zu erfüllen, glaubt er sich insofern dazu befähigt, als er
schon in früher Jugend (vom Jahre 1801) an den Unterricht Beethovens im
Clavierspiel genoß, alle Werke desselben gleich bei ihrem Erscheinen, und viele
darunter unter des Meisters eigener Leitung mit grösster Vorliebe einstudierte, und
sich auch später, bis an Beethovens letzte Tage seines freundschaftlichen und
belehrenden Umgangs erfreute.”
18. Ibid., 32: “[Beethovens] Klavierwerke überragen alles, was vor ihm für dieses
Instrument geschrieben worden, eben so sehr, als bis jetzt noch von keinen andern
erreicht worden sind, und deren vollständige Sammlung bildet einen
unvergänglichen Schatz an Kunstwerken für alle Zeiten.”
beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 103

19. Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, Briefe aus den Jahren 1853–1896, ed.
Berthold Litzmann (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1927), vol.2, 136: “Die große
Pianoforteschule von Czerny ist wohl der Mühe wert, durchgelesen zu werden.
Namentlich auch, was er über Beethoven und den Vortrag dieser Werke sagt, er war
ein fleißiger und aufmerksamer Schüler.”
20. [Carl Czerny], 2tes Capitel. Über den richtigen Vortrag der sämmtlichen
Beethoven’schen Werke für das Piano allein (Vienna: D[iabelli] & C[omp.], [1842]) and
[Carl Czerny], 3tes Capitel. Über den richtigen Vortrag der sämmtlichen Beethoven’schen
Werke für das Piano allein (Vienna: D[iabelli] & C[omp.], [1842]).
21. All remarks of Brahms are found in [Carl Czerny], 2tes Capitel. Über den richti-
gen Vortrag. Cited passages from Czerny: 1. “Die Stelle in dem Schlusssatze wird auf
folgende Art gespielt [musical example], also nicht mit Überschlagen der linken
Hand, wie man nach der Schreibart glauben könnte.” 2. “Zu bemerken ist, dass in
folgender Stelle [musical example] die kleine Note ein langer Vorschlag ist und
daher als Achtel [music example] gespielt werden muss.” 3. “Die erste Variation im
selben Tempo und mit gleicher Ruhe . . .” “Die zweite Variation ein wenig lebhafter,
(ungefähr ⫽ 92) . . .” “Die dritte Variation im Tempo des Thema . . . ” “Die vierte
Variation lebhaft, (wieder wie die 2te ⫽ 92) . . .” 6. “Die Pralltriller werden folgen-
dermassen ausgeführt: [musical example] indem nach den 2 kleinen Noten die
Grundnote scharf hervortreten muß.”
22. Ibid., 34: “Beim Vortrage seiner Werke . . . darf der Spieler sich durchaus
keine Änderung der Composition, keinen Zusatz, keine Abkürzung erlauben. Auch
bei jenen Clavierstücken, welche in früherer Zeit für die damaligen 5-octavigen
Instrumente geschrieben wurden, ist der Versuch, durch Zusätze die 6ste Octave zu
benützen, stets ungünstig ausgefallen, so wie auch alle, an sich noch so geschmack-
voll scheinenden Verzierungen, Mordente, Triller etc. welche nicht der Autor selber
andeutete, mit Recht überflüssig erscheinen. Denn man will das Kunstwerk in seiner
ursprünglichen Gestalt hören, wie der Meister es sich dachte und schrieb.”
23. Wiener allgemeine Musik Zeitung, “Carl Czerny über sein Verhältnis zu
Beethoven,” reprinted in Czerny, Erinnerungen, 34: “Als ich z.B. einst . . . in
Schuppanzighs Musik das Quintett mit Blasinstrumenten vortrug, erlaubte ich mir
im jugendlichen Leichtsinn manche Änderungen,—Erschwerung der Passagen,
Benützung der höheren Oktave etc.—Beethoven warf es mir mit Recht in Gegenwart
des Schuppanzigh, Linke und der anderen Begleitenden mit Strenge vor.”
24. Ibid., 35, and Beethoven, Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe, Band 3: 1814–1816, ed.
Sieghard Brandenburg (München: G. Henle Verlag, 1996), 228: “dies müßen sie
einem autor verzeihen, der sein werk lieber gehört hätte gerade, wie er’s
geschrieben, so schön sie auch übrigens gespielt . . . seyn sie überzeugt, daß ich als
Künstler das gröste wohlwollen für sie hege . . . ihr wahrer Freund Beethowen”
(spelling and capitalization following Brandenburg). It is remarkable that
Beethoven addresses Czerny in this and the following letter (Briefwechsel, 228, no.
903) as “berühmten virtuosen” (famous virtuoso).
25. “Carl Czerny über sein Verhältnis zu Beethoven,” reprinted in Czerny,
Erinnerungen, 35: “Dieser Brief hat mich mehr als alles andere von der Sucht geheilt,
beim Vortrag seiner Werke mir irgendeine Änderung zu erlauben.”
26. In his “Reminiscences” Czerny relates that he heard Beethoven’s first and second
symphonies in public concerts in 1800 and 1803: “die Neugierde, zu wissen auf welche
Weise solche Orchesterwerke geschrieben werden, brachte mich aus eignem Antrieb
auf die Idee, mir dieselben aus den Auflagestimmen in Partitur zu setzen. Durch dieses
104 ❧ ingrid fuchs

Verfahren erhielt ich ziemlich frühzeitig einen ziemlich richtigen Begriff von der
Instrumentation, und diese Arbeit machte mir so viel Vergnügen. . . . Zugleich ver-
schaffte mir diese Arbeit eine große Gewandtheit im schnellen Notenschreiben, die mir
später sehr nützlich wurde” (Czerny, Erinnerungen, 17).
27. Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, Briefe, Czerny 5: “Die
Annonce der Sinfonien ist, glaube ich recht gut, u[nd] das Vertrauen mit dem
Beethoven mich stets erfreute, u[nd] so manche Aufträge der Art gab, erlaubt mir
wohl, jene Worte, die er mir wirklich sagte, hierin zu genehmigen.”
28. “Intelligenz-Blatt zur Allgemeinen musikalischen Zeitung no. 15, Oktober
1829,” in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 31, no. 42 (October 21, 1829): “Herr Carl
Czerny, als Compositeur längst berühmt, genoss Beethoven’s Vertrauen namentlich
in einem solchen Grade, dass ihm dieser bei Arrangemens seinen Compositionen zu
diesem Zwecke gewöhnlich selbst mittheilte, und jede kleine Freyheit, welche die
Eigentümlichkeit des Pianoforte gegen die des Orchesters nothwendig machte,
genehmigte Beethoven, als wäre sie von ihm selbst so angegeben. ‘Was Sie zu ändern
für gut finden, ist mir ganz recht’, sagte der verewigte B. zu Herrn Czerny persön-
lich. Beethoven war also doch der Meinung, dass man das Instrument, für welches
man arrangire, im Auge behalten, und seinen Umfang benützen müsse, um den
Ausdruck der Composition gehörig geben zu können, und dass ein nur ganz sclavis-
cher Partituren-Auszug . . . unzweckmäßig sey. Und so ist auch Hr. Czerny mit diesen
Ansichten in Beethoven’s Geist eingedrungen, und hat jene Riesenwerke auf den
völligen Umfang unserer neuen Pianoforte eingerichtet.”
29. Wiener allgemeine Musik Zeitung, “Carl Czerny über sein Verhältnis zu
Beethoven,” reprinted in Czerny, Erinnerungen, 37: “Da in diesen Musiken
vorzugsweise seine Werke aufgeführt wurden und er das Tempo angab, so glaube ich
in diesem Punkte bei den meisten seiner Werke (selbst seinen Symphonien, welche
auf zwei Klavieren arrangiert oft vorgetragen wurden) mit seinem Willen genau
bekannt geworden zu sein.”
30. Czerny, Erinnerungen, 20: “Ich mußte alle Korrekturen seiner neuerschiene-
nen Werke besorgen, und als 1805 seine Oper ‘Leonore’ aufgeführt wurde, ließ er
mich dieselbe für das Pianoforte arrangieren. Seinen Bemerkungen bei dieser
Arbeit verdanke ich die mir später so nützlich gewordene Geübtheit im
Arrangieren.”
31. Schünemann, “Czernys Erinnerungen,” 67–68: “Als 1805 zum erstenmal die
Franzosen in Wien waren, besuchten ihn [Beethoven] einst mehrere Officiere und
Generale, die musikalisch waren, und denen er Glucks Iphigenie in Tauris aus der
Partitur spielte; wozu sie die Chöre und Gesänge gar nicht übel sangen. Ich bat mir von
Ihm die Partitur aus, und schrieb zu Hause möglichst genau das Clavierarrangement so
auf, wie ich es von ihm hörte. Ich besitze dieses Arrangement noch. Von da an datirt
sich meine Art, die Orchesterwerke zu arrangiren, und er war stets mit meiner Über-
tragung seiner Sinfonien etc. ganz zufrieden.”
32. Beethoven, Briefwechsel. Gesamtausgabe, 5: 380. We learn from this letter, dated
Baden, October 8, 1824, that Czerny had already finished the piano arrangement for
two hands and was asked now for an arrangement for four hands. In Czerny’s letter to
Heinrich Albert Probst of March 7, 1825 (Ludwig van Beethoven, Briefwechsel:
Gesamtausgabe, Band 6: 1825–1827, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg [Munich: G. Henle
Verlag, 1996], 37–38) we find another account of the chronology: “Im Monath
November vorigen Jahres, schickte er [Beethoven] mir plötzlich und unerwartet die
große Fest Ouverture in C . . . im Manuscript der Partitur, mit der Bitte, selbe für ihn
beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 105

sowohl für P[iano]f[orte] allein als zu 4 Händen schleunigst zu übersetzen, was ich
denn auch aus hoher Achtung für den Meister so schnell u gut als mir möglich, that.”
33. Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode no. 28 (5 März 1825):
236: “Ich halte es für meine Pflicht, das musikalische Publicum vor einem gänzlich
verfehlten, der Original-Partitur ungetreuen vierhändigen Auszug meiner letzten
Ouverture zu warnen, welcher unter dem Titel: Fest-Ouverture von Ludwig van
Beethoven, bey Trautwein in Berlin heraus gekommen ist, um so mehr, da die Clavier-
Auszüge zu zwey und vier Händen, von Hrn. Carl Czerny verfaßt, und der Partitur völ-
lig getreu, nächstens in der einzig rechtmäßigen Auflage erscheinen werden.”
34. The following is based on Georg Kinsky and Hans Halm, Das Werk Beethovens.
Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner sämtlichen vollendeten Kompositionen
(Munich-Duisburg: G. Henle Verlag, 1955).
35. Ibid., 260: Letter from Czerny to H. A. Probst, May 21, 1828, where he writes
that he has the “6. und 7. [recte: 7. und 8.] Symphonie für 2 Fortepiano über-
setzt . . . selbst Beethoven war nach deren Durchsicht damit zufrieden.”
36. Kinsky and Halm, Das Werk Beethovens, 481: “Die Unterfertigten bestätigen
hiermit, dass das Trio für Klavier, Violon und Violoncello, welches so anfängt
[Thema] ein authentisches Werk Ludwig van Beethoven’s sey, das Herr Ant.
Schindler in eigener Handschrift des Autors eigenthümlich besitzt—dasselbe gehört
zu den Oeuvres posthums dieses Meisters, und ist in keiner öffentlichen Herausgabe
erschienen. . . . Die ächte, ihm wohl sehr bekannte Handschrift Beethoven’s
bezeugt Franz Wegeler.”
37. Others include WoO 2a, WoO 23, WoO 25, WoO 121, WoO 130, WoO 154.
38. Kinsky and Halm, Das Werk Beethovens, 436: “Dieses Rondo fand sich unvol-
lendet in Beethovens Nachlaß. Carl Czerny hat den Schluß dazu gesetzt und die
Begleitung ergänzt.”
39. Beiträge zur Beethoven-Bibligraphie. Studien und Materialien zum Werkverzeichnis von
Kinsky–Halm, ed. Kurt Dorfmüller (Munich: G. Henle Verlag 1978), 355: Czerny has
edited “den von Beethoven streckenweise nur skizzierten Klavierpart in stark über-
arbeiteter Form.”
40. The autograph is found in the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunden
in Wien, sign. A 3; Czerny’s edition is Rondeau en Sib pour le Pfte avec acc. d’Orchestre
composé par L. van Beethoven (Panthéon No 8) (Vienna: Diabelli et Comp No 3252
[Juni 1829]). Piano score and parts; arrangements were also published at the same
time.
41. See Gustav Nottebohm, “Aenderungen zum Clavierconcert in G-Dur,” in
Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana (Leipzig: J. Rieter-Biedermann, 1887), 356. Czerny
reports that Beethoven played the Concerto in G in public very “muthwillig”: “Bei
Passagen nahm er manchmal andere und viel mehr Noten, als auf dem Papier
standen.” See also Hans-Werner Küthen, “Probleme der Chronologie in den Skizzen
und Autographen zu Beethovens Klavierkonzert op. 19,” in Beethoven-Jahrbuch 1973/77
(Bonn: Beethovenhaus 1977), 263–64. Cf. Beethoven. Werke. Abt. III, Bd. 2 Klavierkonzerte
I. Kritischer Bericht, ed. Hans-Werner Küthen (Munich: G. Henle Verlag 1984).
42. Eusebius Mandyczewski claimed that Czerny’s completion consisted only of
the addition of cadenzas and the realization of implied passage work in order to
make the manuscript ready for print. This is not correct; Czerny’s alterations are, in
part, recompositions. See Eusebius Mandyczewski, “Beethovens Rondo in B für
Pianoforte und Orchester,” Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft 1
[1899–1900]: 295–306.
106 ❧ ingrid fuchs

43. Wiener allgemeine Musik Zeitung, “Carl Czerny über sein Verhältnis zu
Beethoven,” reprinted in Czerny, Erinnerungen, 34: “Es leben in Wien noch viele,
welche Beethoven im Leben nähergestanden und einige von ihnen erfreuten sich
sogar seiner besonderen Zuneigung und eines vertrauten Umganges mit ihm. Wie
wünschenswert muß es daher erscheinen, diese zur Bekanntgabe und
Veröffentlichung einiger Charakterzüge des großen Meisters zu vermögen.”
44. Beethoven, Briefwechsel. Gesamtausgabe. 3: 228 (No. 902) and 3: 236 (No. 912),
concerning the lessons he gave Beethoven’s nephew Karl.
45. “Bemerkungen zum richtigen Vortrage Beethovenscher Sinfonien,” Neue
Wiener Musik-Zeitung 2, no. 15 (April 14, 1853): 59–60, concerning typographical
errors and questions of tempo in “alla breve” time.
46. Ibid., 59: “Da ich schon seit dem Anfange dieses Jahrhunderts fast immer bei
den von Beethoven selber dirigirten Aufführungen zugegen war, auch bisweilen den
vorangegangenen Proben beiwohnte, und da ich mich, in musikalischer Hinsicht,
noch eines ziemlich getreuen Gedächtnisses erfreuen darf, so glaube ich in den fol-
genden Angaben nicht zu irren.”
47. Eugène Eiserle, “Charakterbilder künstlerischer Zeitgenossen. VII. Carl
Czerny,” Hamburger Theater Chronik. Zeitung für Literatur, Kunst, Gesellschaft,
Tagesgeschichte ec. [sic] 7, nos. 23 and 24 (1854): 89–90, 98–99.
48. “The Genius of Beethoven with Reminiscences Communicated by Carl Czerny,”
Cocks’s Musical Miscellany. A Journal of Music and Musical Literature 1 (1852): 53.
49. Other installments include: “Letter from Carl Czerny, Herrn Robert Cocks, Jun.
London,” ibid., 125; “Anecdotes of Beethoven. Contributed by Herr Carl Czerny,”
ibid., 53–54; and “More Reminiscences of Beethoven by Carl Czerny,” ibid., 65.
50. “The Periods of Beethoven’s Composions [sic]. (Contributed by Carl
Czerny.),” ibid., 137.
51. Gustav Nottebohm, “Clavierspiel” in Nottebohm, Zweite Beethovenian, 356–59.
52. Carl Czerny, “Anekdoten und Notizen über Beethoven [niedergeschrieben
1852 für Otto Jahn],” printed in Schünemann, 55–72, and in Czerny, Über dem richti-
gen Vortrag der sämtlichen Beethovenschen Klavierwerke, ed. Paul Badura-Skoda, 13–22.
53. Czerny, Erinnerungen, 39: “Wollen Sie, bitte, zu Ehren des großen Mannes, den
zu verstehen und zu bewundern Sie das Verdienst hatten längst bevor die breite
Masse den Lobgesang um seinen Namen anstimmte, Herrn Jahn den Schatz Ihrer
Erinnerungen und Ihres Wissens öffnen.”
54. Ibid., 40: “Mit Vergnügen habe ich die Bekanntschaft des Hrn. Dr. Jahn gemacht
und alles mögliche will ich beizutragen suchen, sein Vorhaben zu unterstützen.”
55. J. A. Stargardt, Katalog 674: Autographen aus allen Gebieten, Auktion am 27. und
28. März 2001 (Berlin: J. A. Stargardt, 2001), 285: “Ich hatte das Glück, Beethoven
seit dem Jahre 1799, wo er noch nicht 30J: alt war, bis zu seinen letzten Tagen 1827
genau zu kennen, u bey meinem ziemlich guten Gedächtnisse ist es mir, als sähe ich
ihn noch heute in den verschiedenen Epochen seines Alters u seiner Leistungen. In
dem Porträt zeigt sich sein echtes, geistreich-kraftvolles Antlitz u die etwas löwenar-
tige Mäne aus den Jahren von circa 1805 bis 1812, ehe noch Alter, Krankheit, u.
Taubheit seine Züge so gewaltig veränderten.”
56. Ibid.: “Niemand kann die großen Naturgaben meines Freundes Franz Liszt
mehr schätzen u bewundern als ich. Sein Geist ist beynahe zu vielseitig, um sich in
einer ruhigen Kunstansicht zu conzentrieren. Die ungeheure Finger Virtuosität ist
beym Componieren insofern gefährlich, als sie über manche Wirkungen täuscht.
Auch Beethoven war zu seiner Zeit so Virtuos. Aber sein ästhetisches Gefühl für
beethoven’s ambassador posthumous ❧ 107

klassische Form, Schönheit u Rhythmus leitete ihn auf den richtigen Weg, Schein
und Seyn zu unterscheiden. . . . Und dazu kam noch seine ungeheure schöpferische
Erfindungsgabe!”
Liszt himself greatly appreciated Czerny’s efforts in propagating Beethoven: “In
den zwanziger Jahren, wo ein grosser Theil der Beethoven’schen Schöpfungen für
die meisten Musiker eine Art von Sphinx war, spielte Czerny ausschliesslich
Beethoven mit ebenso vortrefflichem Verständnis als ausreichender, wirksamer
Technik.” Franz Liszt, “An Dionys Pruckner in Wien,” Franz Liszt’s Briefe. Gesammelt
und herausgegeben von La Mara, vol.1 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1893), 219.
57. “Wenn er [Czerny] über Beethoven’s Werke schreibt, so geräth er nicht in vage
Verzückung über deren Schönheit, sondern er zeigt uns worin diese besteht und wie
wir als Ausübende ihr gerecht zu werden haben. Seine Bemerkungen zu Beethoven’s
Werken werden heute wenig oder fast gar nicht mehr beachtet, weil neuere
ästhetisierende Erklärer modern sind, die genau wissen, was sich Beethoven bei jeder
Note gedacht hat. D a s weiß Czerny allerdings nicht; aber er weiß, wie ihn Beethoven
selbst im Ausführen dieser Werke unterrichtet hat und wie Beethoven sie selbst spielte.
Wer d a s wissen will, muß Czerny fragen.” Eusebius Mandyczewski, “Carl Czerny. Ein
Versuch einer richtigen Würdigung,” Deutsche Kunst- & Musik-Zeitung 18 (1891):
215–16, 231–32, 239–40, 255–56, 271–72; quotation from 255.
Chapter Seven

Playing Beethoven His Way

Czerny and the Canonization of
Performance Practice
James Parakilas

Carl Czerny has never been much of a hero to the historical performance move-
ment.1 The musicians who are credited with starting that movement—Thibaut
and Mendelssohn, Choron and Niedermeyer, Fétis and Moscheles—belong
more or less to his generation, but his name is hardly ever mentioned in the
same breath as theirs.2 It deserves to be. For one thing, his editions of Scarlatti
sonatas and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier were among the monuments of
nineteenth-century early music publication, reprinted and recommended well
into the twentieth century, even though his editorial methods were under attack
already in his lifetime. Schumann, who somewhat guardedly approved the fin-
gerings and tempo indications and introductory remarks of Czerny’s Well-
Tempered Clavier edition when it was published in 1838, was having second
thoughts by 1845, when he wrote to Hermann Härtel pressing for a new edition
that would be “as correct as possible” on the grounds that “Czerny’s, with its
unnecessary fingerings and its truly foolish performance indications, seems to
me like a caricature.”3 By 1924, when Donald Francis Tovey issued his own edi-
tion of the Well-Tempered Clavier, he could dismiss Czerny’s editing for perpetu-
ating a tradition of Bach playing (which Czerny said he learned largely from
Beethoven) formed in ignorance of the “facts nowadays ascertainable about
Bach’s style”: “Its text is as worthless as a Shakespeare edited by Garrick.”4 We
might conclude that Czerny was important to the historical performance move-
ment in the same way as Mendelssohn: as one who revived interest in historical
music, but whose versions of that music could not stand up once musicians
began thinking of performance style in historical terms.
p l ay i n g b e e t h ov e n h i s way ❧ 109

Actually, the Czerny to be presented here is utterly different from that: he is

one of the important founders of the historical performance movement, but
important precisely in his advocacy of historically appropriate performance
practice rather than in reviving forgotten music. This advocacy, furthermore,
can be found not in his editions of Scarlatti and Bach, but in his commentaries
on the music of his own teacher, Beethoven. For that reason it is hardly surpris-
ing that his role in the history of performance practice has escaped notice: he
was operating not in the realm where we expect to find the performance-
practice tradition developed, namely, in the revival of music and performance
styles that had fallen out of practice,5 but in the perpetuation of the music and
practices he had grown up with. Nonetheless, the attitude he promoted has
proved as powerful in the revival of old music as in the perpetuation of recent
music. That attitude was an insistence on a then-revolutionary kind of correct-
ness in performance. Czerny can be found insisting on his ideal of correctness
throughout his writings on performance, but it is no coincidence that within his
four-volume treatise on piano playing, the Complete Theoretical-Practical Pianoforte
School, Op. 500, he gave the word most prominence in the titles of the two chap-
ters devoted to the music of Beethoven: “On the Correct Performance of All
Beethoven’s Works for the Piano” (Über den richtigen Vortrag der sämtlichen
Beethoven’schen Werke für das Piano).6 Accordingly, those chapters, first pub-
lished in 1846, will be the principal focus of attention in this study.
It is not my intention to turn Czerny into a hero of the performance-practice
movement, but rather to recognize the historical importance of the idea of cor-
rectness that he was instrumental in promoting in the Western musical world. It
was an idea characteristic of his age and still prevalent in ours. It is high time, I
believe, to challenge its reign. Czerny did not invent the idea of correctness in
performance, but he was central in bringing that idea to bear on the individual
composer, promoting the notion that for every composer there was a distinct,
proper style of performance and the related, though not identical, notion that
that proper style was the composer’s own way of performing his works.
Previously, the idea of correct performance style had been applied more
broadly, to national schools of composition, for instance, as Quantz had done in
his Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (1752). To be sure, there
were also occasional instances in the eighteenth century of publications seeking
to preserve a revered composer’s style of performance—the posthumous publi-
cation, for example, of Corelli’s solo violin sonatas with what were represented
as his ornaments—but those publications seem to have served more as a goad to
performers to outdo the composer’s own style than as an invitation to them to
perpetuate it for its correctness.7
The first signs of a desire to tie a composer’s music more or less in perpetuity
to his own style of performance become apparent only in Czerny’s lifetime, as
in Friedrich Conrad Griepenkerl’s edition of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy
(1821) “with an indication of its true interpretation as it was handed down from
110 ❧ james parakilas

J. S. Bach to W. Friedemann Bach, from him to Forkel, and from Forkel to his
pupils.”8 Czerny, applying this reverent attitude to his own firsthand perform-
ance experience with Beethoven, developed it on an unprecedented scale, cov-
ering Beethoven’s entire keyboard output and promoting it in both practical
and philosophical terms. In so doing, he made the idea of performance practice
integral to the increasingly important concept of the musical classics (what we
now often call the musical canon), setting the terms for the debates that con-
tinue to this day on how best—that is, most correctly—to perform the classics.
So far, it may seem as if it should be easy to grant belated acknowledgment to
Czerny for his role in the history of performance practice. But here things get
troublesome. The difficulty is that since Czerny’s day, musicians in the Western
classical tradition have divided into a “classical-music” camp and an “early-
music” camp, and though both camps are dedicated to promoting what they
consider correct performance practice—and in that sense Czerny might be
regarded as the godfather of the whole debate—the two camps believe in incom-
patible ideologies and practice incompatible methods of determining what
counts as correct, so that for Czerny to be the patron saint of one camp—as in
a sense he is of the classical-music camp—makes him suspect by the other.
Furthermore, he cannot avoid being caught in that crossfire because his most
important work deals with the performance of Beethoven, who belongs to the
period of music history—roughly speaking, the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries—in which both camps are equally interested and over which their
debates have consequently been most heated.9
The disagreement in the ideologies of the two camps comes down to a differ-
ence in the kind of authority from which they derive their performance deci-
sions. The classical-music camp can be said to represent a “Catholic” attitude
toward authority, seeking what Griepenkerl called “an indication of [a work’s]
true interpretation as it was handed down” from its composer through a succes-
sion of acolytes to the musician of the present day. The early-music camp, by
contrast, represents a “Protestant” attitude, claiming no unbroken line of peda-
gogical authority, but deriving its practices from historical texts—original scores,
treatises, letters, and the like—that any present-day performer (or listener, for
that matter) can be considered equally fit to read and interpret, just as any
Protestant is to read and interpret the Bible. These two kinds of authority give a
performer access to two different kinds of information. The handed-down
authority of the classical-music camp at its purest gives guidance in the per-
formance of a composer’s music by claiming to reveal how that composer per-
formed it or instructed others to perform it, while the text-derived authority of
early-music experts gives guidance about a given work contextually, by trying to
uncover the terms of understanding among composers, performers, and listen-
ers living more or less in the time and place in which the work was created.10
How does Czerny get drawn into this fray on the classical-music side? As
Beethoven’s acolyte, he founded what continues to be the most prestigious of all
p l ay i n g b e e t h ov e n h i s way ❧ 111

lines of interpretive authority in the classical-music world. What he learned by

hearing Beethoven play his piano works and by studying them with Beethoven,
he is presumed to have passed on to Liszt and Leschetizky, who are supposed to
have passed those lessons on to their students, down to the present day. The
secrets of the piano studio may constitute a difficult trail to document or verify—
and this line of pedagogical authority derives much of its prestige from that very
secrecy—but Czerny also established his authority in the classical-music camp by
publishing a large body of pedagogical and other writings in which we can find
the rationale and practice of the classical-music approach to performance rep-
resented to perfection. In one minor publication, an article he published in the
Wiener Musikzeitung of September 20, 1845, Czerny tells an anecdote that seems
to divulge the very source of the particular classical-music model of correctness
in performance that he espoused:

In 1812 [more likely February 11, 1816] I played the Quintet for Piano and Winds at
one of Schuppanzigh’s concerts; with the frivolity of youth, I took the liberty of com-
plicating the passage work, of using the higher octaves, etc. Beethoven rightly
reproached me severely for it, in front of Schuppanzigh, Linke and the other players.
The next day I got the following letter from him, which I transcribe exactly from the
original in hand:
Dear Czerny,
I cannot see you today, but I will come to talk to you tomorrow. I simply lost control
yesterday, and I was sorry about it as soon as it happened. But you must forgive it from
a composer who would rather have heard his work as it is written, as lovely as your
playing otherwise was. However, I will make loud amends for it when the Violoncello
Sonata’s turn comes. Be assured that I have the greatest goodwill towards you as an
artist, and will try to attest to that always.
Your true friend
Beethoven
More than anything else, this letter cured me of the craze for taking liberties of any
kind when performing his works, and I wish it would have the same effect on all
pianists.11

The story, published three decades after the event, presents two Czernys: the
frivolous young man who takes liberties with Beethoven’s music, even when play-
ing it under Beethoven’s nose, and the older and wiser Czerny who, humiliated
and chastened by Beethoven’s reproach, not only learns from that experience to
play Beethoven’s music “as it is written” but also gains the authority to impose
that lesson on “all pianists.” In fact, in a more formal work, “On the Correct
Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano,” he extends the lesson to
music beyond Beethoven’s: “In the performance of his works, (and generally in
all classical authors,) the player must by no means allow himself to alter the com-
position, nor to make any addition or abbreviation.”12
Though this anecdote reads as the conversion experience that led Czerny to
his classical-music approach to performance, it can equally well be read from an
112 ❧ james parakilas

early-music perspective, offering an utterly different lesson. From this perspective

the story tells us not just how Beethoven said he wanted his music performed, but
how music actually was performed in his day. The sense that it was routine for
musicians to take liberties with the written notes—and therefore that Beethoven
must have expected his music to be toyed with in that way—is if anything rein-
forced by the fact that the performance described here was given by Beethoven’s
own pupil, playing in his presence. The story is particularly valuable, from the
early-music perspective, for suggesting what some of the normal liberties might
have been: “complicating the passage work” and “using the higher octaves” (the
instrument Czerny was playing in 1816, after all, was likely to have had a consid-
erably greater compass than the one for which Beethoven wrote the work two
decades earlier). An early-music reading (assuming it did not dismiss the story
altogether as too tendentious to be credible) would not ignore Czerny’s testi-
mony that Beethoven disapproved of his performance, but it might put more
stock in the young, frivolous Czerny than in the older, wiser one. That is, it would
derive its lessons from the tension the story describes between the routine per-
formance practice of Beethoven’s day and the new direction in which Beethoven,
according to Czerny, wanted to pull performance. Whereas for the classical-music
performer correctness might consist in performing Beethoven’s music “as it is
written,” for the early-music performer it might entail recognizing the fault line
that Beethoven straddles in the history of the performer’s relation to the text.
The classical-music approach of playing the music “as it is written” might
appear to be the simpler approach. But it is no simple matter, as Czerny himself
tacitly admitted in writing almost a hundred pages (those two chapters “On the
Correct Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano”) explaining how
to perform Beethoven’s piano music as it is written. Of course, if learning the
correct way to perform Beethoven is going to depend on wisdom passed down
from one privileged authority to another, then there has to be something to pass
down beyond what Beethoven wrote in his scores. Czerny is always quite explicit
about what that something should be: the performer of a given work needs an
overall concept of the musical character of its composer. Thus, in his Letters to a
Young Lady on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte, he writes: “Every distinguished
composer requires to be played in a style peculiar to himself.”13 Likewise, in the
third volume of his Pianoforte School, titled On Performance, he devotes a chapter
to the subject “On the special way of performing various composers and their
works.” Here he sets out the characteristic styles of six important piano com-
posers or schools of composers (Clementi; Cramer and Dussek; Mozart;
Beethoven; the brilliant new school of Hummel, Meyerbeer, Kalkbrenner, and
Moscheles; and the very newest school including Thalberg, Liszt, and Chopin).
He sums up his lesson in these words:

From this short description the thoughtful player will readily perceive that each com-
poser must be performed in the manner in which he wrote and consequently that one
p l ay i n g b e e t h ov e n h i s way ❧ 113

would go very wrong if one were to perform even the aforementioned masters all in
one and the same way.14

Here the complexity of the classical-music approach becomes clear. It is a com-

parative system of interpretation, a system that depends on a canon of approved
composers who are all defined in musical character by their distinctness from
each other. If the work to be played is by Beethoven, then playing it as it is writ-
ten means playing it in a Beethoven way, as opposed to a Mozart way or anyone
else’s way; it means, therefore, knowing the differences among all the musical
personalities in the canon of composers. Consider, for instance, Czerny’s
description of Beethoven’s styles of playing and composing: each element of it
is shaped so as to give Beethoven a profile and an artistic function different
from the other composers on the list. Thus his account of Beethoven’s playing
starts by contrasting it with Clementi’s solid bravura and Mozart’s light, clear
style:

In the meantime Beethoven appeared and elicited from the fortepiano—through

entirely new and daring runs, through the use of the pedals, through an extraordinar-
ily characteristic manner of playing that was distinguished particularly by the strict
legato of its chords, and which therefore brought about a new kind of singing—many
effects never before imagined.15

But describing Beethoven as the creator of “many effects never before imag-
ined” was not going to distinguish him from later pianist-composers on Czerny’s
list: those of Czerny’s own generation, like Hummel, Kalkbrenner, and
Moscheles, and those of the next generation, like Thalberg, Liszt, and Chopin.
All of these musicians Czerny praises for their brilliance in conquering new tech-
nical difficulties, some with more elegance and grace, others with more daring.
But if he were going to impute that new level of technical mastery to the gener-
ations younger than Beethoven, he would have to reserve to the older master
something on a different plane, something of lasting power.
And so, in a second passage on Beethoven, this one placed between an
account of Mozart’s “witty,” largely staccato, and pedal-free style and an account
of the younger generations’ brilliance, he takes on the challenge of placing
Beethoven beyond comparison with either. In Beethoven’s manner, he writes,

Predominant is characteristic and passionate vigor, alternating with all the charms of
the bound cantabile.
The means of expression is often heightened to extremes, especially in reference to
[his] more capricious mood. The piquant, brilliantly showy manner is only rarely appli-
cable. Rather, total effects are much more often applied, partly through a full-voiced
legato, and partly through skillful use of the loud pedal, etc.
Great fluency without brilliant pretension. In the Adagio more rapturous expression
and more tender singing.16
114 ❧ james parakilas

This is a characterization of Beethoven that can hardly surprise anyone today.

Czerny’s canonizing enterprise helped create an enduring set of stereotypes,
including the stereotypes of performing styles that pianists today still use to dis-
tinguish the proper approach to Beethoven from the proper approaches to
Mozart, to the early Romantic composers, and so forth.
Nevertheless, it is possible to find it surprising that Czerny would be willing to
reduce Beethoven, of all composers, to a single musical character, when we
remember what a tremendous presence Beethoven was in Czerny’s life from an
early age, how often he heard Beethoven play and played for him, how much he
listened to Beethoven and learned from him. The canonized Beethoven may not
agree in every respect and every instance with the remembered Beethoven; the
principle that there is a distinct style of performance appropriate to each com-
poser and the principle that music should be performed the way its composer
performed it are not only not identical, but they may sometimes be at odds.
Defining the style of performance that Beethoven’s music demands, after all, is
a conceptual act conditioned by the pressure of canon-formation to cast each
artist in a singular role within a scheme of roles; modeling the performance of
Beethoven’s works on Beethoven’s own playing of them, on the other hand, is
an empirical act conditioned by the listener’s powers of apprehension and
memory.
How does Czerny handle conflicts between his stereotypes of Beethoven’s
musical character and his memories of Beethoven’s playing? The answer is clear-
est in his major statement on Beethoven performance—“On the Correct
Performance of All Beethoven’s Piano Music”: Czerny’s canonizing concept of
Beethoven gets the better of his memories of him as a musician. In this lengthy
discourse on playing Beethoven, he would have to have been superhuman to
resist telling his readers his memories of Beethoven’s own playing and teaching.
But to an altogether remarkable extent—given that his authority on the correct
performance of Beethoven derived from his status as Beethoven’s pupil—he
plays up his concept of Beethoven’s musical character as a guide to every per-
formance decision and plays down his memory of Beethoven’s decisions on
those points: where he does invoke his memory, it is often demonstrable that he
let that memory be distorted or overridden by conceptual considerations. That
is not to say that Czerny is worthless as a witness to Beethoven’s playing and
teaching, but rather that a reading of any part of his testimony needs to be
informed by a consciousness of his overall strategy in wielding his authority. Let
us see what is revealed when “On the Correct Performance of All Beethoven’s
Piano Music” is read in this way.
The first of the two chapters of the work opens with the detachment of an
encyclopedia entry, surveying Beethoven’s production of piano works and assess-
ing their general character (in a paragraph similar to the one discussed above
from On Performance, with a similar claim that Beethoven’s works “must be per-
formed differently from those of Mozart, Clementi, Hummel etc.”). In a footnote,
p l ay i n g b e e t h ov e n h i s way ❧ 115

almost apologetically, Czerny smuggles into this text his personal claim to
authority on the subject:

The author of this manual has often been asked to discuss the performance of
Beethoven’s piano works. In undertaking to do so, he is confident of his qualifications
for the task, inasmuch as in his early youth (from 1801 on) he was tutored in piano
playing by Beethoven; he was extremely partial to Beethoven’s piano music, studying
all such works immediately they appeared, some of them under the master’s own super-
vision; and later, too, he had the pleasure of Beethoven’s friendly and instructive com-
pany, until the last days of the master’s life.17

It is remarkable that he omits from this list his experience of hearing Beethoven
play his own works. Then, soon after downplaying the importance of his per-
sonal connection to Beethoven in this way, Czerny supplies an even more
remarkable set of arguments against taking Beethoven’s own playing as a model
for subsequent performance of his music:

. . . his performance depended on his constantly varying frame of mind, and even if it
were possible exactly to describe his style of playing, it would not always serve us as a
model . . . and even the mental conception acquires a different value through the
altered taste of the time, and must occasionally be expressed by other means, than were
then demanded.18

By the end of this introductory section of the work, one might reasonably con-
clude that so long as a performer apprehended the spirit or character of
Beethoven’s music, there would be no point in trying to duplicate the details of
his own playing of them.
Nevertheless, once Czerny embarks on the exhaustive, movement-by-move-
ment survey of Beethoven’s piano music that constitutes the body of this work,
he does call on his memory of Beethoven’s own playing of the works. We cannot
of course check his memory in any direct way today, but we can assess what he is
up to when he refers to Beethoven’s playing, by considering what aspects of the
music do and do not draw from him explicit references to Beethoven’s playing
and how that use of his memory might fit with and promote his announced con-
ception of Beethoven’s overall musical character.
The one aspect of the music for which he claims to be systematically following
Beethoven’s performance is tempo. His entries on every movement of every
piano sonata, concerto, and chamber work begin with incipits to which Czerny
added metronome markings (something Beethoven himself gave to only one of
his piano works), saying that he thinks “it will prove acceptable to pianists, if we
everywhere indicate by it the time [tempo] in which Beethoven himself per-
formed his works.”19 The importance of tempo to Czerny’s concept of correct
performance becomes clear in the “Concluding Remarks” to “On the Correct
Performance”:
116 ❧ james parakilas

We have everywhere endeavoured to indicate the exact time, both by Mälzl’s Metronome
and by words; and the observance of the same is certainly of the greatest importance, as
the whole character of the piece is disfigured by a wrong degree of movement.
. . . in the present case there can be only one perfectly correct mode of performance,
and we have endeavoured, according to the best of our remembrance, to indicate the
time, (as the most important part of correct conception,) and also the style of per-
formance, according to Beethoven’s own view.20

For Czerny, then, determining the correct tempo is clearly a central step in
determining the correct conception of each work within his overarching con-
ception of the character of the composer. But how did he go about this? Did he
develop his conceptions out of his memory of the tempos of Beethoven’s play-
ing, or did he adapt his memory of Beethoven’s tempos to the musical concep-
tions he had developed? His metronome markings for Beethoven’s piano works
have been intensively studied by Sandra Rosenblum, George Barth, and others,
who have compared several sets of markings that he gave over the course of sev-
eral decades—from an edition of Beethoven’s sonatas that Czerny published just
after Beethoven’s death, through those he supplied to the incipits in “On the
Correct Performance,” to a final edition of the sonatas that began appearing just
shortly before Czerny’s death. These comparisons have shown that Czerny
changed his metronome markings so significantly and so systematically from
one publication to another that something more than his memory of
Beethoven’s playing must have been at work.21
Barth also refers to Czerny’s “reassignment of note values for the pulse,” that
is, his supplying of metronome markings at a note value other than what
Beethoven’s time signature indicates as the pulse. In very slow movements, at
least, he seems to have done so because Mälzl’s metronome had no settings low
enough to accommodate the note value of the time signature. In his entry on
the Grave introduction to the Sonate pathéthique (in common time), Czerny says
as much: “The introduction is performed so slowly and pathetically that we
could only indicate the beats of the Metronome in semiquavers.” According to
Rosenblum and Barth, Czerny’s markings for this movement varied from eighth
note ⫽ 58 in his edition of the sonatas for Haslinger (1828–1830s) through six-
teenth note ⫽ 92 in “On the Correct Performance” (1846) to eighth note ⫽ 63
in his edition for Simrock (1856–68).22 But the note value of the pulse is not
simply a counter in the measurement of speed. What the player counts as the
pulse determines how the listener feels the motion of the music.
Like tempo itself, the pulse is inseparable from what the performer projects
as the character of the music. In his entry on the Adagio of the C-sharp Minor
Sonata quasi una fantasia, Czerny himself half-acknowledges this effect of his
metronome markings. Beethoven’s time signature is cut-time, but here again
Czerny “could only indicate the beats of the Metronome” in a smaller note
value: quarter note ⫽ 54. After the incipit he begins his entry on the movement
by saying: “The alla breve measure being indicated, the whole must be played in
p l ay i n g b e e t h ov e n h i s way ❧ 117

moderate Andante time.” In this sentence, unless it is a flat contradiction of

Beethoven’s indication of Adagio, Czerny acknowledges that his metronome
marking actually invites the player to feel the pulse in four (moderate) quarter
notes, rather than two (slow) half notes, per measure. Why, then, does he not
acknowledge that changing the pulse, like changing the tempo, inevitably alters
the character of the music? And when Beethoven played the piece (as we learn
later in the entry that Czerny heard him do), what did he project as the pulse?
For some reason, in this work devoted to the principle that “the player must by
no means allow himself to alter the composition,” these are not questions that
Czerny felt the need to address.
Czerny’s metronome markings are the one feature of “On the Correct
Performance” that he makes a general claim to have based on Beethoven’s own
performance. Elsewhere in the entries on the individual movements—almost a
hundred pages spent characterizing those movements and detailing how to play
particular passages—there are only three instances in which he rests his instruc-
tion on his recollection of Beethoven’s playing. In one case, the finale of the
A-flat Sonata, Op. 26, he recommends bringing out a two-note motive in the bass,
“as he himself was accustomed to do,” to “impart the true unity and colouring
to the whole work.” In the Adagio of the C-sharp-Minor Sonata, he tells us that
Beethoven would use the soft pedal throughout the movement, except at the
forte. And in speaking of the Largo of the C-Minor Concerto, he advises against
following Beethoven’s practice of playing the whole theme holding down the
damper pedal, as Beethoven did, because that does not work on newer pianos
the way it did on the pianos of Beethoven’s day. Each of these three remarks
raises a different issue about performing Beethoven’s music. Altogether they
may provide a very scattered, not at all insistent reminder of the source of
Czerny’s authority, very gently implying that every bit of performance advice that
fills the two long chapters is likewise derived from Czerny’s memory of
Beethoven’s playing. But the introduction to these chapters, which as we have
seen minimizes the importance of the teaching he received from Beethoven and
especially of the playing he heard by him, suggests another way to understand
the sparseness of references to Beethoven’s playing in this vast body of instruc-
tions for playing his music: that Czerny’s instructions spring from the under-
standing he claims to have of the nature of Beethoven’s genius (itself no doubt
derived in great part from his years of study and friendship with him), rather
than from specific memories of Beethoven’s own interpretations. In any case, to
understand how Czerny is using his authority to interpret Beethoven’s music, we
need to look beyond those few scattered recollections of Beethoven’s playing.
To that end let us read a whole entry and seek to uncover the range of strate-
gies that Czerny uses to insert his authority between Beethoven and a performer
of his music. Here (together with example 7.1, an excerpt of the score) is the
text of the entry that we have already begun to read, on the Adagio of the
C-sharp-Minor Sonata:
Example 7.1. Beethoven, Sonata quasi una fantasia, Op. 27, no. 2, mvt. 1 (Vienna: Gio[vanni] Cappi, [1802]; facsimile
reprint: [London]: Walsh Holmes & Co., 1929), mm. 1–50.
Example 7.1. (continued)
120 ❧ james parakilas

The alla breve measure being indicated, the whole must be played in moderate Andante
time. The prescribed pedal must be re-employed at each note in the bass; and all must
be played legatissimo. In the 5th bar the real melody commences, in the upper part,
which must be delivered with rather more emphasis. The semiquaver must be struck
after the last note of the triplet; but, let it be well observed, the whole triplet accompa-
niment must proceed strictly legato and with perfect equality. In the 15th bar, the C nat-
ural with particular expression. The bars 32 to 35 remarkably crescendo and also
accelerando up to forte, which in bars 36 to 39 again decreases. In this forte, the shifting
pedal is also relinquished, which otherwise Beethoven was accustomed to employ
throughout the whole piece. This movement is highly poetical, and therefore perfectly
comprehensible to any one. It is a night scene, in which the voice of a complaining
spirit is heard at a distance.23

Czerny’s “poetic” vision of the movement as a “night scene” seems to grow out
of the unusual character indications that Beethoven gave—to play the piece
“most delicately,” pianissimo and with damper pedal throughout—but puts the
character of the music in far more visualized, personified, and dramatized form
than those indications of Beethoven’s do.
Czerny puts this vision at the conclusion of his entry, but it is in a sense his
starting point, his all-important conception controlling the practical perform-
ance directions that make up the rest of the entry. His transformation of
Beethoven’s alla breve pulse into a moderate four, for a start, can be understood
as a technique for emphasizing the repetitiveness of the music, thereby realizing
the still, nocturnal mood that he envisions. His directions about the “prescribed
pedal” specify much more than Beethoven’s “sempre . . . senza sordino,” which
unlike his blurring pedal markings in Largo sections of the first movement of
the “Tempest” Sonata and the opening measures of the Largo in the C-Minor
Piano Concerto, does not prescribe how often the damper pedal is to be
changed. In 1802, when Beethoven published the C-sharp Minor Sonata, a gen-
eral direction to pedal continuously was remarkable; half a century later, when
Czerny published his commentary, the concept of continuous pedaling was not
such a novelty, yet he seems to have felt a need to shape that direction both to
the louder, longer-resonating pianos of his day (“re-employed at each note in
the bass”) and to his own desired overall effect (“all . . . legatissimo”).
The sentences that begin “In the 5th bar the real melody commences” con-
nect clearly with the dramatic persona that emerges in Czerny’s poetic vision:
“the voice of a complaining spirit is heard at a distance.” Here his directions,
and by implication his vision, seem not just more specific than Beethoven’s, but
at odds with them. Czerny says that the “upper part,” starting in m. 5, “must be
delivered with rather more emphasis.” Beethoven writes pp next to those notes,
and given that his only prior dynamic markings are the global delicatissimamente
and sempre pp at the opening, this pp at the introduction of a new line can hardly
mean anything other than that Beethoven wants the new line not to be given
more emphasis than the rest. Likewise, that C natural “in the 15th bar” (actually
p l ay i n g b e e t h ov e n h i s way ❧ 121

it is on the downbeat of the sixteenth) that Czerny wants to hear played “with
particular expression” Beethoven has positioned just before a swell, which
occurs in the lower voices while the C natural is sustained. Beethoven, in other
words, certainly has summoned up a “particular expression” in this measure, but
he locates it away from the C, which is to say, away from the “voice” that Czerny
seems to be identifying with his “complaining spirit.”
His instruction that the sixteenth-note of the melody beginning in m. 5 “must
be struck after the last note of the triplet” has surely had a great influence, since
pianists in both the classical-music and the early-music camps overwhelmingly
comply, despite the question that some have entertained about whether this might
be an appropriate piece in which to apply the tradition of “underdotting,” or
assimilating a dotted-eighth/sixteenth rhythm in one voice to the rhythm of
triplet eighths in another. Rosenblum, who surveys this tradition sensitively, defers
to Czerny’s authority in deciding that the tradition does not apply to this piece: “A
few players persist in arguing the merits of assimilation for the Adagio sostenuto
of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, despite Czerny’s specific instructions to the
contrary.”24 Nevertheless, what was described above as an early-music way of read-
ing—reading, that is, for evidence of performance practice around the time and
place where a work was created—might actually take Czerny’s “specific instruc-
tions to the contrary” as the strongest evidence that the sixteenths in this move-
ment should be assimilated to the triplet eighths. Why, according to such an
argument, would Czerny have singled out this detail of the score for this instruc-
tion—the rest of his instructions in this entry, after all, are to play something dif-
ferent from what Beethoven wrote, while this one is to play the notes precisely as
he wrote them—unless he was aware of some performers who were doing other-
wise, that is, assimilating the rhythm? And if some were still doing so in the 1840s,
does that not suggest that at least some performers in Beethoven’s day assumed
that his notation called for that? And if at least some performers would have
assumed that, is Beethoven not likely to have known they would when he wrote
the piece the way he did? So, since he wrote it as he did, perhaps he would have
countenanced a performance in assimilated rhythm, or even have played it that
way himself. But then why would Czerny, if he knew that, have instructed his read-
ers to distinguish the sixteenth in one voice from the triplet eighth in the other?
Perhaps this is just one more sign of the temperamental literal-mindedness of a
man who decrees that “the player must by no means allow himself to alter the
composition, nor to make any addition or abbreviation.” But his injunction about
the dotted rhythm can also be read as consistent with others in this entry—con-
sistent, that is, with the “emphasis” he asks be given to the upper-voice melody and
the “expression” he calls for on the C natural: it is yet another device for realizing
his poetic conception of the movement by making the “voice of a complaining
spirit” distinct from the rest of the musical texture (or, “heard at a distance”).
Finally, he describes certain measures in the movement that “remarkably
crescendo and also accelerando up to forte,” at which level the player is to release the
122 ❧ james parakilas

soft pedal, “which otherwise Beethoven was accustomed to employ throughout

the whole piece.” What is really remarkable here is that this crescendo to forte, a
fearfully dramatic effect in a generally very quiet movement, is not indicated at
all by Beethoven. His directions, at the beginning, are to play “the whole piece
most delicately” and “pianissimo throughout,” and Czerny’s crescendo comes, after
a marking of piano, in one of the longest stretches without a dynamic marking
of any kind. So where could Czerny’s crescendo come from? Could Czerny have
heard Beethoven play it that way? Once? Repeatedly? Surely it means something
that what he describes as customary in Beethoven’s playing of the movement is
not the unnotated crescendo that contradicts Beethoven’s general directions,
but the general use of the soft pedal, which is perfectly consistent with them. Or
maybe this crescendo is yet another event in Czerny’s night scene: the feelings—
if not the voice—of the complaining spirit welling up and subsiding.
Czerny’s entry on this movement gives a prescription for what could be a
beautiful rendition of the music. It may be a rendition such as Beethoven him-
self performed, once or more, in Czerny’s hearing. The poetic terms with which
Czerny characterizes the music may even, for all we know, derive from
Beethoven in some way. But would that make this rendition the “correct per-
formance” of the movement? This entry, like any other in Czerny’s work, can
help a performer achieve a beautiful performance only insofar as it provides a
conception that allows the performer to make sensitive, coherent, and com-
pelling decisions about how to play the notes. But the score—any score—opens
itself to myriad such conceptions, differing subtly or radically from each other,
and there is nothing that can privilege one such conception over all others as
the correct conception: not Czerny’s authority as Beethoven’s student, not even
Beethoven’s own performance (and which one would we choose out of all the
performances issuing from “his constantly varying frame of mind”?). Any gov-
erning conception entails coloring the music in a particular way not specified in
the score, choosing among possibilities that the score does not choose among.
With the best will in the world—and Czerny’s will to represent his Beethoven
faithfully can hardly be doubted—it entails, as we have found in this one entry,
doubtful and sometimes clearly distorting readings of the composer’s notation.
And this is not bad. In fact, in a musical tradition whose primary vessel is the
musical score, a constant traffic in competing and evolving conceptions of musi-
cal scores is what keeps performance practice alive. It is not just the “frivolity of
youth” that makes musicians play around with a score.
The idea of correct performance of a score, which has been inherited by per-
formers of the classical-music camp and also, in a different way, those of the early-
music camp, has stayed alive from Czerny’s day to ours only because honest
musicians like Czerny have succeeded in lying to themselves about what they were
doing in their playing and teaching, as he lied to himself when he wrote, in his
“Concluding Remarks” to “On the Proper Performance” that “there can be only
one perfectly correct mode of performance.”25 It is surely time to abandon this
p l ay i n g b e e t h ov e n h i s way ❧ 123

idea as philosophically and historically foolish; it is inimical to the nature of musi-

cal scores and of living performance. Performers need to believe in their con-
ceptions of the music they are playing, but they need just as much to be conscious
of a composer’s notes as signs of an engagement with the musical practices of a
certain world, conscious of their own place in a tradition (sometimes centuries
long) of performing that work, conscious of the kinds of authority they are rely-
ing on to define their own engagement with the work, and conscious of the con-
tingency of any authority, any methodology, any conception. As they develop that
consciousness, the sway and the burden of the idea of correctness will dissolve.

Notes
1. Historical performance practice has often been reduced to the commonplace
“playing it the composer’s way.” I first encountered that formulation in an anecdote
reported by Harold Schonberg, in which Wanda Landowska is supposed to have told
another keyboard player, “Very well, my dear, you continue to play Bach your way and
I’ll continue to play him his way.” Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1963), 399. For helpful comments on this essay I thank Sandra
Rosenblum and Ralph Locke.
2. See, for instance, the opening chapter of Harry Haskell, The Early Music
Revival: A History (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988) or the entry “Early Music,”
also by Haskell, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., ed. Stanley
Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001).
3. Schumann’s approving review, “Etüden für Pianoforte,” appeared in Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik 8, no. 6 (January 19, 1838): 21–22; English translation in Robert
Schumann, On Music and Musicians, ed. Konrad Wolff, trans. Paul Rosenfeld (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1964; originally published 1946), 89. His letter of January 31,
1845, to Hermann Härtel appears in Richard Münnich, ed., Aus Robert Schumanns
Briefen und Schriften (Weimar: Gustav Kiepenheuer, 1956), 271; my translation.
4. Donald Francis Tovey, “Principles of Interpretation,” preface to J. S. Bach,
Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues: Pianoforte, ed. Tovey (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1924).
5. Andreas Holschneider, in “Über alte Musik,” Musica (Kassel) 34 (1980): 345,
in fact defines early music as any music having “an interrupted interpretative tradi-
tion.” Cited in Haskell, The Early Music Revival, 9.
6. The two chapters are found in vol. 4 of the Pianoforte School, titled Die Kunst des
Vortrags der älteren und neueren Klavierkompositionen (Vienna, 1846; English trans., The
Art of Playing the Ancient and Modern Piano Forte Works, 1846). In that translation the
two chapter titles were given as “On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s
Works for the Piano Solo” and “On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works
for the Pianoforte with Accompaniments for Other Instruments, or for the
Orchestra.” A facsimile reprint of these two chapters constitutes the principal content
of Carl Czerny, On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, ed. Paul
Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal, 1970).
7. See the articles on Corelli’s Sonatas, Op. 5, in Early Music 24 (1996).
8. Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, eds., The New Bach Reader, rev. Christoph
Wolff (New York: Norton, 1998), 491.
124 ❧ james parakilas

9. A most impressive example of a challenge to Czerny’s interpretations of

Beethoven from an early-music perspective can be found in George Barth, The
Pianist as Orator: Beethoven and the Transformation of Keyboard Style (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1992).
10. For more on authority in the classical-music system, see Henry Kingsbury,
Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1988); for more on authority in the early-music system, see Nicholas
Kenyon, ed., Authenticity and Early Music: A Symposium (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1988).
11. Quoted as translated on p. 1 of the editor’s Commentary in Czerny, On the
Proper Performance.
12. Czerny, On the Proper Performance, 32 (this and later page references are those
found in the 1846 publication reproduced in this edition, not those added by the
modern editor).
13. Czerny, Zehn Briefe an ein Fräulein auf dem Lande über den Unterricht auf dem
Pianoforte, vom Anfange bis zur Ausbildung, als Anhang zu jeder Klavierschule (Vienna,
n.d.); English trans., Letters to a Young Lady, on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte, trans.
J. A. Hamilton (New York: Hewitt & Jaques, n.d.; repr. New York: Da Capo, 1982),
45–46.
14. Czerny, Von dem Vortrage, Part Three of Vollständige theoretisch-practische
Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500 (Vienna, 1839; repr. ed. Ulrich Mahlert [Wiesbaden:
Breitkopf & Härtel, 1991]), 73; translation mine.
15. Ibid., 72.
16. Ibid. Translation from Barth, The Pianist as Orator, 82.
17. Czerny, On the Proper Performance, 30.
18. Ibid., 32.
19. Ibid., 33.
20. Ibid., 118–19.
21. Sandra Rosenblum, Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music: Their Principles
and Applications (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 329–33. See also
Barth, The Pianist as Orator, 60–62.
22. Rosenblum, Performance Practices, 336. Barth, The Pianist as Orator, 96.
23. Czerny, On the Proper Performance, 49.
24. Rosenblum, Performance Practices, 293–98; quotation from 298.
25. Czerny, On the Proper Performance, 119.
Chapter Eight

Carl Czerny and Musical

Authority
Locating the “Primary Vessel” of the
Musical Tradition
George Barth

Anyone attempting to take seriously Carl Czerny’s guidelines for musical per-
formance must come to terms not only with what give every appearance of being
definitive principles, but also with Czerny’s own apparent contradictions of
some of those principles. Although, as we will see, there is no denying a degree
of inconsistency in Czerny’s work—perhaps inevitable in so productive a
career—a closer examination of one such case reveals considerable subtlety.
Czerny’s apparent inconsistency, I will argue, is in fact evidence of a sophisti-
cated concept of the musical work in performance.1
The principle in question is one of Czerny’s most sweepingly formulated. In
his “On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano” of
1846, Czerny’s “general rule” declares that in the performance of the works of
“all classical authors,” the performer “must by no means allow himself to alter
the composition,” and adds even more pointedly that “in those keyboard pieces
which were written for the five-octave instruments of former times, the attempt
by means of additions to use the sixth octave is always unfavorable; likewise all
embellishments, mordents, trills, etc. that the author himself has not indicated,
however tasteful they may seem in themselves, justly appear superfluous.”2
According to Czerny, Beethoven’s scolding after his former pupil’s fanciful
performance at Schuppanzigh’s “more than anything else, cured me of the
craze for taking liberties of any kind when performing his works.”3 That was
probably in 1816. But what are we to make, then, of his 1829 edition of
126 ❧ george barth

(a)

Example 8.1. Beethoven, Rondo in B flat for Fortepiano and Orchestra, WoO 6,
fortepiano part, mm. 249–61. a. Beethoven’s version. From Supplemente zur
Gesamtausgabe, ed. Willy Hess, Ser. 3, Bd. 1 (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel,
1960), 23; b. Czerny’s version. From Beethovens Werke (Leipzig: Breitkopf &
Härtel, 1864–90), ser. 9, no. 72, 211–12.

Beethoven’s Rondo in B Flat, WoO 6, for publication by Diabelli?4 The Rondo,

from 1793, is the original finale for the B-flat Piano Concerto, Op. 19, and
shares with the Concerto a five-octave compass: as is so often the case with
Beethoven’s early compositions, the high F is not only never exceeded, but is
even used as a pedal tone at the top of the highest textures.5
Given Czerny’s “general rule” and his explicit remarks about range, we might
reasonably expect that in filling out what little of the piano part remained unfin-
ished, he would have preserved the five-octave compass of the piece. But instead
he made full use of the sixth octave, as, for instance, in example 8.1b.
And given his proscription of added embellishment, we might expect him to
have reproduced only Beethoven’s original ornaments. Instead he added not
only turns, but—in the middle Andante—expanded fioritura (see ex. 8.2).
Czerny also doubled melodies at the octave, filled out harmonies, altered
voice leading and texture, and even provided new bass lines for the pianist to
perform with the right hand crossing the left.
carl czerny and musical authority ❧ 127

(b)

Example 8.1. (continued)

Are not these revisions infractions against Czerny’s own rules? They seem to be,
and for years I argued the point. But more recently it has seemed increasingly
evident to me that my perspective was too narrow, that Czerny’s aims were more
complex. For example, it may be that he maintained a distinction between com-
position and performance: to complete and modernize a thirty-six-year-old
piece that had never been heard by the public may have seemed to him to have
little to do with his “general rule” addressed to performers of finished classical
works. The Rondo posed a more pressing problem: he needed to complete it in
such a way that it would be well received by contemporary listeners.6
To be sure, there is plenty of evidence that Czerny’s concern with public taste
led him to modernize the “classics” in his instruction to composers.7 In his School
of Practical Composition, Op. 600, of about 1850, he directs his readers to “study
and compare the scores of Haydn, Mozart, Cherubini, Beethoven, Weber,
Meyerbeer & Rossini” in order to identify those “particular and distinctive”
128 ❧ george barth

(a)

(b)

Example 8.2. Beethoven, Rondo in B Flat for Fortepiano and Orchestra, WoO
6, fortepiano part, mm. 191–92. a. Beethoven’s version; b. Czerny’s version.

means by which “each of these masters produced his most beautiful effects.” Yet
in discussing the older works, he frequently modernizes the notation he would
have us study.8
For example, when he wishes to draw a distinction between “the class of the
Sonatina” and “a complete Sonata,” he discusses “the first movement of a little
Sonata by Mozart”—that is, the first movement of Mozart’s Duet Sonata in D, K.
381—but tacitly arranges it for piano solo, substituting his own textures, enriched
harmonies, altered slurring, and added pedal points. He refers to his own version
as “the original” as he subsequently suggests ways in which it might have been
expanded by Mozart into “a greater Sonata on the same subject.”9 Czerny’s deci-
sion to arrange makes perfect sense, given his focus on form. His failure to men-
tion the fact is not surprising either, given the tradition of tacit arrangement (for
example, Mozart’s early pastiche concertos on J. C. Bach’s Sonatas). The mod-
ernizing itself is evidence of his concern with good taste, as we shall see.
When he discusses Mozart’s song “Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge,” K. 596, of
1791, Czerny rewrites not only the accompaniment and the harmony, but the
very melody itself (see ex. 8.3).
(a)

Example 8.3. Mozart’s “Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge,” K. 596 (1791). a. Mozart’s version. From Neue Mozart Ausgabe, Ser.
III:8 (New York: Bärenreiter, 1963), 58. Reproduced by permission of Bärenreiter Verlag; b. Czerny’s version. From Czerny,
School of Practical Composition, 2:54.
(b)

Example 8.3. (continued)

carl czerny and musical authority ❧ 131

Figure 8.1. Czerny’s “Remarks on Refined Taste in Embellishments,” School of

Practical Composition, 1:88.

Even if, in Czerny’s Vienna, there is no general belief in progress, even if

“Klassizismus” accepts progressive elements only from Beethoven and Schubert,10
there are certain aspects of what Czerny calls “Bau und Form” that simply must
keep pace with changing fashion. Cadence formulas in particular all too quickly
become clichés. Czerny takes it for granted that cadences favored by Mozart and
his contemporaries sound offensive to modern ears, as the passage from his
“Remarks on Refined Taste in Embellishment” given as figure 8.1 reveals.
I suspect that in—perhaps unconsciously—modernizing Mozart’s little song,
Czerny is showing his concern for the proper formation of “the young com-
poser.” When it comes to embellishments and cadences, “the ancient authors
can rarely be taken as an example”; one must instead “take only the newest and
most tasteful compositions for a model.” Failure to do so has dire consequences:

He who neglects this in his youth, will experience great difficulty, at a more advanced
age, in keeping pace with the times; and it has never yet been sufficiently considered,
132 ❧ george barth

how great an influence this object has had upon many works, which, though excellent,
have too soon become antiquated.11

For reasons like these, Czerny’s appreciation for the compositions of earlier
“masters” was in some sense qualified, even in the case of his teacher Beethoven.
Although the revered, “ancient” works had proved their lasting worth, they nev-
ertheless stood in need of revision. Sometimes Czerny even viewed younger
composers as perfecting the work of their forebears: much of what Czerny val-
ued in Mozart’s music he found exemplified in a more up-to-date manner in the
music of Mozart’s student Hummel, whose composition and playing he much
admired.12
If Czerny’s “general rule” is not to be applied to the classics as compositional
models, how is it to be applied with respect to their performance?
First of all, their precise notation need not remain unaltered: Czerny routinely
modernizes or personalizes the notation of quotations from works both old and
new, sometimes in surprising ways. (I have discussed his modernization of
Beethoven’s notation at considerable length elsewhere,13 but even works of com-
posers Czerny considered to be of “the modern school” were subject to revision.14)
Second, the style in which classical works were performed need not remain
unaltered. This may seem at first to stand in contradiction to Czerny’s insistence
that “each composer must be performed in the style in which he wrote,” but
this is only an apparent contradiction, as I will demonstrate below.15 For Czerny,
the performance style of classic compositions is subject to modernization
for reasons not unlike those that apply to cadences in composition, as he
explains in a comment on the performance of baroque fugues and “other such
compositions”:

It would be ridiculous if, out of excessive piety for the ancients, we were now freely to
do without the advantages they had to do without, and if we therefore believed that
fugues had to be played in a monotonous and formal manner, as must necessarily have
been the case when our present way of playing was still unknown. We therefore believe
that in the performance of ancient fugues and other such compositions, a well-directed
expression, conformable to our taste, is both necessary and justifiable; since those mas-
ters would certainly have availed themselves of it had they possessed our excellent
pianofortes.16

Whenever the instrument changes or develops, the style of performance must

be appropriately adapted.
If both the notation and the performance style of classic works are subject to
change, what is it that Czerny believes must be preserved? What is it that must
remain “correct”? It is their character, their “conception.” On this point he dif-
fers with James Parakilas, who believes that conception is contingent.17
Parakilas finds the very idea of “correctness” in performance “philosophically
and historically foolish,” a notion that endures only because “honest musicians
carl czerny and musical authority ❧ 133

like Czerny have succeeded in lying to themselves about what they were doing in
their playing and teaching.”18

Performers need to believe in their conceptions of the music they are playing, but they
need just as much to be conscious of a composer’s notes as signs of an engagement with
the musical practices of a certain world, conscious of their own place in a tradition
(sometimes centuries long) of performing that work, conscious of the kinds of author-
ity they are relying on to define their own engagement with the work, and conscious of
the contingency of any authority, any methodology, any conception. As they develop
that consciousness, the sway and the burden of the idea of correctness will dissolve.19

But before we abandon the idea of “correctness” we should look more closely at
how Czerny used it, especially how it related to his idea of “conception,” which
is rather more sophisticated than it may at first appear.
Czerny had no interest in the historical reenactment sought by some mem-
bers of the “early-music camp,” being at least incipiently aware that Beethoven’s
scores and performances were, to use Parakilas’s words, “signs of an engagement
with the musical practices of a certain world,” and that he and his readers occu-
pied a “place in a tradition” that was in certain respects already beyond
Beethoven. That is why he refrained from using Beethoven’s own playing as the
basis of his instruction.20 Indeed, to remind his readers that, “even if it were pos-
sible to reproduce his style of playing quite exactly, it could not always serve us
as a model,” is to insist that Beethoven’s methodology—in this case, his playing
style—is contingent.21
But the “spiritual conception,” in contrast, “takes on a different value because
of changed prevailing taste, and must at times be expressed by other means than
were necessary at that time.”22 In other words, the “spiritual conception” itself is
not contingent. It exists in some sense free of its realization, and stands in need
of being “expressed by other means” in order to be communicated to future
generations. Those who cannot understand that the “conception” is actually pre-
served through translation may “reject the kernel for the shell,” like so many of
the “young performers” who “are no longer able to appreciate what is good,
great, and truly beautiful” in “the ancient works.”23
Czerny’s view of the classics as perduring in this way may be one expression of
a common response to the new demands of Beethoven’s music, described so
vividly by Dahlhaus:

One of the oddest facts in the early reception of Beethoven is a type of failure that was
apparently new to the history of music. . . . Audiences were astonished, believing them-
selves at times to be victims of a weird or raucous joke, and at all events feeling that they
understood little or nothing of what happened in Beethoven’s work, even though they
were supposed to understand it all. But even those who were disappointed felt basically
that the acoustic phenomenon whose sense they were unable to grasp nevertheless har-
bored a meaning which, with sufficient effort, could be made intelligible. . . . There
134 ❧ george barth

was nothing to “understand” about the magic that emanated from Rossini’s music; the
emotions that Beethoven’s works engendered, however, were mingled with a challenge
to decipher, in patient exertion, the meaning of what had taken place in the music.24

There is meaning that endures. At any rate, if we accept Czerny’s view of the
“conception” as free from the means of its realization, it is easier to understand
how he could insist that “each composer must be performed in the style in which
he wrote” while promoting the “newest style” of keyboard playing. For he
believed that the “newest style”—that “most desirable manner of all”—could sup-
port any and all “conceptions,” being “a mixture of and improvement on all those
which preceded it.”25 This is another instance of preservation by translation.
Methodology, then, is contingent, and “conception” is not. But what of
authority: in particular, what of Czerny’s authority to receive and transmit “con-
ception”? It is not apparent that Czerny was conscious of the “kinds of author-
ity” he relied on. That would have been unlikely for his time: he grew up in an
era in which knowledge was passed on more comfortably than it is now. To use
Parakilas’s Protestant–Catholic trope,26 he was the recipient of a continuous tra-
dition, and so never depended on artifacts alone to supply his musical suste-
nance. He was also in many respects a humble man. Unlike Anton Schindler, he
was not given to exaggerating his closeness to Beethoven, and even his strongest
pronouncements were delivered with important caveats.
Czerny’s insistence that “there can be only one perfectly correct mode of per-
formance,” for instance, is prefaced by the phrase “in this case.” And the case to
which he refers is the problem of inappropriate tempos favored by amateurs:

When a pianist has already thoroughly studied a piece in his own way, in a self-selected
tempo, and has thus become enamored of it, he finds it difficult to get used to another
tempo and style of performance, even though the latter be better and more correct. It
may therefore occasionally happen that some players will not immediately agree with
the directions and the indications of the tempo given here. This arises very much from
habit, and it cannot easily be disputed; because, for instance, many players who are
unable to command facility and bravura, content themselves by performing the most
animated pieces in a tranquil and sober manner, and deem this the proper way. But in
this case there can be only one perfectly correct mode of performance, and we have
tried, to the best of our remembrance, to indicate the measure of time (as the most
important part of correct conception), and also the style of performance, according to
Beethoven’s own view.27

If this notion of correctness still seems too strong, it is further softened by the
first of Czerny’s “Concluding Remarks,” explaining why good performances of
the same work differ from one another so markedly:

If several good actors had to represent the same character (as, for instance,
Hamlet), each would mostly differ from another in his conception of it, in many
of the details. Thus, one would chiefly characterize melancholy, another irony, a
carl czerny and musical authority ❧ 135

third dissembled madness &c: and yet each of these representations may be per-
fectly satisfactory in its way, provided the general view be correct.
So, in the performance of classical compositions, and especially in those of
Beethoven, much depends on the individuality of the player. . . . Hence, one may
principally cause humor to predominate, another earnestness, a third feeling, a
fourth bravura, and so on. . . . 28

Beethoven is even singled out here: we should expect performances of his

music to be more dissimilar than performances of works by other classical com-
posers because they depend more on “the individuality of the player.” Yet each
good performance can be “perfectly satisfactory in its way” so long as “the gen-
eral view be correct.”
Earlier in his Piano School Czerny even ventures to say that “there are an infin-
ity of cases, in which a passage or a movement may be played with several kinds
of expression with respect to the degree of movement, without any of those
modifications appearing absolutely incorrect or contradictory.” He then sug-
gests four different ways of performing a four-bar harmonized melody, none of
which “can properly be considered as contradictory.”29
Is Czerny himself trying to “dissolve” what Parakilas calls “the sway and the
burden of the idea of correctness?” Certainly as the whole of his teaching comes
into view, the notion of “correctness” seems more reasonably practical than bur-
densome. Nevertheless he does recognize the possibility of “incorrect” per-
formance: “It would be a contradiction . . . if we were to play this passage
throughout forte and coarse.”30 By “contradiction” Czerny means a misrepresen-
tation of character, which would be false to the “conception” of the music.
How is it, then, that a “true conception” endures? Or better, where does it
endure?
Not in the score, because its notation remains fixed while the representation
of music continues to develop.
Not in the sound, because older instruments are replaced by newer ones.
Not in the way of playing, because older styles give way to newer ones.
Not even where it was once found: in the conception as realized on a given
occasion by the composer, because tastes change.
The “conception” is found in Czerny—who embodies the character and spirit
of each piece “to the best of [his] remembrance”—and in whomever else hears and
understands that “conception.” Czerny’s remarkable powers of recall enabled him
“to play all of Beethoven’s works, without exception, by memory,” but memory
alone is not enough, as Czerny’s practice shows.31 Hence his appeal to “the
player’s sense of propriety,” which depends upon “well cultivated feelings, and
much experience.”32 If, through cultivation and experience, his reader develops
a finely honed “sense of propriety,” then the reader, too, is competent to inter-
pret correctly, and with results that Czerny himself may never have imagined. If
this is authority, then it seems meant to be shared.
136 ❧ george barth

Parakilas describes ours as a “a musical tradition whose primary vessel is the

musical score.”33 But from Czerny’s perspective, this would be a terrible loss. At
any rate, it is really a “Protestant” view, one result of believing in an unbridge-
able chasm of “difference” between the past and us. For Czerny, the tradition is
one in which the primary vessel is the person who embodies “the spirit of the
work.” “Bunglers” may possess the score, but not the “conception.”
From this perspective, Czerny’s habits appear to be more reasonable than
some of his narrowest pronouncements. If one is a living vessel, there is nothing
contradictory in offering Simrock a fresh set of tempo marks for the Beethoven
Sonata edition of 1856–68. Even if 80 percent of the tempi from “Proper
Performance” have been changed, the “conception” of each work is intact,
because it lives in Czerny. He is mistaken, then, in asserting that from a single
metronome mark “one can know with the utmost certainty the tempo desired by
the composer, and preserve it for all futurity.”34 No doubt this is another expres-
sion of his timid side, a response to vivid memories of Beethoven’s effusive pub-
lic endorsements of the metronome and his incessant question: “How were the
tempi?”35 But living things exhibit a certain mutability, a mutability sometimes
vexing even to Czerny. He should have known better, given his nuanced under-
standing of “conception.”

Notes
1. The present chapter, a thorough revision of my presentation at the Czerny
symposium, owes much to the insightful criticism of Dane Waterman and David
Lawrence.
2. Carl Czerny, On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, ed.
Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal, 1970), 22 (32 in original). Translation
adapted.
3. Czerny, Proper Performance, Commentary, 1.
4. As Czerny prepared the part for publication, he made revisions in the auto-
graph itself. C. A. Spina, Diabelli’s partner in Vienna from 1824 to 1851, published
the completed work, after which Breitkopf & Härtel used the Spina score as a basis
for their complete works edition of 1863. I am grateful to Patricia Stroh of the Ira
Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University for providing
these details by e-mail on May 30, 2002.
5. Cf. bars 93 and 100, Rondo für Klavier und Orchester (Originalfassung), in Ludwig
van Beethoven [Works. 1959], Supplemente zur Gesamtausgabe, ed. Willy Hess
(Wiesbaden, Breitkopf & Härtel: 1959– ), vol. 3 (Werke für Soloinsrumente und
Orchester, Bd. 1), 12–13.
6. On Czerny’s qualifications as an arranger and his gracious crediting of
Beethoven’s early advice for his success in that arena, see Ingrid Fuchs, “Carl Czerny:
Beethoven’s Ambassador Posthumous,” in this volume, 94.
7. Czerny defined “classic” in volume 4 of his Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500: “Das
Wort: klassich, kann, nach seiner wahren Bedeutung, nur von denjenigen
Compositionen gelten, welche sich, (auch nach dem Tode ihrer Verfasser,) durch eine
carl czerny and musical authority ❧ 137

lange Zeit ihre Dauer für die Zukunft gesichert haben” (Carl Czerny, Die Kunst des
Vortrags der ältern und neuen Claviercompositionen oder Die Fortschritte biz zur neuesten Zeit;
Supplement [oder 4ter Theil] zur großen Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500, 31).
8. Carl Czerny, School of Practical Composition, 3 vols., trans. John Bishop (London:
R. Cocks, ?1848; repr. [New York: Da Capo Press, 1979]), vol. 3, 1.
9. Czerny, School of Practical Composition, vol. 1, 37–38.
10. See Otto Biba, “Carl Czerny and Post-Classicism in Vienna,” in this volume,
12.
11. Czerny, “Remarks on Refined Taste in Embellishments,” School of Practical
Composition, vol. 1, 89.
12. “Mozart’s style . . . was brought to such exquisite perfection by Hummel”
(Carl Czerny, Complete Theoretical and Practical Piano Forte School, trans. J. A. Hamilton,
3 vols., Op. 500 [London: R. Cocks, 1839], vol. 3, 99).
13. For example, of the 139 examples from Beethoven’s sonatas excerpted by
Czerny for his discussion of “proper performance” in the fourth volume of Opus
500, only seven of the simplest accurately represent Beethoven’s text from first edi-
tion or autograph, the rest being more or less freely rewritten (the nature of the
alterations suggests that Czerny may have written them from memory). See George
Barth, The Pianist as Orator (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 81–97.
14. In one instance, even as he urges performers to observe the left-hand articu-
lation in a passage from Chopin’s F-minor Fantasy, Czerny changes its right-hand
articulation: “As the pedal constantly sustains the sound, in this example, the staccato
in the bass appears superfluous. But such is not the case: for it is worthy of remark
that when the pedal is used, detached notes produce quite a different kind of tone
from the same when held down, which arises from the difference in the touch”
(Czerny, “The Art of Playing the Ancient and Modern Piano Forte Works,”
Supplement to the Complete. . . Piano Forte School, Op. 500 [London: Cocks, 1846],
16). Czerny’s right-hand slurring for this passage is his own: Chopin’s ligature spans
pairs of bars (from the downbeat of m. 21 to the end of m. 22, from the downbeat
of m. 23 to the end of m. 24), but Czerny divides each of these ligatures in two, end-
ing each first half with a staccato dot he places above the right-hand downbeat
eighths at the beginning of measures 22 and 24.
15. Czerny, Piano Forte School, Op. 500, vol. 3, 100. Translation emended.
16. Czerny, Piano Forte School, Op. 500, Supplement, 125.
17. James Parakilas, “Playing Beethoven His Way: Czerny and the Canonization of
Performance Practice,” in this volume, 123.
18. Ibid., 122.
19. Ibid., 123.
20. Beethoven’s manner of playing had been superseded by what Czerny called
the “brilliant style,” characterized by “a very marked staccato touch, . . . perfect ele-
gance and propriety in the embellishment, . . . even more tranquil delicacy, greater
varieties of tone and in the modes of execution, a more connected flow of melody,
and a still more perfect mechanism.” It “was soon acknowledged to be the most
favorite and most applauded style of all,” and now “must be considered as the most
desirable manner of all” (Czerny, Piano Forte School, Op. 500, vol. 3, 99–100).
21. “Jndessen hing er dabei von seinen stets wechselnden Launen ab, und wenn
es auch möglich wäre, seine Spielweise ganz genau wieder-zugeben, so könnte sie,
(in Bezug auf die jetzt ganz anders ausgebildete Reinheit und Deutlichkeit bei
Schwierigkeiten) uns nicht immer als Muster dienen.” (Carl Czerny, Über den richtigen
138 ❧ george barth

Vortrag der sämtlichen Beethoven’schen Klavierwerke, ed. with commentary by Paul

Badura-Skoda [Vienna: Universal, 1963], 26 [34 in original]). My translation.
22. “. . . und selbst die geistige Auffassung erhält durch den veränderten
Zeitgeschmack eine and’re Geltung, und muss bisweilen durch and’re Mittel ausge-
drückt werden, als damals erforderlich waren” (Czerny, Über den richtigen Vortrag, 26
[34 in original]). Translation mine.
23. Czerny, Piano Forte School, Op. 500, Supplement, 29.
24. Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 10–11.
25. Czerny, Piano Forte School, Op. 500, vol. 3, 100.
26. Parakilas, “Playing Beethoven,” 110.
27. Czerny, Proper Performance, 109 (119 in original). Translation emended.
28. Czerny, Proper Performance, 108 (118 in original).
29. Czerny, Piano Forte School, Op. 500, vol. 3, 32–33.
30. Ibid., 33.
31. Czerny, Proper Performance, excerpts from Czerny’s “Anekdoten und Notizen
über Beethoven,” 14. Although Beethoven had at first feared that Czerny’s habit of
memorizing would “make him lose the quick grasp, the sight reading, and now and
then even the proper emphasis,” by the end of 1805 he was completely won over, and
signed the testimonial praising Czerny for his “admirable memory.” See Fuchs, “Carl
Czerny: Beethoven’s Ambassador,” 82–84. Regarding memory, there are fascinating
parallels between Czerny and his student Franz Liszt, the next ambassador in the
Beethoven line. Like Czerny, he is said to have tended toward “purer” performances
of Beethoven’s works later in his life, apparently the result of a similar “conversion
experience.” See William Newman, “Liszt’s Interpreting of Beethoven’s Piano
Sonatas,” Musical Quarterly 58 (1972): 185–209.
32. Carl Czerny, Vollständige theoretisch-praktische Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500 (Vienna:
1839; repr. Von dem Vortrage (1839): dritter Teil aus Vollständige theoretisch-practische
Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500, 3 vols., ed. Ulrich Mahlert [Wisebaden: Breitkopf &
Härtel, c.1991]), vol. 3, 25. My translation.
33. Parakilas, “Playing Beethoven,” 122.
34. “1stens Kann man das vom Tonsetzer gewünschte Tempo auf das Genaueste
erfahren, und für alle Zukunft aufbewahren” (Czerny, Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500, vol.
3, 48). My translation.
35. On Beethoven’s endorsements of the metronome, see Barth, Pianist as Orator,
47–53. Beethoven’s question about tempi was reported by Anton Schindler (Anton
Schindler, Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven, 4th ed. [Münster: Ashendorff, 1871],
247). Rosenblum notes that “although the veracity of Schindler’s reporting on per-
formance practices is open to serious doubt . . . there is ample evidence in letters,
comments to close friends, and in the Conversation Books that realization of his
tempo indications was a primary concern of Beethoven” (Sandra P. Rosenblum,
Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music [Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1988], 321 n. 108).
Chapter Nine

Carl Czerny, Composer

Anton Kuerti

Carl Czerny (1791–1857) occupies a pivotal niche in music history, linking

Beethoven—his teacher, and the ultimate archetype of profoundly spiritual
music—with Liszt, Czerny’s student, who exemplifies the ultraromantic and
often exhibitionistic virtuoso. Squashed between two of the most heroic, color-
ful, and influential personalities in the history of music, each of whom is adu-
lated and imitated to this day, Czerny, quite in contrast, led a very modest,
uneventful, and withdrawn life, and his name remains known mostly for his tech-
nical studies and etudes. Unbelievably numerous as these are, they still repre-
sent only a modest portion of his life work, which was remarkably fertile and
embraced essentially every form of music except opera; indeed, he was possibly
the most productive composer in the history of Western music, with 861 pub-
lished opus numbers and a similar quantity of unpublished material.
To have written so much is a splendid accomplishment, but not necessarily
beneficial to a composer’s reputation, especially when the quality is variable. Just
as bad money drives out good, large quantities of routine, quickly composed
works emphasizing slapdash virtuosity and superficial prettiness destroyed
Czerny’s reputation and discouraged exploration of the rest of his oeuvre. Even
those of us who have become convinced of the extraordinary value of his best
compositions can easily be daunted by the sheer volume and relative inaccessi-
bility of the detritus that must be scoured to find the true gems, despite the fact
that these, too, are gratifyingly numerous.
Czerny was himself very aware of the qualitative schism in his output, and he
divided his music into four categories: (1) studies and exercises; (2) easy pieces for
students; (3) brilliant pieces for concerts; and (4) serious music.1 How interesting
that the “brilliant pieces for concerts” are not what he considered “serious music!”
In an 1824 letter to Friedrich Wieck, Clara Schumann’s father, he asked Wieck to
“beg the musical world’s forgiveness for me, dear friend, for producing such a
quantity of small things and so few great ones until now. As a man of my word, I’ll
endeavor to make up for it.”2 And thirty-three years later, in a letter written just ten
140 ❧ anton kuerti

days before his death, he vowed to henceforth write only serious music and
expressed the wish that the Lord would grant him many more years for that
purpose.3
Despite these resolutions, Czerny eventually became so typecast as a manu-
facturer of etudes and of the mass-produced routine music that enriched his
publishers (they kept begging him for more) that posterity deemed it utterly
unlikely any of his creations might be worth examining. It is my hope that the
2002 International Czerny Festival and Symposium in Edmonton, Alberta, may
have provided a start toward remedying the unjust neglect of his best composi-
tions, many of which are superb by any standard.
Even in Czerny’s shallower works one must admire the infallible craft, the
instinctive and uninhibited mastery of melody, harmony, rhythm, counterpoint,
and form, and the astonishingly inventive figurations that helped prepare the
way for the music of Liszt, Saint-Saens, Alkan, and ever so many others. His ideas
for possible permutations of patterns for ten (and sometimes twenty or even
thirty!) fingers seem inexhaustible.
Czerny has paid dearly for his lack of musical correctness and the inconsis-
tency of his quality. Schumann, usually the epitome of generosity, nailed him
with some of his cruelest critiques: “A greater bankruptcy of imagination than
that demonstrated in Mr. Czerny’s newest creation (The Four Seasons, Op. 434)
could hardly exist. One should force the esteemed composer into retirement
and give him his well-earned pension, so he would stop writing.”4 Arthur
Loesser, in general well-disposed toward music of lesser gods and “salon” music,
describes Czerny, in his authoritative and entertaining Men, Women and Pianos,
as “without depth, intensity, or wit, but always smooth and pretty and rather ear-
tickling when played fast . . . in endless variety of patterns and endless monot-
ony of import.”5
I strongly suspect that neither Schumann nor Loesser was acquainted with
Czerny’s “serious” music, which is consistently fascinating, if not without some
weaknesses. He overutilizes the newly extended top octave of his piano, which
can quickly become irritating. This, plus the ever-present temptation the key-
board provided to indulge in dare-devil spurts of virtuosity, makes it generally
true that his greatest works are those that do not include the piano.
Many of Czerny’s tunes consist of sequential pairs of four-bar phrases, but their
heartfelt sweetness is so satisfying that this objection becomes academic. The reg-
ularity of his phrase structure, almost always in multiples of eight bars, is also not
considered compositionally correct today, but it does help maintain continuity
and natural propulsion, and makes the occasional unexpected event stand out all
the more colorfully. And like Schubert’s, Czerny’s works tend to be rather long.
While the range of his emotions is huge, there is less variety of character than
one finds in most great composers, and the trivial occasionally adjoins the poet-
ically imaginative. Some of these astonishing juxtapositions can be charming,
establishing a naive personal trademark, comparable to Bruckner’s exalted
c a r l c z e r n y, c o m p o s e r ❧ 141

symphonies, which gain so much power from their earthy, almost banal scher-
zos, or to the way Schubert’s heavenly lyricism gains poignancy by the occasional
detour through almost generic, lilting Viennese Ländler. Established “great”
composers are of course allowed more latitude to be “musically incorrect” than
lesser lights; one should only be careful not to scorn in the latter just what one
admires, or at least happily tolerates, in the former.
It has been difficult to properly assess Czerny because his best works are unpub-
lished or out of print, and unrecorded. Imagine trying to say anything definitive
about Beethoven without being familiar with any of his symphonies or chamber
music! Even assessing the published works is problematic, because chamber
music printed in the early nineteenth century never includes a score—the piano
part has only the notes the piano plays, no cues, and not even rehearsal numbers
or letters. Czerny’s most powerful, original, and astonishing works are indeed his
string quartets and quintets, but as far as can be determined, none of his quartets
had ever been performed until the 2002 Czerny Festival, and they remain unpub-
lished, buried in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien! And
even as I pontificate about this, I must remind myself that I have heard or seen
only six out of as many as thirty quartets rumored to exist.6 While that is still six
more than almost anyone who did not attend the 2002 festival had ever heard or
studied, it is still a pitifully small sample.
Czerny’s symphonic music has been only slightly less neglected than the
chamber music. Some of the symphonies (there are about eight) have been
recorded, and the finest one, No. 2 in D Major, has had an occasional perform-
ance (one of which I conducted myself in New York, with the “Jupiter”
Symphony. There is also another Symphony in D Major, recently performed by
the American Symphony Orchestra). His final symphony, the stirring Symphony
in G Minor, written in 1854 but still unpublished, apparently remained in obscu-
rity until, with some difficulty, the manuscript was deciphered and the work
received its first performance at the 2002 Festival. Two splendid overtures were
also heard at the festival, the delightfully Mendelssohnian Overture in E Major
probably being performed for the first time ever.
Aside from the string quartets, written in the last decade of his life, many of
Czerny’s best works are his early ones. The Piano Sonata No. 1, op. 7, written
when the composer was just nineteen, is a massive piece of five movements, the
last being a fugue, and it is cyclic (both these features were distinct innovations
in 1810). One could easily believe that parts of it must be by Schubert or
Mendelssohn (who were, respectively, aged thirteen and one when it was com-
posed). It is a work of great originality, with splendid contrasts ranging from the
soulful Adagio and the sparkling, deliciously Viennese rondo, to the wildly
dramatic scherzo, which Liszt frequently performed. There are another ten
piano sonatas, among them the excellent Sonata in F Minor, Op. 57, the same
key and opus number as Beethoven’s “Appassionata”—which can hardly be a
coincidence.
142 ❧ anton kuerti

Another excellent early keyboard work is the Sonata in F Minor, Op. 10, for
piano four hands, one of many works Czerny wrote in this genre. With their
extraordinary, original harmonic colorations, inspired themes, poetic lyricism,
and daring pianism, they are among the finest ever written for piano four hands,
and should in themselves suffice to establish and maintain Czerny’s reputation
as an important composer. Aside from their profound expression and tingling
drama, they are nearly unique in giving the “secondo” an absolutely equal role.
There is also a copious supply of works for the bizarre spectacle of three pianists
playing at one (pitiable!) piano.
Among the most startling of his early compositions are two works for violin
and piano, written when he was fourteen and sixteen, respectively. The
Variations on a Theme by Krumpholz and the Violin Sonata in A Major, the lat-
ter probably heard for the first time ever at the 2002 festival, alone should qual-
ify Czerny as one of the most amazingly precocious composers, absolutely
comparable, in this respect, to Mendelssohn, Korngold, and even Mozart.
Indeed, his reputation as a significant composer might more easily have been
established had he died young, before diluting these and other great achieve-
ments with an excessive quantity of trivial drivel, like a company that debases its
stock by issuing huge quantities of it!
One need not know the composer’s age to appreciate these masterfully com-
posed, powerfully expressive works. They display a consistent perfection of craft,
a freshness of invention and an engaging sincerity that is remarkable even in
mature composers. They are also unique in the spectacular virtuosity they
demand of both instruments; indeed, the violin writing, especially in the sonata,
is more characteristic of a mid-nineteenth-century concerto than a turn-of-the-
century sonata.
With all their brilliance, a beautifully balanced dialogue of chamber music
persists, and the music surprises us constantly with unexpected little original
touches, some elegant, others quirky—a secret reward for those who listen care-
fully. The traditional forms are harnessed with a confidence and finesse that
allows them to flow effortlessly and seamlessly. So astonishing are these works,
that one is tempted to suspect that Beethoven may have participated heavily in
their creation. Let Czerny himself deny this suspicion, and tell of his early devel-
opment as a composer:

Without being particularly encouraged by my father, I started already in my sev-

enth year to write down my own musical ideas, and I must remark that these were
mostly so properly constructed, that later, when I had gained knowledge of thor-
oughbass, I found there was little that needed to be changed. . . .
In 1806, Krumpholz [a violinist and devoted friend of Beethoven, who originally
brought Czerny to him] . . . gave me a theme he had composed himself. To surprise
him, I wrote, at my own initiative, and without help from anyone, twenty concert varia-
tions on it for piano and violin. Having heard so much music for string quartet, I was
pretty familiar with the technique of writing for the violin, though I could not play the
c a r l c z e r n y, c o m p o s e r ❧ 143

instrument at all. . . . They created, on repeated occasions, such extraordinary success,

that there was a general demand for their publication. . . . No one wanted to believe I
had written them without help.7

Works like the Violin Sonata considerably exceed the difficulty of even such
challenging works as Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata, which may be why Czerny’s
sonata was never published. On the other hand, many extremely difficult cham-
ber works by Czerny were published. It may well be that his popular works, the
potpourris, fantasies, and variations on the latest opera hits and his immense
didactic output made so much money for his publishers that they decided to
humor him by occasionally engraving one of his “serious” works at a modest loss.
But one still ponders for whom these could have been intended. A piece like the
Piano Quartet in C Minor, filled with “Sturm und Drang,” is more difficult than
a Chopin concerto (and in fact it has some very Chopinesque passages), and
must be nearly memorized in order to be properly played. What amateur pianist
could possibly have the time, technique—and arrogance!—to dare inflict this
cascade of notes on his volunteer string accomplices?
Indeed, Czerny was not exactly stingy in terms of providing the pianist with
stormy wall-to-wall cavalcades of scales and arpeggios. Some of these can sound
naive, even primitive, but rarely are they frivolous or simply acrobatic, certainly
less so than one sometimes finds in his pupil Liszt. There is strong drama in
Czerny, and virtuosity is one of the tools he uses to create it. Furthermore, he
incorporates the fireworks so admirably into the structure, offset by heartfelt
lyricism and delicious modulations, that they rarely become tedious.
While much of his piano chamber music and his works for piano and orches-
tra suffer from the gladiatorial exhibition of mindless virtuosity, there are still
plenty of striking exceptions, like the fascinating Trio in A Major, which starts
with mysterious, almost impersonal repeated chords, reminiscent of the
“Waldstein” Sonata. Its second theme and slow movement radiate an irresistible
warmth, while its breathless, highly contrapuntal scherzo is one of many out-
standing examples of this form in Czerny’s music.
His brilliant, highly challenging writing is not limited to the piano parts; works
like the Grande Serenade Concertante, Op. 126, for piano, cello, clarinet, and
horn, the Rondo Concertant for Cello and Piano, Op. 136, no. 3, and a whole
series of fantasies for horn and piano based on Schubert songs all give extremely
difficult tasks to all the instruments.
Another example of his precocity is a group of Lieder written while he was still
a teenager, also premiered at the 2002 festival, after the very difficult task of
turning the illegible manuscript into a readable score. It includes a version of
Goethe’s “Erlkönig,” filled with Beethovenian fervor. He wrote a large variety of
vocal music, some based on the poetry of Felicia Hemans, a British lady very cel-
ebrated in her day and considered to be an early feminist. These are frankly sen-
timental, in keeping with the Victorian parlor music of the day, while a copious
144 ❧ anton kuerti

assortment of Italian canzonettas are extremely short but perfect studies of “bel
canto.”
Czerny’s contrapuntal talents were phenomenal, as can be heard in his organ
works, and especially in the two remarkable Allegro Fugatos for string quintet.
These highly complex triple fugues, expertly constructed, full of color, variety,
and compelling excitement, remind one of the finale to Beethoven’s third
Razumovsky Quartet. One of them was performed in 1891 by string orchestra in
Vienna to celebrate Czerny’s one-hundredth birthday.8
Perhaps most astonishing is the huge amount of liturgical music created by
Czerny, only a minuscule part of which was ever published: cantatas, offertories,
hymns, graduals, Te Deums, choruses, and at least eleven Masses, most of which
remain to be explored. The samples we were able to bring at the 2002 festival
included the splendid “Benedicat nos Deus,” Op. 737, with its exalted clarinet
solo, and the glorious Mass in C Major, brilliant and beautifully written for the
chorus and four soloists.
“Great” composer or not, Czerny was certainly a genius of musical and pianis-
tic creativity who wrote many splendid pieces. He should not be despised or
forgotten.

Notes
1. Czerny’s account of his own output is cited in Grete Wehmeyer, Carl Czerny
und die Einzelhaft am Klavier, oder Die Kunst der Fingerfertigkeit und die industrielle
Arbeitsideologie (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1983), 75.
2. Cited in A. von Meichsner, Friedrich Wieck und seine beiden Töchter Clara
Schumann, geb. Wieck, u. Marie Wieck. Biographische Notizen über dieselben, nebst unge-
druckten Briefen von H.v. Bülow, Czerny, Robert Schumann, Carl Maria v. Weber u.s.w. Ein
Familiendenkmal (Leipzig: H. Matthes, 1875), 31. Translation by the author.
3. Czerny’s 1857 letter to the publisher André is cited in Wehmeyer, Carl Czerny, 84.
4. Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker, ed. Heinrich
Simon (Leipzig: Reclam, n.d.), vol. 2, 156–57. Translation by the author.
5. Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1954), 145.
6. Wehmeyer claims that thirty quartets exist, in Carl Czerny, 75.
7. Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed. Walter Kolneder, Sammlung
Musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 46 (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1968),
vol. 9, 23–24. Translation by the author.
8. Personal communication from Otto Biba, director of the Archives, Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde in Wien.
Chapter Ten

Carl Czerny’s Mass No. 2

in C Major
Church Music and the Biedermeier Spirit

John Wiebe

In a February 1844 Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung review of Carl Czerny’s

Offertory, Op. 737, the writer refers to the “inspired writing,” “beautiful
cantabile,” and “equally effective accompaniment” found in the music.1 The arti-
cle goes on to praise the religious effect and general suitability of the writing
style and further suggests that the greatness and respect accorded to Hummel,
Mozart, and Beethoven also be accorded Czerny. Given Czerny’s singular repu-
tation as a writer of keyboard exercises, it is unlikely that musicians today would
place him amid such a pantheon of composers, particularly in the realm of
sacred music. Indeed, Czerny’s association with dry pedagogy has largely pre-
vented recognition of the nature of Czerny’s other music. A study of the recently
completed performance edition of Czerny’s Mass No. 2 in C Major
(1830/1842),2 however, provides an opportunity to observe Czerny’s composi-
tional technique and approach to sacred music in detail and to place his work
into a context of contemporary Mass composition. While it is unlikely that the
results will convince many to rank Czerny with at least the latter two of the
reviewer’s trio, his sacred music nonetheless displays a distinctive and interest-
ing style, one that epitomizes the musical Biedermeier in its combination of clas-
sical formal constraint and cautious innovation.
The same review tells us that Czerny was not a composer of church music by
mere coincidence, but that higher aspirations as a composer and an inner
spiritual dedication compelled a turn toward sacred music composition.3 The
vast number of sacred compositions in his oeuvre is further proof of Czerny’s
146 ❧ john wiebe

dedication to this genre. Under the title “Works in Manuscript,” the inventory of
his compositions compiled after his death by the publisher R. Cocks & Co. lists:

3. Eleven Solemn Masses for Voices and Orchestra;

4. One Hundred and Six Offertories and Graduals for ditto;
5. Two Te Deums for ditto;
6. A Collection of Cantatas for ditto.4

Very little is known about the genesis of Czerny’s sacred works. From the title
under which these compositions appear in his autobiography, “Works in
Manuscript,” we know these works were not written for publication—indeed,
most remain in manuscript form to this day. Further, we know that at least some
of these works were performed during Czerny’s lifetime: two of the large-scale
Masses exist in revised versions quite possibly prepared for performances, and
an 1828 report in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung describes a performance of
what must have been his first Mass at the Augustiner-Hof-Pfarrkirche in Vienna,
with Czerny himself conducting.5
That Czerny’s church music was not published is of course no reflection on
the music itself; most composers of the era experienced similar fates with
regard to their sacred compositions. Even Schubert’s church compositions, in
particular his Masses, were not published until years after his death, with the
lone exception of his Deutsche Trauermesse (Requiem). Here the extent of
Beethoven’s influence can be appreciated, as both his Mass in C and the Missa
Solemnis were published during his lifetime—exceptions to the rule. While the
absence of published Masses may have precluded knowledge of other com-
posers’ sacred works outside of Vienna, Czerny’s position within the musical cir-
cles of the city itself makes it probable that he would have been familiar with a
significant number of these works. In any case, his lifelong attendance at cele-
brations of the Mass would have ensured his familiarity with the conventions of
its musical setting.
In his writing about church music, Czerny reveals himself to be primarily con-
cerned with practical matters and does not delve into a philosophical discussion
about the current or evolving role of music in church or society. Unlike Franz
Liszt, for example, who sought to initiate a reform of musical style with his
sacred compositions and writings about church music, there is no evidence that
Czerny intended to contribute anything but the production of more examples
in the accepted style of the day. In his School of Practical Composition, Czerny
describes the current method of composition for church music and the Mass,
without contributing any progressive or ideological imperatives.
The most revealing of Czerny’s comments relate to the style and purpose of
the music: “In Church music the art can and ought to be displayed in its great-
est dignity, and indeed from the earliest times it has been one of the most pre-
eminent means for the . . . awakening of religious feelings.”6 He concludes the
carl czerny’s mass no. 2 in c major ❧ 147

chapter’s section on the Mass with this imperative: “But we must always preserve
a certain ecclesiastical dignity of style, and endeavour to impart to the whole
composition that musico-aesthetical unity, by means of which it may fulfil its reli-
gious object and create feelings of devotion in the hearers.”7 Whereas church
music had in the past been written “to the glory of God” or for the benefit of an
educated nobility, Czerny here demonstrates a sense of responsibility to the con-
gregation, now made up of the general public. The desire to create an appro-
priate response in the listener reveals Czerny’s position within the bourgeois
spirit of the nineteenth century, with its demand that composers take into
account the limited musical comprehension of the general population.8
Furthermore, Czerny presumes that a recognizably “ecclesiastical” style is the
appropriate means through which to achieve this goal. As we will see, for Czerny
this meant reliance on the conventions of the Viennese orchestral Mass and the
classical style, familiar means by which to create “musico-aesthetical unity” with-
out unsettling surprises that might disturb listeners’ devotion.
Not surprisingly, Czerny’s compositional style is dominated by a homophonic
texture, which contributes directly to this goal of accessible expression. Like
other Mass composers of the day, Czerny relies on the homophonic texture to
facilitate the extensive text setting in the Mass ordinary. This simplicity of text
delivery was a lingering effect of Emperor Joseph II’s edict of 1783, and more
generally of the age of Enlightenment, which demanded a simpler, more acces-
sible style in order to facilitate the worship of the congregation.9
Czerny abandons the homophonic texture in favor of fugal writing at all of the
traditionally accepted moments: the end of the Gloria, Credo, and Sanctus-
Benedictus, in addition to a fugal section at the end of the Agnus Dei, for the
“Dona nobis pacem.” While the choral texture remains primarily homophonic,
it is through the creative layering of instruments, the use of countermelodies,
and the change of texture at key textual moments that Czerny supplements and
enlivens the texture, creating a musical style both accessible and engaging.
The opening Kyrie movement is a prime example of the way Czerny enriches
the predominant homophony. Beginning at measure one we see, above the osti-
nato accompaniment of the lower strings, the almost chorale-like use of the
woodwind and upper stringed instruments.10 At the entrance of the chorus in
measure 9 the woodwinds abandon the homophonic texture and instead pro-
vide a counterpoint consisting of three unique, fragmented motivic ideas (see
ex. 10.1). This enrichment of the homophonic texture is typical of Czerny’s cre-
ative use of the orchestral palette.
Another example is found in the “cum sancto” fugue of the Gloria, where, in
the midst of the fugal counterpoint, there is a sudden and unexpected homo-
phonic use of the solo ensemble (see ex. 10.2). Once again Czerny uses one set
of instruments to provide an organ-like doubling of the vocal parts, this time the
woodwinds, while the other group, this time the strings, provides both a rhyth-
mic and motivic counterpoint through the introduction of a new motif. This
148 ❧ john wiebe

Example 10.1. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Kyrie, mm. 9–13, chorus, woodwinds, and
bass.

Example 10.2. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria, mm. 199–205, soloists, oboes, bas-
soons, and violins.

section is particularly powerful and effective for the way Czerny builds toward
the eventual arrival of the dominant pedal point.
The use of the vocal soloists as a homophonic ensemble is another character-
istic feature of Czerny’s compositional style. In this Czerny follows a textural style
developed by Haydn, in which the solo voices are treated not so much as distinct
soloists, in the plural, but as a singular “agent of color and texture within a
carl czerny’s mass no. 2 in c major ❧ 149

symphonic framework.”11 With only a few exceptions, the vocal soloists are pre-
sented as a homophonic ensemble and in that texture Czerny invariably gravi-
tates toward an antiphonal juxtaposition with the larger chorus. Far from being
a limitation or a weakness in the writing style, this ensemble treatment of the
soloists allows Czerny to heighten a sense of drama through the antiphonal use
of the soloists and chorus—an exceptional feature that both helps mitigate the
extensive homophonic texture and introduces a dramatic element. The two
utterances of “qui tollis peccata mundi” in the Gloria, for instance, are set to a
strong, forte unison theme in the chorus, answered each time by the homo-
phonic but harmonized solo ensemble (see ex. 10.3). This interplay serves to
dramatize the text so that it seems to suggest a reading by a priest and congre-
gation—with the congregation represented by the penitent soloists.
Due to the practical and liturgical considerations of the genre, and in keeping
with the classical Mass tradition, Czerny limits the unifying elements of his Mass
setting to keys and scoring, with a limited amount of thematic similarity and recall
used to coalesce the work as a whole. While some writers, Martin Chusid in par-
ticular,12 have argued for larger, formal unity in the late classical Mass form, there
is little evidence in this work to support such a position.13 In an effective rebuttal
to arguments like Chusid’s, Eric Johnson notes that even when formal structures
(either large-scale symphonic form or a variation of sonata form within a single
movement) are identified in these works, they are the result of the development
of a rhetorical gesture and not the implementation of a formal construct.14 Thus
in Czerny’s Mass No. 2 in C Major we observe a similar pattern: some basic classi-
cal forms are exhibited within movements (for example, the Kyrie movement con-
forms to the sonata principle), but between the movements Czerny relies on key
relationships, scoring, and moments of thematic similarity, owing to the general
mood of the work, to link the movements to each other.
Those key relationships are summarized in table 10.1. On the largest scale,
harmonic structure is relatively straightforward. The first three movements are
self-contained, each beginning and ending in the home key. Although the final
three depart from this pattern, the second half of each movement, marked in
each case by a textually mandated subdivision, also begins and ends in the tonic
C major. At this level, tonal variety is introduced only in the Sanctus, Benedictus,
and first Agnus Dei.
When Czerny does leave the tonic, it is primarily in the direction of flat keys, usu-
ally avoiding any lasting motion in the dominant direction. However, on a more
local level Czerny does modulate to the dominant—as, for example, the first sec-
tion of the Kyrie. In this Czerny betrays the tension that existed between the con-
ventional motion toward the dominant and the more recent development to avoid
the dominant and instead exploit the mediant relationship. In the Kyrie, after
Czerny has moved to and reinforced G major, a classical progression to the domi-
nant, he supplants that move with a chromatic shift. Thus, in measures 33 and 34
of the Kyrie, when we are sure the next section must continue in G major, there is
Example 10.3. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria, mm. 80–88, soloists and chorus.
carl czerny’s mass no. 2 in c major ❧ 151

Table 10.1. Czerny, Mass No. 2 in C Major, key relationships between movements
Movement Begins in: Ends in:
1. Kyrie C major C major
2. Gloria C major C major
3. Credo C major C major
4. Sanctus A-flat major A-flat major
Osanna C major C major
5. Benedictus F major C major
Osanna C major C major
6. Agnus Dei C minor C minor
Dona nobis C major C major

Example 10.4. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Kyrie, mm. 32–54, harmonic outline.

an abrupt shift to the chromatic submediant of G, leaving the Christe section in E-

flat major (see ex. 10.4). As will be explored below, this motion to E-flat major is so
brief that ultimately it merely serves to delay the eventual arrival of G major.
In keeping with both the practical nature of the Mass composition and
Czerny’s essentially conventional and functional approach, the form of the indi-
vidual movements also follows established conventions. While some movements,
like the Kyrie, exhibit the basic classical formal model of I–V–X–I, others, like
the Credo, derive their formal outline from the naturally occurring textual
divisions and so are through-composed. Czerny assigns the usual sections of the
Mass to the soloists, thereby helping dictate the form of the movements; for
example, the “Christe” section of the Kyrie and the “Gratias” of the Gloria are
given to the solo voices. Additionally, as noted above, the fugal style is employed
at all of the traditionally accepted moments: the end of the Gloria, Credo, and
Sanctus-Benedictus, in addition to a fugal section at the end of the Agnus Dei,
for the “Dona nobis pacem.”
Not surprisingly, given his dependence on classical models, Czerny relies upon
periodic construction and with it the use of the four-bar phrase unit. What Kenneth
DeLong refers to as “a still greater, post-Classical degree of regularity”15 is a
Biedermeier trait easily observed in Czerny’s music, with the Kyrie offering perhaps
152 ❧ john wiebe

the most acute example. Here the entire movement, with the exception of a single
added measure (m. 33), can be divided into successive four-bar phrases, which are
then placed into groupings of eight (4 ⫹ 4), ten (4 ⫹ 4 ⫹ 2), or twelve (4 ⫹ 4 ⫹ 4).
The Kyrie, however, is an extreme example of this tendency, and in later movements
Czerny is not as consistent in his use of the four-bar phrase unit. In particular, eli-
sion helps diffuse the potentially monotonous regularity of the phrasing.
Despite the necessary separation and individuality of the Mass movements,
Czerny does provide a limited degree of thematic unity. A comparison of the
openings of the Kyrie and Gloria movements reveals both themes ascending dia-
tonically before descending chromatically (see ex. 10.5). Further, the fugal
themes found at the ends of the Gloria and Credo share an initial rise of a per-
fect fourth, from the dominant to the tonic, followed by a descent of one octave
to the tonic (see ex. 10.6). These thematic similarities are carried over to other
themes that may not share the same degree of specific similarities but still cap-
ture a similar mood due to the general spirit of the work. For example the
“Osanna” theme of the Sanctus (m. 50) and its reprise in the Benedictus (m. 99)
are similar to the fugue themes in character, with their opening leap of a fourth
followed by a descent (see ex. 10.7).

Example 10.5. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Kyrie and Gloria, opening themes.
carl czerny’s mass no. 2 in c major ❧ 153

Example 10.6. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria and Credo, fugue themes.

Example 10.7. Mass No. 2 in C Major, “Osanna” theme from Sanctus and
Benedictus.

The Gloria makes the most extensive use of thematic development and there-
fore displays the greatest degree of thematic unity. This is most clearly seen in the
fugal conclusion, where themes are recalled, developed and combined in an
ingenious manner. At measure 199 the descending chromatic motion of the
opening “Gloria” theme (itself more loosely echoing mm. 16–17 of the Kyrie—see
ex. 10.5) becomes the basis of a new motive in the fugue (see the soprano solo
part in ex. 10.2). Here counterpoint to the descent of the soprano soloist is pro-
vided by the strings via an anacrusis figure taken from an earlier part of the move-
ment. This rhythmic anacrusis motive figures prominently throughout the
movement, while the melodic motive is based on the fugal answers (see the string
part in ex. 10.2). In the final coda, marked Molto stretto, Czerny inverts this same
descending chromatic motive from the opening and combines it with the rhyth-
mic anacrusis figure (see ex. 10.8), thereby completing the thematic development
of these two themes, a development that encompasses the entire movement.
The most unexpected use of thematic recall occurs at the end of the Mass, in
the Agnus Dei. Here, just before the end of the movement Czerny quotes the
exact notes of the incipit used to open the Credo (see ex. 10.9). Not only does
Czerny quote this figure at the exact same pitch, but he does so with a unison,
unaccompanied chorus, a device that surprises the listener and recalls the a
capella choral tradition and Palestrina’s continued influence. Once the origin of
154 ❧ john wiebe

Example 10.8. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria, mm. 278–86, theme.

Example 10.9. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Credo, mm. 1–3 and Agnus dei, mm.
107–9, choral theme.

Example 10.10. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Agnus dei, mm. 91–93, anticipation of
theme in 2d bassoon, choral bass, and cello.

this a capella theme is recognized it becomes apparent that the bass line of the
preceding sequence (mm. 91–93 and again at mm. 99–101) is based on the first
four notes of the same motive (see ex. 10.10). Czerny’s distinctive integration of
the “Credo” theme at this point of the Mass is a powerful statement of unity for
the Mass as a whole, both as a point of musical recall and as a reaffirmation of
religious faith.
In his dependence upon periodic construction and the four-bar phrase unit,
Czerny reveals the extent to which his music relies upon harmonic progression,
specifically chromatic harmony, to provide impetus. Unlike music that is melod-
ically driven (think of Schubert) or motivically driven (Beethoven), Czerny’s
music makes extensive use of harmonic progression to provide momentum. To
be sure, there are examples in this Mass of strong melodic and motivic presenta-
tion and development, but it is at moments where there is a discernible absence
of melodic material that the importance of the harmonic drive is clearest.
Examples of this phenomenon are numerous, and help reveal Czerny’s dis-
tinctive voice. The opening of the Kyrie, for instance (as seen in ex. 10.1),
carl czerny’s mass no. 2 in c major ❧ 155

Example 10.11. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Gloria, mm. 24–29, harmonic reduction.

derives its impetus not from the ascending line in the upper voices, but from the
harmony beneath them. From measures 9 to 13, five measures, the melodic line
involves only three unique pitch classes, underscoring how inconsequential the
movement of these upper voices is to the progression of the music.
At measure 25 of the Gloria the static melody of the soprano and first violin
parts is supported by an ascending bass line harmonized with a thick, chromatic
accompaniment (see ex. 10.11). In this example we observe how Czerny uses the
rising chromatic line of the bass voice to underscore the dramatic approach
toward the forte in measure 28 and the “glorificamus” text. The lack of melodic
material, far from revealing a flaw in the music, helps to illuminate the importance
of the chromatic harmony. The intensity of the rising chromatic line and the har-
monic progression contained therein are augmented by the lack of activity in the
upper voices, a calm before the storm. This tension is then released with the
explosive ascent of the soprano voice, with flute and first violin, in measure 29.
Another trait that gives rise to Czerny’s characteristic sound, and one directly
related to his reliance on chromatic harmony, is the virtual absence of nonchord
tones. Because he so consistently avoids them, what might otherwise have been
passing melodic ornament becomes a part of his harmonic language. Where it
might be acceptable and appropriate to allow a single voice or note to serve as
a dissonant, nonchord tone, Czerny invariably harmonizes the note, thereby
thickening the harmonic texture, sometimes to an extreme degree. In measures
29–37 of the Credo, for example, at the point where the music confirms the
modulation to the flat mediant, E-flat major, one may observe an intensification
of the harmonic language that typically accompanies the approach to an impor-
tant cadence (see ex. 10.12). Here, instead of a simple progression through dia-
tonic triads interspersed with passing tones, the descent of the upper parts is
harmonized by the sequential pattern of the lower ones via the use of secondary
chords. The resulting harmonic rhythm of one chord per beat is arrested at the
156 ❧ john wiebe

Example 10.12. Mass No. 2 in C Major, Credo, mm. 33–37, harmonic reduction.

arrival of the cadential six-four chord in measure 35. On beat three, Czerny
simultaneously employs two chromatic passing tones (G flat and A natural) to
produce a passing diminished-seventh chord. The dissonance of this implied
passing chord is exponentially heightened by the dominant pedal underneath—
and the whole passage provides an extreme but in no way unique example of the
chromatic harmony that results from Czerny’s avoidance (to the point of elimi-
nation) of nonharmonic tones.
Most of the chromaticism encountered thus far in this Mass is used at the local
level, to provide color and impetus to the progression of individual phrases.
However, Czerny also employs chromatic harmonies in ways that at first glance
appear to impact the underlying structure. The first section of the Kyrie move-
ment modulates to the dominant and even cadences strongly in the new tonal
center. As we have seen, this sets up the anticipation that the “Christe” section
will begin in the dominant; Czerny, however, surprises the listener with an
abrupt modulation to the key of the flat mediant (E-flat major). This appears to
be an example of the chromatic mediant substituting for the dominant, but an
examination of the role of this foray into E-flat major reveals it to be nothing
more than a delay of the eventual arrival of the expected dominant (see ex.
10.4, above). After the cadence on G major in measure 32, Czerny moves to E-
flat major via F minor, the minor-mode flat-seventh chord. From E-flat major the
harmony again touches briefly on F minor, before shifting to E-flat minor, fol-
lowed by its relative major, G flat; a diminished-seventh chord finally leads to the
cadence on G major.
A similar display of internal key relationships can be found in the Agnus Dei,
progressing from C minor (the opening key) to E-flat minor at measure 23 and
further to A-flat minor at measure 31. Despite this wonderful exploitation of the
chromatic-mediant relationship, the A flat in measure 31 is ultimately destined
to function as a Neapolitan for the dominant G-major chord, which proves to be
the destination in measure 45, establishing the dominant and preparing the
return of the tonic at the end of the Agnus Dei.
carl czerny’s mass no. 2 in c major ❧ 157

Thus, while Czerny’s use of chromaticism ultimately proves to be less than

fully functional, the scope of the chromatic exploration is more than decorative
coloring. In this music the chromatic harmonies do not constitute the harmonic
goal but a fascinating approach toward that goal. The manner of approach to
the harmonic goal has become in many ways as important as the goal itself,
thereby evidencing a romantic tendency to supplant the role of the dominant,
in dramatic impact if not in formal function.
The preponderance of chromaticism, then, does not affect the underlying
structure of the music and must therefore be labeled as surface or local chro-
maticism. As Kenneth DeLong notes, such passages derive from the chromati-
cally inflected passages of Mozart’s later music; their “unassimilated local
chromaticism within a diatonic framework” constitutes “one of the most easily
recognizable traits of Biedermeier musical style.”16 And yet, as shown above, the
scope of these chromatic explorations marks them as more than mere decora-
tive colorings; they demonstrate the changing position of the dominant in the
structural hierarchy. While Czerny’s use of regular periodic construction fits the
classical profile, his integration of chromatic harmony into the core of his musi-
cal style reveals a romantic trait—and their simultaneous presence speaks to the
dual nature of his musical style as a product of both classical and romantic
ideals.
Far from being exclusionary or exclusive in their mindset, composers of the
Biedermeier were content to combine elements of the romantic style with the
nostalgic use of classical elements. So we see in Czerny’s music the use of classi-
cal form—classical formal conventions, periodic construction, and regular four-
bar phrase units—to clarify the chromatic harmonies inspired by romantic
ideals. The result is a form of romanticism made accessible for the bourgeoisie.
For us today it adds the name of Carl Czerny to the list of nineteenth-century
composers whose works merit further exploration and performance.

Notes
1. Review of Carl Czerny, “Offertorium: Benedicat nos Deus,” Allgemeine Wiener
Musikalische Zeitung 4, no. 14 (1844): 48.
2. Carl Czerny, “Mass No. 2 in C Major,” ed. John Wiebe (D.Mus. thesis,
University of Alberta, 2006).
3. Review of Czerny, “Offertorium,” 54.
4. A Complete List of Carl Czerny’s Works (London: Cocks & Co., n.d. [ca. 1860]);
repr. in Carl Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ed. Walter Kolneder, Sammlung
Musikwissenschaftliche Abhandlung 46 (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1968),
55–76; quotation from 74. Grete Wehmeyer (“Czerny,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und
Gegenwart, 2d ed., Personenteil 5 [Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001]) lists a far greater
number of works in several of these categories, though their whereabouts are
unclear.
158 ❧ john wiebe

5. “Nachrichten. Wien. Musikalisches Tagebuch vom Monat November,”

Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 30 (1828): 31 (Czerny was conducting one of his
Masses during a church service in the Augustiner-Hof-Pfarrkirche in Vienna).
6. Carl Czerny, School of Practical Composition: Complete treatise on the composition of
all kinds of music, both instrumental and vocal, together with a treatise on instrumentation in
three volumes, translated and preceded by a memoir of the author and a complete list of his works
by John Bishop (London: Robert Cocks and Company, ca. 1848; repr., New York: Da
Capo Press, 1979), vol. 2, 197.
7. Ibid., 207.
8. Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 179.
9. Lawrence Schenbeck, Joseph Haydn and the Classical Choral Tradition (Chapel
Hill, NC: Hinshaw Music, 1996), 150–51.
10. The orchestration for this Mass is: SATB Soloists, SATB Chorus, flute, 2 oboes,
2 bassoons, 2 trumpets, 2 horns, timpani, and strings. Notable by their absence are
the clarinet, trombone, and organ-continuo.
11. Schenbeck, Joseph Haydn and the Classical Choral Tradition, 265.
12. Martin Chusid, “Some Observations on Liturgy, Text, and Structure in
Haydn’s Late Masses,” in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Music. A Tribute to Karl Geiringer
on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. H. C. Robbins Landon in collaboration with Roger E.
Chapman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 127. Here Chusid suggests
that the Kyrie-Gloria form one symphony, the Credo another, independent sym-
phony, and the Sanctus through Agnus Dei a third symphony.
13. Schenbeck, Joseph Haydn and the Classical Choral Tradition, 266, picks up on this
as does H. C. Robbins Landon, The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn (London: Universal
Edition, 1955), 596.
14. Eric A. Johnson, “Franz Joseph Haydn’s Late Masses: An Examination of the
Symphonic Mass Form,” Choral Journal 42, no. 7 (February 2002): 23.
15. Kenneth Delong, “The Conventions of Musical Biedermeier,” in Convention in
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Music: Essays in Honor of Leonard G. Ratner, ed. Wye
J. Allanbrook, Janet M. Levy, and William P. Mahrt (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press,
1992), 204.
16. Ibid.
Chapter Eleven

Carl Czerny’s Orchestral Music

A Preliminary Study

Douglas Townsend

The Unknown Czerny

Carl Czerny was born just six years before Schubert, and, like that composer, as a
student he was exposed to and very much influenced by the music of Mozart,
Haydn, and Beethoven. In his “Recollections from My Life” (1842),1 he makes it
clear that while he never met Mozart, he became familiar with many of his com-
positions while a frequent guest at the musicales given by Constanze, Mozart’s
widow. There many of her late husband’s works were performed, including
Mozart’s piano and violin sonatas, and some of his chamber music. Czerny also
became friendly with Mozart’s son, Franz Xaver Mozart, who was exactly Czerny’s
age, and who also became a composer and piano teacher.2 Although he does not
mention meeting Haydn, who died in 1809, it is more than likely that he and the
older composer met several times, if not at the Mozarts’, then at other musicales
where Czerny’s teacher, Beethoven, performed.
Because of his unusually retentive memory, the young Czerny must have been
deeply impressed by the music he heard performed at such private and public
concerts. As he grew older and began composing his own nondidactic works
(such as his piano sonatas, string quartets, and orchestral and chamber music),
the sounds of the waning classical era were bound to have some influence on
him. Czerny himself described his musical background in his “Recollections”:

From my earliest days I was surrounded with music, since my father [a piano teacher in
Vienna] used to practice a great deal (especially works by Clementi, Mozart, Kozeluch,
etc.) and received the visits of many fellow countrymen [i.e., from Bohemia] whom he
knew professionally. . . . My father had no intention whatsoever of making a superficial
virtuoso out of me; rather, he strove to develop my sight-reading ability through
160 ❧ douglas townsend

continuous study of new works and thus to develop my musicianship. When I was barely
ten I was already able to play cleanly and fluently nearly everything by Mozart,
Clementi, and the other piano composers of the time; owing to my excellent musical
memory I mostly performed without the music. . . . Without my father’s special encour-
agement I began, when I was only seven, to put down some ideas of my own; I should
add that they were at least written correctly enough [so] that in later years when I
received instruction in thorough-bass I found little occasion to change anything.3

Czerny also states that he was taught French, Italian, and German language and
literature on a part-time basis by some of his father’s piano students, who were
too poor to pay for their lessons in cash. By the time he was ten years old, he
could speak those languages fluently.4
These early accomplishments suggest that Czerny may have had what is
regarded today as a photographic memory, and quite possibly the gift of total
(or near total) aural recall. As a mature man and composer, he would have been
able to recall entire compositions and to play from memory the pieces he had
learned as a young child. He would also have been able to recall the sounds of
the orchestral, choral, and chamber works he had heard while still a student.
In writing this chapter it is my intention not only to bring to the reader’s atten-
tion some of Czerny’s unknown compositions but also to place him in the music-
historical milieu to which he belongs, the late classical and early romantic eras.
Like Bach and Vivaldi, he was overlooked by a younger generation of composers
who were more in tune with the musical and cultural developments of their time
than he was. Czerny’s name and some of his music were, of course, well known
to his contemporaries (some might say too well known). But even many of his
exercises, which number in the thousands, are still not known by most piano
pedagogues, especially those in Opus 740 (The Art of Finger Dexterity), wherein
the composer includes a can-can and other works à la Mendelssohn and Chopin,
real character pieces each of them. Such gems notwithstanding, however,
Czerny’s didactic works are a far cry from his symphonies, quartets, sonatas, and
other chamber and orchestral works, and very few of his contemporaries had
any knowledge of these more serious works.

Symphonies

Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 780

Czerny’s Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 780, was published by the composer
and “dedicated to the Vienna Conservatory of Music.” Although it is called
“Premiere simphonie,” the title can only refer to the fact that it is the composer’s
first published symphony, since he is known to have written at least six such “pre-
miere” works, including the unpublished one in G minor discussed below, which
is dated September 17, 1854.
carl czerny’s orchestral music ❧ 161

The Symphony in C Minor is scored for classical orchestra, with the addition
of a piccolo, three trombones, three timpani, and ophicleide. The orchestration
is similar to that of the Schubert Symphony in C, D. 944 (but with the addition
of piccolo, ophicleide, and three timpani), and has the intensity and orchestral
color of some of Beethoven’s minor-key symphonies and overtures.
One of the outstanding characteristics of Czerny’s symphonies is that in the
fast movements he chooses secondary themes that are generally lyrical and very
much either in the Viennese folk-song tradition or in Schubert’s melodic style.
It is this combination of a somewhat restrained classical style coupled with a
Schubertian lyricism and occasionally a Schubertian harmonic language that
makes up the “Czerny style,” that is, an equal combination of the fading classi-
cal style and the romantic musical language of the emerging new musical era.
The harmony and some of the orchestration may be based upon eighteenth-
century tradition, but the emotional quality, the melodies, and the harmony
resemble Schubert and Mendelssohn more than they do Mozart and Beethoven.
The Symphony in C Minor, for example, begins in a manner reminiscent of
the classical style, with a stormy passage in the tonic key, introducing a rhythmic
motif heard throughout the movement; but this leads within seconds to an
entirely new melody, also in the tonic, but in a much more lyrical style (see ex.
11.1). This new melody (mm. 9ff.) includes the classical rhythm and motif of the
opening measures and forms the basis of what will become the lyrical second
theme. As shown in example 11.2, the flowing shape of this second theme is
audibly derived from the motive seen in example 11.1, measure 10.
The development section follows the classical sonata form, in that virtually all
thematic development is derived from melodic or rhythmic motifs occurring in
the exposition, including a very interesting fugato, which is derived from a
motive from the second theme in diminution (see ex. 11.3). The rest of the
development is made up of a varied repetition of portions of either the first or
second themes, including an attempt to restate the lyrical portion of the first
theme in a slightly varied form, played by the strings against a countermelody in
the winds. Orchestrally, one of the most interesting (and advanced) passages in
the development occurs in the transition to the recapitulation, which begins
piano and leads to the fortissimo that establishes the return.
In addition to Czerny’s alternations between stormy and lyrical sections,
another of the chief characteristics of his compositions for orchestra is his use
of the climax after each section or melodic interlude. While the melodies them-
selves are rarely longer than eight to sixteen measures, the climaxes are gener-
ally somewhat longer than sixteen measures and are so intense that each time
one is heard the listener begins to wonder if the composer has reached the apex
of the movement. These climaxes are usually achieved by a gradual change in
dynamics and by fast scale passages, usually in the first violins. It is the frequent
use of these scale passages (or variations of them in slow movements) that
reminds us occasionally of the composer’s piano exercises.
Example 11.1. C-Minor Symphony, Op. 780, mvt. 1, mm. 1–11.
Example 11.1. (continued)
164 ❧ douglas townsend

Example 11.1. (continued)

The second movement of the C-Minor Symphony is in sonata form and is

scored in the romantic style, whereby the melody is divided among various instru-
mental groups, with the other instruments supplying a rhythmic or contrapuntal
background (see ex. 11.4). The opening of the movement (ex. 11.4) provides a
fine example: note the leisurely opening of the principal melody, stated only every
other measure, and the subtle orchestrational touches, such as the timpani dou-
bling the violas in measures 1 and 3 and the answer to the timpani in the pizzicato
cello and bass parts in measures 2 and 4. The solo for the cello section that follows
this theme is another feature of the “romantic Czerny.” A similar passage occurs
in the slow movement of the G-Minor Symphony discussed below. In both cases,
the warmth of nineteenth-century orchestral color is very much in evidence from
the type of phrase and the instruments playing it. The variety of orchestral color
in this movement is at times not unlike some of the effects to be found in the sec-
ond movement of Beethoven’s “Pastorale” Symphony or in portions of the slow
movement of his Ninth Symphony, both of which were anticipations of typical
orchestral technique of the middle and late-nineteenth century.
The third movement, a scherzo, is a kind of grotesque dance, related in mood
to the recapitulation of the scherzo of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Although
carl czerny’s orchestral music ❧ 165

Example 11.2. C-Minor Symphony, Op. 780, mvt. 1, mm. 67–76, condensed
score: second theme.

the intensity of feeling changes a little after the repeat of the first strain, the
dreamlike quality of the dance continues to the trio, despite the climax in which
the full orchestra (including piccolo, trombones, and ophicleide) repeats the
underlying rhythm of this surreal movement. Although the nature of the melody
changes during the trio, so that it is now more sustained and lyrical, there is still
a semblance of the surreal about it, leaving listeners with a feeling of unrest such
as one might encounter midway into a story by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Although the
first two movements are an interesting mix of the classical and romantic with
regard to melody, harmony, and orchestration, the present movement is pure
romanticism in mood, melody, and orchestration, and in its own way it seems
like something Berlioz might have written in his student days.
166 ❧ douglas townsend

Example 11.3. C-Minor Symphony, Op. 780, mvt. 1, mm. 157–62, condensed
score: fugato on motive from second theme in diminution.

The fourth and last movement, “Finale,” is not unlike the sonata-rondo finales
of the late symphonies of Haydn. In this case the second theme is again based
on motifs from the first theme, but is developed differently. Once again Czerny
introduces his themes by having first one group of instruments play part of the
theme, then a second group of instruments play the same or another part of the
theme. In each of the episodes, motifs from both themes are played against each
other, sometimes in imitation, sometimes by melodic extension, with each
episode closing with a forte tutti, which leads back to the refrain of just the first
theme. It is in these transitions that Czerny almost invariably falls back on a
tried-and-true formula: while the orchestra plays sustained chords or motifs
related to one of the themes, the first violins (and occasionally the seconds) play
scale passages in sixteenth notes—one of the few reminders of the music he
wrote during his “other life,” if one may so describe his didactic works.

Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 781

As with Czerny’s Symphony No. 1, the title of the present work can only refer to
the fact that it is the composer’s second published symphony.5 The orchestration
is again for a classical orchestra, with the addition of three (optional) trombones.
From the first chord, and throughout the work, Czerny refers to the past by
alluding to various works of Beethoven and occasionally Schubert. However,
Czerny’s sense of orchestral color is always present, with an occasional melodic frag-
ment or harmonic turn anticipating the music of a later generation of composers.
carl czerny’s orchestral music ❧ 167

Example 11.4. C-Minor Symphony, Op. 780, mvt. 2, mm. 1–4.

The first movement opens with a slow introduction, Adagio molto and fortissimo,
played by the full orchestra. This is followed by four measures of piano played by
the winds—almost a direct paraphrase of the opening of Beethoven’s Second
Symphony. Then, in the middle of the introduction, Czerny introduces a lovely
168 ❧ douglas townsend

melody in the clarinets and flutes, which later (in the allegro), forms the basis for
his very Schubertian second theme. Apparently the composer himself appreciated
this song-like melody, since he extends it in the exposition and uses it in several
different ways in the development section. In the allegro portion of the move-
ment, the first theme is based on the same rhythmic figure as that of Beethoven’s
Second Symphony. The second theme of the allegro portion is the lovely, almost
Schubertian melody referred to above; it seems to grow out of the musical soil like
a beautiful flower in a forest of sound. (See ex. 11.5, which shows the theme as it
is first introduced, beginning in the sixth measure of the excerpt.)
The second movement, Andantino grazioso un poco moto, bears a superficial
resemblance to the slow movement of Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony. From the
nature of the melody and its accompaniment, it is clear that the composer was
familiar with Haydn’s work. Czerny’s melody, however, is more free-flowing than
Haydn’s and is more in the nature of what Percy Grainger would call a “walking
tune”—the kind of melody one would whistle or hum to oneself while out on a
walk. The nature of the tune is best described in the composer’s own words as
they appear in the score: dolce delicatamente con anime. The delicate, almost frag-
ile, melody proceeds effortlessly from one delicious phrase to another, each with
a different orchestration and each seemingly growing out of the preceding one.
The most unusual thing about the movement as a whole is the accompaniment
to the second strain, the major portion of which consists of the second violins
and violas playing a “noodling” figure of four notes in octaves, creating a
buzzing sound, barely heard and a perfect background for the march-like
rhythm played by the first violins.
The third movement, again a scherzo, is vaguely reminiscent of the second
movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in that it begins as a fugato but is
actually in sonata form, with the second strain forming the development of the
fugato theme and the second theme. The coda to this interesting movement
begins with a solo for the horns, which Czerny employs in much the same way
that Beethoven used them at the end of the scherzo of the “Eroica” Symphony.
The trio of the third movement contains one of those melodies that might eas-
ily pass for a folk song in its simplicity and structure. It is the perfect contrast to
the boisterous nature of the scherzo proper and serves much the same purpose
as the lyrical trios in many of Schubert’s Marches Militaires.
The finale (Allegro vivace), in sonata form, begins with several chords of the
dominant seventh, which lead directly to the first theme, a fugato on two sub-
jects announced simultaneously, one in half and quarter notes, the other in six-
teenths (see ex. 11.6). It soon turns out that part of the sixteenth-note subject is
based on the opening motif of the first theme of the first movement. This motif
is bandied about alternately by the strings and winds in a noncontrapuntal
exposition leading to the second theme, which is also introduced in an impres-
sive display of double counterpoint (see ex. 11.7). A short development section
functions also as a transition to the recapitulation.
Example 11.5. D-Major Symphony, Op. 781, mvt. 1, pp. 20–21, condensed
score: second theme.
170 ❧ douglas townsend

Example 11.6. D-Major Symphony, Op. 781, mvt. 4, pp. 132–33, condensed
score: beginning of fugato on two simultaneously announced subjects.

Symphony in G Minor

The last symphony to be discussed in this chapter, Czerny’s Symphony in G

Minor, has not yet been published. Bearing the date September 17, 1854, it is
found in manuscript score in the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde
in Wien (see no. 35 in the appendix to this volume) and was edited by pianist-
scholar Anton Kuerti.
The work is scored for classical orchestra with the addition of three trom-
bones, and begins with a slow introduction in which the head motif of the first
and second themes occurs several times. The entire first movement is made up
of fragments of the first few notes of the first theme (which could be the com-
poser’s homage to the last movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 130),
carl czerny’s orchestral music ❧ 171

Example 11.7. D-Major Symphony, Op. 781, mvt. 4, pp. 142–43: second theme.

with an occasional reference to the second theme acting as a contrast to the

intensity of the first. The second theme, begun by bassoons and clarinets, recalls
similar second theme entries in many of the works of Mendelssohn, although in
this case it is based on a theme from Czerny’s own Die Macht des Gesanges, a work
for chorus and orchestra that was composed in 1842. The 1842 version, how-
ever, does not receive much thematic or motivic development, unlike its
“Mendelssohnian” appearance in the symphony of 1854.
The second movement, Un poco sostenuto, begins with bassoons and horns play-
ing a sustained melody not unlike that in the introduction to Weber’s “Oberon”
overture or the Nocturne from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream music.
As the melody unwinds upon itself, flutes and strings gradually enter, and the
first thirty-odd measures sound less like late eighteenth-century music and more
like a work composed during the first half of the nineteenth century. The sound
of early romanticism is further heightened by a lovely melody played by the
entire cello section. A second theme, no less mellifluous than the first, is fol-
lowed by a transition to the recapitulation and coda. There is hardly a nod to the
composer’s eighteenth-century musical heritage (except, perhaps in the
modified sonata form of the movement as a whole), and the movement displays
172 ❧ douglas townsend

Example 11.7. (continued)

skillful use of the immense variety of color and texture available to the orches-
tras of the early and mid-nineteenth century.
By the deftness and delicacy of orchestration in the scherzo, Czerny clearly
indicates his awareness of Mendelssohn’s scherzi for piano and for orchestra.
The present scherzo is light, fast-moving, and tuneful, even in the loud passages
with trombones. The trio contains snippets of melodies played alternately by
horns and bassoons in the first strain and strings and winds in the second—the
bustling scherzo and colorful trio forming a veritable kaleidoscopic miniature in
sound.
The last movement, Allegro vivace con spirito, is in sonata-rondo form and has
two themes that are motivically related. It is quite possible that the first theme of
this movement was inspired by the last movement of the Piano Sonata in G
Minor, Op. 50, no. 3, by Czerny’s friend Clementi; it only vaguely resembles that
movement’s theme melodically, but seems closely related emotionally.
carl czerny’s orchestral music ❧ 173

Although it is also written in a minor key and calls for a relatively large orches-
tra, this symphony is as different from the C-Minor Symphony, Op. 780, dis-
cussed above, as it is possible to be. There are constant changes in key, mood,
and thematic content in the first movement, such as those frequently encoun-
tered in the orchestral works of Mendelssohn, but which are quite unexpected
in Czerny’s.

Two Overtures and a Piano Concerto

During the early and mid-nineteenth century, a number of changes took place
on the musical scene. In addition to larger orchestras and newly invented instru-
ments, new musical forms began to emerge, such as the “bagatelles” of
Beethoven, the “eclogues” and “impromptus” of Tomášek and Schubert, the
“songs without words” of Mendelssohn, and the “tone poems” of Liszt. Except
for Liszt’s orchestral compositions, all of these pieces were short works for the
piano, generally a few minutes in length and in three-part form. In terms of
orchestral music, composers also began to write short descriptive works, such as
Schubert’s “Overtures in the Italian Style,” Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival” and
Dvor¤ ák’s “Carnival” overtures, Mendelssohn’s “Fingal’s Cave” Overture and
Overture for Wind Instruments, and Brahms’s “Tragic” and “Academic Festival”
overtures.
Czerny’s ten “overtures” for orchestra appear to fall in this category of short
orchestral works written solely for concert performances and not affiliated (so
far as we know) with either a play, an opera, or an extramusical inspiration. Not
only did he write overtures for orchestra, but he wrote or arranged at least three
for piano four hands.6 It is clear from the nature of these works that the names
he gave them at the time of their composition—“Overtures”—meant approxi-
mately the same thing to him as “Impromptu” did to Schubert or Chopin: a
short instrumental work for which no other title seemed appropriate.
Between 1826 and 1839 Czerny composed five overtures for orchestra, the
autographs of which were dated by the composer.7 There are several other sim-
ilar works that are not dated, and at least one published overture, which the
plate numbers indicate was printed about 1835.8 Although the scores or parts to
most of these overtures were not available at this writing, the two that have come
to my attention are interesting because of their similarities and differences.
Musically, they are individually as different in mood as are the Impromptus of
Schubert, and like those works, which are generally all in three-part form,
Czerny’s overtures are all in sonata form or a slight variation of it.
The Overture in C Minor, Op. 142 (which I edited from the original parts pub-
lished by Tobias Haslinger) is in the form of a symphonic first movement, that is,
it opens with a dramatic Andante ma non troppo (see ex. 11.8) followed by a no less
dramatic Allegro moderato ma con fuoco. The opening of the Allegro is at once
174 ❧ douglas townsend

Example 11.8. Overture in C Minor, Op. 142, mm. 1–10, condensed score.

Example 11.9. Overture in C Minor, Op. 142, mm. 132–37, condensed score:
transition to second theme.

mysterious and threatening, and it is at the first tutti that a kind of emotional
storm bursts upon us. The second theme, played by the strings, brings a momen-
tary peace (see ex. 11.9), only to be followed by another intense tutti, which
builds to a climax that reaches its height with a return to G, the dominant of the
carl czerny’s orchestral music ❧ 175

Example 11.10. Overture in E Major, mm. 1–12.

tonic key of C. This arrival at the recapitulation is so sudden and unexpected that
it catches one by surprise. Following the return of the second theme, there is a
coda that serves to maintain the drama and intensity of the overture to the very
end. The entire overture lasts about seven minutes and is a fine dramatic char-
acter piece, which might well serve on any program as a concert opener.
The Overture in E, dated “Octob[er] 1838,” opens with a slow introduction
whose theme, played alternately by the horns and bassoons together and by the
strings and winds in octaves, provides another example of Czerny’s deft orches-
tration (see ex. 11.10). A variant of the tune (with some new melodic material
added) is then played piano by the full orchestra, minus trumpets, creating the
kind of warm tonal sound that was to become so popular among composers in
176 ❧ douglas townsend

Example 11.10. (continued)

the middle of the nineteenth century. The entire slow introduction, with its
abrupt modulations to remote keys, and with its chromatic passages in the winds
or strings, amounts to a very interesting miniature tone poem.
The bulk of the overture, Allegro vivace, is in sonata form with the first theme
played largely by the horns and winds. The second theme begins with the violins
and flutes playing a melodic variation of the opening measure of the first theme;
but the penultimate measure, which lowers the third degree of the scale a half
step, creates a kind of “bluesy” effect—very clever and slightly disarming. The
development section of this brightly colored and sunny overture contains sev-
eral surprising modulations before turning to the recapitulation. The coda too
contains a fascinating passage in the surprisingly remote key of E-flat major. The
only disappointing part of this lovely overture (which well might be called
Czerny’s “Springtime” overture because of its brightness and warmth) is the clos-
ing Codetta of seventeen measures, which has all the appearance of having been
tacked on as an afterthought.
Another aspect of Czerny’s orchestral composition is apparent in his Concerto
in C Major for Piano Four Hands and Orchestra, Op. 153. Structurally, it
carl czerny’s orchestral music ❧ 177

appears to be modeled after Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for violin, cello, and
piano. It is not only in the same key but its second and third movements have
more than a surface resemblance to the Beethoven concerto.
The first movement of the Czerny concerto might well pass for a work of his
teacher. It is musically strong: the interplay between the solo instrument and
orchestra is the work of a master, and the development section of this movement
contains interesting and effective writing for solo and orchestra. It also retains
the chamber music style between solo and orchestra that is such an important
ingredient in Beethoven’s concerti. Czerny’s slow movement, F major, Adagio
espressivo (cf. Beethoven’s in A flat, Largo), contains the same introspective char-
acter of the Beethoven concerto, including at times a highly embellished
melodic line. The last movements of the Beethoven and Czerny concertos are
both rondos alla Polacca.
Czerny’s solo piano parts are so well written for the medium that the primo and
secondo are generally of equal importance. At times, the lyrical portions seem to
reflect Chopin’s solo writing; at other times, the virtuoso scales, arpeggios, and
figurations are merely more difficult versions of similar passages found in some
of the Beethoven concertos. It is indeed ironic that these countless passages in
scales and arpeggios found in Beethoven are accepted without comment by
musicians; but when a few scales occur in the present concerto (even with a
countermelody in the orchestra), performers say, “Ah ha, typical Czerny scales!”
Overall, the piano part in this concerto is a mixture of the early nineteenth-
century virtuoso style and the classical styles of late Mozart and mature
Beethoven. It can be difficult, but it is always pianistic; and where it is relatively
simple, it is always musical and perfectly adapted to the medium and musical
situation for which it was written.

Finale

Czerny was not only one of the fathers of present-day piano playing but also a well-
rounded and thoroughly trained composer who could write excellent fugues as
well as orchestral and chamber music. He may not have been as original as Chopin
or Liszt; but like Bach and Vivaldi, he summed up the musical times in which he
lived. Whether a fugue, symphony, or quartet, his compositions are always well-
written, tuneful, and imaginative. While there are many places in which Czerny’s
music reflects some of the idioms of the classical era, his melodies and orchestra-
tion point toward the nineteenth century. His thematic development frequently
draws upon the technique of the eighteenth century in much the same way that
Brahms did, but without the greater instrumental, harmonic, and technical devel-
opments that Brahms had at his disposal. In Czerny’s music, one sees countless
intimations of musical things to come; and it is this that is really “the Czerny style”:
it draws upon the past and points to a later era.
178 ❧ douglas townsend

Notes
1. Carl Czerny, “Recollections from My Life” (1842), trans. and ed. Ernest
Sanders, Musical Quarterly 42, no. 3 (July 1956): 302–17.
2. Ibid., 308–9.
3. Ibid., 302–3.
4. Ibid., 305.
5. The symphony was published as Seconde grande sinfonie, en re majeur, “Composée
et dédiée au Conservatoire à Paris” (Vienna: C. A. Spina, n.d.).
6. See nos. 66–68 in the appendix.
7. See nos. 37–41 in the appendix.
8. See nos. 42 and 43 in the appendix. The published overture appeared as
Premiere Grande Overture pour l’Orchestre, Op. 142 (Vienna: Tobias Haslinger, n.d.).
Chapter Twelve

Not Just a Dry Academic

Czerny’s String Quartets in E and D Minor

Marie Sumner Lott

From a spirited virtuoso and warm, sensitive Romantic in his youth,

Czerny developed over the years into a dry academician.

The above characterization of Carl Czerny as a failed Romantic first appeared

buried in a footnote of Walter Georgii’s 1914 dissertation Karl Maria von Weber als
Klavierkomponist. William Newman elevated the passing observation to a text-
heading epithet in The Sonata Since Beethoven (1969), in which he memorably
describes Czerny as one of three “Direct Beethoven Transmitters.”1 With his more
than 800 published works (including books of exercises), multitudinous per-
forming editions of classical works, and performance and composition treatises,
Czerny represents, perhaps, the clearest example of early to mid-nineteenth-cen-
tury academicism in music. Czerny was not alone, though, in his interest in cod-
ifying the musical tradition he inherited; many members of the generation of
composers and musicians around him sought to preserve and extend the work of
their artistic forebears both in their compositions and in theoretical and peda-
gogical works.2 The resulting music of the 1830s through the 1850s exhibits a
palpable tension between following or utilizing classical conventions and incor-
porating romantic innovations. Of the dozens, probably hundreds of string quar-
tets composed in the German-speaking realms between 1830 and 1880, very few
survive in the modern concert repertoire, perhaps because of this tension.
The string-quartet genre, moreover, had accrued over the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries a certain mystique as the most elevated instrumental
form, as can be ascertained from the next generation’s descriptions of it—
Czerny described the quartet in his School of Practical Composition as “the most refined,
as well as the most difficult of all kinds of composition.”3 The string quartets of
180 ❧ marie sumner lott

Czerny’s generation—particularly those of Louis Spohr, George Onslow, and

Friedrich Kuhlau, but also the better-known works of Felix Mendelssohn and
Robert Schumann—exhibit a wide range of approaches to the inherited tradi-
tion, providing a snapshot of the wealth of possibilities at that time. The two
quartets considered here were performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet at
the Carl Czerny Festival of 2002, perhaps for the first time in the case of the E-
Minor Quartet.4 An exploration of these works reveals that they, like their mid-
century contemporaries, exhibit features of both Classical and Romantic
musical styles, preserving the eighteenth-century forms with an academic’s eye
toward formal conventions while extending the expressive boundaries con-
stantly being tested by fellow “sensitive Romantics.” We sense in these works, too,
a bit of the “spirited virtuoso” in several vigorous passages requiring finesse and
showmanship in equal measure.

Large-scale Formal Features

The many traits that the two works have in common serve to connect them as a
pair, regardless of the uncertainty surrounding their composition and dissemi-
nation. Both engage the Classical idioms of the string quartet in markedly dif-
ferent ways; the most immediately striking is apparent in their formal layout and
design. (See table 12.1 for an overview of the two works.) The E-Minor Quartet,
whose score bears the date 1850, takes the “normative” movement arrangement:
fast sonata-allegro movement, slow movement, scherzo, and fast rondo finale.
The D-Minor Quartet follows a Haydnesque arrangement with the Scherzo
movement in second position after a monothematic sonata-form first move-
ment. This quartet’s finale takes the form of a concise sonata-allegro.

Table 12.1. Overview of movements, E-Minor and D-Minor quartets

E-Minor Quartet: D-Minor Quartet:
I. [Sonata form] I. [Sonata form]
4/4, Allegro affettuoso C, Allegro moderato
E minor (i) D minor (i)
II. [5-part rondo (A B A C A)] II. Scherzo
3/4, Andante poco sostenuto 3/4, Molto Allegro
C major (VI) D minor (i) (Trio in VI)
III. Scherzo III. [5-part rondo ]
3/4, Vivace 2/4, Adagio
E minor (i) (Trio in I) D major (I)
IV. Finale [Rondo] IV. Finale [Sonata form]
2/4, Allegro vivace 6/8, Allegro non troppo
E minor (i) D minor (i)
not just a dry academic ❧ 181

An immediately noticeable feature of both works is the prevalence of the minor

mode. Not only are all four outer movements in the minor tonic with no heroic
transformations to the major mode, but the two scherzi also reside firmly in the
minor, giving them extra heft and seriousness in addition to a slightly macabre char-
acter, particularly in the forte or fortissimo staccato passages that dominate both
movements’ initial scherzo sections (see ex. 12.1). The St. Lawrence dispatched
these sections with ferocious intensity, emphasizing in both works the abundant
double-stops that give these movements their unsettled and unsettling quality.
Despite the light articulations and soft dynamic that greet the eye in each work, sud-
den fortissimo outbursts proclaim that this is no Mendelssohnian elfin spree.
The trio sections in both cases take on a waltz style with long melodies in
closely spaced harmonies. The E-Minor Quartet’s trio moves to the parallel

(a)

Example 12.1. Opening of Scherzos, comparison: a. E-Minor Quartet, mvt.

3, mm. 1–9; b. D-Minor Quartet, mvt. 2, mm. 1–16.
182 ❧ marie sumner lott

(b)

Example 12.1. (continued)

major for its elegant rendition of the Viennese dance de rigueur, while the D-
minor work presents a slightly unnerving version of the waltz in the submediant
major, featuring parallel motion and a restless harmonic atmosphere that never
decisively establishes B flat as tonic before veering off in the direction of first the
dominant and then flat III.
The treatment of the minor in these quartets deserves special mention
because of Czerny’s inventive solutions to the conundrum of how to present a
major-mode theme in the secondary key area without altogether undermining
the minor mode as tonic. The two works present quite different options. In the
E-minor first movement, Czerny uses repetition of themes to achieve a formal
mirror effect, presenting the primary (P) and secondary theme (S) in both
major and minor modes so that the recapitulation moves from minor to
major and back again without either theme’s having subjugated the other. This
solution (probably not unique, but certainly notable) requires Czerny to com-
not just a dry academic ❧ 183

pose two distinct themes, each of which is suited to both the major and the
minor mode.5 (See table 12.2, which charts the events of the movement, and ex.
12.2, which shows the relevant themes as they appear in the recapitulation.)
The D-minor first movement is slightly more straightforward, in that it con-
fines minor mode to the first theme-key area and major mode to the second

Table 12.2. Form of the first movement, E-Minor Quartet

section Exposition
mm. 1–8/9–21 21–35 36–44 45–51 52–67
themes or P (⫹ ext) tr S ext. (S 8va) K (P mots)
materials
key E minor E → F G major G G
i III
musical operatic/ brilliant “dolce” in cello,
topic or symphonic, symphonic
style stormy, accomp.
singing w/ returns
tremolos
Development
68–87 88 93 101 117
(P mots) S tr
A→D→G E- flat B pedal
minor → E-fl (V)
double stops, “tranquillo” (chromatic
sequences descent in
half-steps bass)
in vln1
Recapitulation
125–32 133–40 141–48 149–56 157–64 165 173–200
[1–8] [36–44] [45–51]
P P’ New tr. S ext. tr K
(S 8va)
E minor E major ⳡB E major E minor E minor E minor
material brilliant
from devel-
opment

P ⫽ theme associated with primary key; S ⫽ theme associated with secondary key; tr ⫽ transi-
tion; K ⫽ closing material; ext ⫽ extension; ⳡ ⫽ modulating; [ ] indicates location of original
statement of restated theme
Example 12.2. E-Minor Quartet, mvt. 1, mm. 125–64, recapitulation of primary
and secondary themes.
Example 12.2. (continued)
Example 12.2. (continued)
not just a dry academic ❧ 187

(see table 12.3). The two themes, though, are similar enough as to be different
iterations of the same theme, resulting in a “monothematic” movement. Thus,
Czerny again sidesteps the problem of major-mode primacy, here by presenting
essentially one theme in both minor-key and major-key versions, showing two sides
of a single entity. The notion here of the secondary theme as a sort of variation of

Table 12.3. Form of the first movement, D-minor Quartet

Exposition

mm. 1–8 9–16 17–31 32–48 49–56/57–63 64–81 82–97

P (Intro) “real” P tr (ext?) Tr (theme) “S”/P2 K S and
P mots
D minor D minor ⳡA D–G–C F major F ⳡ A-flat
(i) (V) (III) ⳡ F→ A
viola-cello operatic sequences (sequences very like brilliant lyrical,
duet, storminess continued) P, lyrical, senti-
stark, senti- mental
simple mental?

Development

98ff. 114–21 130–46 147–53 154–55

[32–40]
P mot Tr
ⳡ C ⳡ D-flat ⳡ B-flat min A! (V of i)
sequences, [same quasi- sixteenths unison
inner texture] fugato, take sixteenths:
voices running over and closure &
repeated 16ths and carry arrival
notes, imitation into high
shimmering register
texture
(sinister
at times)

Recapitulation Coda

164–78 179ff. 203–18 218–25 226–49 250–56

[1–8/9–16] [32ff.] [49–63] [82–97] “piu Allegro”
P Tr “S”/P2 K (P/S mots) [unison P]
D minor D D major D major D minor ⳡ E flat A →D minor
(i) (I) (i) (NII) (V) (i)
stormy, brilliant
tremolos in (in vln1)
vln2 & vla
188 ❧ marie sumner lott

the primary theme raises interesting questions about the relationship between
compositional techniques and social meanings at the time and also about what, to
us today, makes a composition significant and worthy of respect and revival.
“Light” or “salon” music designed primarily for domestic (often female) per-
formers regularly took the form of variation sets and fantasies on popular
melodies.6 Czerny’s abundant compositions in these genres, like those of many
of his contemporaries, met with wide popular appeal, which later led to the
devaluation of this music and its creators in the later nineteenth and particularly
in the twentieth centuries. Thus, Czerny’s use of variation-like writing in his
string quartets may be interpreted as a signal of his inability to handle large
forms or a poverty of invention—not unlike the reading of Schubert’s songful
melodies and tendency toward repetition in his large-scale instrumental works.
Contrarily, variation technique within larger forms has also been heralded as a
defining feature of Beethoven’s late style with no apparent connection to the
lighter, popular genres despite his having composed variation sets and other typ-
ically “light” works geared towards the general music lover.7 Taking seriously
Czerny’s reputation as a “transmitter” of Beethoven, we might then interpret his
use of a variation-like technique to be a connection with his mentor or even a
harbinger of later composers’ use of devices such as Lisztian thematic transfor-
mation or Brahmsian developing variation.
Czerny’s use of a single theme to demonstrate multiple characterizations
might also link him to his younger contemporaries. The Romantic generation
in literature, music, and the visual arts was particularly fascinated by the notion
of doubles or “Doppelgänger.” The possibility of displaying or revealing a secret
side of oneself spurred Schumann, for example, to devise two alternate person-
alities in his Florestan and Eusebius for the Davidsbündler following the exam-
ple of his favorite novelist Jean Paul.8
Though Czerny’s simpler modal shifting or recomposition of themes for major
and minor modes does not present a transformation per se or the uncanny,
supernatural “Other” that the Germanic Doppelgänger implies, these two quar-
tets at least suggest that the composer shared an interest in unified themes and
contrasting interpretations that underlie these cultural developments.
A final connection between Czerny and other lesser-known composers of his
generation leads in a third contextual direction. Formal procedures in works of
Kuhlau, Onslow, and Spohr (not to mention Schubert) tend to emphasize rep-
etition of themes, but these seem to have less to do with transforming a thematic
idea than with allowing equal playing time for the other members of the ensem-
ble. In the string quintets of George Onslow and Louis Spohr, for example,
themes first presented by either the first cello or the first violin are often imme-
diately repeated by another instrument.9 Rather than toss fragments and
motives from one member of the ensemble to another, these composers allow
two or three members of the group to play through the theme in its entirety,
providing the listener with ample opportunity to hear a new interpretation, but
not just a dry academic ❧ 189

perhaps more important, allowing for a more leisurely participatory music-

making experience for the performers. That these composers’ chamber works
were popular among the cultivated bourgeoisie was surely due, in large part, to
their tunefulness and straightforward formal procedures. Although more devel-
opmentally rigorous than Onlsow or Spohr, Czerny’s themes and his deploy-
ment of reiteration may be related to this performer-centered style.
Czerny’s practice of ending in the minor mode continues in the finales,
though both quartets end with a coda that swerves one final time to the major
(as does, in fact, the coda of the D-Minor Quartet’s first movement) before
returning to the minor. Tables 12.4 and 12.5 outline the main events of the final
movements. Czerny’s exploration of distantly related keys in these works is pri-
marily reserved for the codas. All three codas (of the D-minor first movement

Table 12.4. Form of the finale, E-Minor Quartet

A1 B A2

mm. 1–16 17–36/37–40 41–46 47–70 71–86 87–102 103–18 119–42 143–50
[1–24] [25–29]
P ext/tr Tr1 Tr2 S1 tr K P’ (ext) tr’
E minor ⳡ B → F F B major B E minor E minor
(i) pedal (V) (i)
rustic, vla rustic w/ brilliant (brilliant)
bois- counter drones display
terous melody
C A3

151–66 167–80 182ff 213–19 220–45 249–56 257 269–92

S2 S2 repeat P mots S2 (ext) P P repeat
E major Eⳡ E minor → major A ⳡB E minor B pedal
(I) (as V) (as V) (i)
reduced vln2, vla, schematic, sequ- loud, soft,
texture: cello busy ences bois- myste-
vln1 & 2, terous rious
vla, this
song-like time!!

(B2 — — — — — — — — —A4) Coda

293–310 311–24 325–40 341–54 355ff. 373–400

[71–88]
S1 (ext/tr) K (P-based) (K) K “K”
E major ⳡ E minor C F major E minor
(I) (i) (as V) (NII) (i)
schematic E pedal
brilliance
190 ❧ marie sumner lott

Table 12.5. Form of the finale, D-Minor Quartet

Exposition
mm. 1–16 17–23 24–32 33–43 44–55 56–59 68–71
P (tr) Tr1 S (⫹ ext) Tr2 K K/P mots
D minor ⳡ ⳡ F major ⳡC F F
(i) (III) (as V)
elegant, fugato, rustic antique,
coy Italian (plucked new
brilliance accomp.) texture
song-like (hunt?)
Development
72–83 84–87 88–104 105–7 108ff. 132–47
P-related P-related K
ⳡ B-flat F minor Fⳡ A
(as V)
duet vln1 antique intense dominant
(vln1 & brilliant, motivic pedal
cello) sequences to and fro,
and somehow
Italian still light-
brilliance hearted
Recapitulation Coda
148–63 164–77 178–91 192–203 204–19 220–28 229–37 238–57
[1–16] [33–41ff.]
P tr S’ ext/tr P’ (ext’d) New New (K)
theme repeat
D minor D major ⳡA D minor D flat FⳡA D minor
(i) (I) (as V) (i) major
(flat I)
(without
antique
gesture)

and the two finales) venture away from the tonic (which has been confirmed in
the closing gestures of the recapitulations) to briefly explore flat-key tonal areas
before returning to the minor tonic for the final cadence. In two of these cases,
the new key area explored is the Neapolitan (flat II). The D-minor first movement
does so after its final presentation of the secondary theme in the tonic major
and closing materials that lead back to minor. The coda begins in measure 226
not just a dry academic ❧ 191

with a brilliant-style first violin line supported by alternating tonic and dominant
harmonies in the lower voices until m. 231, where E flat is introduced with its
dominant B flat. After slipping in and out of the Neapolitan harmony, Czerny
returns to the tonic minor in measure 235.
The E-minor Quartet’s finale also explores the Neapolitan in its coda. After final
statements of the primary material in tonic in meaures 333–40, the harmony shifts
abruptly to C major, which we soon hear as the dominant of F when this tonality
is attained in m. 355. As in the D-minor first movement, this excursion in the
major mode passes in only a few measures and reveals itself as a mere portal to the
tonic. At measure 365 we return to E minor for further closing material.
The coda of the D-minor finale moves through a major tonality built on the
lowered tonic rather than on the lowered second scale degree, but here, too,
this jaunt in the major serves as a contrast to the minor-mode ending rather than
as a real exploration of this key. In all three cases, the brief move to major at the
end of the movement increases the effect of the minor-tonic ending by juxta-
posing the two modes. The minor key sounds new, almost tragically intense,
after just four or eight bars of dominant-tonic motion in a major key. The choice
in all three cases to move toward the flat-side major spectrum may be significant
for its associations with nostalgia and the pastoral. Rather than introduce sharps,
with their brightness and ascendant tendencies, Czerny chooses to introduce E
flat and D flat, almost dull or blunt-sounding keys with three and five flats,
respectively (requiring more stopped strings for the performers) or F major, the
key traditionally associated with pastoral settings. These keys may have suggested
to contemporary listeners (if the works were ever performed at the time) and to
Czerny a subtle backward-glancing gesture, not the striving upward that E major
or D major might have connoted—and thus despair when they are not sus-
tained—but a light nostalgic nod to child-like playfulness and eccentricity.10

Local Harmonic and Melodic Gestures

The two quartets also demonstrate similarities of style and approach to musical
language. Two sonic features in particular provide a glimpse into the sound world
of these works: Czerny’s use of “symphonic” or “operatic” textures in the inner
voices as a backdrop to vocalistic style in the outer parts, and his use of a unison
or homorhythmic gesture to signal significant junctions between sections.
All eight movements of the two quartets contain some version of the two-voice
repeated-note or tremolo gesture, as seen in the first measures of example 12.2,
and in each case it suggests a different interpretation, ranging from stormy
unrest and malcontent to a gently undulating backdrop—sometimes both in the
same movement. For example, in the E-Minor Quartet, the first movement begins
with this repeated-note gesture with double-stops in the second violin and a
pedal in the cello. All ears are directed to the solo first violinist, who delivers an
192 ❧ marie sumner lott

impassioned eight-bar phrase that traverses a tenth with a series of upward leaps
followed by downward stepwise motion that leads to a sudden half-cadence and
a halting silence in measure 8. In measure 9, this theme is repeated, but at a
softer dynamic level with a dolce marking and without the drive of double-stops.
This iteration of the main theme, though accompanied by the same gesture,
gently caresses the ear, in stark contrast to its preceding version. When this same
theme is presented in the major mode later in the movement’s recapitulation
(previously discussed in ex. 12.2), the repeated-note pattern returns, but here,
too, we encounter a different side of the theme. In E major, the primary theme
material takes on an optimism that it lacked in its earlier appearances.
The second movement of the E-Minor Quartet contains a similar accompani-
ment, also in the inner voices and with double-stops in the second violin line, for
the duet texture of the rondo’s B section. After a hushed, song-like theme in C
major, the inner voices begin a pulsating tonic chord that moves to the domi-
nant seventh and back again to support the two-measure dialogue between the
cello and first violin. In this slowish tempo (Andante poco sostenuto) the inner pair
of instruments provides not a churning restlessness but the undulating back-
drop to vocal phrases batted back and forth by the outer pair, much as a pit
orchestra might in a similar operatic number (see ex. 12.3).
A particularly striking example of the repeated-note pattern’s chameleon-like
ability to function as soothing sonic filler or as intense catalyst comes from the
finale of the D-Minor Quartet. The first twenty-four measures of the develop-
ment section move from (1) fortissimo transitional material with double-stopped
sixteenth notes in the second violin and viola to (2) a new statement of the pri-
mary theme in B flat, where the inner voices slow to eighth notes (double-stops
in the second violin, but not in the viola), and finally (3) back to sixteenth notes,
at a lower dynamic level that increases gradually to create a kinetic momentum
toward the F-sharp diminished-seventh chord that will lead to the new tonal cen-
ter of G minor. These three brief passages (marked in ex. 12.4) contain basically
the same figuration, but to very different ends. Each of these three uses of the
tremolo occurs in some other movement of these quartets for more extended
passages, but here they are condensed and presented one after the other.
Though measure after measure of repeated pitches may seem a fairly mun-
dane and simple gesture to fill time in an instrumental work, its impact on the
musical effect of a passage is immense. The tendency to create a dense texture
that emulates orchestral forces allies Czerny with his contemporaries at the mid-
nineteenth century, Schumann and Mendelssohn, as well as the younger gener-
ation, such as Brahms (just seventeen years old in 1850, the purported date of
composition for these works). One common trait of string quartets composed in
the 1840s–60s (sometimes disparaged by critics) is the use of thick textures and
“orchestral” or “symphonic” gestures. The tremolo was one of these, and it gives
nineteenth-century string quartets their particular storminess, dramatic tension,
and overall thickness and textural complexity.
not just a dry academic ❧ 193

Example 12.3. E-Minor Quartet, mvt. 2, mm. 16–25.

In both quartets, formal and stylistic clarity is enhanced by Czerny’s use of

homorhythmic or unison phrases at formal junctures. These phrases demarcate
new sections and perform a sort of palate-cleansing function, in that they bring
previous themes or compositional processes to a halt in order to make way for new
ideas or to bring them to an end. An example of the former purpose—ushering
in new materials—is the unison “fanfare” that announces arrival at the secondary
key in the finale of the E-Minor Quartet. After two separate transition areas fea-
turing thematic fragmentation and sequences, the movement reaches an F-sharp
seventh chord that leads into the secondary key area (B major, the dominant) in
measure 55. The sequential passage that leads to this moment of arrival had
emphasized scales and arpeggios passed from one member of the quartet to
another, and when these find their way to F sharp, this stage of the journey is
ended with communal statements of that pitch, now the dominant of the new key
(mm. 59–60; see ex. 12.5). The fanfare-like motive effectively halts the headlong
Example 12.4. D-Minor Quartet, mvt. 4, mm. 72–91.
Example 12.4. (continued)

Example 12.5. E-Minor Quartet, mvt. 4, mm. 59–64.

196 ❧ marie sumner lott

Example 12.6. D-Minor Quartet, mvt. 1, mm. 154–57.

scalar motion of the preceding passage. This gesture is repeated when the group
works its way from tonic to dominant in the recapitulation, there celebrating a B-
major chord that heralds the return of the secondary theme in tonic.
This same technique signals arrival at the end of the development section of the
D-Minor Quartet’s first movement. Here, too, a modulating compositional process
achieves its goal and the group celebrates with bright, unison motion, in this case
a descending scale on the tonic, leading to the dominant pedal that ends the
development and brings us back to the home key and theme (see ex. 12.6). The
final bars of this movement feature another unison ending, this time more pro-
longed and presented as a definitive closing gesture. The coda of the movement,
not just a dry academic ❧ 197

Example 12.7. D-Minor Quartet, mvt. 1, mm. 250–57.

after its move to the Neapolitan with brilliant-style writing for the first violin, pres-
ents the head motive of the primary theme one final time, bringing the movement
to a close in grand style, with the marking più Allegro (see ex. 12.7).
The finale of this quartet achieves a similar effect with homorhythmic texture
in the midst of mostly contrapuntal motion. The exposition’s transition section
from tonic to relative major had utilized a fugato-style texture, tossing descending
scales from one instrument to the next, and the closing material that follows the
secondary theme emulates it by alternating a similar figure between the two vio-
lins in measures 52–53, with the first violin taking over in measures 54–55. The
following measure, though, presents a fanfare-like homorhythmic gesture that
halts this interplay and confirms the secondary key (see ex. 12.8). When the
ensemble reiterates the accented F-major triad, the sudden change in texture
contrasts sharply with the surrounding imitative figures of the transition sections
Example 12.8. D-Minor Quartet, mvt. 4, mm. 54–66.
not just a dry academic ❧ 199

(and the clearly solo-and-accompaniment texture of the secondary theme). This

fanfare-like gesture, then, confirms that we have indeed reached the secondary
key, that no further modulation is needed and we are free to move on to the
development section. By clearly signaling these seams in the quartets’ forms,
Czerny guides listeners (and performers?), helping them find their way and fol-
low the musical logic in works that include some surprises and do not always
steadfastly fulfill Classic-style expectations.

***
These two string quartets present a composer at ease with the Classical tradi-
tions he inherited from his teachers and models, as Czerny uses and varies the
forms and conventions commonly associated with Haydn and Beethoven in par-
ticular. At the same time, we perceive in these quartets a real engagement with
contemporary trends in composition evidenced by the harmonic and melodic
gestures and other features of the musical surface that convey a decidedly
Romantic flair. As the musical field today widens and becomes more inclusive,
perhaps Czerny’s self-described “serious” works will reveal themselves as con-
tributors to or participants in the Romantic aesthetic of such nineteenth-century
notables as Mendelssohn and Schumann. Regardless of the lack of a docu-
mented performance history, it is clear that a reassessment of Czerny as a com-
poser of “serious” chamber music is long overdue.

Notes
Epigraph. Walter Georgii. Karl Maria von Weber als Klavierkomponist (Leipzig:
Breitkopf and Härtel, 1914), 4. Quoted in translation in William Newman, The
Sonata Since Beethoven (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969) [sub-
sequent reprints, Norton, 1972, 1983], 183.
1. Newman, 178–86. The other Beethoven transmitters are Ferdinand Ries
(1784–1838) and Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870).
2. In the generation immediately following Beethoven, Louis Spohr comes to
mind, with his performance treatise, which also includes much advice of a general
nature for composers and other musicians, and classicizing works such as the
“Historical” Symphony (No. 6, Op. 116) written, “In the Style and Taste of Four
Different Eras.” Reicha’s theoretical works and his activities as a composition teacher
participate more directly in the academic codification of the Classical style. The work
of Czerny’s younger contemporary Robert Schumann, including his critical activities,
collections of maxims and morals, and compositions such as his Album für die Jugend
also exhibits an interest in shaping the future by monumentalizing the past.
3. He continues with a lengthy warning to would-be quartet composers: “[I]t
presents all means for the creation of noble and original ideas, strictly regular and
skillful working and development, aesthetic beauty, and grand conception; but it
denies, on the contrary, whatever in other kinds of composition, supplies the
place of these requisites and conceals their want . . . and hence, the quartet
200 ❧ marie sumner lott

remains the most hazardous, but at the same time also, the most honorable touch-
stone for a composer, both as regards his creative powers and his scientific acquire-
ments.” Czerny, School of Composition, trans. John Bishop, vol. 2 (London: R. Cocks,
1848), 6.
4. Carl Czerny is supposed by some to have composed as many as thirty string
quartets. The two string quartets under consideration here survive in manuscript
copies in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. They remain
unpublished and seem not to have been publicly performed in Czerny’s lifetime,
though the scores are in another hand, perhaps that of a copyist. Performing parts
do not exist, though if a copyist created the scores, parts might also have been made
and subsequently lost. The lack of public records of performances does not rule out
their possibility. The edition used for this study was made by pianist and Czerny
scholar Anton Kuerti to facilitate performance of these works by the St. Lawrence
String Quartet in 2002.
5. A feminist reading of this work might find Czerny either ambivalent about sex-
uality or a protofeminist himself, if one accepts secondary themes as “feminine” and
if the struggle for primary theme-key dominance is considered masculine. It might
also suggest that our models for sonata-form composition are inadequate once the
multitudinous “lesser” composers are taken into account. Gendered interpretations
of sonata form have been explored and debated in Susan McClary, Feminine Endings:
Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1991/2002) and “Narrative Agendas in ‘Absolute’ Music: Identity and Difference in
Brahms’s Third Symphony” in Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music
Scholarship, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), 326–44);
Elizabeth Sayers, “Deconstructing McClary: Narrative, Feminine Sexuality and
Feminism in Susan McClary’s Feminine Endings,” College Music Symposium 33–34
(1993): 41–55; and James Hepokoski, “Masculine. Feminine. Are Current Readings
of Sonata Form in Terms of a ‘Masculine’ and ‘Feminine’ Dichotomy Exaggerated?”
Musical Times 135, no. 1818 (August 1994): 494–99.
6. For a multifaceted discussion of music and values in the nineteenth century
and beyond, see Carl Dahlhaus (chair), “Roundtable: The Problem of Value in Music
of the Nineteenth Century” in Report of the Tenth Congress Ljubljana, 1967 (Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 1970), 380–404. More in-depth consideration of salon music and its
various associations can be explored in Carl Dahlhaus, ed., Studien zur Trivialmusik des
19. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1967).
7. For discussion of Beethoven’s late style, see Theodor Adorno, Beethoven: The
Philosophy of Music, ed. Rolf Tiedeman, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge: Polity,
1998), 123–61.
8. Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825) used the metaphor of twins to similar purpose
in his Flegeljahre, portraying twin brothers Walt and Vult who fall in love with the same
woman and vie for her favor. For a discussion of Schumann’s music in relation to
Jean Paul, see Erika Reiman, Schumann’s Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul
(Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004).
9. See especially the first movements of Spohr’s Quintet in A Minor, Op. 91,
Kuhlau’s Quartet in A Minor, Op. 122, and Onslow’s Quintet in E Major, Op. 39. For
a detailed analysis of these works and their connections to a domestic audience, see
Marie Sumner Lott, “Changing Audiences, Changing Styles: String Chamber Music
and the Middle Class,” in Instrumental Music and the Industrial Revolution: Proceedings
not just a dry academic ❧ 201

of the Conference Held in Cremona, Italy (1–3 July 2006), ed. Luca Sala and Roberto
Illiano (forthcoming).
10. For information on contemporary key characteristics and associations, see Rita
Steblin, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, 2d
ed. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006). See especially appendix A,
which gives extensive quotations from contemporary sources on each of the twenty-
four keys. About D-flat major, Gustav Schilling says, “It is a playful key which can degen-
erate into grief and rapture” and Ferdinand Hand notes it “is suited not for playful
things, but rather for eccentric matters, and mixes grief and joy to a high degree. But
D-flat major can also assume a pathetic turn and thereupon express a feeling of self-
confidence and of boldly advancing gravity” (235–36). E-flat major is characterized by
several early nineteenth-century authors as solemn, gentle, majestic, and expressing
piety, love, and devotion (248–49). F major similarly denotes “child-like innocence,”
“peace and joy,” and is associated with calmness and comfort (260–62).
Chapter Thirteen

Czerny and the Keyboard Fantasy

Traditions, Innovations, Legacy

Michael Saffle

By the time Carl Czerny achieved artistic maturity—say, by 1820, as he was born
in 1791 and began composing in 1806, at the age of fifteen—keyboard fantasies
of several kinds had flourished for more than a century. Czerny himself was
responsible both for consolidating and for partially transforming the nineteenth
century’s attitudes toward fantasizing at the piano. In addition to producing fan-
tasies of his own and teaching others how to improvise them, Czerny passed to
Franz Liszt a legacy that powerfully influenced the potpourris and operatic par-
aphrases of Liszt and his contemporaries, as well as characteristic aspects of both
the symphonic poem as a genre and such masterpieces as Liszt’s “Dante” and
“Norma” fantasies, his Fantasy and Fugue on “BACH” (in both its organ and
piano versions), and his incomparable Sonata in B Minor.
The pages that follow are devoted to summarizing the evolution of the fantasy
as a genre as well as exploring Czerny’s brands of fantasizing, his contributions
especially to potpourri and operatic fantasies, and his legacy especially as Liszt’s
teacher.

Czerny and the Fantasy Tradition

Although by the early nineteenth century, instrumental fantasies had acquired

“a long, often confusing terminological history,” the keyboard fantasy in and of
itself—which is to say, as a mode of musical expression—was “firmly established
as a distinct and separate musical genre.”1 Throughout Czerny’s lifetime it
remained, as Carl Dahlhaus has pointed out, “one of the nineteenth century’s
paradigmatic virtuoso forms.”2 And,
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 203

although it was ostensibly concerned with freedom of expression, [the fantasy] was in
reality bound by well-defined conventions regarding its musical content and style. Rooted
in a long-standing tradition of keyboard improvisation, [it] was also the form in which
eighteenth-century ideas regarding the nature of musical genius and imagination were
most clearly expressed, ideas that continued to hold sway into the early years of the
nineteenth century.3

Three interrelated conventions associated especially with keyboard fantasies,

all of them widespread before Czerny began composing, had won acceptance
during the earlier decades of his career. In a nutshell, they consisted of:

1. improvisation, or the ability to invent whatever music might be necessary,

on the spot;
2. virtuosity, or the ability to amaze, shock, and move listeners largely—
although not exclusively—through displays of manual skill; and
3. an emphasis on expressive breadth and freedom, often associated with chromatic
harmonies, phrase extensions, variegated tempos and textures, interpolated
themes of contrasting characters, topical contrasts, and other devices.

In his own writings, however, Czerny emphasized expressive freedom. For him,
improvising—which is to say, fantasizing—is often particularly enticing to listen-
ers because of its concomitant “sense of freedom and ease in the connection of
ideas” and a “spontaneity of execution” unique to its practice. “If a well-written
composition” (rather than an improvisation) can be compared to “a noble archi-
tectural edifice in which symmetry must predominate,” a fantasy can be com-
pared to “a beautiful English garden, seemingly irregular, but full of surprising
variety, and executed rationally, meaningfully, and according to plan.”4
Throughout his career Czerny employed existing keyboard fantasy conven-
tions and gestures even as he modified and enlarged them. In addition to many
individual eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century devices and topics, he also
acknowledged—and, in at least one instance, greatly expanded upon—five
aspects characteristic especially of the mid-nineteenth-century “romantic” key-
board fantasy as compositional and concert showpiece:

1. musical programmism, occasionally of a pronounced and far-reaching kind;

2. suggestions of multiple structural functions, arrived at by means of carefully
considered arrangements of contrasting thematic areas and keys, and
associated with the hybrid musical form known as the sonata-fantasy or
fantasy-sonata;
3. a singing style that linked keyboard music with the bel canto traditions of
early nineteenth-century opera;
4. an increasingly widespread and sophisticated use of thematic transformation;
and
5. the potpourri, a fantasy on several familiar and conjoined themes.
204 ❧ michael saffle

Within Czerny’s compositional corpus all of these devices and forms appear, some
much more frequently than others. Comparatively few of his published works, for
example, are truly “programmatic,” although his Opus 19 fantasia, The Burning of
Wiener Neustadt, reminds listeners of an actual event and contains simulated sug-
gestions of extramusical uproar. Similarly, comparatively few of his large-scale works
can be considered “fantasy-sonatas.” None of them, perhaps, is as sophisticated as
Chopin’s Fantaisie or Liszt’s B-Minor Sonata, both of which employ “double-func-
tion” organizational schemes combining single-movement sonata form with sug-
gestions of multimovement “symphonic” organization.5 Nevertheless, Czerny
occasionally produced more adventurous hybrids, among them the Grande Fantaisie
en forme de Sonate, Op. 147.6 Cast in five movements, this fantasy-sonata, which
begins in E minor and ends more or less conventionally in E major, incorporates
both a third-movement Scherzo (featuring an A-major trio) and an “Allegretto”
fourth movement in G major (featuring a contrasting middle passage in G minor).
Czerny more often employed the singing style associated today with Chopin’s
Nocturnes and Liszt’s Liebesträume No. 3 as well as the arias of Bellini and
Rossini. Many of Czerny’s sonatas, fantasies, and variation sets contain one or
more “vocal” passages—and this in no small part because, as the composer him-
self observes, “most melodies acquire their [original] popularity by the fine per-
formance of a human voice.”7 Only infrequently, however (as we shall see
below), do any of his own cantilena-like passages suggest “slow movements,”
development sections, or other “double” structural features. Nor did Czerny
make much use of thematic transformation.
It was as a composer of potpourris and operatic paraphrases that Czerny most
obviously influenced the keyboard fantasy. He did not himself invent the pot-
pourri; near the end of his career, in fact, he observed that “this species is by no
means new; for, Steibelt, upwards of thirty years ago, wrote numerous Fantasias
on the favorite melodies of that time.”8 Nevertheless, Czerny remains one of the
most prolific composers of piano pieces based on preexisting melodies. His ear-
lier works—those that appeared in print between the late 1810s and the late
1820s9—include a fantasy and variations on a romance by Giuseppe Blangini,
scored for piano and strings, Op. 3; a set of variations on “God Save the King” for
solo piano, Op. 77; an impromptu and variations on themes from Weber’s Oberon,
also for solo piano, Op. 134; and at least one Fantaisie elegante ou Potpourri brillant
sur des thêmes favoris de l’Opera la Dame Blanche, Op. 131.10 Yet another work, a “ron-
deau pastorale,” Les Charmes de Baden, seems to be a set of fantasy-variations on a
popular waltz tune of the day.11 Consider, too, Czerny’s numerous “souvenirs,”
“amousements,” “caprices,” and other works based on Gaetano Donizetti’s
operas, among them Anna Bolena, Il Castello di Kenilworth, Roberto Devereux, L’Elisir
d’amore, Linda de Chamounix, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Torquato Tasso.12
Foremost among Czerny’s enthusiasms was improvisation. He heard Hummel
and Beethoven improvise and acknowledged himself, perhaps too modestly, as
merely “proficient” in that art.13 In both his Systematic Introduction to Improvisation
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 205

on the Pianoforte, Op. 200, and his School of Practical Composition, Op. 600, he
maintains that every “practicing musician” (which is to say, every pianist) should
be able to spin out,

during the very performance, on the spur of the moment and without special immediate
preparation . . . each original or even borrowed idea into a sort of musical composition
which, albeit in much freer form than a written work, nevertheless must be fashioned into
an organized totality as far as is necessary to remain comprehensible and interesting.14

Nor did Czerny approach the art of improvisation in a vague or ill-defined

manner. Instead, in his Systematic Introduction, he identified preludes, cadenzas,
and “full-fledged fantasy-like improvisation[s]” as the three essential, consecu-
tive, and increasingly difficult forms of musical extemporizing” and proclaimed
that the “full-fledged” improviser should be capable of working out “a single
theme in all the familiar forms of composition,” of combining “several themes
into a total work,” of intertwining “favorite motives . . . through modulations,
passage-work, [and] cadenzas” into a “genuine potpourri,” of constructing varia-
tions in all their “customary forms” upon given themes, of improvising as well in
“strict and fugal style,” and of being able to invent capriccios, that “most free and
unrestrained type” of fantasy.15 Even in recent years his description of these and
other musical processes have won praise from musicologists.16
Throughout his Systematic Introduction, as well as in a great many of his own
compositions, Czerny demonstrates his mastery of keyboard fantasy traditions.
In “Concerning Preludes,” the first principal section of the Systematic
Introduction, for instance, he provides several examples of the regolo dell’ ottava
(or “rule of the octave”): a collective term for chromatic bass lines, which, as
Emanuel Bach explains, invite and facilitate extravagant harmonic digressions
“in broken or sustained style.”17 In one of Czerny’s examples (no. 18), the
descending chromatic line appears in left-hand octaves, in another (no. 17) a
similar, albeit abbreviated line appears as an inner voice.18 In illustrating his dis-
cussion of “longer and more elaborate” preludes, he frequently employs the
double- and even triple-dotted rhythms of the French overture (associated with
opera seria, from which Emanuel Bach and Beethoven derived inspiration19) as
well as the sudden changes of dynamics and registers associated with the empfind-
samer Styl.20 Nor did Czerny neglect virtuosity: the examples found in his chap-
ter on “cadenzas, fermatas, and more extended elaborations” are full of diatonic
and chromatic runs, fingered thirds, parallel and alternating octave passages,
and other forms of bravura display.21 Finally, he suggests that improvisational
skill could not altogether be separated from composition:

If it were possible immediately to commit to paper such improvisations as are made in

propitious moments, we should possess the most complete works of this kind, particularly
by such great masters as Beethoven and Hummel. But as this is, alas! impracticable, the
composer must endeavour, in writing such Fantasias, to approximate as closely as pos-
sible to the freedom of extemporizing.22
206 ❧ michael saffle

As examples of “propitious” and “beautiful” published fantasies by “great masters,”

Czerny recommends Hummel’s Fantasia in E-flat Major, Op. 18, as well as “Mozart’s
Fantasia in C minor [K. 475], Beethoven’s Sonata quasi Fantasia [Op. 27, no. 1],
Kalkbrenner’s Effusio musica and many other modern works of this species”—all of
which, he maintains, can “serve as guides for the young composer.”23
Among these potpourris and other entertainments, Czerny’s own fantasies
tend to be forgotten. In his Opus 61, a collection of “Preludes, Cadenzas, and
Fantasies in the brilliant Style,”24 however, he demonstrated his knowledge of
Emanuel Bach’s Versuch,25 the regolo dell’ottava, Sturm und Drang conventions, and
“sensibility” as well as virtuoso passagework (see example 13.1). There are also
touches of harmonic extravagance in such earlier works as the Sonata, Op. 7.26
Of all Czerny’s compositions, however, perhaps the most inventive, even eccen-
tric, is the Fantaisie, Op. 27, which he dedicated to Beethoven.27 An outline of
this work by measures, sections (tempi), and keys appears in table 13.1.
In certain respects Czerny’s Opus 27 calls to mind Beethoven’s Op. 77 fantasy.
Both works are “chaotic,” veering from topic to topic and key to key; although
well over half of Czerny’s Fantaisie (mm. 233–658) is in or close to B-flat major,
there is nothing like a predictable key scheme. From the perspective of Liszt’s
and Thalberg’s fantasies, both Czerny’s and Beethoven’s fantasies seem some-
what “antique.” The opening measures of Czerny’s work, for instance, feature
double-dotted figures reminiscent of French-overture and tombeau (“memorial”)
conventions. Furthermore, many passages contain no “tunes,” and several are
strikingly less virtuosic than much of the music found in Czerny’s other fantasies.
Nevertheless, the Op. 27 Fantaisie hints at a multimovement organizational
scheme, with an opening “prelude” (mm. 1–16) that introduces faster and
highly variegated material based largely on dotted figures (mm. 17ff.); all this is
interrupted by a comparatively lengthy “slow movement” (Andante, mm.
108–53), a minuet (mm. 233–70), and a lengthy and restless finale (mm.
284–658) that includes a coda. Two somewhat longer sections, both marked
Vivace (mm. 65–99 and 182–214), also share similar motivic material; these and
other passages hint at thematic transformation of a comparatively simple kind,
although no real “tunes” appear anywhere. And at least some of Czerny’s writing
in his Opus 27 is explicitly virtuosic. The double-dotted figures in measures 1ff.
are interrupted three times by showy cadenzas (mm. 8, 10, and 11), and the sec-
ond Vivace consists largely of showy arpeggios (see example 13.2).
Probably the most striking aspect of this fantasy, however, is its chromaticism. In
measures 27–34 of the Adagio introduction, Czerny’s music moves from E major
to F-sharp major by way of C major; a root-position D-major chord at the begin-
ning of measure 34 serves both as a “substitute” secondary dominant in C (itself
the flat submediant of E major), and as a flat submediant or “substitute” subdom-
inant in F sharp. All this transpires over a chromatic bass line, reminiscent of the
regolo dell’ottava, that rises from C to C sharp, D, E, E sharp (in F-sharp major), and
finally to F sharp itself. Note, too, the bass line in example 13.2, which moves from
Example 13.1. Prelude No. 2 (complete) from Carl Czerny, Präludien, Cadenzen, und kleine Fantasien, Op. 61.
208 ❧ michael saffle

Table 13.1. Czerny, Fantaisie, Op. 27, form

“Movements” Measures Section / Key(s) /
tempo markings harmonic function(s)
1–16 (introduction) modulatory
17–57 Andante modulatory / B major
I 58–64 Allegro B minor
65–99 Vivace F-sharp minor
100–107 (transitional) C-sharp minor
II 108–53 Andante C-sharp minor / modulatory
IA 154–74 Allegretto D-flat major / modulatory
175–81 Allegretto E major
182–214 Vivace E minor / modulatory
215–32 Piu lento modulatory
(transitional)
III 233–70 Minuetto B-flat major / B-flat minor /
D-flat major
271–83 Vivace B-flat major
(transitional)
IV 284–407 Presto agitato B-flat major
408–605 Presto agitato modulatory / B major /
modulatory
606–58 (coda) B-flat major

E (I6 in C major, m. 183) downward almost entirely by half steps through measure
188, then back to A in measure 190. Even more harmonically striking is the unset-
tled chromatic passage found in measures 129ff. (see example 13.3).
In a display of modulatory bravura, Czerny glides from C-sharp minor (in mm.
123–25) to its enharmonic equivalent D-flat major (in m. 154) after touching
briefly on virtually every other possible key. Such gestures seem a little pale in
comparison with the harmonic extravagances of Liszt’s first two Apparitions, but
we must remember that, at least in this instance, Czerny preceded Liszt rather
than followed him. Interestingly enough, Czerny never seems to have attempted
anything quite so harmonically adventurous again. Nor did he often write so
contrapuntally for the keyboard.

Czerny’s Contribution to the Genre

In his Op. 27 Fantaisie, as well as in other early works, Czerny clearly drew upon
fantasy conventions familiar to connoisseurs (Emanuel Bach’s Kenner) before he
himself was born. How, then, did he transform the fantasy and make it “new?”
Example 13.2. Czerny, Fantaisie, Op. 27, mm. 182–90.
210 ❧ michael saffle

Example 13.3. Czerny, Fantaisie, Op. 27, mm. 129–34.

The answer, I believe, lies in Czerny’s wholehearted acceptance of diversion as a

worthwhile musical goal. He seems to have achieved the greatest success among
his contemporaries when he appealed to popular taste, and after his earliest years
he abandoned “hidden” (abditam) harmonic traditions28 in favor of accessibility
and entertainment. Nor did he consider himself above an occasional musical
stunt: in March 1830, for example, he arranged and organized a performance of
Rossini’s Semiramide overture for sixteen aristocratic pianists at eight instruments.29
Finally, Czerny understood the character and significance of his own accomplish-
ments as a creator of musical diversions. Although he preached the “organized
totality” of the keyboard fantasy, and although he believed it capable of being “ele-
vated to an independent branch of art,” the attainment of which constitutes “a
crown of distinction for the keyboard virtuoso,” he excluded his own potpourris
and operatic paraphrases from what he himself considered “serious music.”30
Unlike Beethoven before him—or, claims to the contrary notwithstanding,
Liszt after him—Czerny asked nothing of most fantasies other than that they be
well-made and enjoyable. Thus, in describing how an operatic potpourri might
be assembled, whether extempore or in the leaf, he requests only that the pianist

select . . . in suitable order . . . as many themes from an Opera, as the length of the
piece to be written permits. . . . [The performer then] extends one theme with a vari-
ation, another with a short development, or with brilliant, but not too difficult passages,
unites the different themes to each other by means of pleasing modulations, pauses or
cadences, and takes the liveliest subject for the end, in order to obtain a gay and ani-
mated conclusion.31

Examples of such procedures can be found in Czerny’s own operatic fantasies,

including his first fantasy on themes from Bellini’s I Puritani32 and his third on
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 211

Table 13.2. Czerny, “Puritani” Fantasy, Op. 247, form

“Sections” Measures Section / Key(s) /
tempo markings harmonic
function(s)
1–8 Andante maestoso A-flat major
(introduction)
1 9–37 Theme 1 (Andante maestoso) A-flat major
and variation
2 38–95 Theme 2 (Allegro moderato) G major
with cadenza
96–136 Variation (Vivo e brillante) G major
137–49 Theme 3 (Allegro non D major
troppo)
150–75 Theme 4 (Allegro non D major/
troppo) and cadenza G minor
3 176–212 Theme 5 (Allegretto F major
grazioso)
213–37 Theme 6 (Allegretto F major
grazioso)
238–50 Transition (Molto allegro) F major /
modulatory
4 251–67 Theme 7 (Andante) and D major
cadenza
5 268–305 Theme 8 (Allegretto alla B-flat major
Polacca)
306–40 Variation (Vivo) B-flat major
341–49 Coda B-flat major

that composer’s Norma, both published (together with others) as Opus 247.33
The former work is outlined in table 13.2, the latter in table 13.3.
In his School of Practical Composition, Czerny recommends that “a short
Introduction must always precede such Fantasies or Pot-Pourris.”34 In his
“Puritani” fantasy, measures 1–8, we find such an introduction, complete with
extra-pompous, triple-dotted French overture chords and followed by a con-
trasting passage that combines a simple accompaniment with both diatonic and
chromatic runs, arpeggiated right-hand figures, and an extended trill. Before
the listener has time to recover, the first of “as many themes as the length of the
piece permits”—in this case, “Ah! Per sempre io ti perdei” from Act I, scene iii,
of Bellini’s opera—begins (still Andante maestoso). The “Norma” fantasy opens in
a similar if more extended manner, with an introduction (mm. 1–21) followed
by the first of nine themes: “Deh! con te, con te li prendi” from Act II, scene ii,
of Bellini’s masterpiece (see example 13.4).
212 ❧ michael saffle

Example 13.4. Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, mm. 21–25.

Bellini’s theme is then followed by two full-length variations typical of Czerny’s

figurative approach to keyboard writing (see examples 13.5 and 13.6).

Example 13.5. Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, mm. 45–49.

Example 13.6. Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, mm. 63–67.
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 213

Table 13.3. Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, form

“Sections” Measures Section / Key(s) /
tempo markings harmonic
function(s)
1–21 Moderato B-flat major /
G major
(V of C major)
1 22–45 Theme 1 (Allegro moderato) C major
46–63 Variation 1 (Vivace) C major
64–89 Variation 2 and coda C major / E-flat major
2 90–123 Theme 2 (Moderato) and E-flat major
cadenza (Presto)
3 124–96 Theme 3 (Allego vivace) F major
with transition
4 197–229 Theme 4 (Non tanto allegro) F minor / A minor
with transition and
cadenza (Presto)
5 230–61 Theme 5 (Allegro guerriero) A minor
6 262–304 Theme 6 (Più calmato) F major
with cadenza (Presto)
7 305–55 Theme 7 (Molto allegro) F minor / A-flat major /
with cadenza G major
8 356–99 Theme 8 (Allegretto) G major / C major
9 400–461 Theme 9 (Allegro agitato) E minor / E major
462–80 coda E major

Extravagantly embellished with octave doublings, fingered thirds, chromatic

runs, and a brief but florid interpolated cadenza in measure 26, the first tune of
the “Puritani” fantasy carries us (still in A-flat major) to measure 36. Next, in
measure 37 the music lunges, fortissimo, into G major (by way of a dominant D7
chord); and at measure 38 there begins, Allegro moderato, a variation on “Bel
sogno beato” from Act I, scene iii. All this is followed by another cadenza in
measure 95, an acceleration in tempo to Vivo e brillante, a second variation on
the same tune containing fingered thirds, and a series of emphatic A-major sec-
ondary dominant chords in measures 131–36; these pave the way, at measure
137, for the melody of Elvira’s aria “Sai com’arde in petto mio” from Act I, scene
iv. In a similar manner, the introduction and statement of the first theme from
Norma are followed in Czerny’s fantasy by a succession of themes, variations,
“brief transitions,” and “cadenzas.” Neither fantasy possesses any obvious key
214 ❧ michael saffle

Example 13.7. Czerny, “Norma” Fantasy No. 3, Op. 247, mm. 304–26.

scheme, although “Puritani” seems more to be about keys (“sections”) than

themes and tempi (“movements”), and both pieces—especially “Norma”—rely
upon digital dexterity for much of their interest. See example 13.7 for some of
Czerny’s characteristic pyrotechnics.
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 215

Four other fantasies illustrate other aspects not only of Czerny’s fondness for
accessible music, but important differences between his own work and that of his
pupil Liszt. In three of these fantasies, Czerny does something Liszt never does—
never, at least, after his very first years as a composer: he (Czerny) constructs a
single piece from themes derived from a variety of operatic sources. In his
Potpourri brillant, Op. 64, for instance, Czerny uses otherwise forgotten tunes
familiar to 1820s Viennese music-lovers.35 In Bijoux à la Sontag, Op. 678, he draws
upon Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito as well as Die Zauberflöte, Don Giovanni, and Le
Nozze di Figaro for thematic material.36 Finally, in his Fantaisie brillante sur des airs
Irlandais, Op. 468, he packs almost a dozen familiar “Irish” tunes into a single
potpourri, shifting from one to another after little variation or harmonic diver-
sion.37 Although each of these pieces opens with a prelude full of ombra (or
“mood of mystery”),38 they are mostly cheerful works. The “Irish” fantasy is some-
what more technically challenging than the others, but all of them are compara-
tively easy to play—easier, certainly, than almost any part of any Liszt fantasy.
The fourth of these fantasies by Czerny, his second on themes from Auber’s
almost-forgotten opera Gustave, ou le Bal Masque,39 is perhaps somewhat more
“Lisztian” than the others.40 Outlined in table 13.4, this fantasy opens with an
extravagant opening passage featuring bel canto passages outfitted with cadenza-
like flourishes (mm. 10–16) as well as ombra-like left-hand shudders and sudden
interjections (mm. 17–22; see example 13.8). All this is followed first by an excit-
ing and extended cadenza (m. 23, extended so as to cover several staves of
music), and then by a theme he subsequently subjects to several variations.
Drawn from Gustave’s aria “O vous par qui ma vie,” this theme takes up a sub-
stantial part of Czerny’s work (mm. 24–100); a second, slower theme (mm.
101–27)—“Sainte amitié,” which opens Act V of Gustave—suggests a second
movement; finally, a lengthy excursus on the opening theme of Auber’s overture
(mm. 128–380) suggests a finale. The overall key scheme is coherent: the

Table 13.4. Czerny, “Gustave” Fantasy, Op. 360, form

“Movements” Measures Section / Key(s) /
tempo markings harmonic function(s)
1–22 Moderato A-flat major / modulatory
23 Presto (cadenza) G major / modulatory
I 24–65 Moderato con sentimento E-flat major
(theme)
66–88 Vivo e brillante E-flat major
(variation 1)
89–100 Vivace (variation 2) E-flat major
II 101–27 Andante espressivo A-flat major / F minor
III 128–380 Prestissimo F minor
Example 13.8. Czerny, “Gustave” Fantasy, Op. 360, mm. 1–23.
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 217

introduction and Andante espressivo, both in or emphasizing A-flat major, frame

the E-flat major opening melody and its variations; the Prestissimo finale shifts to
the relative minor (C minor) of E-flat major, the last in effect the work’s “home”
key. Too, both principal vocal themes are presented in Auber’s opera by the title
character, which makes of Czerny’s fantasy something like a musical “profile” of
King Gustave himself.
Like Liszt’s fantasy on another Auber opera, La Fiancée (discussed below),
Czerny’s “Gustave” fantasy incorporates keyboard adaptations of orchestral
sonorities. Although Czerny may have made no attempt faithfully to transcribe
Auber’s orchestral score, he at least approximates Auber’s sonorities. This kind
of approximation is either less true of other Czerny fantasies described above, or
it is irrelevant: the “Irish” fantasy is based entirely on tunes rather than orches-
tral models. Liszt strengthened Czerny’s “Gustave” keyboard writing in his parti-
tions de piano, the most celebrated of which are his painstaking keyboard
adaptations of Beethoven’s symphonies for one or two pianos. Liszt also adapted
and modified the orchestral material he incorporated in many of his operatic
fantasies, but almost all of his “adaptations” are either more faithful or more
brilliant; often they are both. Compare, for example, Czerny’s straightforward
“arrangement” of “La ci darem la mano” near the end of his Bijoux à la Sontag
(see example 13.9) with Liszt’s painstaking, thumb-melody transcription of
Mozart’s original (see example 13.10):

Example 13.9. Czerny, Bijoux à la Sontag, Op. 678, “Don Juan (Andante),” mm. 1–4.

Example 13.10. Liszt, Réminiscences de Don Juan, mm. 69–72.

218 ❧ michael saffle

Nevertheless, Liszt—like Czerny—also strove to entertain and divert his listeners.

To the extent that Liszt’s earliest pastiches, potpourris, and operatic para-
phrases resemble those of his teacher, we may perceive Czerny’s influence in its
most direct form. Czerny may also have inspired Liszt to try his hand at bolder
modulations, more “ingenious and suitable connection[s]” between tunes, as
well as a “refined taste and . . . accurate knowledge of that kind of elegance
which is the style of the day.”41 Certainly he monitored his pupil’s progress from
afar after Liszt left for Paris.42 In the end, of course, the pupil quickly surpassed
his teacher in virtually every aspect of keyboard fantasizing.

Czerny and Liszt

When he first visited Czerny’s studio in August 1819,43 Liszt was a willful child
who “swayed on the chair as if drunk” and whose playing was “completely irreg-
ular, careless, and confused.”44 Czerny set out to equip his charge “with skill in
improvising”—which term means fantasizing45—as well as manual dexterity, skill
in sight-reading transposition, and at least the rudiments of composition.46 The
little Liszt quickly grasped what he was taught. In reviewing the child’s concert
of December 1, 1822, held in Vienna’s Redoutensaal, a critic for Augsburg’s
Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Liszt’s “free fantasy,” although not altogether
successful, “yet . . . was really fine” insofar as “the little Hercules unite[d]
Beethoven’s andante from the Symphony in A and the theme of the cantilena
from Rossini’s Zelmina, and knead[ed] them, so to speak, into one paste.”47
In fact, Liszt’s early musical fame was based not so much on his juvenile pub-
lications (some of which, it should be pointed out—the variation he contributed
to Diabelli’s famous album, for example—borrowed shamelessly from Czerny’s
keyboard etudes), nor upon such occasional “successes” as the Paris perform-
ances of Don Sanche. Rather, it was based largely upon Liszt’s ability to perform,
and especially to improvise, at the keyboard. Furthermore, his facility as an
extempore fantasist grew by leaps and bounds after he left Czerny’s tutelage. A
report published in Der Sammler, a Viennese newspaper, pointed out that, during
his “farewell” concert of April 13, 1823, the young virtuoso was unable to impro-
vise satisfactorily upon a theme by Pixis suggested by the audience; his failure lit-
erally provoked him to tears.48 Two years later, however, the Manchester Gazette
was able to inform its readers that,

[i]n the second part of [Liszt’s] concert, some gentleman in the lower boxes gave [the
boy] the Scottish air “We’re a’ Noddin” for a theme. Young Liszt appearing to be igno-
rant of the air, Mr. Ward immediately pricked it down for him with pencil, and the
young Apollo commenced a most beautiful discourse from it on his instrument, run-
ning through all the intricacies and windings of the major and minor modes, and at
intervals sliding into the simple text. This chef d’oeuvre of improvising drew down loud
and long continued plaudits.49
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 219

Here we encounter Liszt as both performer and Czerny’s pupil. What we often
overlook is that Liszt, as a composer, remained Czerny’s pupil throughout his life.
Remarkably, the extent of this indebtedness has never before been explored. In
1991 Zsuzsanna Domokos published the first scholarly study devoted exclusively
to Czerny’s influence on Liszt’s early compositions, but she couched her obser-
vations largely in terms of virtuoso figures—and, regarding even those figures,
only insofar as they appear in Liszt’s very earliest works, including the Sept
Variations brillantes pour piano sur un thème de Rossini and the Impromptu brillant
pour piano sur des thèmes de Rossini et Spontini, both of 1824.50 There was much
more to it than that. Liszt’s first extended composition,51 a fantasy on a theme
from Auber’s opera La Fiancée,52 could have served as the model for many of
Czerny’s observations in his Systematic Introduction, itself published around the
same time.53 Later, too, Liszt employed what Czerny had taught him in order to
compose large-scale, harmonically innovative, often programmatic works that
combined the possibilities inherent in thematic transformation with startling
harmonies, shifting tempos and textures, and the variegated topical allusions
associated as early as the 1820s with single- and multimovement fantasy-
sonatas.54 On March 13, 1856, in a letter addressed to Dionÿs Pruckner, Liszt
proclaimed that “I know none whose views and opinions offer so just an experi-
ence” of piano playing and composing as his teacher and called Czerny’s Op. 7
Sonata a composition “of importance, beautifully formed and having the noblest
tendency.”55
Consider a few aspects of Liszt’s “Fiancée” fantasy—which, in its first version,
was composed and performed in 1829, when he was eighteen years old. Liszt’s
fantasy resembles many of Czerny’s published works, including the Op. 247
“Norma” and “Puritani” fantasies described above (especially the theme-and-
variations portions of those works), yet manages in a great many respects to tran-
scend them. Like them, Liszt’s fantasy opens with an introduction—in this case
a lengthy one (mm. 1–62) that incorporates a “transcendental” passage in fin-
gered thirds and concludes with a lengthy and extravagant cadenza.
Throughout this passage, however, Liszt takes every opportunity to anticipate
motivically the theme upon which most of the composition is built. The theme
itself (mm. 63–94) is followed by five variations, the first three and the last (or
“Finale”) in A major, the work’s home key, and only the fourth (Allegretto con
grazia, mm. 291–354) in D major, the work’s subdominant. Interleaved between
Variations 1–2 and 2–3 are ritornelli (mm. 94–102 and 163–71) that provide
“consistency.”
“Variety,” on the other hand, is reflected in several of Liszt’s transitional
“Fiancée” passages. One of these passages (mm. 355–64), “developmental” in
character, anticipates the “recapitulatory” A-major fourth variation by way of B-
flat major, E-flat major (V7 of E flat), and a transitional diminished-seventh
chord. Too, in Liszt’s slower fourth variation we find a suggestion of “slow move-
ment”; in its second variation (mm. 172–233), with its will-o’-the-wisp fleetness
220 ❧ michael saffle

and remarkable concluding cadenza, we find a hint of “scherzo”; in the third

variation (mm. 235–90), at least in its opening phrases, we find a march.
Czerny usually moves quickly from tune to tune; his fantasies devolve upon
variety and the kind of showmanship he himself codified in his etudes. Liszt, on
the other hand, anticipates in his “Fiancée” his life-long penchant for thematic
transformation as a unifying and programmatic device, as well as his skill with
double-function forms of various kinds. His fondness for third-related har-
monies is already present: in measures 229–34, for instance, he modulates
suavely from A major to C-sharp major and back. Nor should issues of structural
and harmonic integrity distract us from the overwhelming brilliance of his key-
board writing. Already in this work Liszt’s virtuosity is altogether different from
the “tasteful” and “connected” character of his teacher’s cadenzas and
variations.56
Liszt’s subsequent fantasies were uniformly more experimental, more virtu-
osic, and more romantic not only than Czerny’s, but than his own “Fiancée.”
Consider the Fantaisie romantique of 1836, which I cannot pause to discuss in
these pages.57 That work, as well as other masterpieces Liszt composed during
the 1830s and early 1840s—the Apparitions and the independent piano piece
called Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, as well as the Réminiscences de Don Juan
and a host of other works—are only the beginning. Charles Suttoni considers
the Réminiscences de Norma Liszt’s “finest achievement in re-creating all of an
opera within a single fantasy,” the “fulfillment of Liszt’s dramatic integrity in a
large scale work.”58 Czerny occasionally hints at such dramatic integrity; his
“Gustave” fantasy mostly deals with a single operatic character, is organized
clearly in terms of key relationships, and suggests something like double-
function form in its suggestions of “sections” and “movements.” Most of
Czerny’s fantasies, however—like many of Liszt’s—“range throughout entire
operas” (to paraphrase Suttoni’s synopsis), and at least some of them are
marred by “inordinate length” as well as “an overriding involvement with virtu-
oso technique for its own sake.”59
Nevertheless, Liszt’s compositional output as a whole incorporates much of
Czerny’s pedagogical legacy. In a useful survey of fantasy traditions among
German composers, Hanns Steger provides a diagram that shows Haydn and
Mozart’s music “feeding” directly into Beethoven’s, and Beethoven’s into the
fantasies of Schubert and Schumann.60 Steger, however, ignores Czerny; he also
marginalizes potpourris and operatic paraphrases—indeed, the whole of non-
Germanic European fantasizing, including Liszt. But we cannot ignore Czerny.
Liszt did anything but ignore him. As Czerny’s student, he mastered the entire
fantasy tradition—not merely its “German” aspects—and made it his own. To
paraphrase one of Beethoven’s critics, whose words are also quoted below:
Liszt’s Sonata is a fantasy, his Symphonic Poems are fantasies, and even his sym-
phonies and portions of his large-scale choral compositions are fantasies.61 Just
as Czerny was Beethoven’s pupil, so Liszt was Czerny’s—and Beethoven’s.62
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 221

The Fantasy in Disrepute

In spite of his attempts to consolidate established fantasy traditions on behalf of

a generation of students enthralled by virtuosity and the style brillant, Czerny
came increasingly to be associated by scholars and critics with the hundreds of
routine pastiches and paraphrases that eventually gave the entire genre a bad
name among the nineteenth-century musical establishment. Liszt, who studied
with Czerny, earned his reputation initially as an improviser, a fantasist. For bet-
ter or worse, that reputation dogged him for the rest of his life, long after virtu-
osity and improvisation had begun to be challenged.
Romantic philosophers, poets, and composers, who, in many circumstances,
tended to denigrate form and exalt unbridled expressions of feeling, embraced
the “fantastical”—which is to say, the imaginative, the innovative, the emotion-
ally powerful, and the sublime—as a supremely important aspect of almost all late
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music. The purity of the classical tradition,
however, was also bound up with fantasy:

In sonata form, dance and fantasia complement each other: periods begin as dances
but often move to the fantasia by means of digressions and extensions, to return to the
dance at the beginning of the next period. These [two stylistic elements] are worked
together so deftly that neither controls the other.63

Yet certain more refined souls inveighed against fantasy in almost any guise.
These individuals distrusted too much musical fooling around, too much fun. It
may have been in a similar spirit that Beethoven himself late in life insisted that
“no pianist” or other potentially frivolous soloist participate in the concert of
May 7, 1824, that witnessed the premiere performance of his Ninth Symphony.64
As Alice Hanson has observed, most nineteenth-century Viennese music-lovers
“demanded musical diversion and entertainment.”65 Neither Beethoven’s lack
of financial success from symphony nor the spectacular successes the public
accorded Paganini during his Viennese performances of 1828, however, contra-
dicted a growing distrust of virtuosity among cultivated listeners.
Gradually, too, fantastical aspects of composed “classics” were accepted, while
those improvised or unusually innovative “upstart” works were marginalized. As
a contributor to the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote in 1804, even
Beethoven’s Eroica seemed

in reality a daring and wild fantasia designed on a very large scale. It has no lack of strik-
ing and beautiful passages . . . but very often it appears to lose itself completely in dis-
orderliness. . . . This reviewer . . . must confess that he finds in this work too much that
is glaring and bizarre, which hinders greatly one’s grasp of the whole and results in the
almost total loss of a sense of unity.66

Writing in 1817, Ernest Ludwig Gerber went further:

222 ❧ michael saffle

It appears to me as if the fantasy, like a despot, has seized absolute power over music.
Music without fantasy is inconceivable, of course, but it must be governed judiciously
by taste and reason. At present, however, one can no longer perceive either any defi-
nite musical forms or any limits to the influence of the fantasy. Everything goes in all
directions but to no fixed destination; the madder, the better! the wilder and stranger,
all the move novel and effective. . . . Our sonatas are fantasies, our overtures are
fantasies, and even our symphonies, at least those of Beethoven and his like, are
fantasies.67

(This last review, it should be noted, was published just as the first full-fledged
fantasy-sonatas, incorporating aspects of both single- and multiple-movement
works, were beginning to appear in print.)
Beethoven’s “discursive” sonata-form works and similar pieces were quickly
canonized by those “musical societies, music schools, and journalists” who
“championed the cause of serious art music by ‘classical’ composers of the
recent past.”68 As listeners came to expect canonical masterpieces as concert
mainstays, virtuosos performed less frequently in public and lengthy, à la carte
affairs, at which movements of Beethoven symphonies were routinely punctu-
ated by child prodigies playing harp solos, gradually ceased to exist. Liszt, per-
haps in self-defense, invented the “recital,” devoted to Beethoven sonatas and
other “serious” compositions as well as his own transcriptions and operatic par-
aphrases. Eventually, however, recitals themselves contributed to the segregation
of the seriously symphonic from the frivolously virtuosic.
At last almost everything “prosaic” was regarded with suspicion. This state-
ment must be taken literally. For François Stoepel, writing in 1834 in the Gazette
musicale, even Schiller’s “sublime hymn”—which is to say, words themselves—must
finally be disregarded even when considering Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony “as
a musical work.”69 More and more critics championed the “absolute” beauties of
instrumental masterpieces (and a very few operas); meanwhile, works of a more
programmatic character were pushed into the background. As early as the
1840s, the keyboard fantasy, especially in Czerny’s hands—but also in Liszt’s—
struck listeners as poorly organized, programmatic and, worst of all, “merely”
entertaining. Liszt himself realized that virtuosity was capable “of participating
in the ‘romantic revolution’ which Berlioz, following the lead of Victor Hugo,
had transferred from literature to music.”70 But critics from Heine to Hanslick
shouted out their objections either to that revolution, or to Liszt personally, or
to both. The echoes can be heard today.71
It was Czerny’s fortune to experience first a widespread enthusiasm for key-
board potpourris and public improvisation, then a decline in both critical and
popular interest in improvisatory skill. Liszt came to be considered “tainted”
because he too published fantasies and paraphrases and divertissements on
operatic tunes and popular melodies such as “God Save the Queen.” Liszt had
his partisans; the “War of the Romantics,” as Alan Walker named it, witnessed
victories as well as defeats.72 Even his other works were finally eclipsed in the
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 223

imaginations of a great many connoisseurs by his “dreadful” Hungarian

Rhapsodies and his Grand Galop chromatique.
Today, improvisation is largely the province of church organists and of jazz
and popular musicians; few “classical” musicians, for instance, invent even their
own cadenzas. As publication replaced spontaneity and hit tunes replaced “hid-
den” harmonic secrets, virtuosity itself became the province of men and women
trained to play what was put before them rather than invent it themselves. Think
of Hans von Bülow, Vladimir Horowitz, and Artur Rubinstein, none of whom was
any more a “composer” than Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, or Igor Stravinsky
was a “performer.” A very few exceptions exist: consider Johannes Brahms’s
Sonata in F-sharp Minor (actually a fantasy-sonata), Op. 2, published in 1854.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, operatic paraphrases espe-
cially had “declined in popularity” and the instrumental fantasy had become a
“retrospective form”—one practiced only occasionally by the likes of British
composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, in his celebrated Fantasia on “Greensleeves.”73

Notes
1. Kenneth DeLong, “J. V. Vor¤ íšek and the Fantasy,” Janác¤ek and Czech Music:
Proceedings of the International Conference (Saint Louis, 1988), ed. Michael Beckermann
and Glen Bauer (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon, 1995), 192.
DeLong’s article remains among the finest surveys of early nineteenth-century key-
board fantasy practices, especially those associated with nineteenth-century Vienna.
Other surveys—several of which comprise portions of longer dictionary and encyclo-
pedia articles—include William Drabkin, “Fantasia” [“19th and 20th Centuries”], in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., ed. Stanley Sadie (London and
New York: Macmillan, 2001) 8, 555–57; Willi Kahl, “Fantasie,” in Die Musik in Geschichte
und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume, vol. 3 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1954), esp. cols.
1790–1800; Jesse Parker, “The Clavier Fantasy from Mozart to Liszt: A Study in Style
and Content,” PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1974; and Thomas Schipperges
and Dagmar Teepe, “Fantasie,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2d ed., ed.
Ludwig Finscher, vol. 4 (Kassel and New York: Bärenreiter, 1995), esp. cols. 336–45.
Two additional, somewhat more specialized surveys are: Hanns Steger, “Gedanken
über den Fantasie-Begriff in der Musik des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Gedenkschrift
Hermann Beck, ed. Hermann Dechant and Wolfgang Sieber (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag,
1982), 143–50; and Charles Suttoni, “Piano and Opera: A Study of the Piano Fantasias
Written on Opera Themes in the Romantic Era,” PhD dissertation, New York
University, 1973. The finest previous synopsis of Czerny as fantasist appears in Grete
Wehmeyer, Carl Czerny und die Einzelhaft am Klavier, oder Die Kunst der Fingerfertigkeit und
die industrielle Arbeitsideologie (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1983), 135–47.
2. Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), 137.
3. DeLong, “J. V. Vor¤íšek and the Fantasy,” 192; italics added.
4. Carl Czerny, A Systematic Introduction to Improvisation on the Pianoforte [Op.
200], ed. and trans. Alice L. Mitchell (New York and London: Longman, 1983), 2.
224 ❧ michael saffle

Czerny’s treatise appeared originally under the title Systematische / ANLEITUNG /

ZUM / Fantasieren auf dem Pianoforte / VON / CARL CZERNY, Op. 200 (Vienna:
Diabelli; pl. no. 3270). I was unaware of Czerny’s metaphor regarding buildings
and grounds when I myself compared Liszt’s fantasizing to wandering in a garden.
See Saffle, “Liszt and the Traditions of the Keyboard Fantasy,” in Liszt the Progressive,
ed. Hans Kagebeck and Johan Lagerfelt (Lewiston, MA: Edwin Mellen, 2000),
184–85.
5. For an excellent discussion of double-function form, see William S. Newman,
The Sonata Since Beethoven, 3d ed. (New York: Norton, 1983), 359–78. Additional
information about double-function form in Chopin’s Op. 49 Fantaisie and several
other works may be found in Saffle, “Liszt and the Traditions of the Keyboard
Fantasy,” 163–75 passim.
6. GRANDE FANTAISIE / EN FORME DE SONATE / composée / Pour le Piano-Forté /
ET DEDIÉE / À MONSIEUR FERD. RIES / par son ami / CHARLES CZERNY (Leipzig:
Probst; pl. no. 335).
7. SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL COMPOSITION / OR / Complete Treatise on the
Composition of all kinds of Music, / BOTH / INSTRUMENTAL AND VOCAL . . . IN
THREE VOLUMES . . . BY / CARL CZERNY, Op. 600 (London: Robert Cocks & Co.;
pl. no. 11612), 86. Repr. in facsimile (New York: Da Capo, 1979).
8. Ibid., 86.
9. Plate numbers, in conjunction with opus numbers, provide approximate dates
for many of Czerny’s compositions. In roughly chronological order, consider:
Czerny’s Op. 37, a Fantaisie d’une Romance variée published by Weigl, bears plate num-
ber 2132; this number suggests a publication date of 1825. His Op. 61 “Preludes,
Cadenzas, and Little Fantasies” (see note 24 below), was published by Diabelli and
bears plate number D. et. C. No. 1424, which suggests 1824. Czerny’s Op. 64, a
Fantaisie dans le Style moderne, ou Potpourri brilliant, published by Mechetti, bears plate
number T.M. 1454, which suggests 1824 or possibly 1825; Mechetti plate numbers
921 and 1696 are known to date (respectively) from 1822 and 1825. Czerny’s
Charmes de Baden (see note 11 below) was probably composed around 1825. The
“Dame Blanche” Fantasy, Op. 131, was published by Haslinger and bears plate num-
bers T.H. 4834/4834 (in two fascicles), which suggest 1827. Finally, the Grande
Fantaisie, Op. 147 (see note 6 above), was published by Probst and bears plate num-
ber 335, which also suggests 1827. See Otto Erich Deutsch, Musikverlagsnummern.
Eine Auswahl von 40 datierten Listen, 1710–1900, 2d ed. (Berlin: Merseburger, 1961);
Alexander Weinmann, Verzeichnis der Musikalien des Verlages Thadé Weigl (Vienna:
Ludwig Krenn, 1982); and Weinmann, Vollständiges Verlagsverzeichnis Senefelder, Steiner,
Haslinger (Munich and Salzburg: Emil Katzbichler, 1979).
10. Regarding the publication date of the last fantasy, see note 9 above. I would
like to thank Otto Biba and the staff of the Archives of the Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde in Wien for allowing me to consult this and other Czerny scores in the
Gesellschaft’s collections.
11. Les Charmes de Baden. / Rondeau pastorale (Vienna: Weigl; pl. no. T.W. 2167).
Unlike most of Czerny’s works, this one bears no opus number.
12. According to Vareriano Sacchiero, “ ‘Souvenirs-Phantasien’ von Carl
Czerny über Opernthemen Donizettis,” Donizetti in Wien (Musikwissenschaftliches
Symposion, 17.–18. Oktober 1997), ed. Leopold M. Kantner (Vienna: Praesens, 1998),
194 [“Verzeichnis der Opern Donizettis, die in Czernys Bearbeitung vorhanden
sind”].
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 225

13. Czerny, “Recollections from My Life, trans. Ernest Sanders, The Musical
Quarterly 42 (1956), 311. For the German text see Czerny, Erinnerungen aus meinem
Leben, ed. Walter Kolneder (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1968).
14. Czerny, Systematic Introduction, 1.
15. Ibid., 2–3.
16. See, for example, Peter Cahn, “Carl Czernys erste Beschreibung der
Sonatenform (1832), Musiktheorie 1, no. 3 (1986): 277–79; and Malcolm Stanley
Cole, “Czerny’s Illustrated Description of the Rondo or Finale,” Music Review 36, no.
1 (February 1975): 5–16.
17. See Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard
Instruments, trans. William J. Mitchell (New York: Norton, 1949), 431–32. Examples
of bass lines suitable for harmonic disgressions are illustrated on 432–33 and 435.
Bach’s treatise was published originally under the title Versuch über die wahre Art, das
Clavier zu spielen (Berlin, 1759). It is often referred to simply as his Versuch.
18. Czerny, Systematic Introduction, 13.
19. See Bach, Essay, 434.
20. Czerny, Systematic Introduction, 18ff.
21. See ibid., 26–41 passim.
22. Czerny, School, 82.
23. Ibid., 86. Elsewhere [School, 89], Czerny cites Beethoven’s Opp. 77 (keyboard)
and 80 (“Choral”) fantasies.
24. PRÄLUDIEN, CADENZEN / und kleine / FANTASIEN / im brillanten Style / für das /
PIANO-FORTE / componirt / von / CARL CZERNY (Vienna: Diabelli; pl. no. 1424).
25. Czerny himself studied Emanuel Bach’s Versuch with Beethoven! See Czerny,
“Recollections,” 307.
26. Discussed by Randall Sweets in his “Carl Czerny Reconsidered: Romantic Elements
in his Sonata, Op. 7,” Journal of the American Liszt Society 16 (1984): 63–64. Sweets (62) also
points out Czerny’s use of the singing style in the third movement of his Sonata.
27. FANTAISIE / pour le / Piano-Forte, / composée et dediée / à / Monsieur Louis van
Beethoven / par / CHARLES CZERNY (Vienna: S. A. Steiner; pl. no. S:u:C:3849).
28. See Parker, “Clavier Fantasy,” 3.
29. See Alice M. Hanson, Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna (Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 84. The “overwhelming success” of
Czerny’s stunt, itself part of a charitable undertaking, “was reflected in its huge
profit” of some 2,800 florins.
30. See Czerny, Systematic Introduction, 1.
31. Czerny, School, 87.
32. That is, the first of the FANTAISIES / POUR LE PIANO / sur les motifs favoris de
l’Opera / I PURITANI / DE BELLINI / composées par / CHARLES CZERNY (Milan:
Ricordi; pl. nos. 8881–82). Reprinted recently in an urtext edition prepared by
Mario Martino (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Editioni, 2000; pl. no. SC 12).
33. Published as the third (“III.me”) of three works under the joint title NORMA /
Opera del Maestro / VINo. BELLINI / Ridetta in 3 Fantasie eleganti / PER / Piano Forte /
DA / CARLO CZERNY (Milan: G. Ricordi; pl. no. F. 7144 F.). I would like to thank
Nada Bezić and the Croation Music Institute, Zagreb, for providing me with photo-
copies of this and other rare Czerny scores.
34. Czerny, School, 87.
35. FANTAISIE / dans le Stÿle moderne, / ou / POTPOURRI BRILLANT / pour le /
Pianoforte / sur des motifs favoris / composée / par / CHARLES CZERNY. (Vienna: Pierre
226 ❧ michael saffle

Mechetti; pl. no. 1454). I would like to thank the Newberry Library, Chicago, for pro-
viding me with a photocopy of this rare work.
36. BIJOUX À LA SONTAG / Fantaisie brillante / sur des motifs d’Operas de W. A.
Mozart / par / CH. CZERNY (Bonn: Simrock; pl. no. 4179).
37. I would like to thank Anton Kuerti for providing me with a photocopy of this
interesting work. Unfortunately, the title page is missing. The music itself bears pl.
no. 3129 but no information about which firm published it except that it was prob-
ably an English firm; a footnote in English appears at the bottom of the first page.
38. See Leonard Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York:
Schirmer, 1980), 24.
39. Reprinted in facsimile as: Daniel François Auber and Eugène Scribe, Gustave,
ou le bal masqué, 2 vols., ed. Charles Rosen (New York and London: Garland, 1980).
The full orchestral score of the work, first performed in 1833 and also known as
“Gustave III,” was published in Paris sometime in the 1830s.
40. Grande Fantaisie / Pour le Piano / Sur des Motifs de / Gustave ou le Bal Masque / DE
D.F.E. AUBER / Composée Par / C. CZERNY (Paris: E. Troupenas; pl. no. T.150?). I
would like to thank Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s library for a photocopy
of this rare work. Unfortunately, the plate number on the photocopy is extremely dif-
ficult to read.
41. Czerny, School, 88. Czerny was well aware of fantasy-sonata practices; in his
School (83–86) he examines Hummel’s five-movement Op. 18 Fantasia and observes
that, in appropriate places, “the rules of the Sonata are here observed” especially “in
regard to modulation” (84).
42. See Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811–1847, rev. ed. (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 91–122 passim.
43. See Czerny, “Recollections,” 314.
44. Ibid., 314–15.
45. Czerny’s term for improvisation in the original title of his Op. 200 Anleitung
(or “Systematic Introduction”) is “fantasieren.”
46. Czerny, “Recollections,” 315.
47. Quoted in Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 78.
48. Der Sammler [Vienna], April 29, 1823. This review appears, complete and in
the original German, in Saffle, “Liszt Research Since 1936: A Bibliographic Survey,”
Acta Musicologica 58 (1986): 279. See also, Saffle, “Lingering Legends: Liszt after
Walker,” in Musical Biography: Towards New Paradigms, ed. Jolanta T. Pekacz
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 101–7 passim. A synopsis of the printed program—
only Liszt’s intention to perform a “free fantasy” is mentioned in it—appears in
Hanson, Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna, 100.
49. Quoted in William Wright, “Liszt in Manchester,” Journal of the American Liszt
Society 41 (1997): 10.
50. See Zsuzsanna Domokos, “Carl Czernys Einfluß auf Franz Liszt: Der Kunst des
Phantasierens,” in Der junge Liszt: Referate des 4. Europäischen Liszt-Symposions, Wien
1991, ed. Gottfried Scholz (Munich and Salzburg: Emil Katzbichler, 1993), 19–28.
Domokos oversimplifies Czerny’s intentions when she maintains he “kategorisiert in
seinem Lehrbuch [i.e., the Systematic Introduction] die Arten des Fantasierens nicht
nach der Form, sondern nach den verschiedenen Kompositionstechniken” (21). As
we have seen, Czerny was concerned with both form and harmonic organization—
which is to say, with “organized musical totalities,” not merely keyboard figures
and other compositional devices. Thus, in his School, he observes with regard to
czerny and the keyboard fantasy ❧ 227

multimovement fantasies that, although they cannot be imitated formally “so strictly
as in the case of Sonatas,” a pupil should “attend to the construction of the whole,
and of each separate movement, until he feels himself sufficiently exercised to pro-
ceed in his own way” (87). Earlier and less detailed studies of the Czerny–Liszt rela-
tionship include: C¤ . Gardavský, “Liszt und seine tschechischen Lehrer,” Studia
Musicologica 5 (1963): 69–76; and Grete Wehmeyer, “Carl Czerny (1791–1857)—
Der Klavierlehrer von Franz Liszt,” in Franz Liszt: Ein Genie aus dem pannonischen Raum.
Kindheit und Jugend (Eisenstadt: Burgenländisches Landesmuseum, 1986), 103–15.
51. I do not consider the Etude en douze exercises “one” work, in spite of its title; it
is, instead, a collection of twelve rather short pieces. Furthermore, Don Sanche,
“Liszt’s” only opera, may not have been composed by Liszt at all. Certainly it was
orchestrated and copied out for performance by Ferdinando Paër, in whose hand
the sole surviving complete manuscript is written. See Saffle and Michael Short,
“Making Lis[z]ts: Cataloging the Composer’s Works and the ‘New Grove 2’ Works
Liszt,” Journal of Musicological Research 21 (2002): 235–36; and Saffle, “The Early
Works,” in The Liszt Companion, ed. Ben Arnold (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002),
60, 62.
52. Published originally by Troupenas of Paris as “Souvenir de la Fiancée” / Grande
Fantaisie pour piano sur la Tyrolienne de l’opéra “La Fiancée” d’Auber, and in one early edi-
tion, as Liszt’s “Op. 1.” Two somewhat different versions both appeared in 1829; a
third, more extensively altered version appeared later, ca. 1837–39. The first and
third versions have both been reprinted in Franz Liszt: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke,
series II, vol. 1 (“Freie Bearbeitungen I”), ed. Györgyi Éger et al. (Budapest: Editio
Musica, 1990), 147–70 (first) and 25–41 (third).
53. Mitchell (Systematic Introduction, ix) gives “1836” as the date of Czerny’s publi-
cation, citing as her source Ernst Ferand, Die Improvisation in Beispielen (Cologne:
Arno Volk, 1956), 22. Wehmeyer (Carl Czerny, p. 135) gives “1829/30.” The plate
number D. et. C. 3270 suggests 1829 as the year of publication. See Deutsch,
Musikverlagsnummern, 21.
54. See Saffle, “Lingering Legends: Liszt after Walker,” esp. 99–101.
55. Letters of Franz Liszt, ed. “La Mara” [pseud. of Marie Lipsius]; trans. Constance
Bache (London: H. Grevel, 1894), vol. 1, 266.
56. See Czerny, School, 87.
57. More detailed discussions of the Fantaisie romantique appear in Saffle, “Liszt
and the Traditions of the Keyboard Fantasy,” 179–84; and “The Early Works,” 63–67.
Both articles include references to fantasy elements in such other works as the
Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (1835) and the Apparitions.
58. Suttoni, “Piano and Opera,” 307.
59. Ibid., 307–8. For an even more detailed assessment of Liszt’s operatic fan-
tasies, see Kenneth Lawrie Hamilton, “The Opera Fantasies and Transcriptions of
Franz Liszt: A Critical Study,” dissertation, Oxford University [Balliol College], 1989.
60. See Steger, “Gedanken über den Fantasie-Begriff,” 148.
61. See note 67 below.
62. See Saffle, “Lingering Legends: Liszt after Walker,” 106–7.
63. Ratner, Classic Music, 233.
64. See Hanson, Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna, 103–4. Beethoven, of course,
often improvised in public earlier in his career; at the same concert that witnessed
the premiere performances of his First and Second Symphonies, he invented a fan-
tasy on “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser.” See also, Czerny, “Recollections,” 308.
228 ❧ michael saffle

65. Hanson, Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna, 108.

66. Quoted in Jackson Yi-Shun Leung, “A Selective Study of Sonata-Fantasies in
the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1990, 17.
67. Ibid. Leung translates passages taken from Peter Schleuning, The Fantasia II:
18th to 20th Centuries, trans. A. C. Howie (Cologne: Arno Volk, 1971).
68. Hanson, Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna, 92.
69. Quoted in Robin Wallace, Beethoven’s Critics (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 119.
70. Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 135.
71. See, for example, William G. Atwood, The Parisian World of Frédéric Chopin
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999). Although complimenting
Liszt on many occasions, Atwood finally comes down on the side of Chopin, who “saw
no need to transmogrify the piano into something it was never intended to be.” On
the other hand—always, it seems, “on the other hand”—Atwood, who takes his cues
from Heine (at the latter’s most slanderous), marginalizes Liszt as one of “the ‘thun-
der gods’ of the ‘Donner and Blitzen’ school of virtuosity” (178).
72. See Walker, Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848–1861 (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1989), esp. 338ff.
73. Drabkin, “Fantasia,” 557.
Chapter Fourteen

The Fall and Rise of

“Considerable Talent”
Carl Czerny and the Dynamics of
Musical Reputation
David Gramit

According to the 2001 edition of Baker’s Biographical Dictionary, Czerny was “a

composer of considerable talent.”1 Although, as we will see below, this evaluation
represents a considerable rise in Czerny’s fortunes, it nonetheless comes off as far
from an unconditional affirmation or a battle cry calculated to fuel the com-
poser’s further revival. Indeed, it leaves a great deal unclear: is it the product of
studied and even-handed evaluation or an expression of surprise, or even damn-
ingly faint praise? If, in the famous words of Pierre Bourdieu, “taste classifies, and
it classifies the classifier,” what are the stakes of this remarkably ambiguous for-
mulation?2 There is of course no simple answer to this question; the significance
of the label will depend as much on the reader’s understanding of the nature and
goal of musical activity as on any objective evaluation of the composer. And that
is precisely why the historical development of Czerny’s reputation merits explo-
ration: not because, according to a crude application of Bourdieu’s scheme, we
can measure gains in social status accruing to those who have valued or dismissed
this particular composer, but rather because exploring a cross section of
responses to Czerny’s activity as a composer from his lifetime to the present can
contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the diverse and changing crite-
ria that have grounded critical evaluation during the past two centuries.
From the perspective of that history of critical responses, the reassessment
offered in this collection is revealed as only the most recent in a chain of judg-
ments that have continually sought to make sense of Czerny in light of the
230 ❧ dav i d g r a m i t

changing conditions of musical life. That history will also make clear that criti-
cal judgments neither come into being nor function independently of one
another or of a network of other values. As literary critics have recognized for
some time, the rise and fall of artistic reputations is contingent; in the words of
Barbara Herrnstein Smith, value, including that of a work of art (and, I would
add, of the creator of that work) “is an effect of multiple, continuously chang-
ing, and continuously interacting variables or, to put this another way, the prod-
uct of the dynamics of a system.”3 In tracing the path of Czerny’s reputation,
then, we can gain insight not only into the history of critical evaluations of one
neglected composer but also into the dynamics of a system that has shaped the
larger network of valuations that have given rise to what has come to be known
as the field of classical music. And to a surprising extent, the changing shape of
that network proves to correlate closely with the changing fortunes of the value
that could be ascribed to “a composer of considerable talent.”
Although public evaluations of Czerny, of course, begin only with his first
appearances and publications, the elements that would eventually help deter-
mine his reputation were already at play before his birth. Like all musicians,
especially those who, like him, were born into musicians’ families, he was born
into a world with its own developed conceptions of music and musical careers,
conceptions that would shape him, but that were themselves in continual flux—
and eventually, he himself would contribute to that change. This much, how-
ever, is clear: for most of the century into which he was born, to have been
labeled a “composer of considerable talent” would have been an unquestionably
favorable evaluation. William Weber’s seminal study of the contemporaneity of
musical taste in the eighteenth century suggests the underlying reasons for what,
from the perspective of the classical canon, may seem a puzzling indifference to
enduring musical excellence: distant from the classical traditions of other arts,
music’s public roles were dominated by celebration of events dictated by patrons
or the church on the one hand and by its entertainment value on the other; as
an object of study, music offered nothing like the fully developed intellectual tra-
dition of theoretical, historical, and critical discourse that, for instance, painting
could provide, to say nothing of the ancient models available in sculpture or
architecture. As a result, “since musical amusement had no ancient reference
points, it did not answer to any high intellectual authority, any academy, but
rather to the general public.”4 Such varied and relatively undisciplined taste by
no means ruled out value judgments, but it focused the criteria for those judg-
ments firmly on pleasing in the present rather than on adding to an exemplary
canon of masterworks, and thus on admirable mastery of a craft rather than on
ineffable genius as the primary quality to be sought in a composer. To recognize
“considerable talent,” then, would simply have been to signal genuine approval,
without irony or dismissiveness.
Such a general picture inevitably oversimplifies, and Weber’s own later work has
gone on to locate eighteenth-century links between musical taste and intellectual
the fall and rise of “considerable talent” ❧ 231

and political authority and the (initially local) canonic practices that resulted
from those links. More specifically, during Czerny’s lifetime, music’s cultural
prominence would increase dramatically—and the criteria by which composers
could be evaluated shifted accordingly. The transformation is fascinatingly com-
plex and has been studied from a variety of perspectives; only its barest outlines
can be sketched here.5 Transformations in the modes of aristocratic patronage,
the growing necessity for musicians to align concepts of music’s value with the
ideologies of bourgeois culture, Romantic effusions on music’s ineffable power,
and developments in the techniques and goals of musical composition itself all
had a role in laying the foundations of what Lydia Goehr has called “the
Beethoven Paradigm”: the notion (for which Beethoven was adopted as the ulti-
mate example and justification) that composers were “divinely inspired cre-
ators . . . whose sole task was to objectify in music something unique and
personal and to express something transcendent.”6 In this context, “consider-
able talent” begins to pale perceptibly, almost unavoidably bringing with it the
notion of the “merely” talented.
Considering Czerny in the context of this development demands several
immediate observations. First, he was not only affected by it but an active par-
ticipant in it, not through critical discourse (for he produced next to none of
it), but through his historical and musical activities. Most obviously (see Ingrid
Fuchs’s contribution to this volume), as a lifelong advocate for and willing
provider of reminiscences about his friend and former teacher, Czerny fueled
the Beethoven cult that became central to the ideology and practice of great,
enduring music. In addition, his discussions of the performance of past com-
posers (as considered here by James Parakilas and George Barth) helped nor-
malize and provide a technical foundation for the survival of the developing
canon. And finally, as an editor of the music of Domenico Scarlatti, J. S. Bach,
Beethoven, and others, Czerny contributed materially to defining and making
that canon available for future performers.
Within that canon and the critical and scholarly world that grew along with it,
a paradigm of the development of styles through history ensured that the high-
est premium would be placed on originality, on those who could be interpreted
as contributing to the linear development that constituted musical progress.
Such a developmental paradigm also means that the evaluation of works and
their composers is inevitably comparative, measuring successors to and contem-
poraries of the acknowledged masters against the accomplishment of those
dominant figures—as the term “Beethoven Paradigm” implies. By the late nine-
teenth century and throughout much of the twentieth, this concept was so fully
entrenched that J. Peter Burkholder could write of a “historicist mainstream”
whose goal was to contribute “museum pieces” to an established collection of
great works, a process that depended upon composers’ awareness both of how
their music reflected the heritage of past greats and how it commented on
and departed from them.7 And to the extent that this mainstream continues to
232 ❧ dav i d g r a m i t

flourish, the fate of already devalued “considerable talent” is still more imper-
iled, for the process of reference to earlier canonized works by later candidates
for the museum reinforces the inevitability of those earlier works’ being
regarded as foundational, and their nonrecognized contemporaries as
superfluous.
If this brief summary were the entire story, if it even approximately repre-
sented the whole of musical culture, then understanding Czerny’s position, and
that of many other composers who have never been securely established among
the historical elite, would be far simpler. But not only was the constitution of that
elite far less obvious during the time of its formation than it may appear retro-
spectively, but more important, the values that it represented were themselves by
no means universally accepted. In other words, as valuable as it has been to draw
attention to the process of the formation of a single canonic repertoire, con-
ceptualizing the issue in that way can easily make us lose sight of the continued
and still very vital existence of fields of musical practice for which questions of
such canon-worthiness were essentially irrelevant. Thus Carl Dahlhaus, whose
overriding concern was always finally the history of music as (high) art, could,
for instance, dismiss “the vast output of nineteenth-century works which served
an estimable social function but leave us under no compunction to include
them in a history of music as art.”8 But if we are to consider how musicians were
positioned within and among various fields of activity, and how that positioning
shaped their work and its reception, then considering those fields, their priori-
ties, and the degree to which they were (or were not) distinct from an emerging
“classical” practice becomes essential. And once again, dealing with Czerny
reveals this with particular clarity, for despite Czerny’s significant role in the
establishment of the Beethoven Paradigm, to focus exclusively on that paradigm
obscures from view those fields in which Czerny truly thrived, especially the
commercial and cultural world of music as entertainment, which continued
unabated despite—or more likely, with greater vigor because of—the transfor-
mation I have outlined.
In this world, Czerny unquestionably occupied a leading position for much of
the early nineteenth century. Here, it was irrelevant that those compositions that
Czerny considered serious were largely unheard, or even that they existed. His
hundreds of publications, both “brilliant” and pedagogical, were widely and
often quite favorably reviewed, especially in German and French publications.
One typical example among many is the German journal Cäcilia’s review of the
two volumes of Czerny’s Le Pianiste au salon, Op. 311, in 1835. According to the
reviewer, the collection would provide its intended audience, “pianists whose fin-
ger dexterity is still not exceptional,” pieces that are “nevertheless . . . brilliant
and appealing. They will not fail in their purpose of providing pleasant enter-
tainment along with useful practice.”9 Such examples of Czerny’s music, in other
words, respond “to a pre-existing demand, and in pre-established forms,” to use Pierre
Bourdieu’s criteria for identifying commercial cultural products.10 In this case,
the fall and rise of “considerable talent” ❧ 233

there is no hint of dismissal of such a purpose (perhaps because Le Pianiste au

salon was a publication of Schott, whose house journal was Cäcilia). Another
notice from the same journal might easily be read as conveying the same
approval, even to the point of using Czerny’s identity very much as later mar-
keters would use a brand name:

A single movement filling twenty-five pages, allegro vivo ma grazioso, in 3/4 time, built of
a piquant motive, interwoven with affecting passagework appropriate to the instru-
ment, parading the advantageous aspects of the instrument through highly varied turns
and using its hyper-high tones diligently, carried now one way and now another from
one key into the next, sometimes to very distant ones with the greatest suddenness, and
beyond that not terribly difficult, in the most modern taste throughout, at the end
diminuendo e slentando, à poco, pianissimo, morendo, andante, dying away with the
[damper] pedal and una corda, and, Nota bene, by C. Czerny: what more could the
pianists of the present wish for?11

At first reading, the positive tone is unmistakable, and one could think that we
were again within the admittedly very extensive realm where “critical” journal-
ism is nearly synonymous with advertising. But “diligent” use of “hyper-high”
tones and praise for sudden modulations that were more usually the object of
criticism begin to tip the author’s superior hand. The final impression is one of
a knowing, ironic wink to those whose taste, like the author’s, allows them to
agree that “the most modern taste” of “the pianists of the present” is not, after
all, the final measure. In short, two fields of practice—the reviewer’s and the pre-
sumed consumers of Czerny’s music—are here evoked and ranked, and catering
to the fashionable is gently dismissed in favor of an only implicitly present supe-
rior taste. Note, however, that that hierarchy carries with it no suggestion of links
to a larger social one; in a journal for the musical trade, the internal hierarchy
is of primary concern.
If Continental reviews suggested occasional disapproval at Czerny’s lack of
serious ambitions, the opposite is true of many English examples. While favor-
able English reviews are by no means unusual, many are distinctly reserved, if
not outright negative, and the grounds are more often excessive seriousness or
difficulty than superficiality. An 1824 review of Czerny’s “rondeau pastorale,” Les
Charmes de Baden, for instance, puzzles at some length over where to fit a figure
who is clearly still relatively unknown in England, although “of considerable
repute in his own country.”12 At first, the category of serious original genius
seems appropriate: “He preserves the style of [the German] school, and, if we
read him rightly, has formed his taste very much upon Beethoven. But he has
the fine strength and originality of genius, a command over the materials of his
art, and he combines them like a man who feels his power.” Eventually, though,
praise seems more reserved, for original genius seems wanting. After remarking
on a passage juxtaposing two distant keys, the review adds an immediate qualifi-
cation: “The conception of the whole of this passage is bold and striking, though
234 ❧ dav i d g r a m i t

the idea belongs so exclusively to Beethoven, that it can hardly be called origi-
nal.” The review’s conclusion, however, reveals a perspective that would govern
much of Czerny’s reception in England in the following decades; in the final
analysis, what matters is utility: “Les plaisirs [sic] de Baden is however a beautiful
lesson, it is calculated for good players, and will be found very effective in mixed
musical society.”
According to that yardstick—social utility for English amateur performers—
Czerny’s works did not often measure up, particularly for the reviewers of the
prominent Harmonicon. Here the Beethoven Paradigm is entirely banished and
reviewers are often inspired to splendidly original images of excess. A few sam-
ples will suffice to suggest the dominant tone. The “brilliant” works came in for
severest criticism, as, for example, this on the Introduction, Variations, et Polonaise
on “Tu vedrai la sventurata,” from Bellini’s Il Pirata (Czerny’s Op. 160):

To say nothing of the ridiculous difficulties woven into, or rather forming, the variations
on it, we never met with anything more entirely devoid of taste, of all meaning, than this
production, which might almost lead us to suspect that its author is one of a party to bring
piano-forte music into hatred and contempt. We really view such a composition as a libel
on the art, and guard all prudent persons against assisting in giving currency to it.13

Pedagogical works were not spared, although here at least the evaluation of
Czerny’s 48 études en forme de préludes et cadences, Op. 161, admits occasional suc-
cess. Here is another perspective on the composer of talent: his duty is to remain
comprehensible, and to fail to do so is to open oneself to ridicule:

Some of these forty-eight Studies might be called impracticable introductions to the impos-
sibilities of M. Czerny; for we can hardly believe that any one will be found desperate
enough to attempt to master more than about half of them. . . . There are, however,
among these a few clever studies, enough to prove that the author is a man of talent,
though he so frequently misapplies it. Some we cannot for the life of us understand,
the twenty-fifth for instance; and we have no unconquerable desire to become inti-
mately acquainted with the majority of the four dozen. The multiplication of such
works is a great evil.14

A more ambitious étude, the Grand Exercice d’Octaves dans tous les tons, majeur et
mineur, Op. 152, provoked a still more extravagant denunciation, this time with-
out any mitigating acknowledgement. Its concluding reference to musical com-
merce helps situate the milieu of the critique—the reviewer may judge the music
harshly, but here, in sharp contrast to the field of serious music (in whose dis-
course commerce figured, when it appeared at all, only as a threat), the music’s
commercial basis is simply a fact to be reckoned with:

Were an inhabitant of another sphere . . . to be shown this grand exercice, he would

straightway and naturally conclude that all those belonging to the planet Earth, who
the fall and rise of “considerable talent” ❧ 235

“handle” the piano-forte, must be under the immediate influence of their own satel-
lite:—”For who,” he would ask, “but moon-struck people would submit to a piece sixteen
pages long, consisting of nought else, from beginning to end, but semiquavers running
in octaves without the slightest break or intermission, without air, or rhythm, or any rea-
sonable object, till one solitary chord ends the mad ramble?” And this is no exagger-
ated account of the “grand” composition on our desk, strange and almost incredible as
it may appear.
It is to be presumed that a nondescript of the present kind would not have been pub-
lished unless there had been a chance, amounting almost to a certainty, of finding pur-
chasers for it; and we can only say, that if there are many to waste their money, and what
is worse their time, upon such a matchless piece of absurdity, good taste in music, and
the common sense of its votaries, are in a more declining state than even the former
productions of this composer, and others of the same school, have led us to suppose.15

Even when Czerny’s publications were well received, reviewers could sometimes
not resist stressing the exceptional character of the successful effort. In that
spirit, for instance, the Harmonicon commented on the Three Grand Fantasias,
Op. 64, already in 1826:

These three Fantasias are so little in M. Czerny’s ordinary style, that we certainly should
never have recognized them as his, had not his name appeared to them. They are so
nearly exempt from all those passages of mere execution, and two out of the three shew
a taste so superior to that which we have generally seen exhibited in his publications,
that we must hope and believe that he has at length discovered the futility of those com-
positions which have no other object than to display manual dexterity, and which, even
in Germany, can never have sale enough to pay him a moderate price for his labour,
after the expenses of engraving, paper, and printing are defrayed.16

The network of practices and expectations that produced such reviews is clearly
different than those that led to the Continental reviews with which I began. Most
obviously, the elimination of the serious, canon-informed taste that permitted
the implicit dismissal found in the Cäcilia review and the explicit qualms of the
first English example means that judgment is on the basis of immediate pleas-
ure and utility, just as Weber described for the eighteenth century. As a result,
the Harmonicon’s reviews appear as advice to potential consumers; it positions
itself not as an evaluator within an internally differentiated field, but rather as a
provider of judgments based on generally accepted criteria presumed applica-
ble to all music. And without internal judgments to structure it, the field of musi-
cal practice loses the appearance of autonomy and is presented as directly
governed by the priorities of the general public. The concept of an autonomous
musical field within society as a whole, then, demands a hierarchy of subfields
within music; in that sense (to return to Dahlhaus’s formulation), creating the
“history of music as art” requires that which serves “an estimable social function,”
precisely so that it can be rejected.
236 ❧ dav i d g r a m i t

Czerny’s legendary compositional productivity was also read differently in the

Harmonicon than in Continental music journals, even within the realm of musical
entertainment. Again, the latter were considerably gentler, even when clearly
mildly satirical. Thus, a mock fairy tale in the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris com-
pared Czerny’s Cent études pour de jeunes élèves with the tales of the Thousand and One
Nights.17 One of that journal’s predecessors, the Gazette musicale, had even man-
aged to turn fecundity into a virtue, a sign, if not of genius, then at least of impres-
sive accomplishment: “if he did not possess an inexhaustible faculty of invention,
he could not have written more than three hundred works, all of which contain
enough new and interesting details that they can be played with pleasure.”18 Here
the attempt to recuperate a quality of great art (inexhaustible invention) for a
practitioner of commercial music seems strained, but the very strain reveals aware-
ness of an internal hierarchy. No such mitigating factors were apparent to the
reviewers of the Harmonicon, which had this to say of the Souvenir à Schönbrunn,
Op. 250: “To compose anything new in the form of a march is undoubtedly a dif-
ficult task, and M. Czerny seems to have been determined that his two-hundred
and fiftieth opera [sic] should not be a work of labour.”19 And of the Fantasia sur
des Motifs favoris de La Fiancée d’Auber, Op. 247, we read: “Let the reader not over-
look one remarkable fact recorded on the title-page of this publication,—it is M.
Czerny’s two-hundred and forty-seventh work! And he is still quite a young man.
What a treasure to the stationer! What a labourer for the cheesemonger!”20 Once
again, the refusal of autonomy allows more direct links to broader society, here
apparent in the playful linking of musical creativity to common labor and espe-
cially in the evocation of the class associations of common trades to dismiss
Czerny’s works.
If suspicion of routine and superficial composition could surface even in the
musical worlds of entertainment or pedagogy, it could be fatal in that of serious
music. And robust though the paradigm of music as entertainment remained
through the nineteenth century (and continues to the present in the world of
popular music), it could not maintain a musical reputation in the long term—as
in the eighteenth century, music for entertainment relied on novelty and was
expected to be ephemeral (although the survival of “light” music from the waltzes
of Strauss and Lanner onward is a phenomenon that merits its own study). In the
context of the nineteenth century, survival required acceptance by the institu-
tional and eventually the academic musical establishment, and that in turn
implied monumentalization (most obviously in the form of editions of collected
works, beginning with the Bach Gesellschaft edition) and recognition of “serious”
value. These are terms that would have been familiar to Czerny himself—not only,
as I have already mentioned, did he play a significant role in monumentalizing a
number of composers, but he divided his own compositions among the categories
of pedagogical, “brilliant,” and “serious.” It is from the perspective of the last cat-
egory, then (albeit with a very limited awareness of Czerny’s actual activity in that
area), that his posthumous reputation has largely been based.
the fall and rise of “considerable talent” ❧ 237

Otto Biba’s essay in this volume makes clear how the combination of the clas-
sicizing conservatism of the Vormärz and skepticism that a composer so prolific
in the field of brilliant salon music could also write significant serious music
effectively undermined appreciation of Czerny’s serious music in Austro-
German territories. But it is worth noting that Czerny could also be recruited as
a supporter of classicizing taste. Thus, for instance, several discussions during
the 1840s in the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung are strongly favorable, all noting
Czerny’s link to Beethoven and praising his success in serious genres—specifi-
cally, church music and the piano sonata. But, contrary to the image of
Beethoven the revolutionary, what Czerny is said to have learned from the mas-
ter is propriety. With respect to sacred music, “As far as style is concerned, he is,
as would be expected of a student of Beethoven, pure, correct, and fluent, far
from all effected attempts at genius [Genie-seyn-wollens] and baroque qualities,
but also far from all stiffness and coldness, such as is presented only too often in
church works and seeks to pass itself off as classicism.”21 The Piano Sonata, Op.
730, also receives high praise, and the terms of the final summary betray similar
motivation for approbation: “We must confess that Herr Czerny has remained
faithful to the refined ideal of the sonata form, and the tone-creation just reviewed
has the stamp of perfection impressed upon its brow by the self-sufficiency
[Abgeschlossenheit] of its idea, its artful inner construction, and its formal
beauty.”22 In this view, serious art requires not innovative genius—indeed, one
would expect Beethoven’s pupils to avoid it!—but rather effective exemplifica-
tion of familiar stylistic and generic norms. In effect, such expectations transfer
the standards of commercial art to the level of the canonic.
But this position was by no means held by all critics. In this respect, one of the
most revealing documents on Czerny’s reception by his contemporaries is Henri
Blanchard’s review of Czerny’s first published symphony (in C Minor, Op. 780),
published in the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris in 1845. After first remarking on
Czerny’s enormous productivity (and repeating the familiar story of Czerny
composing several works at once in his study), Blanchard notes the invidious
comparisons Czerny will inevitably provoke for having published his first
“grande symphonie” in C minor with a second movement in A-flat major as well
as a variety of other clear parallels to Beethoven’s own symphony in that key.
Such imitation, he insists, has its “juste milieu,” but it depends on novelty of
motives, thorough thematic work, and “the employment of all the riches of mod-
ern instrumentation.” Although he goes on to praise Czerny’s “great purity of
style” and greater taste than that displayed by most virtuoso composers,
Blanchard’s reservations are equally clear. Czerny’s themes “have an air of famil-
iarity that never permits them to have that striking character that makes an
impression on the hearer and captivates from the first with their originality.” In
the end, despite the favorable impression he seeks to leave of the piece under
review, Blanchard’s most revealing judgment is this: “but it is precisely fantasy,
caprice, the unexpected, that M. Czerny lacks.”23 From this critical perspective,
238 ❧ dav i d g r a m i t

the most such a composer could hope for was to be “useful,” a term that recurs
in several of the same journal’s reviews of Czerny from that time—once, indeed,
the comparison becomes explicit: Czerny cannot be ranked among the “great
men of the art of music,” a list that includes Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart,
“but rather, and in the first rank, among the useful men.”24
As a “useful” composer, Czerny could maintain a successful and highly visible
career, but even during his lifetime, those who sought to assess him from a com-
parative and long-term perspective were at best reserved. François Fétis, for
example, generalized in 1837 that “his works doubtless do not have the qualities
that will make them live in the history of artistic productions and that will make
them classics,” despite their agreeable nature, and Franz Brendel, whose self-
consciously progressive lectures on the history of music had no use for the util-
itarian or the merely agreeable, attributed to Czerny (along with Kalkbrenner,
Herz, “and many others”) responsibility for the decline of German instrumental
music into “content-less, empty superficiality.”25 After Czerny’s death, assess-
ments tended more uniformly toward the dismissive. There are exceptions, to be
sure: the hometown Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich ventured a
mild defense of its native son in 1858, and C. F. Pohl’s treatment in both the
Allgemeine deutsche Biographie and the early editions of Grove’s Dictionary of Music
and Musicians managed to opine ambivalently that “however worthy of admira-
tion Czerny’s industry may be, there is no doubt that he weakened his creative
powers by over-production, and the effect has been that the host of lesser works
have involved the really good ones in undeserved forgetfulness”—at least imply-
ing that “really good ones” existed.26 Overall, however, Mendel’s Musikalisches
Conversations-Lexikon captured the assessment that remained dominant through-
out the remainder of the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century. After
praising Czerny’s pedagogical efforts, it continues:

Those works, by contrast, with which Czerny came forward as a creative tone-poet, and
thus without the secondary goal of instruction, cannot be called significant; they
betray the diligently schooled, solid musician in every measure, and also the intelli-
gent study of good examples—but they lack the igniting and warming spark of
genius.27

Once established in the official world of music reference sources, such dismis-
sive judgments proved remarkably stable. The Grove Dictionary maintained Pohl’s
evaluation through five editions into the 1950s, and the assessment of Hugo
Riemann’s Musik-Lexikon, first made in 1882—that only Czerny’s pedagogical
works [Etüdenwerke] had “lasting significance”—survived even longer: the 1978
edition, edited by two leading figures in German musicology (Hans Heinrich
Eggebrecht and Carl Dahlhaus) rewords the original entry on Czerny but fulfills
its predecessor’s prediction by continuing to deny “lasting significance” to any
works but piano etudes.28 To judge by such authoritative sources, Czerny’s
the fall and rise of “considerable talent” ❧ 239

reputation gave every appearance of having been permanently fixed as useful

but essentially uninteresting.
That permanence, however, proved to be illusory. Here an American source,
the regularly updated Baker’s Biographical Dictionary, is the most sensitive barom-
eter of change. Beginning in 1900 with a shortened paraphrase of Riemann, the
dictionary’s first four editions remained essentially stable, like its English and
German counterparts. By 1958, however, in the first edition edited by Nicolas
Slonimsky, a slight change in tone is evident; while the first editions had merely
noted that “his pf.-studies were of lasting value,” the fifth reports him to have
been “an amazingly prolific composer,” provides a list of genres of activity, and
reframes his pedagogical activity as a crowning glory rather than the sole object
of interest: “he owes his everlasting fame to his collections of piano studies and
exercises, used by generations of pianists all over the world.”29 The sixth edition
of 1978 expands on biographical detail and announces a recent general
“change of heart towards Czerny as a worthy composer in his own right,” noting
Stravinsky’s admiration for Czerny, and that he “was unexpectedly revealed to be
a musician of imaginative fancy and engaging pedantic humor.”30 By the ninth
edition of 2001, the first to have the benefit of Grete Wehmeyer’s monograph
on Czerny, a list of genres for Czerny’s “serious works” appears, along with the
pronouncement with which I began, given here in its immediate context: “In
recent years, recordings of a number of his more ambitious scores have revealed
him to be a composer of considerable talent. Indeed, his Sym. No. 1, while
owing much to Beethoven, nevertheless is a notable example of his assured han-
dling of symphonic form.”31 “Considerable talent,” it would appear, is finally
achieving its due.
The nature of this claim, however, merits closer examination, for it suggests
that more than greater musicological diligence and audience open-mindedness
is at work in this revision. Several aspects of the summary are noteworthy: first,
it credits recordings with making this discovery possible (although it fails to sug-
gest why those recordings should have been made before a revival promised
their viability); second, its report on Czerny’s symphony assesses it in much the
same terms as the review of the same piece cited above, a review written more
than 150 years earlier; and finally, it makes no claim to have found in Czerny
“sparks of genius” previously overlooked—competence (“assured handling of
symphonic form”) is apparently enough. In short, there is in fact little here to
suggest that either the terms of assessment of Czerny as a composer of serious
music or the conclusion of that assessment has changed significantly; what have
changed, however, are the conclusions drawn from that assessment and the
mode of listening that leads to that conclusion. The two, I suggest, are more
closely linked than is often realized.
As I have argued elsewhere (drawing on popular music studies, in which the
impact of recording technology has received far more sustained attention than it
has in studies of the classical canon), by fundamentally altering the way in which
240 ❧ dav i d g r a m i t

music can be experienced, recording has challenged the basis of that canon’s
claim to authority.32 Like the transformation of musical culture in the early nine-
teenth century, this too is a fascinatingly complex development that I can treat
only briefly here, but consider only these relatively straightforward conse-
quences.33 First, by privileging specific performances with all their unwritten
nuances, recording made it possible for performance- as well as text-based reper-
toires to become widely familiar, even massively popular; the sheer variety of avail-
able musical styles now available to any consumer is nothing short of bewildering.
And another feature of recording—particularly in those increasingly portable
and ubiquitous formats that have proliferated in the last decades of the twentieth
century and the beginning of the twenty-first—further undermines any claim to
particular status for the Western classical canon. By uncoupling music from spe-
cific sites of performance—as Richard Taruskin puts it, “we can hear Aida on the
patio and the St. Matthew Passion in the shower”34—recording turned the rever-
ential public listening rituals developed during the nineteenth century into ves-
tiges of a former practice rather than the essential foundation of the listening
experience. Crudely put, the “spark of genius” is likely a far remoter concept to
the listener who happens to choose a classical CD while engaged in sorting laun-
dry or fighting through traffic than to one sitting in hushed awe in a concert hall
knowing that there is no other way to experience fully a great work of music. If
this perspective on the consumption of music favors “considerable talent,”
aspects of its production too have a contribution to make; there had, after all, to
be an incentive for the recordings of Czerny cited in the 2001 Baker’s entry to be
made in the first place. Recordings, once again, preserve individual perform-
ances, and given a classical repertoire that has been relatively fixed since the early
twentieth century, there is by now an abundance of exemplary performances of
that repertoire, performances that can be re-released with each change of record-
ing format for far less than the cost of recording new performances, and without
the difficulty of persuading potential buyers that there is something essentially
novel and revelatory in a new, unknown performance. As critics reflecting on the
early music performance movement have noted at least since the 1980s, this sit-
uation has been an impetus both to the exploration of early repertoires and to
the development of performances of standard repertoire on original instru-
ments.35 While various “authentic” or “historically informed” performances of
familiar Baroque or Classical repertoire could defamiliarize and so heighten the
novelty of the known, the revival of unknown early music “promises progress”
because it heightens awareness of music long unheard, but unlike the avant-
garde largely rejected by concert audiences and buyers of recordings, still “prom-
ises to be diverting and pleasurable.”36 Both developments thus offered novelty
within relative familiarity and could be viewed as renewing a musical culture in
serious danger of stagnation.
In this context, the revival of Czerny also makes a great deal of sense, for we can
now see that he has once again become a “useful” composer. Like many talented
the fall and rise of “considerable talent” ❧ 241

contemporaries of canonic composers, he is useful to classical performers in

search of new repertoire and new recording opportunities, to recording com-
panies in search of alternative but nonthreatening projects, and to audiences
who value what, some 200 years ago and in a very different musical and social
situation, J. A. P. Schulz termed the “appearance of the familiar” [Schein des
Bekannten], which he distinguished from the (already) familiar itself, which, like
the all-too-familiar classical radio standards, only “awakens boredom.”37 From
this perspective, qualities that might at first seem a liability—gestures that have
been recognized ever since the earliest reviews as derivative of Beethoven—
come to be an asset. If we no longer expect the “spark of genius,” then Czerny’s
“serious” music—new/old works that offers not only “assured handling of sym-
phonic forms” but also recognizably Beethovenian (sometimes even
Mendelssohnian) gestures—can at last take on what it, unlike so many of
Czerny’s “brilliant” and “pedagogical” works, never had during Czerny’s lifetime:
genuine music-economic utility, to the extent that classical music remains a
viable economic entity at all. Indeed, they may help contribute to that viability.
None of these observations undermine the genuine interest that Czerny
holds. It remains true that his revived prospects seem to correct an injustice, to
bring to our awareness an overlooked composer of interesting music as well as a
prominent figure in the development of the field of “classical” music. I do hope
to have suggested, however, that the recent revival of interest in Czerny is, like
the earlier judgment it seeks to correct, the product of more than (either newly
refined or newly degenerate) powers of objective evaluation. In some respects,
evaluations of Czerny have been remarkably consistent for nearly two centuries,
but that has not prevented strikingly different conclusions about his value as a
composer, and those conclusions prove to be closely linked to the evolving
processes of cultural and economic production and consumption that have
shaped a domain of classical music that is, despite appearances, far from time-
less. The world of “immortal masters” continues to evolve, and it may be that the
notion of a classical canon itself is being replaced, or at least supplemented, by
a more easily expandable archive of the classical-sounding, perhaps a more viable
presence in a now globalized field of musics. And if the current upsurge of inter-
est is an indicator, Czerny may fare better in such a world than in the more
autonomous and hierarchical one that Czerny’s own efforts helped to create but
that in turn consigned him to obscurity.

Notes
1. Nicholas Slonimsky, Laura Kuhn, and Dennis McIntire, “Czerny, Carl,” Baker’s
Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Centennial Edition (New York: Schirmer Books,
2001) 2, 775.
2. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans.
Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 6.
242 ❧ dav i d g r a m i t

3. Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for

Critical Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 30.
4. William Weber, “The Contemporaneity of Eighteenth-Century Musical Taste,”
Musical Quarterly 68 (1984): 175–94. Quotation from 191.
5. From the perspective of social history, see William Weber, “Mass Culture and
the Reshaping of European Musical Taste, 1770–1870,” International Review of the
Aesthetics and the Sociology of Music 8 (1977): 5–21; and “The History of Musical
Canon,” in Rethinking Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 336–55. From that of sociology, see Tia DeNora, Beethoven
and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792–1803 (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press 1995). From that of cultural history, see
Michael P. Steinberg, Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-Century
Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). For a historicizing philosophi-
cal study, see Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay In the
Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). There is of course a long his-
tory of musicological studies, including Eberhard Preußner, Die bürgerliche
Musikkultur: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Musikgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts, 2d ed.
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1950); Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J.
Bradford Robinson, California Studies in Nineteenth Century Music 5 (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), esp. 88–96; David Gramit,
Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture,
1770–1848 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002); and
Celia Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St.
Matthew Passion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
6. Goehr, Imaginary Museum, 208.
7. J. Peter Burkholder, “Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream in Music of
the Last Hundred Years,” Journal of Musicology 2 (1983): 115–34.
8. Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 103.
9. Review of Czerny, Le Pianiste au salon . . . , Op. 311, pt. 1 and 2, Cäcilia 17, no.
67 (1835): 204. Ascribed to “Dr. Aab.” This and subsequent translations by the
author. It is worth noting that the favorably reviewed publication was published by
Schott, who also published Cäcilia. For similar acknowledgments of the appropriate-
ness of Czerny’s brilliant compositions, see (again from among many possibilities)
the reviews of Trois Fantaisies Élégantes sur les motifs favoris des opéras de Bellini, Op. 247,
Gazette musicale de Paris 2, no. 2 (January 11, 1835): 14; and of Deux Rondinos sur des
motifs de la “Reine de Chypre” et de la “Favorite,” Revue et gazette musicale de Paris 10, no.
5 (January 29, 1843): 39.
10. Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans.
Susan Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 142. While my reading
of commercial and autonomous areas of musical practice is indebted to Bourdieu, as
discussed below, the links between these distinctions within the musical field and the
larger social hierarchy are far less clear than in the (often more recent) French lit-
erary examples that are his focus.
11. Review of Czerny, Impromptu brilliant . . . , Op. 116, Cäcilia vol. 5, no. 20
(1826): 265. Ascribed to “Zyx.” The only further statement in the review is “the
external features of the edition are good and attractive.”
12. Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review 6, no. 24 (1824): 535–37. The same
periodical had given brief mention to Czerny’s Impromptus, or Brilliant Variations on a
the fall and rise of “considerable talent” ❧ 243

favorite Cotillon by Gallenberg two issues earlier (261–62), but in terms making clear
that the reviewer had no familiarity with the composer.
13. Harmonicon 9, no. 8 (August 1831): 194.
14. Harmonicon 9, no. 12 (December 1831): 301–2. The review erroneously lists
the work as Opus 160.
15. Harmonicon 11, no. 2 (February 1833): 31–32.
16. Harmonicon 4, no. 42 (June 1826): 118.
17. Perrault, “Le Songe de Czerny. Conte de fée,” Revue et gazette musicale de Paris
17, no. 53 (September 13, 1840): 460–61.
18. Review of Czerny, Bibliothèue populaire du pianiste, 1re livraison: Fantaisie élégante
sur des motifs de “Robert le Diable,” Gazette musicale de Paris 1, no. 31 (August 3, 1834):
251.
19. Harmonicon 11, no. 8 (August 1833): 176.
20. Review of Czerny, Fantasia sur des Motifs favoris de La Fiancée d’Auber, Op. 247,
Harmonicon 11, no. 6 (June 1833): 128.
21. Athanasius, “Gallerie ausgezeichneter Kirchencomponisten. Carl Czerny,”
Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung 3, no. 86 (July 20, 1843): 357. See also the review of
Czerny’s Offertory, “Benedicat nos deus,” Op. 737, by Philokales, ibid., 4, no. 14
(February 1, 1844): 54.
22. G. Prinz, Review of Czerny, Onzième grande Sonate pour le Piano, Op. 730,
Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung 4, no. 51 (April 27, 1844): 203.
23. Henri Blanchard, Review of Czerny, Première grande Symphonie en ut mineur et à
grande orchestre, Revue et gazette musicale de Paris 12, no. 38 (September 21, 1845):
310–11.
24. Amédée Méreaux, “Revue critique. C. Czerny. A propos de l’Art de délier les
doigts,” Revue et gazette musicale de Paris 12, no. 2 (January 12, 1845): 13. See also the
reviews of Czerny’s Études nouvelles, Op. 818 (ibid. 18, no. 38 [September 21, 1851]:
308–9) and of his 90 nouvelles Études Journalières, Op. 820 (ibid. 19, no. 38
[September 19, 1852]: 314).
25. François Joseph Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens, vol. 3 (Brussels:
Méline, Cans et Cie, 1837), 232. Franz Brendel, Geschichte der Musik in Italien,
Deutschland und Frankreich. Von den ersten christlichen Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart [1852]
(Vaduz/ Liechtenstein: Sändig Reprint Verlag, 1985), 505.
26. Constant von Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, vol. 3
(Vienna: Verlag der typographischen-literarischen-artistischen Anstalt, 1858),
105–8. Pohl is quoted from the conclusion of the article “Czerny, Karl,” in George
Grove, A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London and New York: Macmillan,
1878–89) 1, 426.
27. E. Meliš, “Czerny, Carl,” in Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon: Eine Enzyklopädie
der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften für Gebildete aller Stände, begründet von
Hermann Mendel, vollendet von Dr. August Reissmann, vol. 3 (Berlin: Robert
Oppenheim, 1869), 44–45.
28. Hugo Riemann, ed., Musik-Lexikon (Leipzig: Verlag des Bibliographischen
Instituts, 1882), 188; Carl Dahlhaus and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, Brockhaus-
Riemann Musiklexikon in zwei Bände (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus; Mainz: B. Schotts
Söhne, 1978) 1, 288.
29. The first quotation is from the article on Czerny in Theodore Baker, ed., A
Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (New York: Schirmer, 1900), 132. The remaining
244 ❧ dav i d g r a m i t

ones are from that in Nicolas Slonimsky, ed., Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of
Musicians (New York: Schirmer, 1958), 340.
30. Ibid., 6th ed. (1978), 371.
31. Slonimsky, Kuhn, and McIntire, “Czerny, Carl,” 775.
32. See David Gramit, “The Circulation of the Lied: The Double Life of an
Artwork and a Commodity,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 311–13.
33. For a useful overview, see Michael Chanan, Repeated Takes: A Short History of
Recording and Its Effects on Music (London: Verso, 1995).
34. Richard Taruskin, “The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past,”
in Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 93.
35. See, for example, Laurence Dreyfus, “Early Music Defended against Its
Devotees: A Theory of Historical Performance in the Twentieth Century,” Musical
Quarterly 69 (1983): 297–322; Taruskin, Text and Act; and John Butt, Playing with
History: The Historical Approach to Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002).
36. Dreyfus in particular develops these arguments in “Early Music Defended”;
quotations from 314.
37. From the preface to Schulz’s Lieder im Volkston, 2d ed. (Berlin: Decker, 1785).
Appendix

Musical Autographs by Carl Czerny

in the Archiv der Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde in Wien
A Checklist

Otto Biba

This list includes all the music autographs by Carl Czerny held as of spring 2006,
including complete scores or fragments, without any distinction between auto-
graphs coming into the holdings of the Archives as a part of Czerny’s estate and
autographs bought or donated later on. If there is no other indication the auto-
graphs are scores. Not included are manuscripts by copyists just signed by
Czerny or manuscripts by copyists with only a few corrections by Czerny.
1. 2te Solenne Messe
Komponiert 1830, revidiert 1842
[Score of the revised version]
C Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, timpani

2. Mass in C Major
[First version, 1830, of second Solenne Messe, no. 1 above]
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, timpani
246 ❧ appendix

3. 3te Solenne Messe

Komponiert 1831, revidiert 1842
[Score of the revised version]
E-Flat Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 1 flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, timpani

4. 4te Solenne Messe

1832
[Score of a later revised version; on the basis of its paper perhaps also from
1842]
B-flat Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 1 flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, timpani

5. 4te Messe
Angefangen im Juli 1832. Geendet d[en] 14. August [1]832
[Score of an early version of the fourth Solenne Messe, no. 4 above]
B-flat Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 1 flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, timpani
Bound with:
5te Messe
Angefangen im Juli 1832
B-flat Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 1 flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, timpani

6. 8te Messe
1839 May
C Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings; ad libitum: 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2
horns, 2 trumpets, timpani
Supplement:
Gloria. Statt der letzten 8 Takte. [Gloria. Substitute for the last eight measures.]
Den 10 Dec[ember] 1840 angefang[en] u[nd] vollendet [Begun and completed
on December 10, 1840.]

7. Missa
1837
E-flat Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons,
2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani
appendix ❧ 247

8. Et incarnatus zur 13ten Messe

Undated
A-flat Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), [strings, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns or trum-
pets, timpani]

9. 1tes Requiem
Im Juli 1835 angefangen. Vollendet den 5ten August 1835
F Minor
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bas-
soons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, ophicleide, timpani

10. IItes Requiem

1841. Vollendet am 23 Juni 1841
C Minor
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bas-
soons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani

11. Te Deum
August 1837. Angefangen den 8ten August. Vollendet den 11 August [1]837
D Major
S, A, T, B (choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani

12. 2tes Te Deum

August 1837
C Major
S, A, T, B (choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani

13. Laudate Dominum. Offertorium

[Fragment, seven pages, only two pages completely orchestrated. Breaks off
with the words “Magnitudinis ejus”]
Juli 18 [Illegible due to torn paper. Writing and paper make clear that this
is a youthful work.]
C Major
S, A, T, B (choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets

14. Graduale “Hodie Christus natus est” [Op. 154]

7–10 O[ctober] 1827
F Major
S, A, T, B (choir), strings, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, organ
248 ❧ appendix

15. Offertorium pastorale “Exulta, filia Sion” [Op. 155]

7te[r] Oct[o]b[er] 1827
D Major
S, A, T, B (choir), strings, 2 oboes or clarinets, 2 horns ad libitum, 2 trum-
pets, timpani, organ

16. Der 113. Psalm, “Lobet, ihr Knechte, den Herren”

1840
C Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bas-
soons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani

17. Der 130ste Psalm, “Aus der Tiefe rufe ich, Herr, zu dir”
1840
D Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bas-
soons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani

18. 134. Psalm, “Siehe, lobet den Herrn”

1840
E-flat Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bas-
soons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani

19. Gegenwart Gottes

([Josef Friedrich] A[ugust] Wendt)
Undated
[First version]
D Minor
S, A, T, B (choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, timpani

20. Gegenwart Gottes

([Josef Friedrich] A[ugust] Wendt)
Fine den 8ten März 1842
[Second version]
D Minor
S, A, T, B (choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns,
2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani

21. “Oeffnet euch, entzückte Seelen”

Undated
D Major
S, A, T, B (choir), 2 violins, viola, violoncello, phisharmonika, pianoforte
appendix ❧ 249

22. Preis der Tonkunst

4stimmiger Männerchor mit Pianofortebegleitung
1844
E-flat Major
T, T, B, B, pianoforte

23. Die Macht des Gesanges

[Friedrich] v[on] Schiller
Fantasie für Chor und Orchester
Juli 1842
C Major
S, A, T, B (choir), strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns,
2 trumpets, 3 trombones, ophicleide, timpani

24. Der Geist der Harmonie

Von Chr[istian] Schreiber
Für Männerchor, Pianoforte, und Phisharmonica
Undated
E-flat Major
T, T, B, B, Pianoforte, Phisharmonica

25. Der Geist der Harmonie

[Same as no. 24]
Parts: Pianoforte, Phisharmonica, Tenore I, Tenore II, Basso I, Basso II

26. Das Gewitter

Gedicht von [Johann Gottfried] Seume
[First version of no. 27]
Undated
E Major
T, T, B, B (choir, with T and B solo), flute, violoncello, horn, 2 Pianofortes,
Phisharmonica

27. Das Gewitter

Gedicht von [Johann Gottfried] Seume
Für 4 Chor- und Solo-Stimmen und volles Orchester
[Fragment; copy breaks off at the words “tief herab ins Thal.” Second ver-
sion of no. 26]
Undated
E Major
S, A, T, B (soloists and choir), strings, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets,
2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, ophicleide, 3 timpani
250 ❧ appendix

28. Die Kraniche des Ibykus

Ballade von [Friedrich von] Schiller.
Für Sopran, Tenor und Baß solo, und Chor. Mit Begleitung des Fortepiano und der
Phisharmonica
Undated
C Major
Parts: Pianoforte, Phisharmonica

29. Cantate, “Was schallt der Stimmen Hochgesang”

Den 11. Juli 1825 vollendet für H[er]rn v[on] Hradezky
F Major
T, T, B, B (choir, and T solo), flute, 3 horns

30. [Five songs for voice and piano; duet for soprano, bass, and piano]
a) Mädchens Klage, “Der Eichenwald brauset”
([Friedrich von] Schiller)
Angefangen den 2. März 1811
A Minor
Voice and piano
b) Der Bund, “Hast du’s in meinem Auge nicht gelesen”
([Friedrich von] Matthisson)
April 1811. Vollendet den 8. May 1811
E-flat Major
Voice and piano
c) Geheimniß, “Sie konnten nur kein Wörtchen sagen”
(F[riedrich von] Schiller)
May 1811. Vollendet den 19. July 1811
B-flat Major
Voice and piano
d) Erlkönig. “Wer reitet so spat”
([Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe)
Angefangen den 1. August 1811. Vollendet den 19. Jänner 1812
D Minor
Voice and piano
e) “Du Herzensweib, das Gott mir gab”
(Poet unknown)
Verfertigt den 29. Jänner 1812
G Major
S, B, and piano
f) Traum am Bach, “Auf blühenden Wiesen am einsamen Bach”
([Aloys Wilhelm] Schreiber)
Vollendet den 16. Jänner 1812
A Major
Voice and piano
appendix ❧ 251

31. Grande Sinfonie, Oeuvre IIieme N: I des Sinfonies

July 11, 1806
[Only one movement, certainly the first: Allegro con brio]
F Minor
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani

32. Sinfonia
Angefangen den 21. April 1814. Völlig vollendet den 9. October 1814 Abends um 9
1/2 Uhr
D Major
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani

33. Sinfonia
Angefangen den 10ten Sept[ember] 1832. Vollendet 28. September 1832
[Only the first movement, Adagio maestoso-Molto Allegro alla breve; and
Finale, Allegro vivace]
D Minor
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3
trombones, timpani

34. Sinfonie in Es. Nr: 5

1845
E-flat Major
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani

35. Sinfonia in G mol[l]

1854
G Minor
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3
trombones, timpani

36. Andante und poco sostenuto

Undated
E-flat Major
[Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons,] 2 horns, 2 trumpets, [3
trombones], timpani

37. Ouverture
[August 1826, cf. the Archive’s copy, XII 7704 (Q 18267)]
C Minor
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani
252 ❧ appendix

38. Ouverture
1835
D Minor
Strings, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets,
3 trombones, timpani

39. Ouverture
Octob[er] 1838
E Major
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani

40. Ouverture
Octob[e]r 1838
E-flat Major
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani
[The score also contains a version of this work for piano.]

41. Ouverture
[Fragment; clearly missing the second gathering of the manuscript]
Jan[uar] 1839
B-flat Major
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani

42. [Two overtures, pp. 1–43 and 44–85 of the autograph]

a) Ouverture auf Schottische Themen
Undated
B-flat Major
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani
b) Ouverture Nr: 3 sur des themes irlandais
Undated
D Major
Strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani

43. Ouverture
Undated
C Major
Strings, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trum-
pets, 3 trombones, timpani

44. I. Concerto pour Pianoforte et grand Orchestre

Angefangen den 30. März 1811. Vollendet den 22. Juni 1812
D Minor
Cembalo [sic], strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2
trumpets, timpani
appendix ❧ 253

45. Second Grand Concerto pour Pianoforte avec accompagn[ement]

Angefangen den 24. Febr[uar] 1812. Vollendet den 24. September 1814.
E-flat Major
Cembalo [sic], strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 4
trumpets, timpani

46. Fantaisia et Variations brillantes pour le Pianoforte avec l’accompagnement

Vollendet den 8ten April 1819 für Szalay
D Major
Cembalo [sic], strings, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2
trumpets, timpani
[The following sentence is marked out on the title page:] “Ces Variations
peuvent être executès avec l’accompagnement de 2 Violon, Alto et
Violoncelle, en jouant les petites notes marqueès.”

47. [Introduction, Variations, and Finale for Piano and Orchestra]

Undated
C Major
Pianoforte, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets,
timpani

48. Quartetto
1851
D Major
2 violins, viola, violoncello

49. Deux Quatuors N 33 D dur u[nd] 36 A moll

3ième Livraison
Nr: 5. en Re majeur. Comp. 1853
Nr: 6. en La mineur
[The number 6 is corrected to 36 only in the violin I part.]
Four parts
a) D Major
b) A Major
2 violins, viola, violoncello

50. Quartetto Nr: 1

Undated
D Minor
2 violins, viola, violoncello
254 ❧ appendix

51. Quartetto
Undated
B-flat Major
2 violins, viola, violoncello

52. Quartetto 3
Undated
G Minor
2 violins, viola, violoncello

53. Quartetto
Undated
E Minor
2 violins, viola, violoncello

54. Quartetto
[Identical with the parts for no. 6 in autograph 48]
Undated
A Minor
2 violins, viola, violoncello

55. Quatuor
[Fair copy by a copyist, with essential additions and corrections by Czerny]
Undated
D Minor
Piano-Forte, violin, viola, violoncello

56. Trio Nr: II

1850
G Major
Violin, viola, violoncello

57. Trio Nr: III

1850
C Minor
Violin, viola, violoncello

58. Trio
Den 16. August 1810 angefangen. Im März 1812 fortgesetzt. Vollendet den 19ten
April 1812
B Major
[Piano, violin, violoncello]
appendix ❧ 255

59. [Sonata]
Den 17. Februar 1810 angefangen. Den 7ten März 1810 vollendet.
F Minor
Cembalo [sic], Violin

60. Sonata concertante pour Piano et Violon

Octob[er] u[nd] Nov[ember] 1848
E-flat Major
Pianoforte, violin

61. Sonata
4.t[er] August 1850. Vollendet 16. August 1850
A Major
Pianoforte, Violino

62. And[an]te e Polacca per Corno, con accomp[agnamento] di Pianoforte

Undated
E Major
Horn, Pianoforte

63. Duo Concertante pour Harpe et Piano sur des Motifs de “Linda di Chamonix” de
Donizetti [. . .] composée [. . .] par Charles Czerny et E. Parish Alvars. Czerny opus
719. Alvars opus 63
[Complete autograph by Carl Czerny]
Undated
B-flat Major
Harp, piano

64. Introduktion und Variationen für zwei Klaviere

Undated
A Major
Pianoforte Imo, Pianoforte IIdo

65. Rondo brillant pour Pianoforte a 4 mains

Angefangen d[en] 21. Sept[ember] 1818. Vollendet den 3ten October 1818
F Major
Piano four hands

66. Ouverture [marked out: tragique; marked out: characteristique] 4 mani, [Op. 54]
Im Sept[ember] 1823. Vollendet den 24. Sept[ember] [1]823
[cf. Autograph 67]
B Minor
Piano four hands
256 ❧ appendix

67. Ouverture fantasque pour le Pianoforte à 4 mains, Op. 54

[Identical with the work presented in score in no. 66; here in parts on facing
pages]
1823
B Minor
Piano four hands

68. Ouverture à 4 mani, Op. 142

Undated
C Minor
Piano four hands

69. Sonate [added afterward by Czerny:] pittoresque

Angefangen im November 1809. Im Dezember 1809 vollendet
[This date clearly pertains only to the first movement. The second move-
ment is already written in a somewhat changed hand. This movement pro-
ceeds, attaca, into a third movement, at the end of which is written: vollendet
den 17ten Sept[ember] 1814. This is linked to an added Menuett with Trio,
dated at its end with: vollendet den 18. September 1814.]
E-flat Major
Piano (two hands)

70. Allegro molto

Undated
B Minor
Piano (two hands)

71. Allegro molto vivo

Undated
G Major
Piano (two hands)

72. [Fragment of a composition for piano (a composition for piano and orchestra?)]
Undated
C Minor
Piano (two hands)

73. Exercises
Undated
No. 1–No. 2, No. 4–No. 5, [No. 6]–[No. 21], numbered consecutively in
gatherings: 1–20 (each a bifolio)
Piano (two hands)
appendix ❧ 257

74. Allegro
Undated
C Major
Piano (two hands)
[Numbered as sheet or gathering 6]

75. Allegretto
Undated
C Major
Piano (two hands)
[Numbered as gathering 10]

76. Molto All[egr]o

On the reverse side: Molto Alle[gro], Fragment, breaks off after seven meas-
ures
Undated
C Major
Piano (two hands)
[Numbered as sheet 11]

77. Six Grands Allegros d’Etude

Undated
Piano (two hands)

78. [Six] Etude[n]

Undated
G Major, B Major, D-flat Major, B-flat Major, A-flat Major
Piano (two hands)

79. [Fourteen piano pieces]

Numbered as Nos. 2–4 and 6–16
Undated
Piano (two hands)
[Paginated as pp. 3–8 and 11–35, pp. 9–10 would certainly have included
no. 5]

80. Vivace giocoso

Undated
C Major
Piano (two hands)
[Numbered as 11]
258 ❧ appendix

81. Vivace
Undated
G Major
Piano (two hands)
[Numbered as 35]

82. [Twenty-four piano pieces]

Undated
C Minor, G Major, F Major, C Major, E-flat Major, A-flat Major, A Major, A-
flat Major, B-flat Major, B-flat Major, F Minor, D Major, A Major, G Major, E-
flat Major, B-flat Major, B Minor, E Minor, C Major, A-flat Major, A-flat Major,
G Major, A Major, D Minor
Piano (two hands)
[Numbered as gatherings 29–48 and 52]

83. [Five piano pieces]

Undated
C Major, F Major, C Major, C Major, A Minor
Piano (two hands)
[Numbered as gatherings 12–16]

84. [Twenty-seven piano pieces]

Original numbering: nos. 8–29; five more added later. Then no. 17 marked
out and the old numbers 8–16 renumbered as 45–53, nos. 18–29 and the
five added pieces numbered 34–50. The overlapping numbers, however,
refer to different pieces.
The original numbers 8–14 each have this note in Czerny’s hand, marked
out: Composed for Hamiltons Modern Instructions
Undated
C Major, C Major, C Major, C Major, C Major, C Major, F Major, F Major, F
Major, G Major, G Major, C Major, C Major, C Major, B-flat Major, B-flat
Major, B-flat Major, E-flat Major, C Major, C Major, D Major, G Major, C
Major, C Major, C Major, C Major, A Major
Piano (two hands)
[Five gatherings, the first and the third numbered as gathering 27 and 28,
respectively]

85. Allegretto con animo

Undated
B-flat Major
Piano (two hands)
appendix ❧ 259

86. Rondino Nr: 2. Czaar und Zimmermann. Op: 766 Nr: 2

Undated
E-flat Major
Piano (two hands)

87. Rondino Nr: 3. Norma [added in another hand:] de Bellini. Op: 766 Nr: 3.
Undated
F Major
Piano (two hands)

88. Rondino Nr: 4. Sonnambula [added in another hand:] de Bellini. Op: 766 Nr: 4.
Undated
F Major
Piano (two hands)

89. Rondino Nr: 5. Fille da Regiment Op: 766 Nr: 5

Undated
F-Major
Piano (two hands)

90. Rondino Nr: 6 L’elisir d’amore Op: 766 Nr: 6.

Undated
A Major
Piano (two hands)

91. Rondoletto Nr: 1. |: Ô passe tems:| Fröhlicher Sing(. . .) aus Balfe’s Liebesb[runnen],
[Op. 772/1]
Undated
E-flat Major
Piano (two hands)

92. Nr: I. Rondoletto en Bacchanale [Op. 770/1]

Undated
F Major
Piano (two hands)

93. Nr: II. Rondoletto di Campanella [Op. 770/2]

Undated
E-flat Major
Piano (two hands)
260 ❧ appendix

94. Andantino
[No. 10 from: Fleurs Mélodiques, Op. 791]
Undated
B-flat Major
Piano (two hands)

95. 2te Abteilung

36 Übungen zur Förderung der Fingergelenkigkeit, Op: 829. 2te Abteilung
Undated
[For the continuation see autograph 96]
Piano (two hands)
[Thirty-six paginated pages bound together in ten gatherings, together
numbered as gathering 21]
[Not published with the opus number 829; the Melodisch-brillante Studien für
das Pianoforte, published as Op. 829 by C. A. Spina in Vienna do not corre-
spond to these pieces.]

96. 3te Abtheilung

30 Übungen nebst 1 Capriccio. Zur Ausbildung der höhern Fertigkeit, Op: 829. 3te
Abtheilung
Undated
[cf. autograph 95]
Piano (two hands)
[Seventy-four paginated pages bound together in eighteen gatherings,
together numbered as gathering 22]
[Not published with the opus number 829; the Melodisch-brillante Studien für
das Pianoforte, published as Op. 829 by C. A. Spina in Vienna do not corre-
spond to these pieces.]

97. [Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37]
Manuscript score
Below the score, Czerny’s version of this piano concerto for piano (two
hands) is notated on two lines
Undated
Piano (two hands)

98. [Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58]
Manuscript score
Below the score, Czerny’s version of this piano concerto for piano (two
hands) is notated on two lines.
Undated
Piano (two hands)
appendix ❧ 261

99. Troisième Grand Quatuor pour Pianoforte, Violon, Alte & Violoncello. |: Gmoll :|
composè par Charles Czerny. Œuvre. ?
Manuscript score
[Fragment: the upper left corner is torn from the first two pages, so that in
mm. 1 and 15 the string parts are entirely missing, and partially in m. 14;
in m. 15 two notes are also missing from the piano part.]
6.ten July 1837
On the last page of the score, Czerny added a slow introduction for the first
movement in his own hand.

100. Quartetto in C mol

Manuscript parts with corrections and additions by Czerny himself.
Undated, but obviously related to the performance of this quartet by the
Hellmesberger Quartet, November 16, 1851.
Contributors
GEORGE BARTH is professor of teaching at Stanford University, where he holds
the Billie Bennett Achilles Directorship of Keyboard Programs. His specialties
include the piano music of Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Ives, and Bartók, and
his research probes the relationship between reading and performing, espe-
cially the growth and change of expressive vocabularies from the late eighteenth
to the early twenty-first century. Among his publications are the CD-ROM
Understanding Beethoven: The Mind of the Master for the Oxford–Stanford–Yale
Alliance for Lifelong Learning, the book The Pianist as Orator: Beethoven and the
Transformation of Keyboard Style, the Beethoven Cello Sonatas recorded on period
instruments with cellist Stephen Harrison of the Ives Quartet, and Schubert’s
Winterreise with mezzo-soprano Miriam Abramowitsch. His articles and reviews
appear in the second edition of the New Grove Dictionary, Early Music, Hungarian
Quarterly, Music & Letters, Early Keyboard Studies Newsletter, Humanities magazine,
and Music Library Association Notes. He is presently working on a critical edition
of Ives’s First Piano Sonata for the Ives Society.

OTTO BIBA is director of the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in

Wien. He has published extensively on a wide variety of musical-historical topics,
particularly from the eighteenth century to the present, including books on
Schubert, Brahms, Zemlinsky, and others. He has published over 130 editions of
compositions, primarily from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

ATTILIO BOTTEGAL graduated in musicology from Pavia University in 1999 and

subsequently specialized in paleography as well as archives and record manage-
ment at the State Archive of Rome in 2001. In 2002 he completed a master’s
degree in musical philology at the Faculty of Musicology in Cremona. He has
worked with the Stichting-Fondazione Pietro Antonio Locatelli (Amsterdam-
Cremona), with the Archivo Luigi Nono (Venice), and with the Dutch University
Institute for Art History (Florence). He is co-editor of the volume Il Fondo musi-
cale Albert Dunning: Catalogo (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005) and has contributed to
national and international musical journals.
264 ❧ list of contributors

DEANNA C. DAVIS is a doctoral candidate in musicology at the University of

Alberta and holder of a Canadian Graduate Fellowship from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her research focuses on the ide-
ology and practice of domestic music in early nineteenth-century Germany and
Austria, particularly as they relate to gender and the body. Her dissertation
examines epistolary music pedagogy as a textual mediation of the private body
and an instrument for subject organization, social control, and management.

JAMES DEAVILLE is associate professor of music in the School for Studies in Art
and Culture of Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He has spoken and pub-
lished on the music of Liszt and his circle in Weimar, Wagner, Mahler, Strauss,
Reger, music criticism, music and gender, television music, and music and race.
He is the editor of Wagner in Rehearsal 1875–1876: The Diaries of Richard Fricke
(Pendragon, 1997), and co-editor (with Günter Wagner) of Peter Cornelius,
Gesammelte Aufsätze. Gedanken über Musik und Theater, Poesie und bildende Kunst
(Schott, 2004). He has contributed chapters to books published by Cambridge,
Princeton, Yale, Routledge, and Ashgate (among others) and articles to ency-
clopedias including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Die
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. He has published essays and reviews in a wide
variety of journals, among them American Music, Echo, Notes, Canadian University
Music Review, Journal of Musicological Research, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and
Studien zur Wertungsforschung.

INGRID FUCHS, born in Vienna, studied musicology at the University in Vienna

and violoncello at the Vienna University for Music. From 1981 to 1999 she
served on the staff of the Committee for Musicological Research at the Austrian
Academy of Sciences, Vienna, and from 1986 to 1996 as general secretary of the
Austrian Musicological Society. Since September 1999, she has been vice-director
of the Archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. She has collabo-
rated on numerous international musicological projects, conferences, and exhi-
bitions, and is a regular speaker at musicological conferences and editor of
congress reports. She publishes on the music of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and
twentieth centuries, especially that of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms,
Bruckner, and Gottfried von Einem.

DAVID GRAMIT teaches musicology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton,

Canada. A recipient of the Alfred Einstein Award of the American Musicological
Society for his work on the intellectual and aesthetic context of Franz Schubert’s
circle, he has published on a variety of topics including Schubert’s Lieder, the
social construction of musical meaning in the nineteenth century, and the social
history of German musical culture. He is the author of Cultivating Music: The
Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770–1848 (University
of California Press, 2002).
list of contributors ❧ 265

ALICE M. HANSON is professor of music at St. Olaf College in Northfield,

Minnesota. Her doctoral studies at the University of Illinois (1980) and subse-
quent research have focused on the political, economic, and social contexts of
music and musicians in Vienna during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Notable among her publications is Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna (Cambridge
University Press, 1985).

Pianist ANTON KUERTI was born in Austria, grew up in the United States, and has
lived in Canada for the past thirty-five years. His teachers have included Arthur
Loesser, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and Rudolf Serkin. His distinguished perform-
ing career has included tours to nearly forty countries, including Japan, Russia,
and most of Europe. He has performed with most of the major U.S. orchestras
and conductors, such as the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony
(Menuhin), Cleveland Orchestra (Szell), Philadelphia Orchestra (Ormandy),
and the orchestras of Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San
Francisco. In June, 2002, Anton Kuerti served as director of the world’s first
Czerny Festival in Edmonton. Artists such as the St. Lawrence String Quartet
and violinist Erika Raum joined Anton Kuerti in celebrating the works of Carl
Czerny at Convocation Hall and the Winspear Centre.

MARIE SUMNER LOTT is a PhD candidate in musicology at the Eastman School of

Music. Her research focuses on chamber music in Europe during the period
1830–80 with a special emphasis on the relationship between publishing, audi-
ences, and the development of musical style. She has presented papers at con-
ferences such as the 14th International Conference on Nineteenth-Century
Music in Manchester, England; Instrumental Music and the Industrial Revolution
in Cremona, Italy; and the annual meetings of the Rocky Mountain and New
York–St. Lawrence chapters of the American Musicological Society. She has also
published articles and reviews in the Journal of Musicological Research, Music Library
Association Notes, and the Journal of the Association of Recorded Sound Collections.

JAMES PARAKILAS is the James L. Moody, Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts
at Bates College, where he has taught since 1979. His publications include Piano
Roles: 300 Years of Life with the Piano (Yale University Press, 2000), Ballads without
Words: Chopin and the Tradition of the Instrumental Ballade (Amadeus Press, 1992),
and the critical anthology The Nineteenth-Century Piano Ballade (A-R Editions,
1990). He is currently writing an introduction to opera for Prentice Hall.

MICHAEL SAFFLE is professor of music and humanities in the Department of

Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Tech. He is editor of American entries for
the new edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart and has written for the
Journal of the American Musicological Society, Acta musicologica, Notes, the
Programmhefte of Bayreuth’s Wagner Festival, Music & Letters, and the Leonardo
266 ❧ list of contributors

Music Journal as well as the International Dictionary of Black Composers. His books
include Franz Liszt: A Guide to Research (rev. ed. New York: Routledge, 2004); he
also edits the “Franz Liszt Studies Series” for Pendragon Press and has published
chapters on American music, including film music and music and national iden-
tity issues, in a variety of university presses; his forthcoming biography of
American composer Edward MacDowell was commissioned by the University of
Illinois Press. As a teacher Saffle has three times won Virginia Tech’s Certificate
of Teaching Excellence and recently received the William E. Wine Award from
Tech’s Academy of Teaching Excellence; as a scholar he has held fellowships
from the Fulbright and Humboldt Foundations as well as the American
Philosophical Society; in 2000–2001 he served as Bicentennial Fulbright
Distinguished Professor of American Studies at the University of Helsinki. In
December 2006, on his sixtieth birthday, he was honored with a Festschrift pub-
lished as an issue of the cultural studies e-journal Spaces of Identity.

FRANZ A. J. SZABO is professor of Austrian and Habsburg history and director of

the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University
of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He has published widely in Europe and in
North America on the subject of Habsburg enlightened absolutism, and is the
author of Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism, 1753–1780, published by
Cambridge University Press in 1994, which won both the Barbara Jelavich Prize
of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in 1995 and
the Austrian Cultural Institute Prize for best book in Austrian studies in 1996.
He has also lectured widely on art historical, musical, and other cultural topics,
including at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the
Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.

DOUGLAS TOWNSEND, composer and musicologist, was born in 1921 in New York
City and graduated from Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art. In 1941 he
began several years of study in composition with, successively, Tibor Serly, Stefan
Wolpe, Aaron Copland, Otto Luening, and Felix Greissle. To date, his composi-
tions range from symphonies and concertos to band, choral, and chamber
music. His principal publishers are C. F. Peters and Carl Fischer. As a musicolo-
gist, aided by research grants to Europe, Townsend has brought to light and
edited over fifty compositions from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Many of these have been published, performed, and/or recorded, including an
overture and a concerto by Carl Czerny. He has researched and written numer-
ous program notes, liner notes, and articles, many of which he contributed to
the Musical Heritage Review, which he edited from 1977 to 1980. He has taught
at Brooklyn College, CUNY; Lehman College, CUNY; and Purchase College
(SUNY Purchase). He is currently an adjunct professor in the Music Department
of the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He continues to live, write, edit,
and compose at his home in New York City.
list of contributors ❧ 267

JOHN WIEBE received his DMus in choral conducting at the University of Alberta
and is founder and director of the Abendmusik Ensemble and director of the
Edmonton Youth Choir. His academic and performance interests range widely,
from contemporary repertoire to the concerted Mass of the early nineteenth
century. Among his projects is a performance edition and analysis of Czerny’s
Mass No. 2 in C Major.
Index of Names
Page numbers in italics indicate an illustration or musical example. For compositions by
Carl Czerny and others, please refer to the Index of Works.

Alkan, Charles-Valentin, 140 of, 85–90, 108–23, 125–27, 133–35;

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 35, 238 Czerny’s recollections of, 34, 36, 38–39,
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Leipzig), 56, 82–83, 94, 96, 99–100; deafness of,
15, 16, 34, 55, 91–92, 93, 146, 221 99; death of, 29, 38–39, 82; funeral of,
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Vienna), 55 29, 82; improvisation by, 204; and
Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung: Czerny’s keyboard fantasy, 206, 210, 220,
article for, 36, 38–39, 83, 91, 92, 96; 221–22; and move to Vienna, 2, 24;
evaluations of Czerny in, 237 playing style of, 113–17, 133; self-
Allgemeine Zeitung (Augsburg), 218 organized concerts by, 17; as teacher of
Auber, Daniel François, 215, 217 Czerny, xi, 2, 19, 25, 38, 83, 111, 139,
Auernhammer, Josepha Barbara, 43, 44, 159, 220, 237; and testimonial for
46, 47, 50n33 Czerny, 83, 84, 138n31; variation
technique of, 188
Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel, 205; Versuch Belleville, Anna (Ninnete) de, 26
über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, Bellini, Vincenzo, 30, 204
206, 225n17 Berliner Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 55
Bach, Johann Christian, 128 Berlinische musikalische Zeitung, 53
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 18, 43, 46, 47, Berlioz, Hector, 165, 222, 223
48, 57, 160, 177, 231, 238; Bach Biedermeier era, 17, 27; and Czerny’s
Gesellschaft edition of (complete sacred music, 145, 151–52, 157
works), 236; Griepenkerl edition of, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums
109–10; The Well-Tempered Clavier, 108, Oesterreich, 238
109 Blanchard, Henri, 237–38
Badura-Skoda, Paul, 86 Blangini, Giuseppe, 204
Baker’s Biographical Dictionary, 229, 239, Bohak, Johann, 42, 45, 50n31
240 Brahms, Johannes, 11, 12, 19, 177, 188,
Beethoven, Karl van (composer’s 192; and Czerny’s interpretations of
nephew), 26, 38, 83 Beethoven, 86, 89–90, 89–90
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 2, 23, 27, 43, 46, Brendel, Franz, Geschichte der Musik, 60, 238
47, 48, 57, 77, 145, 161, 166, 199, 205, Bruckner, Anton, 140–41
241; as avant-garde, 11, 12, 13–14, 15, Bülow, Hans von, 223
131; bagatelles of, 173; and “Beethoven
Paradigm,” 231, 232; as championed by Cäcilia (journal), 232–33, 235
Czerny, 3, 4, 6, 82–100, 231; Czerny’s Cappi (music publisher), 24
arrangements/revisions of, 91–96, 97, Cather, Willa, 1–2; Song of the Lark, 2
98, 115–22, 125–27, 126–28, 132; and Chopin, Frédéric, 30, 112, 113, 143, 160,
Czerny’s display of virtuosity, 91, 173, 177
111–12, 125; Czerny’s interpretations Choron, Alexandre-Étienne, 108
270 ❧ index of names

Clementi, Muzio, 18, 26, 37, 43, 46, 47, 109; Theoretical Works on Harmony,
48, 57, 112, 113, 159–60 Melody, Counterpoint, and Dramatic
Cocks, Robert, and company of, 30, 36, Composition (Reicha), 30; The Well-
39; and posthumous inventory of Tempered Clavier (Bach), 108, 109
Czerny’s works, 146 Czerny, Carl, memoirs/reminiscences of,
Cocks, Robert, Jr., “The Genius 34–48; Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen,
Beethoven, with Reminiscences 35–47; recollections of Beethoven, 36,
Communicated by Carl Czerny,” 96 38–39, 56, 82–83, 94, 96, 99–100; short
Cocks’s Musical Miscellany, 36, 96, 99 autobiography, 35, 39, 40, 47–48. See
Complete Theoretical and Practical Pianoforte also Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben;
School (Czerny). See Index of Works Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen aus der
Congress of Vienna, 12, 15, 25 Zeit meiner Kindheit und Jugend
Corelli, Arcangelo, 109 Czerny, Carl, musical autographs by
Cramer, Johann Baptist, 112 (checklist of archival holdings), 245–61
Czartoryska, Princess Marcelina, 28 Czerny, Carl, musical works of, 139–44;
Czernin, Count Eugen, 28 first compositions, 14, 25, 26, 142–43;
Czerny, Carl, 23–32; and amateur keyboard fantasies, 202–23; orchestral
musicians, 67–69, 74–77; Beethoven’s works, 159–77; piano exercises and
testimonial for, 83, 84, 138n31; birth etudes, xi, 2, 18, 67, 139, 140, 145,
of, 24, 37, 41, 44, 47, 48; as 160, 161, 166, 179, 218, 220, 232–33,
champion/“ambassador” of Beethoven, 234–35, 236, 238, 239; plate numbers
3, 4, 6, 82–100, 231; and classical-music for, 224n9; sacred music, 145–57, 237;
tradition of performance practice, string quartets, 179–99. See also Index of
110–14, 121–23, 133–34, 136; as Works
composer, 139–44; as conformist, Czerny, Carl, and work of Beethoven,
14–17; critical evaluation of, 229–41; 85–98; arrangements/revisions, 91–96,
criticisms of, 14, 108, 140; death of, 31, 97, 98, 115–22, 125–27, 126–28, 132;
99, 140; as embodiment of musical editions, 116, 125–27, 127–28, 136;
“conception,” 132–36; and epistolary interpretations/commentaries, 85–90,
pedagogy, 70–74; first compositions, 14, 108–23, 125–27, 126–28, 133–35; and
25, 26, 142–43; hidden works by, notes by Brahms, 86, 89–90, 89–90;
16–17, 18; modesty/reticence of, 17, performances of, 91, 101n10, 102n11,
39, 134, 139; “musical circles” held by, 111–12
26, 85, 92; as music teacher, 26–27, 28, Czerny, Maria (mother), 24, 37, 41,
47, 48, 83; obituaries of, 18; public 42–43, 44, 45, 46
performances by, 14, 24–25, 56, 91, Czerny, Wenzel (father), 24, 37, 41,
101n10, 102n11, 111–12, 125, 146, 42–43, 44–46, 47, 48, 49n21
158n5; as student of Beethoven, xi, 2,
19, 25, 38, 83, 111, 139, 159, 220, 237; Dahlhaus, Carl, 1–2, 133–34, 232, 235
as teacher of Liszt, xi, 2, 29, 52–53, Diabelli, Anton, 95, 126, 218
56–61, 111, 139, 218–19, 220; as Döhler, Theodor, 57
“transmitter” of Beethoven, 179; Donizetti, Gaetano, 204
unfulfilled love of, 17–18, 28; and use Doppelgänger theme, in literature and
of metronome, 115–17, 136; on music, 188
virtuosity, 38, 44, 47, 56–61, 75–77, 83, Dorfmüller, Kurt, 95
85, 99–100; virtuosity displayed by, 91, Dussek, Jan Ladislav, 112
95–96, 111–12, 125, 140, 143, 205, Dvor¤ák, Antonín, 173
206, 220; will/bequests of, 31, 36. See
also entries immediately below, entries for Eberl, Anton, 44, 47, 50n35
specific written works, and Index of Works Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich, 238
Czerny, Carl, editions by, 231; of Eiserle, Eugène, 35, 96
Beethoven’s work, 116, 125–27, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Czerny),
127–28, 136; of Scarlatti’s sonatas, 108, 23, 30, 34, 85, 146, 159–60; on
❧
index of names 271

Beethoven, 82–83, 94; as compared to Hugo, Victor, 222

Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen, 35–37, Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, 29, 55, 56,
38–39; as published posthumously, 56, 57, 76, 77, 112, 113, 132, 145, 204
96
Ertmann, Baroness Dorothea, 85 Jahn, Otto, 31, 36, 99
Joseph II, Emperor, 23, 147
Ferdinand I of Austria, Emperor, 31
Ferdinandi, Abbé Franz, 37, 41, 42, 44, Kalkbrenner, Friedrich, 53, 55, 76, 112,
45, 50n27 113, 238
Fétis, François-Joseph, 108, 238 Kanne, Friedrich August, 55
Fink, Gottfried Wilhelm, 15 Kerman, Joseph, 7
Franz II (later Franz I of Austria), Kerst, Friedrich, Erinnerungen an Beethoven,
Emperor, 23 36
Franz Joseph I of Austria, Emperor, 31 Kiesewetter, Raphael, 29
Frimmel, Theodor von, 35 Kinsky, Georg, and Hans Halm, Das Werk
Beethovens: Thematisch-Bibliographisches
Gazette musicale (journal), 236 Verzeichnis, 95
Gelinek, Abbé Joseph, 24, 37, 41, 42, 44, Kistner, Julius, 99
45, 50n23 “Klassizismus,” 12–13, 131
Georgii, Walter, Karl Maria von Weber als Klemm, Josef, 18
Klavierkomponist, 179 Korngold, Erich Wolfgang, 142
Gerber, Ernst Ludwig, 221–22; Tonkünstler- Kozeluch, Johann Antonin, 37, 41, 43, 45,
Lexicon, 34, 58 46, 50n24
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, Kozeluch, Leopold, 50n33, 159
4, 14, 18, 29, 82, 85, 95; archival Krumpholz, Wenzel, 25, 82–83, 142
holdings of Czerny’s musical autographs Kuhlau, Friedrich, 180, 188
(checklist), 245–61; archival holdings Kurzböck, Magdalene von, 43, 44, 46, 47,
of Czerny’s work (general), 3, 5, 16, 35, 51n34
86, 87–88, 91–92, 92, 141, 200n4;
Czerny’s bequests to, 31, 36; and Landsteiner, Karl, 13
Czerny centenary, 100, 144; foundation Lanner, Josef, 236
of, 26; orchestra of, 31 Leopold II, Emperor, 23
Graf, Conrad, 17 Leschetizky, Theodor, 111
Griepenkerl, Friedrich Conrad, 109–10 Letters to a Young Lady on the Art of Playing
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 238 the Pianoforte (Czerny), 6, 67–78, 112
Lichnowsky, Count Moritz, 83
Hamburger Theater-Chronik, 35, 96 Lichnowsky, Prince Karl, 28
Handel, George Frideric, 47, 48, 238 Lipavsky, Joseph, 24, 37, 42, 43, 45, 46,
Hanslick, Eduard, 222 50n26
Harmonicon (journal), 234–36 Liszt, Adam (composer’s father), 53, 56,
Haslinger (music publisher), 24, 116 57, 58
Haslinger, Tobias, 173 Liszt, Franz, 2, 6, 8, 23, 31, 99–100, 112,
Haydn, Joseph, 2, 12, 14, 51n34, 220, 113, 141, 177, 188; adaptations by,
238; as influence on Czerny, 18, 148, 217–18; improvisation by, 218; and
159, 166, 168, 180, 199 keyboard fantasy, 202, 206, 210, 215,
Heine, Heinrich, 222 217–18, 219–23; public performances
Hemans, Felicia, 143 by, 218; and recital, 222; as student of
Henning, Carl Wilhelm, 94 Czerny, xi, 2, 29, 52–53, 56–61, 111,
Herz, Henri, 30, 238 139, 218–19, 220; tone poems of, 173;
Hochnagel, Joseph, 29 as virtuoso, 56–61, 76, 139, 143, 218,
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 165 220, 221
Holmes, Edward, 29 Loesser, Arthur, Men, Women and Pianos,
Horowitz, Vladimir, 223 140
272 ❧ index of names

Löhlein, Georg Simon, Clavier-Schule, 58 Nicolai, Otto, 29

Luib, Ferdinand, 96 Niedermeyer, Louis, 108
Nottebohm, Gustav, 7, 99
MacArdle, Donald W., 35
Mahler, Gustav, 11 Onslow, George, 180, 188–89
Mälzl, Johann Nepomuk, metronome of,
116 Paganini, Nicolò, 29, 56, 60, 221
Mandyczewski, Eusebius, 100 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 153
Marx, Adolf Bernhard, 55 Pixis, Johann Peter, 30, 218
Mattheson, Johann Georg, Vollkommener Pleyel, Ignaz, 43, 46
Kapellmeister, 14 Pohl, Carl Ferdinand, 35, 82, 238
Mayer, Charles, 18 Preyer, Gottfried, 17
Mechetti, Pietro, 224n9 Probst, Heinrich Albert, 91–92, 94
Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen aus der Pruckner, Dionÿs, 219
Zeit meiner Kindheit und Jugend (Czerny),
35–39, 41–44; as compared to Quantz, Johann Joachim, Versuch einer
Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 35–37, Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen,
38–39; English translation of, 44–47; 109
State of Piano Music in the Years
1790–1800 (appendix), 38, 43–44, Rafael, Ignaz or František, 42, 45, 50n28
46–47 Ramann, Lina, 60
Mendel, Hermann, Musikalisches “Recollections”/“Reminiscences”
Conversations-Lexikon, 238 (Czerny). See Erinnerungen aus meinem
Mendelssohn, Felix, 12, 142, 180; and Leben; Meine musikalischen Erinnerungen
similarities to Czerny, 16, 108, 141, 160, aus der Zeit meiner Kindheit und Jugend
161, 171–72, 173, 192, 199, 241; and “Remarks on the Correct Interpretation of
“songs without words,” 173 Beethoven’s Symphonies” (Czerny), 96
Metternich, Clemens von: “preservation Reicha, Anton, 30, 199n2
and persistence” policy of, 12, 13, 15, Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, 53–54
17; and revolution of 1848, 31; state Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (journal),
repression/censorship under, 12, 236, 237
25–26, 27 Richter, Jean Paul, 188, 200n8
Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 112 Riemann, Hugo, Musik-Lexikon, 238, 239
Moscheles, Ignaz, 55, 57, 108, 112, 113 Ries, Ferdinand, 57, 95
Mozart, Constanze (composer’s wife), 159 Rossini, Gioachino, 3, 15, 29, 204
Mozart, Franz Xaver (composer’s son), 159 Rubinstein, Artur, 223
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 2, 12, 13, 41, Ruzicka, Wenzel, 42, 45, 50n29
45, 50n33, 112, 142, 145, 220, 238;
Czerny’s arrangements/revisions of, Saint-Saëns, Camille, 140
128, 129–30, 131–32; Czerny’s Salieri, Antonio, 29
childhood study/performance of, Scarlatti, Domenico, 108, 109, 231
24–25, 37, 43, 46, 47, 48, 159; as Schantz, Johann, 42, 45, 50n30
influence on Czerny, 18, 157, 159–60, Schiller, Friedrich: Maria Stuart, 24; Ode
161, 177; and performance practice, an die Freude (setting by Beethoven),
113, 114; Violin Sonatas of, 43, 46 222
Schilling, Gustav, 54
Napoleon Bonaparte, 23–24, 25 Schindler, Anton, 90, 95, 99, 134
Napoleonic Wars, 12, 15, 25 Schlegel, Friedrich, Florentin, 24
Neue Wiener Musik-Zeitung, 96 Schmidt, August, 36, 38, 96. See also
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 34 Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung
New German School of music, 59, 60 Schnapp, Friedrich, 34
Newman, William, The Sonata Since Schott (music publisher), 30, 233
Beethoven, 179 Schubert, Franz, 2, 13, 19, 27, 140, 159,
❧
index of names 273

220; as avant-garde, 11–12, 13, 14, 131; Tomášek, Václav Jan Kr¤ titel, 43, 46,
church compositions by, 146; death of, 50n32; eclogues of, 173
29; impromptus of, 173; as influence Tovey, Donald Francis, 7, 108
on Czerny, 143, 161, 166, 168;
lyrical/melodic qualities of, 141, 154, Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 223
161, 168, 188; self-organized concert Verdi, Giuseppe, 31
by, 17, 28–29 Victoria, Queen, 17, 30
Schumann, Clara, 86, 139 Vienna, 23–32; avant-garde composers in,
Schumann, Robert, 11, 16, 192, 199, 220; 11; “Klassizismus” in, 12–13, 131; living
alternate personalities of, 188; and conditions in, 26, 27–28, 30–31;
criticisms of Czerny, 108, 140; string musical scene in, 28–29; music
quartets of, 180 publishing in, 16; state
Schünemann, Georg, 35 repression/censorship in, 12, 25–26,
Schuppanzigh, Ignaz, 91 27; revolution in, 31. See also
Schuppanzigh concerts, 14, 91, 102n11, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde
111, 125 in Wien; Metternich, Clemens von
Scott, Sir Walter, “The Lady of the Lake,” 14 Vivaldi, Antonio, 160, 177
Sedlnitsky, Joseph, 25–26 Vormärz era, 30–31. See also Metternich,
Senn, Johann, 27 Clemens von
Simrock, Nicholas, 116, 136
Slonimsky, Nicolas, 239 Wagner, Johann Jakob, 55
Sonnleithner, Leopold von, 95; Czerny’s Wagner, Richard, 31, 223
Ableben, 35; and Czerny’s will, 36 Wanhal, Johann, 24, 37, 41–42, 43, 45,
Spina, C. A., 136n4 46, 50n25
Spohr, Louis, 180, 188–89, 199n2 Weber, Carl Maria von, 29, 171, 204
Stadler, Maximilian, 44, 47, 51n38 Weber, William, 230–31, 235
State of Piano Music in the Years 1790–1800 Wehmeyer, Grete, 25, 56, 59; Carl Czerny
(appendix to Czerny’s Meine und die Einzelhaft am Klavier, 3, 239
musikalischen Erinnerungen), 38, 43–44, Wendt, F. A., 55
46–47 “Werk-Vezeichnis” (Beethoven catalog).
Steibelt, Daniel, 204 See Kinsky, Georg, and Hans Halm
Sterkel, Johann Franz Xavier, 44, 47, 51n37 Wieck, Friedrich, 139
Strauss, Johann, Jr., 31, 236 Wiedebein, Gottlob, 25
Stravinsky, Igor, 223, 239 Wiener Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung. See
Streicher, Johann Andreas, 24 Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung
Stross, Father Virgilius, 43, 46 Windischgrätz, Prince Alfred, 31
Wintzingerode, Eberhard von, 34, 35
Thalberg, Sigismond, 30, 76, 112, 113, Wölfl, Joseph, 44, 47, 51n35
206 “Works in Manuscript” (in Czerny’s
Thayer, Alexander Wheelock, 99 memoirs), 146
Thibaut, Anton Friedrich Justus, 108
Tieck, Ludwig, Romantische Dichtung, 24 Zellner, Leopold Alexander, 18, 35
Index of Works
Page numbers in italics indicate an illustration or musical example.

WORKS BY CARL CZERNY

WORKS FOR PIANO Symphony No. 8 in F Major

(Beethoven), arrangement for two
Arrangements and Variations pianos, 95
“Variations brillantes,” two-hand
“Les Charmes de Baden” (Op. 45), rondo arrangement of Beethoven’s Violin
pastoral of fantasy-variations on popular Sonata No. 9 in A Minor, 95
waltz tune, 204, 224n9, 233–34 Variations Concertantes for Piano and Violin
“Les Charmes de l’Amitié/Das Glück der (Op. 1), 25, 142
Freundschaft” (Beethoven),
arrangement of (Op. 55), 95
Deux Rondinos sur des motifs de la “Reine de Fantasies
Chypre” et de la “Favorite,” 242n9 Bijoux à la Sontag (Op. 678), 215; “Don
Fantaisie élégante ou Potpourri brillant sur les Juan,” 217, 217
thèmes favoris de l’ópéra La dame blanche The Burning of Wiener Neustadt (Op. 19),
(Op. 131), 204, 224n9 204
Fantasy and Variations on Romance by “Les Charmes de Baden” (Op. 45), rondo
Giuseppe Blangini, for piano and strings pastoral of fantasy-variations on popular
(Op. 3), 26, 204 waltz tune, 204, 224n9, 233–34
“God Save the King,” variations for solo Fantaisie (Op. 27), 206, 208, 209–10
piano (Op. 77), 204 Fantaisie brillante sur des airs Irlandais
Introduction, Variations, et Polonaise on “Tu (Op. 468), 215
vedrai la sventurata,” from Bellini’s Il Fantaisie dans le Style moderne, ou Potpourri
Pirata (Op. 160), 234 brillant (Op. 64), 215, 224n9
Oberon (Weber), impromptu and Fantaisie d’une Romance variée (Op. 37),
variations on (Op. 134), 204 224n9
Overture in C Major (Beethoven), two- Fantaisie élégante, ou Potpourri brillant sur les
and four-hand arrangements of, 94 thèmes favoris de l’ópéra La dame blanche
“Romance favourite” (Op. 44), four-hand (Op. 131), 204, 224n9
arrangement of Romance for Violin and Fantasy and Variations on Romance by
Orchestra in F Major (Beethoven), 95 Giuseppe Blangini, for piano and strings
“Second Décameron Musical” (Op. 175), (Op. 3), 26, 204
arrangement of Beethoven’s “Adelaide,” The Four Seasons, Four Brilliant Fantasias
95 on Original Themes (Op. 434), 140
Septet in E-Flat Major (Beethoven), Grande Fantaisie en forme de Sonate
arrangements of, 94–95 (Op. 147), 204, 224n9
Symphony No. 7 in A Major (Beethoven), “Gustave” Fantasy (Op. 360), 215, 216,
arrangement for two pianos, 95 217, 220
276 ❧ index of works

Impromptus on Variations brillantes sur le School (Op. 500), 30, 70; “On the
Cotillon du Ballet Arsena [Gallenberg] Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s
(Op. 36), 242–43n12 Works for the Piano Solo” (Vol. 4, Chap.
“Norma” Fantasy No. 3 (Op. 247), 2), 85–86, 87, 109, 111, 112, 123n6;
211–12, 212, 213–14, 214, 219, 236 “On the Proper Performance of All
Preludes, Cadenzas, and Little Fantasies in the Beethoven’s Works for the Pianoforte
Brilliant Style (Op. 61), 206, 224n9; with Accompaniments for Other
Prelude No. 2, 207 Instruments, or for the Orchestra” (Vol.
“Puritani” Fantasy (Op. 247), 210–11, 219 4, Chap. 3), 85, 88, 109, 112, 114–16,
Three Grand Fantasias (Op. 64), 235 123n6; “On the Proper Performance”—
Trois Fantaisies Élégantes sur les motifs favoris “Concluding Remarks,” 122, 134–35;
des operas de Bellini (Op. 247), 242n9. On Performance (Vol. 3), 112, 114, 135;
See also “Norma” Fantasy; “Puritani” “On the Special Way of Performing
Fantasy (above) Various Composers and their Works”
(chapter in Vol. 3), 112–13
Marches 48 études en forme de preludes et cadences
(Op. 161), 234
“Coronation March for Ferdinand King of Grande Exercice d’Octaves dans tous les tons,
Hungary” (Op. 238), 30 majeur et mineur (Op. 152), 234–35
“Entrance March for the opening of the One Hundred Exercises in Progressive Order
Hungarian Diet, Sept. 13, 1830” (Op. 139), 59
(Op. 237), 30 Le Pianiste au salon (Op. 311), 232–33
“Marcia funebre sulla morte di Luigi van School of Extemporaneous Performance. See A
Beethoven” (Op. 146), 30, 82 Systematic Introduction to Improvisation
Souvenir à Schönbrunn, Second Grande (below)
Marche (Op. 250), 236 School of Practical Composition (Op. 600),
127–28, 130–31, 131–32, 146–47,
Miscellaneous 179–80, 205, 211; “Remarks on Refined
Allegri di Bravura (three manuscript Taste in Embellishment” (Czerny), 131,
works), 58 131
A Systematic Introduction to Improvisation on
Rondos the Pianoforte (Op. 200), 30, 204–5, 219;
“Concerning Preludes,” 205
“Les Charmes de Baden” (Op. 45), rondo Vierzig tägliche Studien (Op. 337), 59
pastoral of fantasy-variations on popular
waltz tune, 204, 224n9, 233–34 CHAMBER MUSIC WITH PIANO
Deux Rondinos sur des motifs de la “Reine de
Chypre” et de la “Favorite,” 242n9 Grande Serenade Concertante for piano,
cello, clarinet, and horn (Op. 126), 143
Piano Quartet in C Minor, 143
Sonatas Piano Trio No. 1 in E-Flat Major
Piano Sonata No. 1 in A-Flat Major (Op. 105), 14
(Op. 7), 14, 141, 206, 219 Piano Trio No. 2 in A Major (Op. 166),
Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor (Op. 57), 143
141 Rondo Concertante in C Major for cello
Piano Sonata No. 11 (Op. 730), 237 and piano (Op. 136, No. 3), 143
Sonata in F Minor for piano, four hands Violin Sonata in A Major, xi, 142, 143
(Op. 10), 142
CONCERTOS
Studies, Exercises, and Methods Concerto in C Major for piano, four
The Art of Finger Dexterity (Op. 740), 3, 160 hands, and orchestra (Op. 153),
Cent études pour de jeunes élèves, 236 176–77
Complete Theoretical and Practical Pianoforte Piano Concerto No. 2, 16
❧
index of works 277

LIEDER (SONGS) STRING QUARTETS

“Der Erlkönig,” xi, 143 Allegro Fugatos for string quartet, 144
Romance from Sir Walter Scott’s “The String Quartet in D Minor, 179–99; finale,
Lady of the Lake” (Op. 83), 14 189–90, 191, 192, 194–95, 198; first
movement, 183, 187–88, 189–91,
OVERTURES 196–97; homorhythmic/unison phrases
Overture in C Minor (Op. 142), 173–75, 174 in, 191, 193, 196–98, 196–99; overview
Overture in E Major, xi, 141, 175–76, of movements, 180; scherzo, 181, 182;
175–76 trio, 182; and use of tremolo, 184,
191–92, 194–95; variation technique in,
SACRED MUSIC, 145–57 187–88
Mass No. 2 in C Major, xi, 8, 144, 145–57; String Quartet in E Minor, xi, 179–99;
and absence of nonchord tones, finale, 189–90, 191; first movement,
155–56; and Biedermeier style, 145, 182–83, 184–86, 191–92;
151–52, 157; chromatic harmony in, homorhythmic/unison phrases in, 191,
154–57; homophonic compositional 193, 195, 196; overview of movements,
style of, 147–49; and key relationships 180; scherzo, 181, 181; second
between movements, 149, 151; soloists movement, 192, 193; trio, 181–82; and
in, 148–49, 151; thematic unity in, 149, use of tremolo, 191–92, 193
152–54, 152–54
SYMPHONIES
Mass No. 2 in C Major, movements of:
Agnus Dei, 149, 151, 153–54, 154, 156; Symphony No. 1 in C Minor (Op. 780),
Benedictus, 149, 151, 152; Credo, 151, 160–66, 173; Baker’s commentary on,
152, 153–54, 154, 155–56, 156; Gloria, 239; Blanchard review of, 237–38, 239;
147–48, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152–53, first movement, 160–61, 162–64, 165,
152–54, 155, 155; Kyrie, 147, 148, 149, 166; fourth movement, 166; second move-
151, 151–52, 152, 153, 154–55, 156; ment, 164, 167; third movement, 164–65
Sanctus, 149, 151, 152 Symphony No. 2 in D Major (Op. 781), 141,
“Offertorium: Benedicat nos Deus” 166–68; first movement, 167–68, 169;
(Op. 737), 144, 145 fourth movement, 168, 170, 171; second
movement, 168; third movement, 168
SECULAR CHORAL MUSIC, 143–44 Symphony in G Minor, xi, 141, 160, 164,
Die Macht des Gesanges, work for chorus 170–73, 251; first movement, 170–71;
and orchestra, 171 second movement, 171–72; third
movement, 172

WORKS BY OTHER COMPOSERS

Auber, Daniel François Beethoven, Ludwig van
La Fiancée, 217 CHAMBER MUSIC
Gustave, ou le Bal Masqué, 215, 217; “O Piano Trio No. 8 in E-Flat Major (WoO
vous par qui ma vie,” 215; “Sainte 38), 95
amitié,” 215 Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-Flat
Major (Op. 16), 91
Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Septet in E-Flat Major (Op. 20), 94–95
Sonaten für Kenner und Liebhaber, 208 String Quartet No. 9 in C Major,
“Razumovsky” (Op. 59, No. 3), 144
String Quartet No. 13 in B-Flat Major,
Bach, Johann Sebastian “Lieb” (Op. 130), 170
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue (BWV 903), Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Minor,
109–10 “Kreutzer” (Op. 47), 95, 143
278 ❧ index of works

CONCERTOS Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor,

Triple Concerto for piano, violin, and “Moonlight” (Op. 27, No. 2), first
cello (Op. 56), 177 movement (adagio), 116–17, 118–19,
120–22
FANTASIES Piano Sonata No. 15 in D Major, “Pastorale”
(Op. 28), first movement, 89, 90
Fantasia in G Minor (Op. 77), 206
Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Minor,
LIEDER (SONGS) “Tempest” (Op. 31, No. 2), 89, 90; first
movement, 120
“Adelaide” (Op. 46), 83, 95 Piano Sonata No. 21 in C Major,
“Das Glück der Freundschaft” (Op. 88), “Waldstein” (Op. 53), 83, 143
95 Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor,
“Appassionata” (Op. 57), 141
OPERAS AND INCIDENTAL MUSIC
Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major
Egmont, incidental music for (Op. 84), 95 (Op. 101), 85
Leonore (Op. 72), 25, 31, 94 Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major,
“Hammerklavier” (Op. 106), 26
ORCHESTRAL WORKS WITH SOLO
INSTRUMENTS SACRED MUSIC
Romance for Violin and Orchestra in Mass in C Major (Op. 86), 95, 146
F Major (Op. 50), 95 Mass in D Major, Missa Solemnis
Rondo in B-Flat Major for piano and (Op. 123), 28, 146
orchestra (WoO 6), 95, 97–98
STRING QUARTETS. See CHAMBER MUSIC
OVERTURES
SYMPHONIES
Overture in C Major, “Consecration of the
symphonies for four-hand piano, 91–94
House” (Op. 124), 94
Symphony No. 2 in D Major (Op. 36),
PIANO CONCERTOS 167, 168
Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, “Eroica”
Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major (Op. 55), 168, 221
(Op. 15), 25, 101n10 Symphony No. 5 in C Minor (Op. 67), 164
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major Symphony No. 6 in F Major, “Pastorale”
(Op. 19), 95 (Op. 68), 164
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor Symphony No. 7 in A Major (Op. 92), 95
(Op. 37), second movement (Largo), Symphony No. 8 in F Major (Op. 93), 95
117, 120 Symphony No. 9 in D Minor (Op. 125),
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E Flat Major, 28, 164, 168, 221, 222
“Emperor” (Op. 73), 101n10, 102n11

PIANO SONATAS Bellini, Vincenzo

Piano Sonata No. 2 in A Major (Op. 2), Norma, 211–12, 213
fourth movement, 86, 89, 89 I Puritani, 30, 210
Piano Sonata No. 3 in D Major (Op. 10),
first movement, 86, 89, 89 Berlioz, Hector
Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor,
“Roman Carnival” Overture (Op. 9), 173
“Pathétique” (Op. 13), 83, 116
Piano Sonata No. 12 in A-Flat Major
(Op. 26): first movement, 86, 89; third Brahms, Johannes
movement (trio), 89, 90; fourth Academic Festival Overture (Op. 80), 173
movement, 117 Piano Sonata No. 2 in F-Sharp Minor
Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-Flat Major, “Quasi (Op. 2), 223
una fantasia” (Op. 27, No. 1), 206 Tragic Overture (Op. 81), 173
❧
index of works 279

Chopin, Frédéric “Norma” Fantasy (S.394), 202, 220

Fantaisie (Op. 49), 204 Piano Sonata in B Minor (S.178), 202,
Nocturnes, 204 204
Réminiscences de Don Juan (S.418), 217,
Clementi, Muzio 217, 220
Piano Sonata in G Minor (Op. 50, No. 3), Sept variations brillantes pour piano sur un
172 theme de Rossini (S.149), 219
Three Concert Etudes (S.144), 31
Donizetti, Gaetano
Operas: Anna Bolena, Il Castello di
Kenilworth, L’Elisir d’amore, Linda de Mendelssohn, Felix
Chamounix, Lucia di Lammermoor, Roberto “Fingal’s Cave” Overture (Op. 26), 173
Devereux, and Torquato Tasso, 204 Midsummer Night’s Dream (Op. 61),
Nocturne, 171
Dvor¤ ák, Antonín Overture for Wind Instruments (Op. 24),
“Carnival” Overture (Op. 92), 173 173

Haydn, Joseph
The Creation (oratorio; H.21/2), 26
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
Piano Sonata in E-Flat (H.16/52), 51n34 Duet Sonata in D Major (K.381), 128
Symphony No. 101 in D Major, “The Fantasia in C Minor (K.475), 206
Clock,” 168 Operas: La Clemenza di Tito, Don Giovanni,
Le Nozze di Figaro, and Die Zauberflöte,
Hummel, Johann Nepomuk 215
Fantasia in E-Flat Major (Op. 18), 206 Piano Concerto in C Minor (K.491), 24
Rondo Concertante in B-Flat Major
Kalkbrenner, Friedrich (K.269), 50n33
Effusio musica (Op. 68), 206 “Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge” (K.596),
128, 129–30
Kuhlau, Friedrich Sonatas for Piano and Violin (K.376–80),
String Quartet in A Minor (Op. 122), 50n33
200n9

Liszt, Franz Onslow, George

Apparitions, 220; Nos. 1 and 2 (S.155), String Quintet in E Major (Op. 39),
208 200n9
“Dante” Fantasy (S.161), 202
Don Sanche (S.1), 218 Rossini, Gioachino
“Fantasy and Fugue on ‘BACH’ ” (S.463),
202 Semiramide, 29, 210
Fantaisie romantique sur deux mélodies suisses
(S.157), 220 Schubert, Franz
“Fiancée” Fantasy (S.385), 217, 219–20 Deutsche Trauermesse (Requiem Mass;
“God Save the Queen,” variations on D.621), 146
(S.235), 222 “Der Erlkönig” (Op. 1, D.328), 26
Grand galop chromatique (S.219), 223 “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (Op. 2, D.118),
Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (S.154), 1, 9
220 “Marches Militaires” (Op. 51, D.733), 168
Hexameron (S.392), 30 Overtures “in the Italian Style” (D.590
Hungarian Rhapsodies (S.244), 223 and D.591), 173
Impromptu brilliant pour piano sur des thèmes Symphony No. 9 in C Major (“Great”;
de Rossini et Spontini (S.151), 219 D.944), 12, 161
Liebesträume, Nocturne No. 3 in A-Flat Symphony No. 10 in D Major (D.936A),
Major, (S.541), 204 11
280 ❧ index of works

Schumann, Robert Verdi, Giuseppe

Album für die Jugend (Op. 68), 199n2 Rigoletto, 31
Frauenliebe und Leben (Op. 42), 72 Il Trovatore, 31

Spohr, Louis Wagner, Richard

String Quintet No. 4 in A Minor (Op. 91), Lohengrin, 31
200n9 Tannhäuser, 31
Symphony No. 6 in G Major, “Historical”
(Op. 116), 199n2 Weber, Carl Maria von
Euryanthe, 29
Vaughan Williams, Ralph Oberon, 204; overture, 171
Fantasia on “Greensleeves,” 223
Eastman Studies in Music

The Poetic Debussy: A Collection of Music and Musicians in the

His Song Texts and Selected Letters Escorial Liturgy under the
(Revised Second Edition) Habsburgs, 1563–1700
Edited by Margaret G. Cobb Michael J. Noone

Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz since Analyzing Wagner’s Operas:

1945: Essays and Analytical Studies Alfred Lorenz and German
Edited by Elizabeth West Marvin Nationalist Ideology
and Richard Hermann Stephen McClatchie

Music and the Occult: French The Gardano Music Printing

Musical Philosophies, 1750–1950 Firms, 1569–1611
Joscelyn Godwin Richard J. Agee

“Wanderjahre of a Revolutionist” and “The Broadway Sound”: The

Other Essays on American Music Autobiography and Selected Essays
Arthur Farwell, of Robert Russell Bennett
edited by Thomas Stoner Edited by George J. Ferencz

French Organ Music from the Revolution Theories of Fugue from the Age of
to Franck and Widor Josquin to the Age of Bach
Edited by Lawrence Archbold Paul Mark Walker
and William J. Peterson
The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso
Musical Creativity in Twentieth-Century and Their Protestant Listeners:
China: Abing, His Music, and Its Music, Piety, and Print in
Changing Meanings Sixteenth-Century France
(includes CD) Richard Freedman
Jonathan P. J. Stock
Berlioz’s Semi-Operas: Roméo et
Elliott Carter: Collected Essays and Juliette and La damnation de Faust
Lectures, 1937–1995 Daniel Albright
Edited by Jonathan W. Bernard
The Gamelan Digul and the
Music Theory in Concept and Practice Prison-Camp Musician Who Built It:
Edited by James M. Baker, An Australian Link with the
David W. Beach, and Indonesian Revolution
Jonathan W. Bernard Margaret J. Kartomi
“The Music of American Folk Song” Historical Musicology: Sources,
and Selected Other Writings on Methods, Interpretations
American Folk Music Edited by Stephen A. Crist and
Ruth Crawford Seeger, edited by Roberta Montemorra Marvin
Larry Polansky and Judith Tick
The Pleasure of Modernist Music:
Portrait of Percy Grainger Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology
Edited by Malcolm Gillies Edited by Arved Ashby
and David Pear
Debussy’s Letters to Inghelbrecht:
Berlioz: Past, Present, Future The Story of a Musical Friendship
Edited by Peter Bloom Annotated by Margaret G. Cobb

The Musical Madhouse Explaining Tonality:

(Les Grotesques de la musique) Schenkerian Theory and Beyond
Hector Berlioz Matthew Brown
Translated and edited by
Alastair Bruce The Substance of Things Heard:
Introduction by Hugh Macdonald Writings about Music
Paul Griffiths
The Music of Luigi Dallapiccola
Raymond Fearn Musical Encounters at the
1889 Paris World’s Fair
Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Annegret Fauser
Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac
Sylvia Kahan Aspects of Unity in J. S. Bach’s
Partitas and Suites: An Analytical Study
The Sea on Fire: Jean Barraqué David W. Beach
Paul Griffiths
Letters I Never Mailed: Clues to a Life
“Claude Debussy As I Knew Him” and Alec Wilder
Other Writings of Arthur Hartmann Annotated by David Demsey
Edited by Samuel Hsu, Foreword by Marian McPartland
Sidney Grolnic, and Mark Peters
Foreword by David Grayson Wagner and Wagnerism in Nineteenth-
Century Sweden, Finland, and
Schumann’s Piano Cycles and the the Baltic Provinces:
Novels of Jean Paul Reception, Enthusiasm, Cult
Erika Reiman Hannu Salmi

Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: Bach’s Changing World:

An Organist’s Guide Voices in the Community
Joel Speerstra Edited by Carol K. Baron
CageTalk: Dialogues with and Pentatonicism from the
about John Cage Eighteenth Century to Debussy
Edited by Peter Dickinson Jeremy Day-O’Connell
European Music and Musicians Maurice Duruflé:
in New York City, 1840–1900 The Man and His Music
Edited by John Graziano James E. Frazier
Schubert in the European Imagination, Representing Non-Western Music in
Volume 1: The Romantic and Victorian Eras Nineteenth-Century Britain
Scott Messing Bennett Zon
Opera and Ideology in Prague: The Music of the Moravian Church
Polemics and Practice at the National in America
Theater, 1900–1938 Edited by Nola Reed Knouse
Brian S. Locke
Music Theory and Mathematics:
Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Worlds Chords, Collections, and
Innovation and Tradition in Transformations
Twentieth-Century American Music Edited by Jack Douthett, Martha
Edited by Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama M. Hyde, and Charles J. Smith
Schubert in the European Imagination, The Rosary Cantoral:
Volume 2: Fin-de-Siècle Vienna Ritual and Social Design in
Scott Messing a Chantbook from Early Renaissance
Toledo
Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the
Lorenzo Candelaria
Walpurgis Night: The Heathen
Muse in European Culture,
Berlioz: Scenes from the Life
1700–1850
and Work
John Michael Cooper
Edited by Peter Bloom
Dieterich Buxtehude:
Organist in Lübeck Beyond The Art of Finger Dexterity:
Kerala J. Snyder Reassessing Carl Czerny
Edited by David Gramit
Musicking Shakespeare:
A Conflict of Theatres
Daniel Albright