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Remembered as the most famous piano student of Beethoven, Carl Czerny developed a reputation as one of the most significant piano teachers of the Nineteenth Century. Influenced by his own childhood studies (with Beethoven) of the pedagogical works of C.P.E. Bach and Beethoven’s own Sonatas, Czerny strove to create new compositions based on these models. His later friendship with Muzio Clementi, whose teaching methods and exercises he adapted and incorporated into his own approach, proved to be of great influence in his career. And the mutual admiration between Fryderyk Chopin and Czerny, preserved in their correspondence, is evidence that Czerny’s works were highly admired by many of his contemporaries.
When viewed strictly as a composer, Czerny’s Symphonies have been much maligned by critics, and his choral music is largely unknown today. It is true that only in his works for piano solo and piano ensemble does his creativity truly soar. The “Beethoven-esque” quality of his Sonatas is quite evident. His chamber works for piano and other instruments also demonstrate his finest abilities as a composer. Standing in the shadow of Beethoven, Czerny was quite timid in genres other than his piano works, and some of his most charming music can be found in his Piano Sonatas for 4-Hands which he composed for his many students to perform.
When viewed in the light of creating a new musical niche for himself by staying at home to teach and compose, rather than to travel as a concert pianist, Czerny’s music is best understood. But apart from his “serious music,” Czerny produced hundreds of pieces for consumption by amateurs that were quickly published in Vienna, resulting in considerable wealth and popularity for Czerny. However, his most valuable contribution to generations of pianists through his systematic composition of thousands of technical studies remains his most enduring creation.
From his earliest childhood keyboard lessons with his father, Carl Czerny demonstrated a remarkable musical ability that led to his first public performance as a pianist in Vienna when, as a nine-year-old child, he played Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C minor, K.491. The performance style of Mozart, which Czerny heard through Mozart’s pupil Hummel, greatly impressed the young pianist. Nevertheless, he later became a great champion and devoted supporter of Beethoven’s Sonatas and Piano Concertos, with their demands for a legato style suited to the newer technological developments of the instrument. It is not an overstatement to say that Czerny was a central figure in the transmission of Beethoven’s legacy to a new generation of composers.
However, Czerny’s primary source of fame during his long career stemmed from his teaching and from his pedagogical compositions. His pupils included such famous pianists as Sigismond Thalberg, Franz Liszt, Stephen Heller, and Theodor Leschetizky. Additionally, Czerny’s astonishing creation of some 1000 compositions, particularly his technical studies and exercises, continue to be widely used by developing pianists around the world today. But it is unfortunate that a very large number of his works (published without opus numbers), in nearly every sacred and secular genre employed in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, have largely gone out of print or were never published at all, and these quite unjustly have been forgotten by history.
In his brief autobiographical notes entitled Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Memories from My Life), written in 1842, Carl Czerny described his paternal grandfather as a talented amateur violinist, employed as a city official in Nimburg, near Prague. Czerny’s father, Wenzel Czerny, a pianist, organist, oboist, and singer, was born in Nimburg in 1750, and he received his education and musical training in a Benedictine monastery near Prague. Shortly after his marriage in his mid thirties, Wenzel settled in Vienna in 1786, where he earned a meager livelihood as a music teacher and piano technician. Carl Czerny, his parents’ only child, was born in Vienna on Sunday, February 20, 1791, the year of Mozart’s death. Czerny lived with his parents until his mother’s death in 1827, and his father’s subsequent death in 1832. Czerny never married, and he lived alone for the remainder of his life.
Czerny describes his childhood as being “under my parents’ constant supervision,” and he goes on to say that he was “carefully isolated from other children.” Although Czerny’s earliest piano instruction was with his father, he became the pupil of Krumpholz (whose first name was also Wenzel), a family friend, after a few years. By the time he was ten years old, he was “able to play cleanly and fluently nearly everything of Mozart and Clementi.” His first efforts at composition (never published) began around the age of seven. In 1799, he began to study Beethoven’s compositions, coached by Krumpholz, who was a violinist in the Imperial Court Opera orchestra. Krumpholz introduced Czerny to Beethoven when he was ten, and Czerny played for him the opening movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C Major, K.503 and Beethoven’s own Pathetique Sonata.
Being greatly impressed with the boy’s abilities, Beethoven offered to teach Czerny several times a week, and he told Czerny’s father to procure a copy of C.P.E. Bach’s Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments) for the boy’s instruction. Czerny describes his lessons with Beethoven as consisting of scales and technique at first, then progressing through the Versuch with Beethoven’s major emphasis placed on legato technique throughout. The lessons stopped at some point before 1803, because Beethoven needed to concentrate for longer periods of time on composition, and because Czerny’s father was unable to sacrifice his own lessons in order to take his son to Beethoven. Nevertheless, Czerny remained on close terms with Beethoven, who asked him to proofread all his newly published works, and Beethoven entrusted Czerny with the piano reduction of the score of his only opera, Fidelio, in 1805.
Although his formal lessons with Beethoven had ceased, it was Czerny whom Beethoven selected for the first performance of the Piano Concerto No.1 in C Major, Op.15 in 1806 and the Piano Concerto No.5 in E-Flat Major (The Emperor), Op.73 in 1812. Beginning in 1816, Czerny gave weekly concerts at his home devoted exclusively to Beethoven’s piano music. Apparently, Czerny could perform all of Beethoven’s piano works from memory. Even though his playing was highly praised by critics, he did not pursue a career as a traveling performer. Czerny chose not to pursue such a career, partly because he lacked showmanship, partly because he did not wish to leave his ailing parents, and partly because he basically loathed performing for large audiences. However, by his late teens he was a highly successful teacher, and his frequently hosted Sunday lunchtime concerts at his parents’ apartment, ostensibly to launch his more talented pupils, became almost legendary events. Since Beethoven often attended these recitals, either he or Czerny would perform one of Beethoven’s Sonatas. Therefore, it is evident that Beethoven regarded Czerny as a musician of first rank.
Czerny made ill-fated plans for a concert tour in 1805, for which Beethoven wrote a glowing testimonial, and although he describes himself at this time as quite proficient as a pianist, sight-reader, and improviser, Czerny conceded that his playing “lacked the type of brilliant, calculated wizardry that is usually part of a traveling virtuoso’s essential equipment.” So for reasons of political instability and taking into account the very modest income of his family, he chose to cancel the tour. Ultimately, he reached the decision never again to undertake a concert tour, a path that would have made him more widely known as a performer. Instead, he decided to concentrate his career on teaching and composition.
Czerny’s career as a composer began around 1802, when he meticulously copied out many of J.S. Bach’s Fugues, Scarlatti’s Sonatas, and other works by earlier composers. He learned the art of orchestration by copying the parts from Beethoven’s Symphony No.1 and Symphony No.2, and he used the same procedure with several orchestral works by both Haydn and Mozart. Czerny’s first composition was published when he was 15 years old in 1806. It was a set of 20 Variations concertantes for Piano and Violin, Op.1, on a theme by Krumpholz. Until he gave up teaching altogether, composition occupied all his free time in the evening hours after his piano pupils were gone for the day. The popularity of his Opp.1-10, published as a collection in 1818-1819, and the demand for copies of his arrangements of works by other composers, made publishers eager to print anything he would submit. Thus, Czerny earned a substantial income from the sale of his piano works.
When Muzio Clementi arrived in Vienna in 1810, Czerny spent as much time as he could spare with the famous pianist, familiarizing himself with Clementi’s method of teaching, which Czerny greatly admired and which he incorporated into his own teaching methods. His Nouveau Gradus ad Parnassum, Op.822 is direct evidence of Clementi’s influence on Czerny’s methodology. From his early teenage years, Czerny began to teach some of his father’s students. By the age of 15, he was commanding a good price for piano lessons, and he had many pupils. In 1815, Beethoven asked him to teach his nephew, Carl. As his reputation continued to grow, he was able to command increasingly more lucrative fees, and for the next 21 years, he claimed to have given 12 lessons a day – 8 A.M. to 8 P.M., until he gave up teaching entirely in 1836.
In 1821, the nine-year-old Franz Liszt began a two-year period of piano study with Czerny. The teacher noted that “never before had I had so eager, talented, or industrious a student,” but Czerny lamented that Liszt had begun his performing career too early, without proper or sufficient training in composition. Czerny not only put Liszt through the rigors of technical study, but he also influenced Liszt’s thinking while allowing him to shape his own thought and understanding of music and life in general. However, Liszt was an impatient student, and he longed for a life of fame as a virtuoso performer while he was still quite young. Despite this fact, Liszt and Czerny remained in frequent contact as life-long correspondents, and Liszt later dedicated his famous Transcendental Etudes to Czerny, his friend and teacher.
To say that Carl Czerny was a highly prolific composer does not begin to describe the staggering quantity and diversity of his compositional output. A list of Czerny’s published works occupies 22 pages of small type, at the end of which his London publisher, Robert Cocks & Co., apologizes that “many other arrangements exist by the talented author of this work, of which even the titles have escaped his memory.” It includes 861 published opus numbers plus a great deal of unpublished material, including 4 Symphonies (in addition to two published Symphonies), 30 String Quartets and innumerable religious works for voices and orchestra. Czerny divided his works into four categories:
- Studies and exercises
- Easy pieces for students
- Brilliant pieces for concerts
- Serious music.
Interestingly, Czerny did not regard his “brilliant pieces for concerts” as “serious music.” But in this latter category, he placed his symphonies, overtures, and piano concertos, many of which remain generally unknown today, and some of which still languish among his hundreds of unpublished manuscripts. However, his compositions for solo piano, piano ensembles, and piano with chamber instruments illustrate the veritable explosion in the number of works published for the instrument at a critical time in its development. In addition to his many technical studies, Czerny published sonatas, sonatinas and hundreds of shorter works, many of which were arranged for piano in four to eight-hand editions. He also published a plethora of works based on national anthems, folk songs, and other well-known songs. Works for other instruments and genres include much symphonic and chamber music featuring instruments other than the piano, as well as a wealth of sacred choral music.
Mandyczewski’s tabulation of the works remaining in unpublished manuscripts in the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde includes over 300 sacred works alone, along with works in many other genres. And among his compositions that survive in printed form, Czerny published approximately 300 piano arrangements without opus numbers. These works are based on themes from approximately 100 different operas and ballets, plus symphonies, overtures and oratorios by such composers as Auber, Beethoven, Bellini, Cherubini, Donizetti, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mozart, Rossini, Spohr, Verdi, Wagner, and Weber.
As a composer, Czerny did not achieve universal acceptance from some of the major critics of his day. In particular, Robert Schumann penned some rather stinging reviews of his works, and Schumann is responsible for the view of Czerny as the pedagogue churning out a seemingly endless stream of uninspired works. In the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, Schumann stated: “It would be hard to discover a greater bankruptcy in imagination than Czerny has proved.” This statement came from a review of The Four Seasons, Four Brilliant Fantasias, Op.434. However, Schumann’s low opinion and rather cavalier dismissal of Czerny as a serious composer was an opinion not shared by many prominent musicians of his time.
During his 1829 stay in Vienna, Chopin was a frequent visitor at Czerny’s home, and much of the correspondence between these two great composers still survives, affirming their mutual admiration for each other’s work and their genuine, personal regard for one another. One of Franz Liszt’s letters from Paris to his former teacher in Vienna, dated August 26, 1830, describes his performances of Czerny’s Piano Sonata No.1 in A-Flat Major, Op.7, and the work’s enthusiastic reception by French audiences. Liszt urged Czerny to join him in Paris. Liszt’s high regard is again seen in his inclusion of Czerny as one of the contributors to his Hexameron, the Grand Variations on the March from Bellini’s I puritani, arranged by Liszt, and including variations by Chopin, Czerny, Herz, Liszt, Pixis and Thalberg, composed in 1837. Perhaps even more striking and challenging is Kriehuber’s famous portrait of 1846 which depicts assembled around Liszt at the piano: Berlioz, Czerny, and the violinist, Heinrich Ernst, who was regarded as one of the greatest virtuosos of the Nineteenth Century. All are lost in the Romantic reverie evoked by Liszt’s performance. Perhaps this symbolizes Beethoven’s spirit as transmitted by Czerny to Liszt, Berlioz and Ernst.
John Field, the Irish pianist and composer, stayed with Czerny in 1835 and described his host’s “composition factory.” Czerny worked, often at four pieces simultaneously, at a round table in the middle of his main music room. A large cupboard served as a filing repository of samples of every kind of passagework and figuration, for instant availability. In the adjoining room worked his assistants, pupils with instructions to transpose selected passages and insert them in the piece they were copying. A great deal of Czerny’s work depended on formula writing, and a whole page of a development section could be ‘composed’, for instance, merely by setting a 4-bar figure out in a sequence of consecutive sevenths or diminished chord formations combined with a motif from the main subject (a task which could easily be delegated to his student assistants). As the vast majority of Czerny’s work was formulaic, this method saved a great deal of his energy, while at the same time, it served as theory exercises for his pupils. One of Czerny’s primary aims as a composer was supplying the insatiable demand for attractive, yet undemanding pieces for amateur pianists. At this time in Vienna, home piano playing was at its zenith.
Czerny’s complete schools and treatises combine sound pedagogy with remarkable revelations about contemporary performance practices, and they present a detailed picture of the musical culture of his time. In the Fantasie-Schule, Opp.200 and 300, he uses stylized models and what he describes as a “systematic” approach to improvising preludes, modulations, cadenzas, fermatas, fantasies, variations, fugal styles, and capriccios. His Schule des Fugenspiels, Op.400, comprising 12 pairs of Preludes and Fugues, is intended as a study in multi-voiced playing for pianists. His most substantial work, the Pianoforte-Schule, Op.500, covers an extraordinary range of topics, including improvisation, transposition, score reading, concert decorum and piano maintenance. The fourth volume, added in 1846, includes advice on the performance of new works by Chopin, Liszt, and other notable composers of the day, as well as on Bach and Handel. Czerny also draws on his reminiscences of Beethoven’s playing and teaching. In his last major treatise, the Schule der praktischen Tonsetzkunst, Op.600, he returns to the models of form and descriptions of style first expounded in his Op.200, but here uses them for the instruction of composers. Of his small amount of music composed for the organ, perhaps his most famous composition is his Prelude and Fugue in A minor, Op.603.
Czerny’s works reveal, in addition to the familiar pedagogue and virtuoso, an artist of taste, passion, sensitivity, drama, lyricism, and solitude. In Czerny’s Sonata sentimentale in C minor, Op.10 for piano four-hands, we see a fine example of a composer who straddled the Classical tradition and early Romanticism through an ingenious piece expressing genuine elements of both period styles. Czerny’s Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op.57 has been described as “outstandingly original,” and the Piano Concerto in C Major, Op.153 for piano four-hands and orchestra is a very interesting example of the late Classical piano concerto combined with the emerging bravura piano technique of the Romantic concerto. Many of Czerny’s “exercises” stand alone as fine compositions in their own right, such as some of the character pieces found in the Left Hand Etudes, Op.718, and The Art of Finger Dexterity, Op.740.
Carl Czerny died at age 66 at his Vienna home on Wednesday, July 15, 1857, leaving behind many unpublished manuscripts, particularly much of his sacred choral music, including eleven complete settings of the Mass, Graduals, Offertories and other liturgical works. He died a phenomenally wealthy man, one of the most successful composers of the Nineteenth Century, and undoubtedly the father of the modern concert virtuoso by virtue of the fact that his many famous pupils taught others who brought pianism into the Twentieth Century. Czerny bequeathed his considerable fortune to the Vienna Conservatorium and various benevolent institutions. Perhaps, through new recordings, the world will one day have a more complete view of the depths of Czerny’s genuine gifts as a composer in the genres in which he still remains unjudged by history and largely unheard by modern ears.