The father of Muzio Clementi, however, did exactly the opposite. When Muzio was 14, his father agreed to let Sir Peter Beckford, a wealthy Englishman visiting Italy, take his son away to his estate in Dorset. There, young Muzio would entertain Beckford’s family in return for a sponsored musical education, with Sir Peter later claiming to have ‘bought’ Clementi for a seven-year period.
Those seven years, however dubiously arranged, were crucial in honing the spectacular keyboard technique which later brought Clementi face to face with another precociously talented musician – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In December 1781, Clementi, now aged 29, was visiting Vienna as part of a concert tour in Europe. An invitation arrived from Viennese court circles: would Clementi care to play for the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and his guests on Christmas Eve?
Mozart, aged 25 and working as a freelance musician in Vienna, received a similar invitation. Both men readily accepted. But did they know in advance they would be pitted against one another in a piano-playing competition? If Clementi’s account of the evening is anything to go by, it would seem not. ‘On entering the Emperor’s music room I found there someone whom, because of his elegant appearance, I took for one of the Emperor’s chamberlains,’ he later recounted. ‘But scarcely had we begun a conversation when we soon recognised each other as Mozart and Clementi.’
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 2022-Ausgabe von BBC Music Magazine.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 2022-Ausgabe von BBC Music Magazine.
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