Carl Czerny – Uberteacher

Czerny – any pianist knows that name, but who was he?  What inspired him to be the teacher that he was?  Which of his teachers was he more influenced by, and how much of his theoretical and pedagogical worth come from his own findings rather than development of his teachers’ ideas herunterladen?

Carl Czerny was born in 1791 in Vienna.  A child prodigy on the piano, he made his first appearance at the age of 9 playing a Mozart piano concerto.  The gifted youngster studied with composers and performers who were, perhaps, as eager to teach him as he was to study with them.  Over the course of his musical development, Czerny had the privilege of studying with Antonio Salieri, Johann Hummel and Ludwig van Beethoven youtube musikspuren.

While it would be an interesting topic to research and write about, Salieri is not quite as influential on piano pedagogy as one may first think, given his wealth of students that include Meyerbeer, Moscheles, Schubert, Liszt, Beethoven, Hummel, Sussmayr and others.  Many of them went on to be talented pianists and composers, but it is Czerny who has left a more lasting thumbprint on the piano world, even though he has fewer “big name students” to his credit adobe premiere elements gratis downloaden.

Picture this:  It is a story about a composer, a student, and an instrument still in it’s baby stages, the piano.

Beethoven, for whatever reason deep inside of him, has become enchanted with the piano.  He prefers it over the harpsichord or clavichord for its ability to play long legato lines, singing passages, and to be expressive through the use of dynamics and phrasing, methods unavailable on other keyboard instruments.  While the kinks have not yet all been worked out in the mechanics of the instrument yet, Beethoven realizes it’s potential cd laufwerk herunterladen.

Beethoven also has the chance to teach a young Carl Czerny, but only for a few years.  The two part on very good terms.  At the very least, the impact of Beethoven’s music is quite apparent – by the time Czerny dies, he is a master of almost every single piano work Beethoven as written, and it is directly through his influence on his students Leszetycki and Liszt that the tradition of fine Beethoven playing methods continues into the 19th century, and beyond outlook anhang downloaden.

It is probably also a bit of the sympathy that Czerny may have had for his former teacher’s affliction with hearing loss that may have inspired him in his life’s work.  Because of Beethoven’s illness, he was already completely deaf by the time the piano underwent the major changes that brought it light years closer to the instrument we know today.  While he was able to take advantage of some of these advancements (his later works feature notes previously not available on earlier pianos with a smaller range) he was not able to aurally appreciate them dropbox mappen download.

When Czerny began teaching and composing, he appears to have taken the same approach to his teaching style as Beethoven did with his music.  Much in the same way that Beethoven’s music runs the gamut of emotion, form and style, so does Czerny’s teaching methods.  He believed that there was not just one way to teach a person how to play the piano because no two pairs of hands were ever alike, and also, no two people were alike.  He approached each new student with a fresh start, and would tailor the lessons to the students’ specific needs movies for free illegally.

The pieces he is most famous for, which almost any piano student may recognize are his The School of Velocity and The Art of Finger Dexterity.  Although he would not prescribe a set schedule of when a student should study what, he certainly had a variety of technical exercises at his fingertips when and if he needed them for a student libreoffice gratis downloaden.

Czerny is, of course, most famous for his enormous output of creative works of piano music.  He has composed more than 800 opuses in addition to countless more unpublished works, with works ranging from his most well known technical studies to symphonies, religious texts, string quartets, and sonatas.  He also wrote over 300 pieces without opus numbers, these being variations on themes by some of the “ancients” like Mozart and Haydn, and also his contemporaries, Beethoven, Mayerbeer, Mendlesson, Spohr and Verdi, and others.    Much of his work was done for the benefit of his piano students; these variations may be no exception kostenlos rechner downloaden.

Czerny spent the majority of his life teaching and composing, having given up on the performing aspect of his career.  He lacked the showmanship that was required by audiences of the day to sustain a career giving concerts, and also did not like to travel.  Instead, he stayed at home, became a bit of a recluse and worked on composing and teaching.  It is said that at one point he taught 12 hours a day, every day.  He would also work on multiple pieces of music at a time – he would write out an entire page of one work, then, while he was waiting for the ink to dry, he would move on to a different composition.  His approach to composition was sometimes pragmatic and methodic.  He could easily compose pieces just by applying this style of passage work in this key here, then this cadence pattern, then transpose it, etc, much in the way musical composition was almost like writing out a mathematical equation for Baroque composers.  In fact, he even had assistants whom he would give instructions to in this manner, and they would write out his ideas for him appsen in pc.

This may make for bland writing in comparison to the more passionate and deep, soul searching pieces being written by other composers more in the Romantic vein, and it showed.  He received less than stellar reviews from Robert Schumann.  He was respected by Chopin, though the man did not think highly of his music.

When you analyze Czerny’s musical works from the standpoint of a composer, one may agree that his large body of work lacks the expression or depth of emotion of other composers of his day.  However, when you reanalyze his work from the standpoint of a teacher, it takes on a whole new meaning.

His lasting impression on the music world is of great benefit to piano players everywhere, and when used properly, his many technical studies can be a fantastic teaching tool on the instrument most loved by him and by his teacher, Beethoven.  If Czerny has left a lasting thumbprint on the music world, perhaps it was Beethoven who guided his hand there in the first place, more so than any of Czerny’s other teachers or contemporaries.