32 Facts About Carl Czerny

Carl Czerny was an Austrian composer, teacher, and pianist of Czech origin whose music spanned the late Classical and early Romantic eras.

Carl Czerny was one of Ludwig van Beethoven's best-known pupils.

Carl Czerny was born in Vienna and was baptized in St Leopold parish.

Carl Czerny's father was of Czech origin; his mother was Moravian.

When Carl Czerny was six months old, his father took a job as a piano teacher at a Polish manor and the family moved to Poland, where they lived until the third partition of Poland prompted the family to return to Vienna in 1795.

Carl Czerny began performing piano recitals in his parents' home.

Carl Czerny made his first public performance in 1800 playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No 24 in C minor.

Carl Czerny remained under Beethoven's tutelage until 1804 and sporadically thereafter.

Carl Czerny particularly admired Beethoven's facility at improvisation, his expertise at fingering, the rapidity of his scales and trills, and his restrained demeanour while performing.

Carl Czerny was the first to report symptoms of Beethoven's deafness, several years before the matter became public.

At the age of fifteen, Carl Czerny began a very successful teaching career.

Carl Czerny was a pale, sickly-looking child, who, while playing, swayed about on the stool as if drunk.

Carl Czerny trained the child with the works of Beethoven, Clementi, Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Liszt family lived in the same street in Vienna as Carl Czerny, who was so impressed by the boy that he taught him free of charge.

Shortly before Liszt's Vienna concert of 13 April 1823, Carl Czerny arranged, with some difficulty the introduction of Liszt to Beethoven.

Carl Czerny left Vienna only to make trips to Italy, France and England.

Carl Czerny wrote a large number of piano solo exercises for the development of the pianistic technique, designed to cover from the first lessons for children up to the needs of the most advanced virtuoso.

Carl Czerny's works include not only piano music but masses and choral music, symphonies, concertos, songs, string quartets and other chamber music.

The better known part of Carl Czerny's repertoire is the large number of didactic piano pieces he wrote, such as The School of Velocity and The Art of Finger Dexterity.

Carl Czerny was one of the first composers to use etude for a title.

Carl Czerny composed approximately 180 pieces that bear the title "Variations".

Carl Czerny sometimes combined his variations with other genres, such as fantasy, rondo, or impromptu.

Carl Czerny was one of 50 composers who wrote a Variation on a theme of Anton Diabelli for Part II of the Vaterlandischer Kunstlerverein.

Carl Czerny wrote a coda to round out the collection.

Together with Liszt, Chopin, Henri Herz, Johann Peter Pixis and Sigismond Thalberg, Carl Czerny was a contributor to the compendium set of variations for piano, Hexameron.

The seven symphonies of Carl Czerny began to be recorded in 1990s.

Carl Czerny was a prolific composer of chamber music, normally including the piano: Trios for strings and Piano, Quintets for strings and Piano, Sonatas for Violin and Piano, and Piano Variations with Flute, Horn, and other instruments.

In 1842 Carl Czerny published an autobiographical sketch, "Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben".

Carl Czerny can be considered as a father of modern piano technique for generations of pianists, when it is taken into account that many of his students, such as Theodor Leschetizky, Franz Liszt and Theodor Kullak, became teachers and passed on his legacy.

The US music magazine The Etude presented in its issue of April 1927 an illustration showing how Carl Czerny could be considered the father of modern piano technique and the basis of an entire generation of pianists.

Carl Czerny wrote an essay on the correct performing of the piano sonatas of Beethoven, "On the Proper performance of all Beethoven's works for piano".

Carl Czerny had an influential role in defining the canon of classical piano repertoire.