Carl Czerny (1791-1857)
When your
piano teacher first
hauls out a pale yellow
volume of
music with the
stark letters
C Z E R N Y on the cover, you know you're in for it. You've successfully passed
Schumann's "The Happy Farmer" and may have flirted a bit with
J.S. Bach, but you are now ready for the master of exercise and boredom: Carl Czerny. He was born in Vienna in 1791 and died there in 1857. And that is more than most piano students know about him.
What else is there to know other than that most piano students will sooner or later grow to
hate him. He came from quite a
musical family: his
grandfather was a
violinist and his father an
organist, oboist,
singer and piano teacher. As a child of only 3, he was already playing the piano and by 7 he was writing down his musical ideas. He studied with
Beethoven who taught him the fine art of
legato, using
C. P. E. Bach's
Versuch, which was so different from the style required by
Mozart's music. He later lost interest in performing and for the rest of his life he taught
piano and along the way creating 15 noted composers of the time, including
Franz Liszt.
His works included 6
symphonies,
masses,
requiems,
sonatas, and
sonatinas, totaling more than 1000 works written in a period of over 40 years -- many of them
flashy and none of them
memorable. As a boy I remember being back stage after a performance by the great pianist, Arthur Rubenstein (1887-1982), and overheard a student ask him about Czerny. He responded, "Better Bach, Bach and more Bach." That says it all!