The piano music of Muzio Clementi, or at least his pedagogical Gradus ad Parnassum, has in part been well enough known to generations of ambitious keyboard-players. Clementi himself, born in Rome in 1752, was taken as a boy to England by Peter Beckford, cousin of the eccentric William Beckford. There he developed his abilities as a performer. His subsequent career brought success as a composer, teacher and pianist, and later as a manufacturer of pianos. He died at Evesham in 1832.

Piano Music

Clementi wrote a great deal of music for the piano, including more than a hundred sonatas. He published a number of pedagogical works, of which the Introduction to the Art of Playing the Piano Forte and Gradus ad Parnassum are the best known.