Before we dive into our core 19th century composers, let's take a look back for a moment and consider some important figures who are active at the time of Beethoven and Schubert. Since the piano sonata was so popular at this time and so well respected, there's a good deal of repertoire to scope out here, especially from these four virtuoso performers. But none of it has attained canonical status, so, unfortunately, it's beyond the scope of this course. As more and more music continues to be written and our repertoire just keeps on expanding, it gets harder and harder for compositions and composers to make our short list. Although the likes of Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Brahms have ultimately overshadowed these figures, they were certainly major players in their day. Jan Ladislav Dussek was a major pianist composer who was active in England. He wrote mostly for the piano and also significantly for the harp. A friend of the piano builder, John Broadwood, he was highly influential in pushing for increases in the range and dynamics of the instrument. He was an enormously prolific composer whose output includes 34 piano sonatas, as well as 13 concertos. Dussek's sonatas were likely an influence on Beethoven, especially Dussek's sonata, Op 44, which was nicknamed The Farewell. It also has musical commonalities with Beethoven's well known sonata, Les Adieux, which means also the farewell, or [FOREIGN], somebody waving bye bye, which is his Sonata in E Flat Op 81a. The name of Muzio Clementi will be well known to any student of the piano, particularly for his famous Six Sonatinas, Op 36. They're the perfect example of the sonata used for pedagogical purpose and they're still used for the same reason today. Clementi has been nicknamed the Father of the Piano, but unfortunately few people nowadays are aware that he owned a piano store and was the composer of, honestly, 110 piano sonatas. And I'm not talking just sonatinas, these are full fledged symphonic scope sonatas and they are very good quality. Clementi's virtuosic piano sonatas were probably a more direct influence on Beethoven's style than were the sonatas of Mozart. Famously, Clementi was taken up and advocated by the virtuoso, Vladimir Horowitz. Clementi's also well known for having taken part in a famous piano duel with Mozart, but he's had the distinct misfortune in music history to have been overshadowed by so many great contemporaries, such as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The most significant set of the Clementi Sonatas is probably his group of Op 50, which were published in 1821, and this includes the programmatic sonata subtitled Didone abbandonata, which is based on Virgil's Aeneid. Another significant composer in this time was Carl Maria von Weber. He was especially well known as an opera composer and while he was not as prolific a composer of piano sonatas as were Clementi or Dussek, some of his sonatas achieved quite a bit of renown and notoriety in his time. Especially his second Sonata in A Flat is a major work and was played and taught by the likes of Chopin and Liszt. Weber's piano music has gone almost entirely out of fashion since that time, but from time to time, there's some major pianists who have taken up and championed his work. The last of these pianist composers was Johann Nepomuk Hummel. He was a major virtuoso in his time, a successful performer and teacher, and it probably helped that he was the best known student of Mozart. Looking at his output, or Weber's for that matter, it's easy to see the great popularity of the genre of theme and variations at this time. It was oriented towards the celebration of these players' virtuosity. Hummel composed seven mature piano sonatas of which his Sonata No 5 Op 81 in F Sharp Minor was regarded as one of the most important piano sonatas of its time. I think it's probably overdue for a revival. [MUSIC]
