Muzio Clementi

Born shortly after Handel wrote his oratorio Jephtha and dead shortly after Berlioz wrote his Symphonie fantastique, Muzio Clementi failed to write anything equal to the originality of those two composers -- or, certainly, equal to the best of his closer contemporaries, Mozart and Haydn. Yet Clementi remains a significant figure for his pioneering work on behalf of the newfangled piano, that percussive, expressive instrument that quickly displaced the harpsichord at the end of the 18th century. His full-scale sonatas and small studies exploited the possibilities of the early p...