CLEMENTI, Muzio. – Musician, b. in Rome on 24 Jan. 1752, d. in London on 10 March 1832. Pupil of Buroni, Cordicelli, Carpani and Santorelli, in 1764 he composed the oratorio Il martirio dei gloriosi santi Giuliano e Celso for 4 voices and chorus, of which only the poetic text and the title page remain, now in the possession of U. Rolandi.
He studied in England from 1766 to 1773, then undertook long journeys. On returning to London, he founded a school of outstanding pianists (Cramer, Field, Bertini, Moscheles, Czerny, etc.), conducted concerts, and composed numerous sonatas and symphonies. Between 1811 and ’15 he published the Practical Harmony, a collection of music from Frescobaldi to Haydn; between 1815 and ’26 there appeared the Gradus ad Parnassum, still unsurpassed as a didactic work. This and the piano sonatas (about a hundred), technically perfect and innovative, contain pages of true beauty.
Little remains of the symphonies. Some manuscript fragments are in the British Museum and others in the Library of Congress (Washington).