Clementi, Muzio - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III, p. 1083

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

CLEMENTI, Muzio. - Musician, born in Roma on 24 January 1752, died in Londra on 10 March 1832. A pupil of Buroni, Cordicelli, Carpani, and Santorelli, he composed in 1764 the oratorio Martirio dei gloriosi santi Giuliano e Celso for four 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. Having returned to Londra, he founded a school of excellent pianists (Cramer, Field, Bertini, Moscheles, Czerny, etc.), conducted concerts, and composed numerous sonatas and symphonies. Between 1811 and 1815 he published the Practical Harmony, a collection of music from Frescobaldi to Haydn; between 1815 and 1826 the Gradus ad Parnassum appeared, a didactic work still unsurpassed; this and the piano sonatas (about a hundred), technically perfect and innovative, contain pages of true beauty.

Article illustration — (from P. Della Corte and G. Pannain, Storia della musica, II, Torino 1918) CLEMENTI, Muzio - Portrait engraved by V. Rosconi. Lithograph. Milano, Museo Teatrale de La Scala.

Very little remains of the symphonies. Some manuscript fragments are in the British Museum and others in the Library of Congress (Washington).

BIBL.: M. Unger, M. C. Leben, Lipsia 1914; G. C. Paribeni, M. C. nella vita e nell'arte, Milano 1921; U. Rolandi, Uno sconosciuto oratorio di M. C. dodicenne, Roma 1926.

Anna Maria Gentili