List of musical examples xi

List of tables xiii List of figures xv

Preface xvii

Chapter 1: Clementi and the Enlightenment 1

Introduction 1

Clementi’s interests 6

Clementi as “Beethoven’s skeleton” 13

Clementi and the work-concept 19

Discussing eighteenth-century virtuosity 23

Chapter 2: Mozart’s insult and the irritations of virtuosity 31

Post-Enlightenment responses to difficulty 31

Reconsidering Mozart on Clementi 35

“Virtuosity” versus “difficulty” 54

Cultural and rhetorical responses to difficult music 59

Charlatans and virtuosi: “Est-ce ironie, ou vérité?” 66

Chapter 3: Keyboard performance and gender in eighteenth-century London 73

Introduction 73

Women (and men) at the keyboard in eighteenth-century  England: an overview 75

Reading regulatory texts: ideologies of behavior 90

“Perpetual babyism”: compulsory passivity at the keyboard 94

Resistance, doubt, and the anxiety of performance 103

Conduct books reflect a changing ideology: 1740–1840 109

The reading woman, the performing woman:  “misreading” and “misplaying” 112

Chapter 4: Clementi’s “Black joke” 119

The “Black joke” and bawdiness 119

A crude in-joke? 131

Radical pianism? 132

Before Clementi’s Op. 2 136

After Clementi’s Op. 2 141

Chapter 5: Male theoria and female praxis 151

Introduction 151

An overview of English keyboard culture in the late 1770s 155

Male theoria, female praxis, and the accompanied sonata 168

Difficult music and the male gaze 172

Clementi and counterpoint 183

Novelty and shame in post-Op. 2 keyboard culture 190

Chapter 6: Clementi in the marketplace and the Conservatoire 195

Introduction 195

Clementi’s revisions 197

Topical diversity and the legitimization of pleasure in  Op. 37 210

Helping to conquer difficulty: the music-master and his  “chest of tools” 227

Clementi’s students and dedicatees 232

The father (also) of French pianism 234

Clementi’s European reputation in the 1800s: from Zurich to Paris 239

The importance of fingering: French pianism of the  “Clementi epoch” 244

“Un chant aussi suave”: Clementi in France in the  

nineteenth century 249 Conclusion: Clementi’s coin 259

Appendix: ideological differences regarding keyboard practicing/ music education in thirty-six conduct books and  treatises, 1741–1829 269

Bibliography 281

Index 309