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