Does anyone care about Czerny anymore?

I have noticed that nobody listens to or performs Czerny except for the School of Velocity and the other Etudes. Kind of sad since he composed 861 Opus numbers (skipping a few along the way, so it probably comes to like 500 but anyway...)

Is it me or has Czerny been forgotten?

He certainly doesn't have the popularity he once had. I too have to admit that I haven't heard anything by him for a long time. Even though I actually liked some of his compositions I heard quite a lot.

But on the other hand: What about the thousands of other composers who have been forgotten, and much more so than Czerny? All the names we never heard of, or all the names that might not even have been famous while they lived. Maybe just because they didn't manage to promote their pieces in ways others did, or composed in ways that were unpopular while they lived and so on. Czerny is still rather well off if we consider this.

Still performed, but he's forgotten mostly because he's forgettable.

Very little Czerny has caught my attention, were it competently written or not.

Problem with Carl (isn't this his first name?) is that his etudes are SO loving ugly, that all pianists go through them and then promise to never touch this composer again. He dug his own grave, as I see it. Same with Hannon (if he is even a composer! :D)

I don't know alot of Czerny - due to his reputation and some of the stuff I have heard or sight read. But there are a few piece from the Art of Finger Dexterity Op 740 which are pretty good -

# 8, A minor. Great left hand Etude and has a Beethovian drive and drama. Very good showpiece.

# 40 - C major - Bright, very pleasant, harder than it sounds. Detached chord playing the right hand. Would serve as a nice contrast to # 8.

# 45 - A flat major. Nice piece. Suggests Fielding. Great prep for the famous Chopin A flat Etude Op 25.

# 27 - D maj - A good performance piece - relaxed, bucolic mood and excellent etude for finger independence. You have to bring the melody out while playing broken octaves in one hand.

# 4 - B flat major - Another bright pleasant piece that imitates a carillon. Harder to play than it sounds. Again good showpiece.

But even in 740 there are alot of pedantic pieces. So I would dissuade a student from learning all of them.

This is wonderful music, plus a wonderful performance.

Having played a great deal of Czerny when I was a kid, I must admit his etudes are painfully dry. But let's not forget that these etudes were intended for instructive, pedagogical purposes only, and they serve those purposes extremely well.

However, early on in his career Czerny showed considerable promise as a composer. I once accidently stumbled on a score of one of Czerny's early concert works, his First Piano Sonata op. 7, which to my surprise was a musically rich and rewarding work full of interest. It's a grand sonata written in an idiom that's highly influenced by Beethoven (who was Czerny's teacher) but that also seems to anticipate the romanticism of Schubert and Mendelssohn and even Liszt (who was Czerny's pupil). For some reason, Czerny failed to live up to his early promise as a composer, probably because he wrote too much and too many etudes.

gianluca -

I also think from what I have read Czerny was an extremely shy and possibly insecure musician. Not enough to prevent him from success and recognition (face it keyboard technique with Czerny profoundly changed, though the revolution started with CPE Bach). Yet it may have been enough to put a stranglehold on his compositional development possibly, as you said, from devoting himself primarily as a teacher.

Interestingly there is a modern day equivalent of this story though the composer wrote much more interesting and high quality stuff but her compositions suffered a somewhat similar fate to Czerny (again not as bad) - Ruth Crawford Seeger.

Ruth Crawford... :wub:

I love her Preludes.

Interestingly there is a modern day equivalent of this story though the composer wrote much more interesting and high quality stuff but her compositions suffered a somewhat similar fate to Czerny (again not as bad) - Ruth Crawford Seeger.

Actually, I think Ruth Crawford Seeger is a completely different case.

Czerny's output is of varying quality not just because he devoted himself primarily to teaching, but also (mainly?) because he was a 'vielschreiber', because he simply wrote far too much. And because of this varying quality, his works other than the etudes have fallen into neglect. Crawford Seeger, on the other hand, wrote very little, but what we have of her work is of great quality (I love her string quartet BTW). Moreover, her works can hardly be said to have fallen into neglect. True, she may not be a very popular composer either (which may in part be due to the uncompromisingly dissonant nature of her music), but at least there still seems to be considerable interest in her music, especially among lovers of 20th century music.

I like Czerny's Concerto for 4 hands piano though.

his music is way too mathematical for my taste.

helpful when you want to improve your skills, but extremely boring.

theres nothing in his music that wows me with its creativity.

Ginaluca - Oh, I agree it is not the same case at all - and the degree of Czerny's case is far more dramatic than Seegers. But if you compare her early stuff before she devoted her time to teaching and family to her stuff afterwards, the later work sounds as if she is out of practice and the quality diminished. Nevertheless she also died too soon as she was returning to the prior level of quality and a new style.

Seeger faced a challenge similar to Czerny and I think common for many music educators - how do you remain a the best teacher and composer possible?

There reaches a point where you have to focus on composition to continue to explore and "grow". Unfortunately we tend to study exceptions - Beethoven, Bach, Prokofiev - fantastic performers and either great or excellent composers. But if you start serious study young enough you can be a very good concert level performer and good composer - we have a few examples here at YC already. In Seeger's case, putting your main efforts into teaching makes it difficult to focus on composition. It can be done ( William Schumann, Sessions, Ligeti) but Seeger didn't practice much composition during those years devoted to teaching, therefor the quality suffered.

Maybe too you just have to focus on performance and composition very early on and then as you work with a variety of musicians of different levels you indirectly gain teaching skills which may be honed later in life. One possible path, I think.

Sorry if my conjectures have diverted this thread from the original post - Czerny's career raises all sorts of interesting questions.