The Unknown Czerny

Carl Czerny was born just six years before Schubert, and, like that composer, as a student he was exposed to and very much influenced by the music of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. In his “Recollections from My Life” (1842), he makes it clear that while he never met Mozart, he became familiar with many of his compositions while a frequent guest at the musicales given by Constanze, Mozart's widow. There many of her late husband's works were performed, including Mozart's piano and violin sonatas, and some of his chamber music. Czerny also became friendly with Mozart's son, Franz Xaver Mozart, who was exactly Czerny's age, and who also became a composer and piano teacher. Although he does not mention meeting Haydn, who died in 1809, it is more than likely that he and the older composer met several times, if not at the Mozarts’, then at other musicales where Czerny's teacher, Beethoven, performed.

Because of his unusually retentive memory, the young Czerny must have been deeply impressed by the music he heard performed at such private and public concerts. As he grew older and began composing his own nondidactic works (such as his piano sonatas, string quartets, and orchestral and chamber music), the sounds of the waning classical era were bound to have some influence on him. Czerny himself described his musical background in his “Recollections”: