Carl Czerny

Carl Czerny (; ; 21 February 1791 – 15 July 1857) was an Austrian composer, music educator, and pianist of Czech origin. His music spanned the late Classical and early Romantic eras. His vast musical production amounted to over a thousand works and his books of studies for the piano are still widely used in piano teaching. He was one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s best-known pupils and would later on be one of the main teachers of Franz Liszt. Early life Infancy Carl Czerny was born in Vienna (Leopoldstadt) and was baptized in St. Leopold parish. His father was of Czech origin; his mother was Moravian. Czerny came from a musical family: his grandfather was a violinist at Nimburg, near Prague, and his father, Wenzel, was an oboist, organist and pianist. When Czerny was six months old, his father took a job as a piano teacher at a Polish manor and the family moved to Poland, where they lived until the third partition of Poland prompted the family to return to Vienna in 1795. As a child prodigy, Czerny began playing piano at age three and composing at age seven. His first piano teacher was his father, who taught him mainly Bach, Haydn and Mozart. He began performing piano recitals in his p