The Intellectual Circle of Muzio Clementi in London: A Contribution to His Biography

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the relationship that the musician Muzio Clementi had with the intellectuals of his period in England. The most significant connection stems from his friendship with the writer Thomas Holcroft and the philosopher William Godwin. From the analysis of documents, recently published studies and their comparison with different testimonies about the musician, the article aims to make a contribution to the biography of Clementi based on his interactions with the thinkers of the period, which had an effect on his personality and his professional activity as a musician. It becomes clear that as well as being an exceptional musician he was also an intellectual with an enlightened mind who played a part in the ideas that were provoking great changes in Europe, in his case through music.

KEYWORDS:

• Muzio Clementi
• William Godwin
• Thomas Holcroft
• Mary Wollstonecraft
• Mary Shelley
• anarchism
• intellectual

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Victoria Myers, David O’Shaughnessy and Mark Philp, eds., The Diary of William Godwin (Oxford: Oxford Digital Library, 2010) http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

² Kenneth Neill Cameron, ed., Shelley and his Circle (1773–1822): Volume II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 550.

³ Thomas Holcroft to William Godwin, Altona, 15 August 1800. Abinger Dep. c.511, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

⁴ A Tale of Mystery, a Melo-Drame by Thomas Holcroft. As performed at the Theatre-Royal Covent-Garden. Second Edition, with Etchings after designs by Tresham (London: Richard Phillips, 1802).

⁵ Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft, Written by Himself; and continued to the Time of his Death, from His Diary, Notes, and other Papers (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1852), 211, 238.

⁶ For a good summary of Godwin’s idiosyncrasy, see Kenneth R. Johnston, review of The Letters of William Godwin: Volume I, 1778–1797, ed. Pamela Clemit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), in Review 19 (2011), http://test.nbol-19.org/view_doc.php?index=141.

⁷ Nicholson’s son writes in his memoir: ‘From Red Lion Sq my father removed to Gt. Russell St. and next to Newman St, which was at the time (about 1796) a colony of artists and scientific characters. There resided Holcroft, Bacon the sculptor, Stothard the artist, and many other men of talent. Godwin, Holcroft, Thelwall, and others were constantly at our house and though my father never evinced any very strong political bias, the others expressed themselves very forcibly and there was constant reference to a “Corresponding Society” from which great things were expected to result.’ MS Don. e. 125, Bodleian Library, Oxford, quoted in The Diary of William Godwin, eds., Myers, O’Shaughnessy and Philp http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/people/NIC01.html#NIC01-notes.

⁸ Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft, 253.

⁹ Martin Garrett, A Mary Shelley Chronology (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 4 (1799).

¹⁰ The Letters of William Godwin: Volume II, 1798–1805, ed. Pamela Clemit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), William Godwin to Muzio Clementi, 20 October 1800, 173–4.

¹¹ Marx/Engels Collected Works. MECW, Volume 43, 396; first published: Abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Berlin, 1931. MECW, Volume 43, 396. ‘You must get hold of Curran’s “Speeches” edited by Davies (London: James Duffy, 22 Paternoster Row)… I regard Curran as the sole great lawyer (people’s advocate) of the 18th century, and the noblest personality’. A letter from Marx to Engels, 10 December 1869.

https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1869/letters/69_12_10.htm.

¹² Muzio Clementi, Practical Harmony: Volume 1. Seneca Ep:VI.

¹³ ‘The Notebook of Muzio Clementi’ (‘Muzio Clementi’s Book’), unpublished manuscript, in possession of John Collard. Clementi’s notes from 1803 to 1808, including notes by Clementi and his grandson Herbert Clementi Smith.

¹⁴ Jean de La Fontaine, Fabl. VIII, 26.

¹⁵ The Correspondence of Muzio Clementi, ed. David Rowland (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2010), 27. Muzio Clementi to Gaetano Clementi, London, 21 December 1798.

¹⁶ Leon Plantinga, Clementi: His Life and Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977/New York: Da Capo Press, 1985), 234.

¹⁷ Maria Gisborne & Edward E. Williams, Shelley’s Friends. Their Journals and Letters, ed. Frederick L. Jones (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951), 41. The Journal of Maria Gisborne, London, 3 August 1820.

¹⁸ Correspondence of Clementi, ed. Rowland, 369. Vincent Clementi to Cecil Clementi Smith, Ontario, Canada, 20 August 1895.

¹⁹ William Gardiner, Music and Friends (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, and Longman, 1838), 243.

²⁰ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, ed. Mary Shelley, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840), II, 193. Percy B. Shelley to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, Pisa.

²¹ Correspondence of Clementi, ed. Rowland, 133. Caroline and Muzio Clementi to Sophie Sander, Rome, 1 December 1804.

²² For a better idea of who Maria Gisborne was and her relationship with the Shelleys, see Timothy Webb, ‘Scratching at the Door of Absence: Writing and Reading “Letter to Maria Gisborne”’, in Timothy Webb and Alan M. Weinberg (eds), The Unfamiliar Shelley (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).

²³ Maria Gisborne & Edward E. Williams, ed. Jones, 6: ‘[Percy B.] Shelley and Mary [Shelley] both had a preconceived liking for the woman [Maria Gisborne] who had been a friend of Mary’s [Shelley] mother [Mary Wollstonecraft], an object of great admiration of her father [William Godwin], and a nurse of Mary [Shelley] herself’.

²⁴ Maria Gisborne & Edward E. Williams, ed. Jones, 38. The Journal of Maria Gisborne, 2 July 1820.

²⁵ Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed. Betty T. Bennett (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 65. Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne, Leghorn, 19 July 1820.

²⁶ Maria Gisborne & Edward E. Williams, ed. Jones, 66. Maria Gisborne to Mary Shelley, 23 August 1820.

²⁷ Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed. Bennett, 84. Mary Shelley to Maria Gisborne, Pisa, 18 January 1822, ‘My Compliments to Emma Clementi’. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed. Bennett, 119. Mary Shelley to Lord Byron, [Genoa,] 21 October 1822.

²⁸ Maria Gisborne & Edward E. Williams, ed. Jones, 83. Maria Gisborne to Mary Shelley, London, 28 April 1822.

²⁹ Peter Marshall, William Godwin: Philosopher, Novelist, Revolutionary (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017), Chapter X, ‘Political Justice Revisited’, n. 51.

³⁰ See Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (London, 1792).

³¹ Correspondence of Clementi, ed. Rowland, 152. Clementi to F.W. Collard, Berlin, 31 August 1805.

³² Correspondence of Clementi, ed. Rowland, 257. Clementi to Mme. Lehmann, London, 15 June 1818.

³³ Correspondence of Clementi, ed. Rowland, 84. Pleyel to Clementi, Paris, 3 April 1802.

³⁴ Correspondence of Clementi, ed. Rowland, 120. Clementi to F.W. Collard. Berlin, 4 August 1804.

³⁵ Correspondence of Clementi, ed. Rowland, 77. Clementi & Co. to Pleyel & Co., London, 20 October 1801.

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Marina Rodríguez Brià

Marina Rodríguez Brià is a pianist, independent researcher and music communicator. She writes articles and poetry, gives lectures and recitals and is curator of several exhibitions about Clementi, Beethoven and Fernando Sor. Her main research interests are the study of Muzio Clementi’s life and work as well as musical life in London. She also studies the world of piano in Barcelona and recovers Catalan writers and artists of the twentieth century. She holds a master’s degree in Music and in French Philology, is an associate member of the Catalan Society of Musicology and a founder member of the Muzio Clementi Association of Barcelona. Her website is marinarodriguezbria.blogspot.com