Pixis and his Hommage to Clementi

During the reign of King George IV, Johann Peter Pixis wrote his Hommage a Clementi, a set of piano variations on ‘God Save the King’, op.101.  Published in 1828 by S. Chappell, and also distributed by Henry Lemoine, copies went to all the copyright libraries.  As I’m transcribing each item on the two Advocates’ Library music lists, I’m looking to see where copies survived, and it’s rare to trace such near-complete coverage as I did with this piece.   Playing my game of ‘Happy Families’ with the list dated March 8th, 1830, I checked off an almost complete set still extant, in Aberdeen, St Andrews, Glasgow, Oxford, Cambridge and the British Library.  Clearly, variations on ‘God Save the King’ were generally considered worth keeping.  Indeed, St Andrews and Cambridge each hold two copies.  The popularity of the tune is corroborated in a recent book, Taking it to the Bridge: Music as performance, edited by Nicholas Cook and Richard Pettengill, p.114. 

I don’t think the Advocates were selling theirs, after due reflection.   Moreover, who knows what happened to the copy that presumably also went to the University of Edinburgh (aka ‘Edinburgh College’)? As for Sion College – I haven’t started investigating what happened to their music, yet.  I hope to visit my counterparts in Lambeth Palace soon, but my travel plans are a bit up in the air at the moment …

After several hours of transcribing grey, enlarged camera photos, I thought it might be fun to play this apparently desirable score.  It’s lucky I was able to visit Glasgow University Library, because a quick search online didn’t turn up a digitised copy.  Admittedly, I didn’t look very hard.  However, I did find a review of the piece in The Harmonicon of 1828, the music magazine which was enormously popular with library users in St Andrews!  Two of Pixis’ sets of variations are reviewed.  Do I really want to bother with something fit only for ‘crazy amateurs of Vienna’,  or nimble-fingered pianists with no judgement? 

I did find a rather dull piano rondo online …  but then again, his Double Concerto for violin and piano in F# minor is rather lovely! So who knows?

Storify: Wunderkind, Johann Peter Pixis

This posting sparked a veritable Twitter storm of enthusiastic commentary from German musicians and musicologists.  I have saved the entire conversation as a Storify story, involving Clara Wieck, Scottish tunes and variations, piano prodigies and virtuosi, frothy ephemeral music and the abovementioned lovely concerto.  Read on!

• https://storify.com/karenmca/a-pixis-fixation
• This is a link to an impromptu SoundCloud recording.  Some will say I have no shame.  My argument is that an average amateur pianist sight-reading the introduction to Pixis’ Hommage a Clementi, in a chilly November Edinburgh house, would probably have sounded no better!  I promise to work at it ….