Carl Ludwig Heinrich Berger (18 April 1777 – 16 February 1839) was a German

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

, composer, and piano teacher. He was born in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, and spent his youth in

Templin Templin () is a small town in the Uckermark district of Brandenburg, Germany. Though it has a population of only 17,127 (2006), in terms of area it is, with 377.01 km2 (145.56 sq mi), the second largest town in Brandenburg (after Wittstock) and ...

and

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

, where he studied both flute and

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

. Later, he studied composition with J. A. Gürrlich in Berlin. He became a pupil of the composer

Muzio Clementi Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi (23 January 1752 – 10 March 1832) was an Italian composer, virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer, who was mostly active in England. Encourag ...

, and went with him to

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

, where he stayed for eight years. While in Russia, he married, but was widowed in less than a year. During the

Napoleonic wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...

, he fled to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, where his piano performances were well received. He returned to Berlin in 1814, and lived there for the rest of his life. A nervous disorder in his arm led to the end of his career as a piano virtuoso, and he built a reputation as a teacher, numbering

Felix Felix may refer to: * Felix (name), people and fictional characters with the name Places * Arabia Felix is the ancient Latin name of Yemen * Felix, Spain, a municipality of the province Almería, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, ...

and Fanny Mendelssohn, as well as Taubert, Dorn, and August Wilhelm Bach among his more distinguished pupils. Berger wrote over 160 solo songs (for instance in 1816/17 a song-cycle "Die schöne Müllerin" based on a parlor game), as well as a piano concerto, seven piano sonatas, twenty-nine studies, and several didactic piano works. He died in Berlin in 1839.

Sources

*Kershaw, Richard, and Musgrave, Michael. "Berger, Ludwig"
Grove Music Online
(subscription access).

External links

* 1777 births 1839 deaths German classical composers German classical pianists German male classical composers German male classical pianists German music educators Pupils of Muzio Clementi {{Germany-composer-stub