nts that "very few composers in the history of Western music . . . have suffered so precipitous a decline in the estimation of posterity" (xi).
Despite the fact that Clementi has not survived as a household name into the late twentieth century, he enjoyed great fame and fortune during his lifetime, as mentioned above, and as far back as the early nineteenth century, he was recognized as the "originator of the modern--i.e. the extended, dramatic--keyboard sonata (Plantinga 293). He also anticipated the later romantic composers in his use of brilliant figurations and bravura playing (Plantinga 293).
Among music scholars, Clementi has been acknowledged as a likely influence on Beethoven's piano compositions for over a century; Plantinga credits John Shedlock's book The Pianoforte Sonata, published in 1895, with first referring to Clementi as a "forerunner of Beethoven" (309), and he lists a number of other scholars who have studied possible connections between the compositional techniques of Beethoven and Clementi, including Saint-Foix, Ringer, and Truscott (Plantinga 315).
Beethoven and Clementi knew one another personally, but their relationship was entirely business related, and it got off to a hopelessly rocky start. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Clementi was in Vienna; in 1804, he attempted to arrange a meeting with Beethoven, but the younger composer rebuffed him (Plantinga 194). This resulted in a number of awkward run-ins, such as those described by Beethoven's student Ferdinand Ries:
When Clementi came to Vienna, Beethoven wanted to go to him at once, but his brother put it into his head that Clementi ought to make the first visit. Though much older Clementi would probably have done so had not gossip begun to concern itself with the matter. Thus it came about that Clementi was in Vienna a long time without knowing Beethoven except by sight. Often we dined at the same table i...