Carl Czerny

Born 21 February 1791 in Austria to a Czech family, Czerny became a pupil of Beethoven and absorbed the late Classical style at its source. He built a career as a composer and pedagogue, eventually taking on a young Franz Liszt and shaping the next generation's virtuosity. His output topped a thousand works spanning the Classical and early Romantic eras, but what endures are the books of piano studies — methodical, relentless exercises that still populate lesson plans worldwide. He died 15 July 1857, remembered less for the music he wrote than for the fingers he trained.