Camille-Marie Stamaty

Camille-Marie Stamaty, born in Rome, was the son of a naturalized Greek father and a French mother.

His mother was French and according to Antoine François Marmontel, who probably knew her, a fine singer of Italian operatic arias.

In his spare time he kept practicing and composing and his playing must have been so good that he could perform at soirees in fashionable Parisian homes.

This was no mean achievement as Paris was considered to be the city of pianists and Stamaty had ample competition in fashionable salons from Sigismond Thalberg, Franz Liszt, Stephen Heller, Henri Herz, Émile Prudent and scores of lesser known piano players.

Marmontel shrewdly points out that, as Stamaty was no artist on the scale of Chopin and thus lacked the strong personality of the great genius, he was ideally suited for Kalkbrenner's strict regime.

He received lessons in organ playing from François Benoist and in harmony and counterpoint from Anton Reicha.

[10] Finally, in October 1836, Stamaty went to Leipzig to receive the finishing touches of his education from Felix Mendelssohn.

Stamaty, from the age of 19 on, suffered from nervous exhaustion, overwork and frequent and severe bouts from what was then called rheumatism.

These pianos were ideal for the execution of rapid scales, facile arpeggios and quickly repeated notes.

Marmontel clearly states that Stamaty was a "pianist of style but was no transcendental virtuoso" and that his playing lacked "warmth, colour and brilliance".

Saint-Saëns who during his long life had witnessed the development from the old purely digital technique to the transcendental virtuosity of Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein and even Leopold Godowsky sums up the advantages and the drawbacks of the Kalkbrenner-Stamaty school like this: His works include a great quantity of studies, shorter piano works (waltzes, fantasies, quadrilles, variations), several sonatas, some chamber music and a piano concerto.