Most of what we know about Carl Czerny's life comes from his memoirs (1842). Written in retrospect when he was a retired but well-known music teacher and composer, the recollections function more as a bildungsroman (biographical novel) than as a real history. They focus on those who shaped his education, his career, and his teaching methods. As a Viennese insider he regularly drops names of the famous personalities he knew, especially Beethoven and Liszt. He also deems himself qualified to evaluate certain eras as "golden ages" and to label critical style changes in Beethoven's music. That his writing says so little about his milieu and the turbulent political events that surrounded his life may testify to his narrow, professional intent. But it may also have been a calculated move to ensure that his memoirs could be published, since in the prerevolutionary Austria of 1842, censors could have banned any observation that strayed from official stances on current events. Czerny lived in Vienna alongside a surprising number of important musicians, writers, artists, and actors. The wealth of research on their lives and works coincides with numerous examples of nineteenth- century Viennese travel literature and extensive Austrian archival information from the period. My work draws on all of these and seeks to provide the wider context of Czerny's life. Throughout, I have used the composer's own dates and periodization, adding only an extra period to cover his last years.

First Period (1791-1806)-Birth to Age Fifteen

Austria's "Enlightened" emperor Joseph II died the year before Czerny's birth and was succeeded by his brother Leopold II, who undid many of his reforms. Leopold died in 1792, after only two years on the throne, and the crown passed to his son Franz II. Early in his reign, postrevolutionary France became the empire's principal antagonist, as Napoleon emerged first as a military leader and then as a new emperor. By 1805 his forces defeated the Austrian army, occupied Vienna, and thus ended the Holy Roman Empire. Franz II became Franz I, Emperor of Austria.

Although Czerny's origins were far removed from the elevated circles of international politics, these events would shape the circumstances in which he lived his early years. Carl's father Wenzel was a Bohemian-born musician who had delayed his musical career by first serving a fifteen-year term in the artillery division of the military because his parents were poor.