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Greetings, all!

Today I discovered that one of my current professors, unbeknownst to me, studied under Leon Fleisher for some time. That led me to google, and I quickly discovered that I'm part of a lineage not uncommon among the classical piano community!

Here are my findings, in reverse chronlogical order of tutelage:

Durden
Huang
Fleisher
Schnabel
Leschetizky
Czerny
Beethoven ...

Albrechtsberger, Zachow, Handel...
... or Salieri, Gluck, Sammartini

It gets a little bit dicey prior to Beethoven... can't quite figure out how to tie it back to CPE Bach and his father...

Anybody else ever attempted this excercise? I'd be interested to hear your "genealogy..."

Derulux
Potter
Rowling...

...and that's usually where I get side-tracked. :p

Beethoven
Czerny
Liszt
Krause
Arrau
Drury
Jimenez
me.

I know that Leon Fleisher, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Helen Titus, and Nadia Boulanger taught Nelita True, who taught my teacher's teacher.

Mr. Durden listed Schnabel, Leschetizky, Czerny, Beethoven as ancestors to Fleisher, does that mean I descend from Beethoven? cool

guess I'm an orphan... bravely making my way to my current and only teacher since '68 who at least shows evidence of formal study .

I have a 'teacher pedigree' assembled by my teacher which goes back to Ockheghem. Bach, his sons, Beethoven, Czerny, Liszt, Leschetizky are all on there with their lineage as well. My teachers studied with Bauer, Samaroff, Grainger, Gabrilowitsch, Safonoff, Friedman, Siloti, Gallico, Hofmann, Rosenthal, Riesberg, etc.,who were students of Liszt or Leschetizky for the most part. ETUDE Magazine had a pictorial display of famous artists who had studied with either Liszt or Leschetizky with the lineage descending from Czerny and Beethoven. He told me of the process by which he found all the relationships. Chopin, Schubert, Salieri, Binchois--it's rather large and quite interesting as he also put some interesting aside for some of them.

Mme. de Horvath, my teacher in Chicago, was a student of Safonoff (teacher of Josef & Rosinna Lhevinne), Gabrilowitsch (student of Essipoff, Rubinstein, and Leschetizky), Friedman (student of Leschetizky), and von Sternberg (student of Liszt).

It's interesting to see the traditions passed down from teachers of great reputation--either as composers/teachers, or performers. Oh--Mozart is there too with many other recognizable names from history.

Pretty cool, indeed!

My teacher studied with Perlemuter for a period. If Perlemuter is my pianistic 'grandfather', then Cortot is my pianistic 'great grandfather', and Lipatti my pianist 'great uncle'.

Humbling for some who is no more than an amateur. I hope they do not turn in their graves when I play...

Ummm,

at age 6-8 Edith Mae Beckwith
8-12 Mrs. Cramer
12-15? Mrs. Potter

Whos knows who they studied with? They're all long gone now.
Does John Thompson count?

it's funny how many people can trace their teaching lineage back to Liszt... I can too!

It seems though that he taught quite a few students though so I can understand!

Beethoven
Czerny
Liszt
Busoni
Egon Petri
Julian White
me

Aaron -

That Liszt-Busoni link is a bit tenuous, wouldn't you think?

I can trace back to Busoni as well:

Busoni
Epstein
Silk
Jimenez
me

or

Busoni
Arrau
Drury
Jimenez
me

but I wouldn't have thought to link Busoni with Liszt.

You're right, Jon. Busoni wasn't Liszt's pupil. I'll gladly stop at Busoni!

The trouble with Liszt, as has been mentioned (and I don't want to make too big a fuss about it, because I honestly don't know enough about it) is that he did teach a LOT of students and the majority--a vast majority--of pianists in that time who went to him were really just looking for his name to add on to their life's tale to add some credence or intrigue or...whatever. So, in other words, going to one of Liszt's public masterclasses for an hour, in which Liszt would have someone play and then he would play the piece himself and occassionally through in some comments, was often reason enough to call yourself a Liszt pupil.

I'd love to hear from someone who can trace back through Tausig, Rosenthal, Sauer, Thoman, or...*mind blank* someone else whose name is more closely associated with Liszt than the average Romantic-era pianist. Thoman was particularly interesting; I believe he was the last "direct" Liszt pupil to die, after years of working with Dohnanyi at the Liszt Academy; he actually taught Cziffra for several years!

This reminded me of this story:

My instructor has her instruction linage back to Beethoven. I have been meaning to ask her to write it down for me and I would make up something for her to hang on the wall.

I have similar ties to the others who have posted - Liszt, Czerny, Beethoven - however I cannot recall it perfectly. What you say, Goldberg, is very true. I believe I do have a closer tie to Liszt, however I am not positive. I have a lesson tonight - I will ask my teacher and post my lineage later tonight.

To actually answer the question, I honestly don't know much about my former teachers' pasts (and I no longer have a teacher so it's not easy to ask one of them), but looking on the Rice website I dug up some information like Dariusz Pawlas, my most recent and favorite teacher of all, learned from one Andrzej Jasinski and John Perry and also took "summer classes" with Richard Goode, Karl-Heinz Kammerling, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

My longest-standing and perhaps least favorite teacher, Dean Shank, has on his bio the teachers Stefan Bardas, Richard Cass, Richard Goode, John Perry, William Race, and Alexander Uninsky, of which I remember him talking about Perry and Uninsky the most (and I recognise Uninsky from somewhere else, and of course everyone knows who John Perry is, at least in Texas).

Now I'll google a few names to see if anything interesting pops up...

*several minutes later* shoot! I can't seem to find anything helpful! Does anyone know a little more about some of those guys? I know they're mostly famous (apparently Schoenberg had some sort of correspondence with Stefan Bardas, which is pretty neat) but I guess this sort of thing isn't readily available on google...

Sorry to be like this, but it's "pedagogical." Topic line's been driving me nuts for a few days.

I go back through Frank Mannheimer and Tobias Matthay. (Teacher of Myra Hess and Clifford Curzon.)

Kreisler! Me too on the correction!! My 'pedigree' is about 4 1/2 feet wide and about 3 feet high hanging in the studio with almost 500 names numbered and indexed going back 19 generations. I had a copy made recently and have permission from my teacher to copy it (it's copyrighted) so I'm ok there. For those interested in lineage it's quite interesting. And in Vienna I had a teacher who had worked with Edwin Fischer but I don't know his background. I'm sure it's available tho and could prove interesting as well.