That Clementi's great Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps Toward Parnassus) is so poorly and unaffectionately remembered today is one of the more unfortunate results of the mid- and late nineteenth century obsession with pure instrumental virtuosity in the wake of figures like Niccolò Paganini and Franz Liszt. Gradus comprises 100 pieces for solo piano Clementi wrote over a span of nearly five decades and published in three volumes (1817, 1819, and 1826). Clementi intended the collection to serve as an instructional tool, but it hardly reflects the dry, colorless vein of such famous pedagogical aids as Charles-Louis Hanon's The Virtuoso Pianist. Though Gradus contains simple technical exercises, it also includes graceful miniature sonatas, fugues, and deeply expressive, operatic fantasias designed to tap all of a player's musical resources.

In the late 1850s, more than 40 years after the publication of Volume I, famed pianist and Liszt pupil Carl Tausig prepared and eventually published an new edition of Gradus ad Parnassum. However, he included only the purely technical exercises, believing that it was only as raw practice fodder that Clementi's work was of value to contemporary pianists consumed with attaining ever-greater digital velocity and power. In subsequent generations, unfortunately, many musicians came to know Clementi's great compendium only in this defleshed, skeletal form. It was only in the last few decades of the twentieth century that a revival of interest in Clementi's music spurred a widespread revisitation of the work in its original incarnation.

Gradus ad Parnassum is, quite simply, a stunning achievement. Clementi was one of Europe's most famous musicians during his lifetime; in a famous keyboard duel with the formidable Mozart, the judges declared the contest a draw. This level of manual skill, plus a further forty years' experience, is at the heart of Clementi's Opus 44. As Gradus was written in bits and pieces over most of the composer's long career, the range of styles represented is impressive, from the almost Haydnesque Classicism of the famous Allegro (No. 62 in Clementi's original ordering) to the chromatically adventuresome pieces composed during the 1820s. The best known of the finger-exercise-variety pieces is probably No. 16, parodied by Claude Debussy in "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum" from the piano suite Children's Corner (1906-1908).

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