The English Garden Fantasy : Rule Poetics and Transformation Strategies in Carl Czerny's Teaching of Piano Improvisation

This thesis investigates the Viennese pianist, composer, and pedagogue Carl Czerny’s approach to piano improvisation in his Systematische Anleitung zum Fantasieren op. 200 (1829) and Die Kunst des Präludirens op. 300 (1834). Most research on eighteenth and nineteenth-century keyboard improvisation has been focused on the prominent role of thoroughbass-based, standardized harmonic patterns in the improvisation pedagogy of these eras, and on techniques for figuration and contrapuntal elaboration of such patterns. The present work is founded on the insights of previous research, but it is mainly concerned with the central role of genres, styles, and characters in Czerny’s approach to improvisation. With this shift of focus, an essential and hitherto neglected part of the craft of improvisation that Czerny teaches is disclosed. For Czerny, the style and character of an improvisation should be akin to an English garden—seemingly ruleless but based on rational principles. Through a close reading of his method, the present dissertation shows how this English garden ideal is concretely expressed in Czerny’s approach to fantasizing. The thesis situates Czerny’s method in relation to ideas from the tradition of rhetorically influenced, genre-based rule-poetics—a perspective that has not received enough attention in previous research on Czerny and early nineteenth century piano improvisation. The study investigates the meanings and implications of the interplay between genre-based rule poetics, transformative imitation, and the aesthetic ideal of the English garden in Czerny’s approach. The thesis thus offers new insights into Czerny's conception of imitation and models, as well as into how genres, style types, and transformation strategies are governed by aptum (appropriateness) criteria. The study argues that Czerny’s improvisation method amounts to a pedagogy for stylistic appropriateness. But it also shows how Czerny incorporates pre-romantic notions of spontaneity into his rule-regulated genre system, thus interpreting spontaneity as a form of craft. In other words, Czerny’s instruction on fantasizing conveys rules for a seeming rulelessness.