Carl Ludwig Heinrich Berger (18 April 177716 February 1839) was a German

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

, and piano teacher. He was born in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, and spent his youth in Templin and

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

, where he studied both

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

and

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

. Later, he studied composition with in Berlin. He became a pupil of the composer

Muzio Clementi Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi (23 January 1752 – 10 March 1832) was an Italian-British composer, virtuoso pianist, pedagogue, conductor (music), conductor, music publisher, editor, and piano manufacturer, who was mostly ac ...

, and went with him to

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, where he stayed for eight years. While in Russia, he married, but was widowed in less than a year. During the

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

, he fled to

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, where his piano performances were well received. He returned to Berlin in 1814, and lived there for the rest of his life. A nervous disorder in his arm led to the end of his career as a piano virtuoso, and he built a reputation as a teacher, numbering Felix and

Fanny Mendelssohn Fanny Mendelssohn (14 November 1805 – 14 May 1847) was a German composer and pianist of the early Romantic era who was known as Fanny Hensel after her marriage. Her compositions include a string quartet, a piano trio, a piano quartet, an or ...

, as well as Taubert, Dorn, and August Wilhelm Bach among his more distinguished pupils. See . Berger wrote over 160 solo songs (for instance in 1816/17 a song-cycle "Die schöne Müllerin" based on a parlor game), as well as a piano concerto, seven piano sonatas, 29 studies, and several didactic piano works. He died in Berlin in 1839.

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* 1777 births 1839 deaths German Romantic composers German classical pianists German male classical composers German male classical pianists German music educators Pupils of Muzio Clementi Composers for piano Composers from the Kingdom of Prussia {{Germany-composer-stub