Camille-Marie Stamaty

Who was Camille-Marie Stamaty?

Camille-Marie Stamaty was a French pianist, piano teacher and composer predominantly of piano music and studies. Today largely forgotten, he was one of the preeminent piano teachers in 19th century Paris. His most famous pupils were Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Camille Saint-Saëns.

Stamaty was the star pupil of Friedrich Kalkbrenner and heir to Kalkbrenner's teaching method. He taught a crisp, fine, even filigree piano playing that concentrated on evenness of scales, independence of fingers and minimum movement of body and arms.

Stamaty composed a great number of piano studies, various other shorter piano works, a piano concerto and some chamber music. None of his music is still in the repertoire today, although a good look at his once famous études might be very worthwhile. New recordings of his best output, possibly on period instruments, would be desirable.