A friend of the Clementis

Abstract

• ON 10 March 1832 Muzio Clementi, 'The Father of the Pianoforte', breathed his last in the unlikely setting of Evesham in Worcestershire. The 'Land without Music' had lost its most distinguished resident foreign composer since the death of Handel over seventy years before. On 2 January, realizing that his life was drawing to a close, he had made his will. One of the witnesses was an Elizabeth Banks, spinster. As his biographer Unger noticed, this was not the first appearance of a Banks in Clementi's life. Two of his works were dedicated to a John Cleaver Banks. The question arises as to whether there was any connection between these two and, if there was, as to what exactly was their relationship to Clementi.