Camille-Marie Stamaty (13 March 1811 – 19 April 1870) was a French pianist, piano teacher and composer predominantly of piano music and studies (études). 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.[1]
Stamaty composed a great number of piano studies, various other shorter piano works (waltzes, fantasies, quadrilles, and variations), a piano concerto and some chamber music. None of his music is still in the repertoire today.
- ^ Harold C. Schonberg, not without reason, characterizes the Kalkbrenner-Stamaty school with these words: "French pianists were schooled in the light, fluent virtuoso technique stemming from Kalkbrenner, Herz and Stamaty. It was elegant but superficial." Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists, revised and updated edition (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 290.