Liszt’s musical education was, in one respect, commonplace. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Habsburg Empire’s gifted youngsters typically began instruction with their fathers or close relatives, who ranged in expertise from amateurs to professional court or church musicians. Exceptional talent warranted engaging recognised pedagogues or cultivating special opportunities, often in Vienna, where a conservatory that opened as a singing school in 1817 developed no instrumental curricula until 1827. This pattern governed the training of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and many contemporaries. Liszt likewise studied first with his father, Adam Liszt, in Raiding, then with Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri in Vienna and finally with Ferdinando Paer and Antoine Reicha in Paris, all between 1817 and 1826.