PRAGUE, 1794–1808

“The best of fathers, husbands, sons, and friends.” This is how Charlotte Moscheles described her husband Ignaz in the final paragraph of her book Aus Moscheles’ Leben, published two years after his death, in 1872, and translated into English in 1873. It would be entirely natural if Charlotte had exaggerated these characteristics at this sensitive time of mourning. However, newspapers, journals and eyewitness accounts confirm that Ignaz Moscheles was not only the man Charlotte described, but much more: a kind and generous person, a beloved artist, a virtuoso pianist, a renowned pedagogue, a fine conductor, and a musical pioneer.

Ignaz Moscheles was born in Prague on 23 May 1794. His parents, the cloth merchant Joachim (Chaim) Moyses (Moscheles) (7 February 1765/66–24 April 1805) and his wife Klara (or Klarysa or Kehla) Lieben (d. 16 March 1842), had six children. Isack or Isaak, as he was named and known in the Jewish community, was the first of two sons to survive infancy; Solomon died six months after his birth. Moscheles describes a happy childhood within a close-knit, warm and supportive family. His “mother was kindness, love and affection itself,” and his father was unfailingly “gentle and tender” with his eldest son.

Music and the “military” were apparently Moscheles’ two passions as a little boy. These were the tumultuous years immediately following the French revolution, and Moscheles informs us with considerable charm that sometimes he had to put his music aside in order to fulfill his “duties as a Captain” by distributing “scabbard, helmets and other pasteboard armor to [his] troop.” At other times he had the opportunity to combine both passions, especially when he was one of the boys chosen to hold up the music for the military bands parading in front of the guardhouse.

FIRST MUSIC LESSONS

Music, however, soon took precedence over military activities, real or imaginary. His father, an amateur musician, wanted one of his children to become a professional, and naturally chose Moscheles’ older sister Henrietta as the first to be given piano lessons. Moscheles implies that Henrietta was not pleased when her little brother could play her pieces better than she could—without lessons—just by listening, and especially after little Isaak supplanted her as the one destined for a musical career.