Profession: composer

Michael Haydn was Joseph Haydn’s younger brother – and as highly regarded at the time. Albrechtsberger was a fellow-chorister. Haydn found himself competing with Leopold Mozart for the same positions, but became a close friend of Mozart’s son Wolfgang. Reicha was also a good friend. Weber and Neukomm were among his pupils.

Fauré taught Ravel over fourteen years. He met Satie and Chabrier as a student — both influenced him. Fargue was a fellow-member of the self-styled ‘Apaches.’ Poulenc approached him as a possible teacher but was rebuffed; Delage and Vaughan-Williams were among his few students; Gershwin asked him for lessons, though when Ravel learned how much he earned, he jokingly suggested Gershwin teach him. Debussy and he knew and admired each other; De Falla and Stravinsky were among other composer friends; Strauss and Cocteau were correspondents. Colette, a close friend, called him “Ravelito.”

Cherubini studied with Sarti in Bologna, as well as with Salieri. His work, often out of fashion, was highly rated by Beethoven and Haydn, both of whom met him when he was invited to work in Vienna. He met Paganini in Paris. Cherubini was enthusiastic about Mendelssohn’s musical future when the teenager’s father took him along for advice.

Beethoven and Reicha became lifelong friends when they played in Reicha’s uncle’s orchestra. Neefe taught him as a teenager, as later did Albrechtsberger, Salieri and Haydn. Czerny became his own most noted pupil; Hummel was another. Moscheles had idolised him, later in life organising a fund for him, and translating his biography into English. Whether or not the boy Liszt was taken by Czerny to Beethoven, and kissed by him for the quality of his playing, is still disputed. Hiller visited the sick Beethoven with Hummel; both were pallbearers at his funeral, Hiller cutting the famous lock of hair from his head.