Plaidy, Louis

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Plaidy, Louis

Plaidy, Louis , famous German piano teacher; b. Wermsdorf, Nov. 28, 1810; d. Grimma, March 3, 1874. He began his professional career as a violinist, and performed in public in Dresden and Leipzig; at the same time he took piano lessons from Agthe, and became greatly proficient as a pianist, so that Mendelssohn engaged him in 1843 as a piano teacher at the Leipzig Cons. Plaidy concentrated on the technical problems of piano pedagogy. He taught at the Leipzig Cons. until 1865, then continued to give private lessons. He publ. a number of instructive piano studies which were widely used, his Technische Studien für das Pianoforte-Spiel being a standard manual. He also publ. a booklet, Der Klavierlehrer (1874; British ed. as The Pianoforte Teacher’s Guide; American ed., tr. by J.S. Dwight, as The Piano-Teacher).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire