In 1937, Sviatoslav Richter entered Heinrich Neuhaus’s class at the Moscow Conservatory. An eyewitness later recalled hearing Sviatoslav Richter play Beethoven’s Appassionata there. That account places a named work in a teaching setting. It does not record what Heinrich Neuhaus said about the performance.
Ten connections lead back from that class to Johann Pachelbel. Some are documented lessons; others are family ties or records of study whose details remain unknown. The route connects teachers and pupils, but it cannot by itself establish a continuous way of playing.
From Erfurt to the Bach family
Johann Christoph Bach studied the organ with Johann Pachelbel in Erfurt for three years. Their contact continued after Johann Christoph Bach moved to Ohrdruf: Johann Pachelbel prepared a written assessment of the organ at his church, and Johann Christoph Bach added faults he had found. Accounts describe the document, though the research for this article did not find an image or transcription of it. It therefore cannot show which musical habits the apprenticeship passed on.
Johann Sebastian Bach later lived in his brother Johann Christoph Bach’s household and learned the foundations of keyboard playing from him. Surviving collections assembled by Johann Christoph Bach include music by Johann Pachelbel alongside works by other composers. Because the collections were compiled after Johann Sebastian Bach had left Ohrdruf, they show the range of his brother’s library rather than a list of pieces used in their lessons.
Johann Christian Bach was Johann Sebastian Bach’s son. The research report records early keyboard and theory lessons from his father, followed by study elsewhere after Johann Sebastian Bach died in 1750. Manuscripts of Johann Christian Bach’s music and manuscripts of his father’s music that he owned may help trace what he kept, but their published description identifies no particular technique passed between them.
Bologna and Mozart
Johann Christian Bach studied with Giovanni Martin in Bologna. Most of their surviving correspondence remains there; a scholarly catalogue publishes transcriptions and translations. Without examining the letters, it is not possible to name an exercise Giovanni Martin assigned or attribute a feature of Johann Christian Bach’s music to those lessons.
Giovanni Martin also taught Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Bologna as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart prepared for admission to the city’s Philharmonic Academy. A copy of the examination setting Quaerite primum, K. 86, bears corrections attributed to Giovanni Martin. On 4 September 1776, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sent him the motet Misericordias Domini, K. 222—a sacred vocal work—and asked for his judgment. A surviving draft reply discusses how its harmonies change and how its individual musical lines fit together. The score and letters document teaching and criticism, though they do not establish years of regular lessons.
Pupils, manuscripts and a conservatory
The Mozart letters edition identifies Johann Hummel as a pupil of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but marks its proposed dating of 1787–88 as uncertain. A later manuscript in Johann Hummel’s hand contains arrangements of six Mozart concertos, some with cadenzas: solo passages added to a concerto. It shows Johann Hummel working with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music, not what he was taught about making those additions.
Ferdinand von Hiller went to Johann Hummel in Weimar for further training. Johann Hummel later published a substantial piano-playing method. Ferdinand von Hiller went on to direct a Cologne institution that taught piano alongside composition, harmony and counterpoint—the practice of combining independent musical lines. No lesson book or marked score found in this research shows which parts of Johann Hummel’s method Ferdinand von Hiller used as a teacher.
A compiled Cologne Conservatory student list records Gustav Neuhaus there from October 1867 to 22 August 1870. Biographical accounts name Ferdinand von Hiller as his teacher, and Ferdinand von Hiller led the institution. The student-list entry itself names no teacher. No class register, timetable or lesson record assigning Gustav Neuhaus to Ferdinand von Hiller was found.
The Neuhaus classroom
Gustav Neuhaus was Heinrich Neuhaus’s father and gave him early piano instruction. Heinrich Neuhaus’s recollections describe disagreement over his artistic direction, and he later studied beyond the family school. The consulted sources identify no specific exercise taught by Gustav Neuhaus that Heinrich Neuhaus either adopted or rejected.
The 1937 conservatory record and the eyewitness account establish the final teaching connection, from Heinrich Neuhaus to Sviatoslav Richter. The account names Beethoven’s Appassionata but gives no advice Heinrich Neuhaus offered on it. At an earlier point in the route, even the date of Johann Christian Bach’s journey to Italy remains unsettled: the Bach Archive gives 1755, while MusicLineage’s editorial record gives 1754.
