Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Phillip Sear plays a piece from around 1850 by the Austrian pianist, composer, and civil servant Carl Georg Lickl (1801–77)
---------------------------------------------
"Lickl was the elder son of the Kapellmeister and composer Johann Georg Lickl (1769–1843) and brother of the Trieste-based composer Aegidius Ferdinand Karl Lickl (1803–1864). Raised in Vienna in a musical household, Carl Georg received his early formation under the direct influence of his father, whose own training had encompassed organ, piano, and compositional technique in the Viennese tradition. Unlike his brother, who pursued a full professional career in opera and sacred music, Carl Georg balanced his musical activities with employment as a civil servant, a circumstance that necessarily shaped the character and scope of his compositional output. He became particularly distinguished as a performer on the physharmonica, a free-reed keyboard instrument fashionable in Viennese domestic music-making during the Biedermeier era, and his mastery of the instrument lent his keyboard writing a characteristic sensitivity to sustained, vocally inflected melodic lines.
Lickl's solo keyboard output reflects the cultivated amateur and salon milieu of mid-nineteenth-century Vienna. His works for piano and physharmonica are largely cast in the forms characteristic of the period — character pieces, sets of variations, dances, and pedagogical studies — conceived for the educated domestic performer rather than the concert virtuoso. The physharmonica transcription of Beethoven's 'Mass in C major', undertaken jointly with his brother, demonstrates both his technical command of the instrument and a readiness to engage with the weightier repertoire of the German tradition. His piano writing occupies a stylistic position broadly consonant with the Viennese school of Hummel and the younger Schubert, favouring melodic clarity and formal proportion over the more extravagant demands of the emerging virtuoso style.
Beyond the keyboard, Lickl's wider legacy is inseparable from the broader Lickl family contribution to Viennese musical culture in the first three quarters of the nineteenth century. As a composer he remained a figure of regional and domestic rather than international significance, yet his cultivation of the physharmonica as a serious compositional medium represents a minor but distinctive strand within the history of keyboard music in the Biedermeier period." (Perplexity AI, 14 May 2026).
This piece (I'm not sure if it is from a larger work) was published in a weekly piano publication for 1850 issued in Vienna by Haslinger, titled 'Musikalischer Telegraf für das Piano-Forte: Wochenblatt für das Jahr 1850', enthaltend interessante Musikstücke von versch. Comp.. The title means roughly “Musical Telegraph for the Piano-Forte: weekly sheet for the year 1850, containing interesting music pieces by various composers”. There were 52 pieces in the collection, one for each week, and it was sold as individual pieces, and (after 1850) as a complete set. I have no idea if it appeared for other years, but it provides a fascinating insight into the tastes of the time (mainly of the Viennese domestic market)
Thumbnail image created with Picsart ( tinyl.co/4WqE ).
#austrianmusic #scherzo
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Played by Phillip Sear
psear.co.uk (Email: piano4@psear.33mail.com
WhatsApp: wa.me/441444483794 ) TikTok: tiktok.com/@pianogems
****See all my latest videos here: tinyurl.com/phillip210 ****
Phillip Sear plays a piece from around 1850 by the Austrian pianist, composer, and civil servant Carl Georg Lickl (1801–77)
---------------------------------------------
"Lickl was the elder son of the Kapellmeister and composer Johann Georg Lickl (1769–1843) and brother of the Trieste-based composer Aegidius Ferdinand Karl Lickl (1803–1864). Raised in Vienna in a musical household, Carl Georg received his early formation under the direct influence of his father, whose own training had encompassed organ, piano, and compositional technique in the Viennese tradition. Unlike his brother, who pursued a full professional career in opera and sacred music, Carl Georg balanced his musical activities with employment as a civil servant, a circumstance that necessarily shaped the character and scope of his compositional output. He became particularly distinguished as a performer on the physharmonica, a free-reed keyboard instrument fashionable in Viennese domestic music-making during the Biedermeier era, and his mastery of the instrument lent his keyboard writing a characteristic sensitivity to sustained, vocally inflected melodic lines.
Lickl's solo keyboard output reflects the cultivated amateur and salon milieu of mid-nineteenth-century Vienna. His works for piano and physharmonica are largely cast in the forms characteristic of the period — character pieces, sets of variations, dances, and pedagogical studies — conceived for the educated domestic performer rather than the concert virtuoso. The physharmonica transcription of Beethoven's 'Mass in C major', undertaken jointly with his brother, demonstrates both his technical command of the instrument and a readiness to engage with the weightier repertoire of the German tradition. His piano writing occupies a stylistic position broadly consonant with the Viennese school of Hummel and the younger Schubert, favouring melodic clarity and formal proportion over the more extravagant demands of the emerging virtuoso style.
Beyond the keyboard, Lickl's wider legacy is inseparable from the broader Lickl family contribution to Viennese musical culture in the first three quarters of the nineteenth century. As a composer he remained a figure of regional and domestic rather than international significance, yet his cultivation of the physharmonica as a serious compositional medium represents a minor but distinctive strand within the history of keyboard music in the Biedermeier period." (Perplexity AI, 14 May 2026).
This piece (I'm not sure if it is from a larger work) was published in a weekly piano publication for 1850 issued in Vienna by Haslinger, titled 'Musikalischer Telegraf für das Piano-Forte: Wochenblatt für das Jahr 1850', enthaltend interessante Musikstücke von versch. Comp.. The title means roughly “Musical Telegraph for the Piano-Forte: weekly sheet for the year 1850, containing interesting music pieces by various composers”. There were 52 pieces in the collection, one for each week, and it was sold as individual pieces, and (after 1850) as a complete set. I have no idea if it appeared for other years, but it provides a fascinating insight into the tastes of the time (mainly of the Viennese domestic market)
Thumbnail image created with Picsart ( tinyl.co/4WqE ).
#austrianmusic #scherzo
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Played by Phillip Sear
psear.co.uk (Email: piano4@psear.33mail.com
WhatsApp: wa.me/441444483794 ) TikTok: tiktok.com/@pianogems
****See all my latest videos here: tinyurl.com/phillip210 ****
