Marcel Paul Maximin Ciampi (29 May 1891 – 2 September 1980) was a French pianist and teacher. He held the longest tenure in the history of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and also became head of piano classes at the Yehudi Menuhin School

Yehudi Menuhin School

The Yehudi Menuhin School is a specialist music school in Surrey, England. It was founded in 1963 by the violinist Yehudi Menuhin.The School also gives pupils the best musical education any specialist schools can with a number of internationally main teachers, Simon Fischer , Natalya Boyarskaya ,...

 in England. He worked with many of the great names of the 20th century, including Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy

Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

, Pablo Casals

Pablo Casals

Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...

, Jacques Thibaud

Jacques Thibaud

Jacques Thibaud was a French violinist.Thibaud was born in Bordeaux and studied the violin with his father before entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. In 1896 he jointly won the conservatory's violin prize with Pierre Monteux...

, Georges Enesco

George Enescu

George Enescu was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher.-Biography:Enescu was born in the village of Liveni , Dorohoi County at the time, today Botoşani County. He showed musical talent from early in his childhood. A child prodigy, Enescu created his first musical...

, Alfred Cortot

Alfred Cortot

Alfred Denis Cortot was a Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor. He is one of the most renowned 20th-century classical musicians, especially valued for his poetic insight in Romantic period piano works, particularly those of Chopin and Schumann.-Early life and education:Born in Nyon, Vaud, in the...

, Vlado Perlemuter

Vlado Perlemuter

Vlado Perlemuter was a Lithuanian-born French pianist.-Biography:Vlado Perlemuter was born to a Polish Jewish family, the third of four sons, in Kovno, Russia . At the age of three, he lost the use of his left eye in an accident.His family settled in France in 1907...

 and Lazare Lévy

Lazare Lévy

Lazare Lévy was an influential French pianist, organist, composer and pedgogue. As a virtuoso pianist he toured throughout Europe, in North Africa, Israel, the Soviet Union and Japan...

.

Ciampi was taught by Louis Diémer

Louis Diémer

Louis-Joseph Diémer was a French pianist and composer.- Life :Diémer studied at the Paris Conservatoire, winning premiers prix in piano, harmony and accompaniment, counterpoint and fugue, and solfège, and a second prix in organ...

 at the Paris Conservatoire and won the first prize for pianoforte in 1909. He had a brilliant career as a concert pianist, appearing with orchestras in France, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Prague, Warsaw, Sofia and Athens. He turned to teaching and had a particular influence on Hephzibah Menuhin

Hephzibah Menuhin

Hephzibah Menuhin was an American-Australian pianist and human rights campaigner. She was sister to the violinist Lord Menuhin and to the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin...

 and her sister Yaltah Menuhin

Yaltah Menuhin

Yaltah Menuhin was an American-born British pianist, artist and poet.-Early life:Yaltah was born of Russian Jewish parents in San Francisco, the youngest of three extraordinarily musical children. Her siblings were Yehudi Menuhin and Hephzibah Menuhin...

. He accepted Yaltah at age four, after hearing her play Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

’s Kinderszenen

Kinderszenen

Kinderszenen , Opus 15, by Robert Schumann, is a set of thirteen pieces of music for piano written in 1838. In this work, Schumann provides us with his adult reminiscences of childhood. Schumann had originally written 30 movements for this work, but chose 13 for the final version...

.

His students also included Yvonne Loriod

Yvonne Loriod

Yvonne Loriod was a French pianist, teacher, and composer, and the second wife of composer Olivier Messiaen. Her sister was the Ondes Martenot player Jeanne Loriod.-Life:...

, Cécile Ousset

Cécile Ousset

Cécile Ousset is a French pianist.Cécile Ousset was born in Tarbes, France, and gave her first recital at the age of five, subsequently studying at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 10 with Marcel Ciampi where, aged only fourteen, she was awarded first prize in the piano graduation class of...

, Thea Musgrave

Thea Musgrave

Thea Musgrave CBE is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music.-Biography:Born in Barnton, Edinburgh, Thea Musgrave studied at the University of Edinburgh and in Paris as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger...

, John Carmichael

John Carmichael (composer)

John Carmichael OAM is an Australian pianist, composer and music therapist who has long been resident in the United Kingdom. One of his best known works is the Concierto folklorico for piano and string orchestra. His works for piano form much of his musical output, although he composes for many...

, Mícéal O'Rourke

Mícéal O'Rourke

Míċeál O'Rourke is an Irish pianist who is best known for his recordings of works by John Field.Born and raised in Dublin, O'Rourke obtained a degree in music from University College, Dublin. Shortly after graduation, he moved to Paris where he has lived ever since. On December 12, 1976 he gave his...

, Jean-Marc Luisada

Jean-Marc Luisada

Jean-Marc Luisada is a French pianist born in Bizerte, Tunisia. He started on the piano at six years old, "the normal age".At the age of 16 he began studies at the Conservatoire de Paris under Dominique Merlet and Marcel Ciampi and Genevieve Joy-Dutilleux...

, Pierre Hétu

Pierre Hétu

Pierre Hétu was a Canadian conductor and pianist.Hetu was born in Montreal, Quebec. He studied in Paris with Marcel Ciampi and Edouard Lindenberg , and in 1961, following studies with Sergiu Celibidache, he won the Concours International des Jeunes Chefs d'Orchestre in Besançon...

, Kathryn Stott

Kathryn Stott

Kathryn Stott is a British classical pianist who performs as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. Her specialities include the English and French classical repertoire, contemporary classical music and the tango...

, Melvyn Tan

Melvyn Tan

Melvyn Tan is a Singapore-born British classical pianist, noted for his study of historical performance practice....

, Nancy Bricard, Avi Schönfeld

Avi Schönfeld

Avi Schönfeld is a Dutch-Israeli pianist and composer. He was born in Lodz, Poland on December 15, 1947.-Life:Schönfeld gave his first concerts in his native Poland before at the age of 19 going to Israel to become a pupil of the Bartók disciple Ilona Vincze-Kraus...

, Beryl Sedivka, Andree Juliette Brun, Sally Sargent, Grant Foster, Mary Lou Muller, Anna-Marie Globenski, Eric Heidsieck, Jacqueline Cole, and many others. Another of his students was John-Paul Bracey, who was to become his biographer.

Ciampi recorded some early electrical solo and chamber music discs for French Columbia. His available recordings on CD include César Franck

César Franck

César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....

’s Piano Quintet with the Capet Quartet

Capet Quartet

The Capet String Quartet was a French musical ensemble founded in 1893, which remained in existence until 1928 or later. It made a number of recordings and was considered one of the leading string quartets of its time.- Personnel :...

. His family also had international careers. His assistants were Denyse Rivière and Blanche Bascourret de Guéraldi.

His compositions include Six Studies for the piano. He was a jury member on competitions such as the Alexander Brailowsky

Alexander Brailowsky

Alexander Brailowsky was a Ukrainian French pianist who specialized in the works of Frédéric Chopin. He was a leading concert pianist in the years between the two World Wars.-Early life:...

 Competition in Liège and the Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...

 Competition in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

.

Ciampi was appointed an Officer of the Légion d'honneur

Légion d'honneur

The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...

 and the Belgian Order of Léopold. He died in 1980.

Further reading

• John-Paul Bracey, A Biography of French Pianist Marcel Ciampi: Music To Last A Lifetime