Johann Baptist Cramer was born in Mannheim on 24 February 1771, the son of Wilhelm Cramer, a violinist and conductor prominent in London, and was brought to England as a child; he worked there for most of his career, lived most of his life there and died there on 16 April 1858. He studied piano with Muzio Clementi from 1782 to 1784 and quickly became a leading professional player in London and on the continent. In Vienna he met Beethoven, played against him and formed a lasting relationship with him, and renewed his friendship with Haydn. After 1800 he was based almost entirely in England. His brother Franz Cramer was Master of the King’s Musick from 1837 until 1848.

He and Beethoven were regarded as the finest pianists of their day, Beethoven for expressive interpretation and Cramer for technical perfection — a judgement Beethoven himself made. He was the English publisher of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto and is credited with giving it the name Emperor. Following Clementi’s example he went into publishing, was a founding member of the Regent’s Harmonic Institution in 1818, set up to raise money for the Royal Philharmonic Society and the restoration of the Argyll Rooms, and in 1824 established Cramer & Co. at 201 Regent Street as an instrument manufacturer and publisher, withdrawing from its management at the end of 1833. He wrote some two hundred solo piano sonatas, about fifty accompanied sonatas, nine piano concertos and chamber music: stylistically conservative, less dramatic than Clementi, less adventurous than Dussek and far less Romantic than Field, but full of advanced and idiomatic keyboard writing. The Études remain standard teaching material.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Baptist_Cramer
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q455212