ETUDE

(French: study), in music, originally a study or technical exercise, later a complete and musically intelligible composition exploring a particular technical problem in an esthetically satisfying manner. Although a number of didactic pieces date from earlier times, including vocal solfeggi and keyboard works (Domenico Scarlatti's Esercizi per gravicembalo), the tude came into its own only in the late 18th and early 19th centuries with collections published by the virtuoso pianist Muzio Clementi (especially his Gradus ad Parnassum, 1817), emulated by other pianist-composers, including Johann Baptist Cramer, Henri Bertini, and especially Karl Czerny. With the 27 piano tudes by Chopin, the tude became a composition of considerable musical interest apart from its merit as a technical study; Claude Debussy's Douze tudes (1915; Twelve tudes) is a notable later example. The violin tude, less cultivated than the piano tude, is represented in a number of collections by Rodolphe Kreutzer, Pierre Baillot, Pierre Rode, Charles-Auguste de Briot, and others, following the example of Niccol Paganini, whose 24 Capricci for solo violin set the pace for 19th-century virtuosity at large.