pupil who would continue his school for some time. He had considered Frédéric Chopin, but Chopin on the advice of his teacher Józef Elsner had turned him down. The same had happened with Charles Hallé. Hallé, too, had at first sought out Kalkbrenner to become his pupil, but Kalkbrenner's stiff, old-fashioned playing deterred Hallé so much that he decided otherwise. Stamaty in many ways was the ideal candidate for Kalkbrenner. He was talented, ambitious and, in addition to that, he was poor and bored at his job in the Préfecture. And above all he was prepared to suffer Kalkbrenner who had a reputation as a martinet. Marmontel shrewdly points out that, as Stamaty was no artist on the scale of Chopin and thus lacked the strong personality of the great genius, he was ideally suited for Kalkbrenner's strict regime. So when Kalkbrenner heard Stamaty play a quadrille with variations of his own composition he approached Stamaty and made him a business proposal: Stamaty would become his pupil and his répètiteur at the same time. A "répètiteur" was an auxiliary teacher to Kalkbrenner who in his later years did little teaching himself. Kalkbrenner gave fashionable and very expensive piano courses for selected pupils, while Stamaty would prepare students for these courses and do all the preparatory teaching. 1832–1836: Studies with Benoist, Reicha and Mendelssohn Even as teacher, Stamaty (one guesses supervised by Kalkbrenner) did not neglect his studies in music theory. He received lessons in organ playing from François Benoist and in harmony and counterpoint from Anton Reicha. Finally, in October 1836, Stamaty went to Leipzig to receive the finishing touches of his education from Felix Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn writes about the lessons he gave Stamaty in a letter to Ferdinand Hiller on 29 October 1836: "Stamaty is staying here, and I have got to teach him counterpoint – I declare I really don't know much about it myself. He says, however, that that is only my modesty." On 26 November 1836, Mendelssohn wrote some more about Stamaty to Hiller: "Stamaty will be at Frankfort in a few days, on his way back to Paris. I maintain that he has got de l'Allemagne and du contrepoint double par dessus les Oreilles." Stamaty figured also in a letter Mendelssohn's sister Rebecca wrote to Karl Klingemann on 4 October 1836: "Moreover, Kalkbrenner's best pupil, Mr. Stamaty, élève du conservatoire de Paris, and popular music