Career
Plaidy was invited to join the faculty of the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843 by Felix Mendelssohn, remaining there through 1865. Among his notable students were Dudley Buck, Frederic Hymen Cowen, Felix Draeseke, Gustave Gagnon, Edvard Grieg, Michael Maybrick, James Cutler Dunn Parker, Oscar Paul, Julius Röntgen, Ernst Rudorff, Samuel Sanford, Arthur Sullivan, and Hans von Bülow. He published two books on piano pedagogy, Technische Studien fuer das Pianofortespiel and Der Clavierlehrer.