Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Another chapter in the musical world of Europe in the early 19th century, in the transition from Classical to Romantic times. Today’s transitional figure, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, started his musical career as a child-prodigy pupil of the former child prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and went on from there. I’ll start by reviewing some postings of mine on others in this transitional cohort; then turning to his Wikipedia entry, focusing on his music (rather than his life); and ending with information about the one album of Hummel’s music I have in my Apple Music, which provides some pleasant surprises.

Two members of the transitional cohort.

— from my 12/15/16 posting “Ignaz Moscheles”:

Ignaz Moscheles, a fascinating figure from the transition from high classicism to full-blown romanticism in music. A man of two musical worlds, devoted to the music of Beethoven but also close to Mendelssohn.

[in addition to Meyerbeer,] Moscheles was also familiar with Hummel and Kalkbrenner. Among the virtuosi of the 1820s, Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Cramer, Herz and Weber were his most famous rivals.(from Wikipedia)

— from my 3/23 posting “Chopin x Gottschalk”, about Friedrich / Frédéric Kalkbrenner (1784 – 1849),  a major figure of the transitional period between the late Classical music of Beethoven (1770 – 1827) and Schubert (1797 – 1829) and the early Romantic music of Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847) and Chopin (1810 – 1849):

Once more with K and Hummel et al. From my 11/20/14 posting “Muzio Clementi”, about a contemporary of Beethoven’s (Clementi’s dates are 1752 – 1832), this Wikipedia bit:

Influenced by Domenico Scarlatti’s harpsichord school and Haydn’s classical school and by the stile galante of Johann Christian Bach and Ignazio Cirri, Clementi developed a fluent and technical legato style, which he passed on to a generation of pianists, including John Field, Johann Baptist Cramer, Ignaz Moscheles, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Carl Czerny. He was a notable influence on Ludwig van Beethoven.

Obviously, I’ll need to blog on Hummel one of these days. There’s a lot of stuff in the early 19th century.

And here with are with Hummel today.

On JNH. From Wikipedia:

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (14 November 1778 – 17 October 1837) was an Austrian composer and virtuoso pianist. His music reflects the transition from the Classical to the Romantic musical era. He was a pupil of Mozart, Salieri and Haydn. He also knew Beethoven and Schubert.

… At the end of his life, Hummel saw the rise of a new school of young composers and virtuosi, and found his own music slowly going out of fashion. His disciplined and clean Clementi-style technique, and his balanced classicism, opposed him to the rising school of tempestuous bravura displayed by the likes of Liszt. Composing less and less, but still highly respected and admired, Hummel died peacefully in Weimar in 1837.

… Although Hummel died famous, with a lasting posthumous reputation apparently secure, he and his music were quickly forgotten at the onrush of the Romantic period, perhaps because his classical ideas were seen as old-fashioned. Later, during the classical revival of the early 20th century, Hummel was passed over. Like Franz Joseph Haydn, whose musical revival had to wait until the second half of the 20th century, Hummel was overshadowed by Mozart and especially Beethoven.

… Hummel’s music took a different direction from that of Beethoven. Looking forward, Hummel stepped into modernity through pieces like his Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor, Op. 81, cherished by Robert Schumann, and his Fantasy, Op. 18, which would have a major influence for Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, for piano. These pieces are examples where Hummel may be seen to both challenge the classical harmonic structures and stretch the sonata form.

His main oeuvre is for the piano, on which instrument he was one of the great virtuosi of his day. He wrote eight piano concertos, a double concerto for violin and piano, ten piano sonatas, eight piano trios, a piano quartet, two piano septets, a piano quintet and four hand piano music.

Aside from the piano, Hummel wrote a wind octet, a cello sonata, a mandolin concerto, a mandolin sonata, a Trumpet Concerto in E major written for the keyed trumpet (usually heard now in E-flat major – better suited to modern trumpets), a “Grand Bassoon Concerto” in F, a quartet for clarinet, violin, viola, and cello, 22 operas and Singspiels, masses and more.

… Hummel was also very interested in the guitar and talented with the instrument. He was prolific in his writing for it, beginning with opus 7 and finishing with opus 93.

Trios and Scottish songs. A Meridian CD released 6/15/99: Trios and Scottish Song Settings of J.N. Hummel, performed by Musicians of the Old Post Road and Pamela Dellal. On the CD:

— settings of Scottish folksongs for voice, flute, violin, cello & piano

— piano trios (including Trio in F Major, Op. 22 No. 3: Rondo alla Turca (Vivace))

— Adagio, Variations and Rondo on “Schöne Minka” for piano, flute & cello in A major, Op. 78

First, about the performers. From Wikipedia about MOPR:

Musicians of the Old Post Road (MOPR) is a chamber music ensemble based in the Boston area that specializes in period instrument performance. The ensemble often performs “rediscovered” works from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods. The ensemble, founded by Artistic Directors Suzanne Stumpf and Daniel Ryan, performs in historical buildings along the Boston Post Road, which was a trade and travel route between Boston and New York City from the late 17th through mid-19th centuries. MOPR’s repertoire spans these dates. The group has produced seven CDs

And from Wikipedia about Pamela Dallal:

Pamela Dellal (born 1960) is an American mezzo-soprano in opera and concert, a musicologist and academic teacher. She has performed classical music from the medieval Hildegard von Bingen to contemporary. She is on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory, Brandeis University, and the Longy School of Music of Bard College.

Then a couple of notes on the music.

Folksong settings. I don’t know if JNH was familiar with Beethoven’s enormous oeuvre of folksong settings — most for voice with piano accompaniment, except that Beethoven being Beethoven, they are actually duets for equal parts, some of them quite wonderful (Fischer-Dieskau lovingly recorded a number of them). But they’re a likely model for JNH’s settings. From my 7/2/11 posting “Star-spangled banners and my country”, with this note:

If you don’t know Beethoven’s folk-song settings (especially of Welsh and Scots songs), you really should get acquainted with them. Beethoven obviously adored this music, and spent an absurd amount of time setting it for voice and piano.

A Rondo alla Turca. Models from Mozart especially, but also from Beethoven. Background from this blog:

— my 5/4/22 posting “Turkish earworms of joy”, with some cultural background on Turkishness in 17th to 19th-century Europe, especially in music, taking off from Mozart’s opera The Abduction from the Seraglio

— my 9/8/23 posting “Turkish marches”, including Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca

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