1778–1837
Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837), a native of Pressburg (today's Bratislava), was an Austrian virtuoso pianist and composer. He studied with Mozart, Haydn and Salieri, served for many years as Kapellmeister in Weimar, and wrote the best part of his output for the piano. For players, his sonatas, fantasy and bagatelles are music on the border between Classicism and Romanticism.
Hummel was born in November 1778 in Pressburg, as today's Bratislava was then called, part of the Kingdom of Hungary. For the period this was unusual: he was an only child. The boy was named after John of Nepomuk, the Czech patron saint. His musical gift showed itself at the age of three.
The boy's father, Johannes Hummel, worked as a violinist and as a music teacher. He first played in the orchestra at Count Grassalkovich's house, then directed the orchestra of the Pressburg Theatre, and around 1780 became music director of the military academy in Wartberg (today Senec in Slovakia). His mother, Margarethe Sommer, was the widow of a wigmaker, Josef Ludwig.
At five he received a small piano of his own from his father, and he kept it until he died. When the academy was dissolved under the reforms of Joseph II, the family moved to Vienna in late 1786 or early 1787. There his father became music director first of the Theater auf der Wieden, then of the Apollo dance hall.
Mozart was impressed by the eight-year-old Hummel's ability and offered to teach him. For two years the boy studied with Mozart and lived in his house, paying nothing. In 1786–1788 Hummel is listed as a pupil of both Mozart and Antonio Salieri. He first played in public at nine, at a concert given by Mozart.
His father then set off with him on a tour of Europe. They reached London in 1790, where Hummel took lessons from Muzio Clementi. At the Hanover Square Rooms he was warmly received, playing a concerto by Mozart and one of his own sonatas. In 1791, in the same hall, the thirteen-year-old Hummel gave the first performance of a piano trio by Haydn.
In 1793 Hummel returned to Vienna, performing at various stops on the way. He studied counterpoint with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, who was also one of Beethoven's teachers, and singing with Antonio Salieri. From 1795 he was a pupil of Joseph Haydn.
Around then the young Ludwig van Beethoven came to Vienna as well, and he too took lessons from Haydn and Albrechtsberger. Beethoven and Hummel became friends, and Hummel took part in a number of performances of Beethoven's Wellington's Victory. He called on Beethoven in Vienna several times, accompanied by his wife Elisabeth and by Ferdinand Hiller, his pupil, and later he performed at the concert held in Beethoven's memory.
Hummel also became a friend of Franz Schubert, who dedicated to him the last three of his piano sonatas. By the time they were first published both men were dead, and the publishers switched the dedication to Robert Schumann.
In 1804 Haydn named Hummel as his successor in the post of Konzertmeister at the court of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy in Eisenstadt. Haydn's health did not allow him to manage every task, so Hummel carried many of the Kapellmeister's duties, but out of respect for the older composer he was still called simply the Konzertmeister. He received the title of Kapellmeister only after Haydn died in May 1809. Hummel spent seven years in the prince's service and was let go in May 1811 because he had neglected his duties.
On 16 May 1813 Hummel married Elisabeth Röckel, an opera singer. They had two sons. The younger son, Carl (1821–1907), made his name as a landscape painter. Eduard, the elder, was active as a pianist, conductor and composer, emigrated to the USA and died in Troy, New York.
Hummel held the post of Kapellmeister in Stuttgart between 1816 and 1818, and in Weimar between 1819 and 1837, where he became friends with Goethe. He gave benefit concert tours to raise money, and in this way helped create one of the first pension schemes for musicians. In his struggle against unscrupulous publishers he was among the central figures who helped lay the foundations of intellectual property and copyright law.
In 1822 Hummel gave concerts in Russia. In 1825 the Paris publishing house of Aristide Farrenc announced that it had bought the French rights to all of Hummel's future works, and in 1826 he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour. In 1830 he gave three concerts in Paris, and at one of these a rondo of his was played by the composer Louise Farrenc, wife of the publisher Aristide, who asked him to assess her piano playing.
In 1828 he published his piano method, Anweisung zum Pianofortespiel, a full theoretical and practical guide. Thousands of copies sold within days, and the book introduced a fresh approach to fingering and ornamentation. Robert Schumann studied it and thought of becoming Hummel's pupil.
Carl Czerny, who had studied with Beethoven for three years, moved to Hummel and later taught Liszt. Liszt's father would not pay the high fee that Hummel usually asked, so Liszt went to Czerny instead. Adolf von Henselt, Sigismond Thalberg, Ferdinand Hiller, Friedrich Silcher and Czerny himself are named among Hummel's best-known pupils; he also gave Felix Mendelssohn a few lessons.
In 1820 Hummel gave piano lessons to Julius Benedict, to whom Queen Victoria later granted a noble title.
In 1832, in poor health, Hummel started devoting less energy to his duties in Weimar. Goethe's passing in March of that year left him with less contact with the city's theatre world, and he lived in partial retirement for the rest of his days.
Near the end of his life Hummel saw younger composers and virtuosos gather into a new school while his own music slowly lost its fashion. His clean, disciplined Clementi-style technique and balanced classicism set him apart from the stormy bravura of players such as Liszt. He composed less and less but remained respected and admired. He passed away quietly at Weimar, on 17 October 1837. Hummel was a freemason and left a good part of the famous garden behind his Weimar house to his lodge. He is buried in Weimar.
Although Hummel died famous, his music was quickly forgotten as Romanticism took hold, perhaps because classical ideals began to look old-fashioned. It was overlooked again when classical music was revived in the early twentieth century, as Mozart and especially Beethoven cast a long shadow over it. Thanks to a growing number of recordings and concerts, it has since regained a place in the classical repertoire.
Hummel's music stands at the crossing from Classicism to Romanticism. The best part of his legacy is his piano writing, marked by virtuosity, a sentimental-romantic mood and graceful melody. He was himself one of the great virtuoso pianists of his day.
For the piano Hummel wrote eight concertos, ten sonatas, eight trios, a quartet, a quintet, two septets and music for four hands, as well as a concerto pairing violin and piano as soloists. He also left a wind octet, a cello sonata, concertos for mandolin, trumpet and bassoon, a clarinet quartet with violin, viola and cello, 22 operas and Singspiels, and masses. He wrote a great deal for the guitar too, from opus 7 to opus 93. Yet there is not a single symphony in his output.
Hummel's road parted from Beethoven's. Looking ahead, Hummel stepped into the new age in works such as the F-sharp minor sonata, Op. 81, which Robert Schumann cherished, and the Fantasy, Op. 18, which left a strong mark on Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy. In these pieces one can see Hummel questioning classical harmonic structures and stretching sonata form. His influence can be traced in the early pieces by Mendelssohn, Chopin and Schumann; Chopin kept Hummel's concertos in his repertoire, and the shadow of the A minor and B minor concertos can be felt in Chopin's own.
Among Hummel's chamber works is the Septet, Op. 74, which also exists in a quintet version. Liszt knew and admired Hummel and often played his music, with this septet a particular favourite. According to Albert Stadler, a friend of Schubert, the Trout Quintet by Schubert took the quintet version of the septet as its model. Hummel also wrote a variation on a theme by Anton Diabelli for the second part of the Vaterländischer Künstlerverein.
On the site all of Hummel's sheet music is marked at the Intermediate+ level. Among them are the sonatas Sonata No. 2 (Op. 13), Sonata No 4 (Op. 38) and Sonata No. 6 (Op. 106), the last also available by separate movements; Bagatelles (Op. 107); Fantasie (Op. 18) and the Op. 81 sonata discussed above; the concertos Op. 85 and Op. 89 for piano with orchestra, and the Sonata for cello and piano.