FPJ: R. J. Stove, A Forgotten Virtuoso

If Hummel had managed nothing else, he would continue to warrant attention for his almost Mozartean precocity. Born in 1778, he had already become an exceptional pianist when just six years old, and a skilled violinist too (this secondary interest ended when he smashed his violin in ire during an inconclusive aesthetic discussion with a fellow juvenile). At the age of eight he not only began studying piano with Mozart in Vienna, but went to live with him, rent-free. No doubt today this residential arrangement would inspire charges of pedophilia, but such residences occurred quite often at the time—Mozart’s father had his own live-in pupils—with no hint of sexual relations. Hummel proceeded to arrange for chamber forces several of Mozart’s operas and orchestral works, as well as to reveal in his own pianism three Mozartean traits: a constant concern for the long, singing line (Mozart demanded that his keyboard music “flow like oil”), persistent textural clarity, and aversion to any but the most prudent use of the sustaining pedal. In short, everything epitomized in the term “classicist”: everything, also, antipathetic to the young Beethoven’s keyboard style, with its string-wrecking ebullience and pedal-heavy grandeur. Only in the field of improvisation did Hummel and Beethoven meet occasionally on shared ground, several competent judges regarding Hummel as the more gifted improviser of the two. Between both men there arose—and there survived until Beethoven’s death-bed—an improbable friendship, punctuated by occasional quarreling. Hummel seems to have been devoid of envy, while Beethoven (for all his tantrums) possessed sufficient natural generosity to accord his major rivals due respect.

Neglected by many professionals and unknown to most people today, Johann Nepomuk Hummel was one of the great classical composers, and one fo the last. I only discovered him (more than a decade ago) thanks to an article by Robert Reilly in Crisis.


larger photo of painting here

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (Scarecrow Press, Inc.)
Johann Nepomuk Hummel Classical Composers Database
Karadar entry
Naxos biography
Michael Haydn - Johann Nepomuk Hummel
HOASM: Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Johann Nepomuk Hummel ArkivMusic
Google Books: Sonatas, rondos, fantasies, and other works for solo piano and Piano concerto, opus 113
OUP: Johann Nepomuk HUMMEL (1778-1837)
Hyperion Records Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Johann Nepomuk Hummel ArkivMusic

Robert Reilly, Is Music Sacred?
The Best Recordings of 2004