Discovering Johann Nepomuk Hummel

[Don]

The Piano Trios are absolutely wonderful though recommendation will be the Beaux Arts Trio on Philips

What did you think of the MDG set?

[Bogey]

Hummel's masses are exquisite, and rank alongside Haydn's late masses . . . . . .

Go for the Hickox recordings:

Indeed....the three discs in this series are toward the top of my wish-list.

[Don]

Indeed....the three discs in this series are toward the top of my wish-list.

Yup, they are top grade.  That Naxos choral disc is also stunning.  And I agree that Hummel's music sounds more like Mozart than Haydn.

[Bogey]

Yup, they are top grade.  That Naxos choral disc is also stunning.   And I agree that Hummel's music sounds more like Mozart than Haydn.

Just sampled the Gloria of the Te Deum....now on my wish list as well.

[SonicMan46]

Can't believe that I missed this 'new' Hummel thread (must have been out of town!) - Gurn started a Hummel thread on the old forum - CHECK HERE, which has some excellent (and similar) recommendations.  Since that time, I've added the Piano Trios 2-CD set w/ the Trio Parnassus to my collection, which already been discussed - quite excellent; and the Clarinet Quartet w/  L'Archibudelli - but plenty of other instrumental works to consider, and I must start exploring the vocal discs discussed! 

 

[BachQ]

Can't believe that I missed this 'new' Hummel thread (must have been out of town!) - Gurn started a Hummel thread on the old forum - CHECK HERE, which has some excellent (and similar) recommendations.  Since that time, I've added the Piano Trios 2-CD set w/ the Trio Parnassus to my collection, which already been discussed - quite excellent; and the Clarinet Quartet w/  L'Archibudelli - but plenty of other instrumental works to consider, and I must start exploring the vocal discs discussed! 

 

Those piano trios look mighty tempting . . . . . . .

[Don]

Those piano trios look mighty tempting . . . . . . .

Another great aspect of the Piano Trios set is that we get to hear Hummel's development as his music matures. 

[Gabriel]

There is a superb CD of Hummel's piano sonatas in Hyperion, played by Stephen Hough. His nervous playing suits Hummel's music very well, as it is evident also from his piano concertos CD for Chandos. The music is extraordinary and you can easily guess why he was highly appreciated by Schubert and Chopin; Hummel at his best is a first-rate composer.

It is a pity, for example, that he just wrote 3 string quartets. Even if his predilection for the piano is more than evident, those works are magnificent. For me, the jewel among them is the Menuetto from the second string quartet in G major: a violent minuet in the best Haydnesque style, followed by a trio of Mozartian transparency and Hummelian textures and of which I'd say it is one of the greatest refinements of folkloric-inspired chamber music I've ever listened to. The contrast between trio and minuet clearly reinforces the qualities of each section: one sophisticated, the other popular; one massive, the other delicate; one "symphonical", the other "concertante". But the wonderful simplicity of the trio is quite unique; I would say I have seldom been so touched by a single string quartet movement as it was with this one.

Finally, some words on the piano trios. I totally agree with Don's appreciation. It is easy to perceive in them how Hummel develops as a composer. But even the earliest trios have remarkable moments; as a group, they are one of the great monuments of classical chamber music. There are breathtaking moments, as the Un poco larghetto from op. 93, which shows that Beethoven was by no means composing alone in Europe during those decades.

In my very humble opinion, this is not music from a second-rate composer who should be revived in order to get "a complete panorama" of the era: Hummel's best works are essential for knowing and understanding late classicism.

[Gabriel]

the thing i quickly learned from listening to some Hummel was how avant-garde Beethoven must have been then.

And the thing I quickly learned from listening to some Chopin was how important must have been Hummel for his development as a musician.

In fact, for "avant garde" I wouldn't precisely think of Hummel, but of Reicha. That speaks for the characteristics of their music, but not for its quality (which is superb in both cases).

[JoshLilly]

Are you heavily familiar with some of the more obscure composers of that time period? Beethoven only sounded ahead-of-his-time to me before I really got in depth into the era. I quickly discovered that he wasn't really doing anything bizarre or "forward-looking" that hadn't already been done by someone else. While Beethoven was in large part near the very front of the wave of musical progress, he was hardly creating it.

Anyway, Hummel is one of my absolute top favourite composers. I've got to add my recommendation for the Hough recording of the Piano Concerti 2&3. I'd also recommend that somebody record at least one of his operas! As far as I know, not one of them has ever been recorded, or even performed in the 20th or 21st century. And for the composer himself, I wish he'd written at least one symphony in his later years.

http://www.geocities.com/mbfleur/Works_Catalog_of_Hummel.pdf

[JoshLilly]

To not even get really obscure: Grétry or Méhul for orchestral textures, Dussek for use of the piano, or Reicha for experimentations in chamber music. To be fair to Beethoven, his last Cello Sonata has one movement that is pretty edgy for the time. I'm not sure that experimentation was really his thing, though. I never got the impression that he was actually attempting to do something "new", whereas Reicha did some really weird stuff with that express purpose.

[JoshLilly]

Er, that's what I'm saying. I don't think Beethoven had any "innovations" with which they could be "on par". Also note that, combined as a whole, I like Beethoven's music more than I like any of these other four composers I've named, so I'm not talking about what I like more.

Check out Grétry's opera Richard cœur de Lion.

Méhul's Symphony #1 was written at almost the exact same time as Beethoven's Symphony #5 and, though neither could have possibly been familiar with the other's, Robert Schumann thought that Méhul had copied from Beethoven. He wasn't aware that this would have been physically impossible! (Indeed, Méhul's came out first.) The similarities in the slow movement of each are fairly eerie, but I think this shows that neither Beethoven nor Méhul were doing anything really bizarre or unusual here, nothing their audiences would have found shocking. I mean, they had to get paid.

For the piano, try Dussek's programme sonata Le Retour à Paris or Wölfl's similar Non Plus Ultra. Wölfl's work, in order to maximise difficulty, ends up doing some stuff that sounds very out of place for its time; I don't personally care for the sacrifices he made for the sake of technicality, but it ends up making it sound like a piece from the 1830s or even 1840s for some passages.

Reicha... oh boy. Heheh, Reicha was maybe the most deliberately "experimental" composer of all time, at the least until the 20th century. I don't really know one specific thing to recommend. Sometimes I think he was trying on purpose to make the listener be surprised or even uncomfortable. Apparently, his string quartets, in the process of being recorded for the first time, contained some really abnormal stuff. I'm interested in those when they finally come out! In the meantime, much of his chamber music is already available. Not all of it is experimental, but a lot of it is; chances are, you won't have to sift through much of his music to find something containing the bizarre.

[Gabriel]

...another thing i noticed too, from listening to some Hummel is how quickly superseded he became by Romantic pianists such as Chopin & Liszt.

This argumentation is, from my point of view, weak. With the same logic you should say that Beethoven came superseded by Schumann or Brahms.

My perspective is the opposite: the important thing is that Hummel's music influenced Chopin, and Beethoven's influenced Schumann, and in both regards there is a continuity that honours the older composers.

...new and more elaborate Sonata and symphonic forms etc.

For this, try Reicha. If you are a lover of musical structure analysis, you will find that Beethoven's solutions were often more conventional than, for example, Reicha's wind quintets.

But, sincerely, "elaboration" doesn't increase with time. In many regards, for example, Mozart's piano concertos are more complex in structure than Beethoven's.

Can you please list some specific works from these composers that highlight their great innovations that are on par with those of LvB. Thanks.

Which other "great innovations" in particular would you like to discuss? Thanks.

[M forever]

I just wanted to point out that "Hummel" means "bumble-bee" in German.

[Gabriel]

I just wanted to point out that "Hummel" means "bumble-bee" in German.

So Rimsky-Korsakov didn't just pay attention to Mozart and Salieri, but also to another famous composer of the era with one of his works...

[JoshLilly]

I do suggest Beethoven was not a great innovator. You can call it silly if you want, but I'm not alone in this. I just don't know of anything he did that was a "first", in terms of musical development. What innovation did he do? What groundwork did he lay? You name something Beethoven did that was supposedly new to him, and you can bet your bottom dollar someone else did it first. Whether you think what Beethoven did was better or not is your opinion, but that has nothing to do with whether or not he was the first to do something. He's one of my favourite composers, but I can't think of any "new" thing he ever did.

[Gabriel]

Beethoven often used Mozart as the model earlier on, but his music is much more complex than Mozarts, and in the earlier LvB Piano Concertos they sound already like a more "advanced" Mozart...but Mozart's shadow definitely looms over many of them and other earlier LvB compositions.....however the 4th & 5th PCs take it further...as does most of Beethoven's mid and especially late output does...

James, with such an appreciation of Mozart's music I can just tell you that not even a thousand pages would arrive to convince you minimally that any composer of the classical era could be compared with Beethoven. It is not a problem of their music, but, I'm afraid, of your position.

Hummel's influence is, undeniably, smaller than Beethoven's in the music that came later. He may have been less "progressive" than Beethoven. Beethoven may be a greater composer than Hummel: granted. But the proportion is by no means the one of a colossus at the side of a pigmy, as you seem to suggest. And the state of music during 1800-1827 wasn't at all "Beethoven in front of a horde of musicians who kept stuck in Mozart's paradigms". But to realize that you have to explore the great names of the era, a task for which I wish you very good luck and fabulous discoveries.

I do suggest Beethoven was not a great innovator.

Anyway, Josh, I guess this opinion is an excess. I'm thinking, for example, about the late string quartets. If we have to avoid the position of attributing Beethoven the whole development of music after him, we must avoid also the one of ignoring his real contribution.

[JoshLilly]

I would kindly suggest that you listen to composers other than the most famous, if you really believe what you're saying is true. It's not a "side", it's simply deeper exploration of the period. I'm just forced to wonder how much of Reicha's chamber music you've listened to before making your statements.

[Gabriel]

...he did elaborate and further development form. i.e. Symphonic, sonata, string quartets etc.

This sounds to me like Haydn.

Innovative doesnt mean first. He obviously built upon what came before...but he did so with such staggering genius, honed and distilled into staggering results...

Compared to what? Please explain something concrete. Compare the overtures to Coriolan (Beethoven) and Cherubini's Médée. Compare Hummel's piano sonatas to Beethoven's. Compare Méhul's symphonies to Beethoven's. Perhaps "going against history", as Josh is doing, is a serious mistake, but speaking about music you haven't ever seriously listened to, in my opinion, is an even more serious one.

[Gabriel]

Thank you, that is all I was saying, he was a very conservative composer esp. when you hear Beethoven...

I didn't say that: I said that Beethoven was more progressive than Hummel, what is totally different.