John Field (1782 – 1837): Piano Concerto no 5 in C Major, “L’Incendie par L’Orage”
John Field was one of classical music’s first rock-stars. A world-famous pianist, he loved to perform in fashionable salons and glittering concert halls while relishing the money and adulation his fame brought him. Outside of performing venues, he devoted himself to a life of carousing and womanizing, disliked piano practice and found composing an irksome chore. Still he could be surprisingly productive. He was an interesting mixture of a man, a naturally cosmopolitan outlook always balanced by firm Irish roots. His famous nocturnes would become a pan-European phenomenon, and yet an Irish nun once claimed she could trace all their melodies back to old Irish airs. Success may have spoiled him slightly, but Field was never one to take himself too seriously – by all accounts a likeable and humorous man, he was still making bad puns on his deathbed.
Much of his legacy, and the general impression we have of him today, was shaped by a posthumous critique of his work, written by Franz Liszt, who while commending Field’s sublime piano miniatures, managed with damningly faint praise to almost bury his reputation in other ways. Liszt would portray Field as an ethereal creative energy only lacking an inner volition. Although his nocturnes were full of “poignant charm”, “delicate originality” and “extreme simplicity”, Field himself, according to Liszt, was the ultimate introvert as both composer and performer: “one cannot imagine a franker disregard of the public than his… his chief auditor was himself…. he will ever be an incomparable model of grace unconscious of itself, of melancholy artlessness.”
Liszt not only seems to have overlooked the painstaking, calculated craftsmanship behind the nocturnes, but also misunderstood Field’s whole attitude towards performing. Field never sought to build his pianistic technique upon virtuosic fireworks and bravura (as Liszt sometimes did). Subtle and delicate expressiveness were more important to him, and they would become something of his hallmark (it was also these qualities that would have some influence on the performing style of Frédéric Chopin). When composer Ignaz Moscheles (himself a virtuoso pianist) heard Field perform, he remarked on his “enchanting legato, his tenderness and elegance and his beautiful touch”. In St Petersburg, where Field would spend so much of his career, it was said that “not to have heard Field play was a sin against art and good taste”*
*Mikhail Glinka, who was briefly taught by Field as a boy, would also spring to his defense in print: “Field’s playing was at once sweet and strong and characterised by admirable precision. His fingers fell on the keys as large drops of rain that spread themselves like iridescent pearls. Here let me say – and I am sure that my opinion is shared by many who have heard Field – that I do not share the view of Liszt who told me on one occasion that he found Field’s playing “sleepy.” No ! the playing of Field was not sleepy, on the contrary it was strong, capricious, and improvised. In particular, he never descended to charlatanism to produce his effects.”
So how did a man from humble Irish roots end up living so much of his life in old imperial Russia? In Field’s case it was certainly linked to a sense of escaping a spartan upbringing. He was born into a poor but nonetheless musical family, reluctantly submitted himself to long hours at the piano and gave his first public recital (in his home city of Dublin) at the age of nine. After this debut success, he was apprenticed to Muzio Clementi, a celebrated Italian composer, piano maker and publisher, who at that time lived in London. John Field never again set foot in the country of his birth.
His teenage years were spent in London as Clementi’s pupil and assistant. Clementi taught him composition and published some of his earliest works. In return, he had the boy work as a kind of salesperson on the floor of his piano warehouse, getting the young Field to publicly demonstrate the possibilities of each piano with some exquisite improvisations. Field’s unusual talent was by now evident. He published his first piano music at the age of 13 and by 16 had written his First Piano Concerto, which although lacking the expressive range of his later concerti, is still an impressively assured work for one so young.
Although his apprenticeship formally ended in 1800, Field stayed on as Clementi’s assistant. He was by his side when they went on a European concert tour together in 1802, including Paris and Vienna, before reaching St Petersburg where Clementi hoped to forge new links for his publishing and piano-making business. Working under Clementi wasn’t always a congenial experience, and nor did the older man look after his young protégé as well as he might. He could be stingy with money, often taking the entire performing fee for himself even after Field had stood in for him at a concert. Field was also underequipped with basic essentials, such as warm clothing for the harsh Russian winters. As one near contemporary wrote in 1834, “even now there are people who remember Field walking through the streets without an overcoat, wearing Nanking underwear while the weather was at twenty five degrees below zero, suffering from a cold and being obliged to blow his nose in the lining of his hat.” Others recalled Field’s stick-thin, undernourished physique, and the jackets whose sleeves were so short they would come up over his elbows. Field would later name one of his dogs after his parsimonious old master, an act of either affectionate tribute or petty revenge.
But Clementi also gave Field some all-important introductions while in St Petersburg and it was towards the end of their eight-month stay that Field, recognizing his commercial potential, took the momentous decision to part ways with his mentor and go it alone in the Russian capital. In fairness, St Petersburg was at that time a welcoming place for emigrant artists, a legacy perhaps of Peter the Great calling in architects from all over Europe to build the city in the early eighteenth century, many of whom then stayed on and raised families. Once Field had performed on the piano a few times (including his first piano concerto) he attracted further wealthy, influential backers and from then on would never go cold or hungry again.
Field would remain in Russia for the next thirty years, alternating his residence between St Petersburg and Moscow (fortunately he was living in the former when Moscow was burned to the ground after the French invasion of 1812). The skinny, shabbily clad youth had by now embraced the glamorous new possibilities of his life, even if more expensive clothes did not necessarily improve his dress sense. He became something of a bon viveur, fond of expensive food and fine living, while developing, more ominously, a fondness for cognac. He had more money than he could ever have dreamed of, and a touch of complacency crept into his outlook. He was happy to turn down several lucrative and prestigious career opportunities even while a still relatively young man. Having once refused a position at the imperial court, Field (who spoke quite good French) punned: “la cour n’est pas fait pour moi, et je ne sais pas lui faire la cour.” (“courtship is not for me, as I don’t know how to court her”).
He did in fact have many courtships of the other kind, and one would lead to marriage with a French pupil, Adelaide Percheron, in 1810. Their decade-long matrimony would appear to be the most productive time of Field’s life. He began to write (and publish) the short, exquisite piano pieces – his nocturnes – which would do so much to shape his posthumous reputation. In response to demands for fresh orchestral material, he wrote six further piano concerti. The latter have been chronically overlooked since Field’s death and yet they are surprisingly good pieces of music. Often unfairly dubbed a miniaturist, Field shows himself adept at handling large, symphonic structures, his first movements usually lasting around 20 minutes, even as the principal ideas are given plenty of room in which to breathe and unfold at their own pace. Moreso even than the nocturnes, the concerti show Field in all of his moods. They can be warm, soulful, dramatic and sometimes mischievous in tone.
Although the Second Concerto is particularly well-regarded (both Chopin and Clara Schumann would use it as teaching material for their pupils), the Fifth is its equal in many ways, and not least it is the most unusual. While the second and third movements of the Fifth are relatively short and light (and quite Mozartian sounding), the first movement is monumental: it is like a concerto, symphony and tone poem all rolled into one. Subtitled “The Blazing Storm”, it was inspired by German composer, Daniel Steibelt’s “Storm” concerto written 20 years later, although Field’s grander and more ambitious concept was clearly designed to outdo his predecessor’s efforts. The movement is in concerto-sonata form, and while the outer sections are full of bright, charming Classicism, the middle “storm” section is exciting and dramatic, and quite unlike anything else Field ever wrote. As the music evokes thunder, lightning and general meteorological mayhem, Field (an instinctive orchestrator) employs his instrumental resources in highly pictorial ways, while also making effective (and original) use of a tam-tam and tubular bells.
A Sixth Concerto would follow in 1819, after which Field’s output began to falter. His lively, somewhat dissipated lifestyle had started to catch up with him. A three-year affair, producing an illegitimate son in 1815, had damaged his marriage – Adelaide then finally left him in 1821, taking their only child with him. Field was devastated and fell into a decade-long slump. He stopped composing, performed seldomly and drank much more heavily. When he began to be known as “drunken John”, Field defiantly responded that he could still “play better when I am drunk than anyone in Russia when they are sober.” With his health having been slowly undermined by his alcoholism, illness and encroaching poverty eventually forced him back into the concert halls in the early 1830s. A Seventh Piano Concerto, which he had been fiddling with for the past ten years, was performed, but to only moderate success. He needed an operation for suspected bowel cancer and travelled to London to raise the funds and undergo the (partly successful) procedure. While subsequently touring Europe, he fell desperately ill in southern Italy and languished in a hospital there for almost a year. Thankfully he was rescued by some wealthy benefactors from Russia and taken back to St Petersburg. He lived another 18 months, still undertaking a little teaching, performing and writing nocturnes, before his weakened constitution succumbed to pneumonia in early 1837.
And as for his departing deathbed pun? A visiting priest asked him his religion, was he a Calvinist? “No, not a Calvinist, a Claveciniste,” replied Field.
It maybe works better in French.
Suggestions for further listening
All seven of Field’s Piano Concertos are on Youtube, and all are well worth a listen. The Second Concerto, written in 1811, is probably the best of them.
If you like Chopin Nocturnes, then you will almost certainly like the ones composed by Field. Writing short, lyrical piano pieces to no set structure or form was a highly original concept in the 1810s – Field’s Nocturnes not only inspired Chopin but the next generations of piano miniaturists, including Mendelssohn’s extensive series of Lieder ohne Worte (Songs Without Words). Far from being dreamy, artless improvisations, Field took painstaking care with the balance and overall shape of each of his exquisite offerings.
Who in turn influenced Field? His overall musical style suggests he was more a Mozart than Beethoven man. One definite early inspiration was the late eighteenth century Czech composer, Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760 – 1812). Field and Dussek both lived in London for several years in the 1790s, and it is likely that Clementi’s apprentice was at least distantly acquainted with the older man. Field also performed several Dussek concertos during the same period, including (very probably) the latter’s fine Piano Concerto in G Minor op 49, written in 1801.