Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778 – 1837): Piano Concerto no 3 in B Minor op 89
There was little ideology behind Hummel’s art – he was not the sort to make sweeping political or philosophical statements. He would not tear up a dedication page in a fit of rage, offer short shrift to any performer who complained his music was too difficult to play, or throw hard-boiled eggs at waiters when dissatisfied by the level of service in a restaurant. Despite living through many of the same times and taking many of the same roads, he was a kind of antithesis to Beethoven. Business-like, even tempered and orderly, Hummel was less dysfunctional genius and more of a kind of musical everyman – though an everyman blessed with exceptional talent.
When a promising young pupil, Ferdinand Hiller*, came to lodge with Hummel, his wife Elisabeth and their two children in the 1820s, he noted the “great simplicity, order, even some monotony” in the household and in particular the “daily peaceful life.” Perhaps such order was absolutely essential as the mature Hummel balanced his various commitments as kapellmeister, teacher, piano virtuoso and composer. By all accounts, he was also a devoted husband and father.
*A future composer himself, although most of his output is forgotten today.
He was the ultimate pragmatist when it came to his work. Hiller noted Hummel’s way of always being “upright and direct… self assured and calm”, while he “possessed the strength of his convictions… he was continually productive, [but always] with complete ease, never in haste and without rushing.” Hummel would manifest this same quiet, confident efficiency whether writing a letter, taking a piano lesson or directing an orchestral ensemble.
Ironically, it is many of these same qualities that have since worked against Hummel and his legacy. Creating a compelling narrative about his life’s work has never been easy. Whatever shocks and struggles he suffered along the way (and he did not appear to suffer many) his outward equilibrium was rarely disturbed. More awkward still for future musical ideologues was the way Hummel’s creativity seldom followed a linear path. Aside from his early Trumpet Concerto, he wrote few iconic works. He was forever turning down side-tracks, and just when his compositional output appeared to be blossoming into a glorious zenith in early middle age, it suddenly halted mid-step, as if not caring to make too much fuss.
Even as Hummel’s music could be genuinely progressive, he was never one with revolution on the brain. Working in an environment of aristocratic court patronage for most of his life, he wrote essentially to order and for whatever was required. When asked for something easy on the ear he was not afraid to turn out singable, foot-tapping melodies. But whenever he was allowed a little more creative license, he took it – mostly through his piano sonatas, his chamber music and two magnificent piano concertos.
He wrote no symphonies and just one opera, which he was reluctant to ever have performed. He was thought to be the greatest pianist of his age, and his extraordinary virtuosity would push the possibilities of the (ever-expanding) instrument to new levels. But even with that, there was something essentially unflashy about his playing. He liked clarity and clean textures, favoured the smaller French pianos over more powerful English ones, and emphasised to his pupils the importance of sitting upright and avoiding any unnecessary movement while performing.
Although Hummel’s life journey between two very different stylistic eras was less dramatic than Beethoven’s, it was just as remarkable and in its own way even more personal. As a youngster, Hummel wasn’t only inspired by Mozart and Haydn – to an extent he even briefly lived their lives. In the mid-1780s he lodged for two years with Mozart as his pupil, at a time when the latter was writing some of his best and most famous music. Twenty years later he worked alongside the elderly Joseph Haydn as court musician to the aristocratic Esterházy family, taking on many of the duties previously assigned to the old but ailing maestro. Mozart and Haydn would leave an indelible impression on Hummel’s musical soul.
At the other end of his career. Hummel would watch the youthful, barnstorming Franz Liszt build his early performing reputation from two virtuosic piano concertos which Hummel had himself composed. By this stage he was also a major formative influence on the likes of Chopin, Schubert and Schumann.
One of those Hummel concertos which Liszt would so memorably showcase was the Third in B Minor. It dates from 1819, at a time when Hummel had just been appointed Kapellmeister at Weimar, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. It’s a work which shows the composer at the absolute height of his powers – indeed one could make a case for it being the finest piano concerto of the 1810s. The work’s basic framework is very solidly Classical, with its foundations firmly rooted in Mozart: as Hummel once advised a composition pupil, “model yourself after great masters in form and plan, although don’t copy their style, which must be your own.” And the style is very much Hummel’s own, full of colourfully vibrant music and a wide-ranging, Romantic expressiveness.
Although Hummel never wrote a symphony, the first movement of the Third Concerto is distinctly symphonic in its dimensions. The orchestral exposition, in the dark tonality of B Minor, is as powerful and dramatic as any written by Beethoven. The eventual piano entry is highly original – briefly the music misleads us into the tonic major while the piano opens with soft, ambiguous B Major arpeggios in the upper bass, only accompanied by distant sounding rumbles on the timpani. B Minor is quickly re-asserted and the rest of the movement proceeds through a troubled landscape with further drama never too far away. But there are pleasing contrasts along the way, and gentler passages comprising lyrical, arabesque-like melodies, in a manner that clearly anticipates Frédéric Chopin.
There is also some terrifically difficult piano writing throughout the movement. Such virtuosity provided an irresistible challenge to the teenage Franz Liszt, who enjoyed performing this work with such relish that he would sometimes break piano strings during a performance and be forced to take a break while a technician was hurriedly called in for running repairs. Even today, pianists find the concerto notably demanding to play.
For the second movement, the orchestral accompaniment is reduced to just horns, cellos and double basses. The music opens with a solemn, extended chorale for four horns, an unusual scoring also used a couple of times by Hummel’s German contemporary, Carl Maria von Weber. The piano eventually takes up the horn theme, now dreamily accompanied by spacious broken chords in the left hand. The tension is racked up briefly during an unsettled middle section before the movement closes, as it opened, in quiet solemnity.
The last movement is an exuberant rondo, with a rapid, recurring polka theme, once more in the serious sounding key of B Minor – although this time graced with a certain lightness absent from the first movement, and moving, perhaps inevitably, to a sunnier, triumphant conclusion in B Major.
At the time, with Hummel still only in his early forties, one might have assumed that there were many more works like the B Minor Concerto to come. Instead, it would prove to be one his last masterpieces with many of his later compositions beginning to look back and not forwards. But Hummel was also content in both his personal and professional life at Weimar, and perhaps some of the creative hunger was no longer there. He lived well and became something of a bon viveur: colourful tales have been told about the famously stout figure he evolved in his later years.
To the end of his life, Hummel remained an extremely important focal point for Weimar’s musical life. He was instrumental in setting up pension schemes and benefit funds for struggling professional musicians while also campaigning for better copyright laws. He also published a piano treatise, well-received at first though soon regarded as old-fashioned by the same younger generation of composers who had once revered him.
But perhaps Hummel was never really a man cut out for creating schools or writing artistic manifestos. The nearest he came to the latter was some typically sensible advice he once gave to a young composition pupil (and which he appeared to follow himself):
Your purpose is to touch the heart, to install joy, to delight the ear.
Dry learned art alone is pedantry and belongs only to the eye.
Therefore combine feeling and taste in art, raise and value emotion in composition, make it serious and worthy, and this will lead the artist to the true goal.
After Hummel’s death, his wife Elisabeth created a beautiful flower bed around his gravestone, which she faithfully tended for the rest of her days. The flower bed still blooms today.
Suggestions for further listening
Hummel’s Piano Concerto no 2 in A Minor written three years before the Third is held in almost equal regard. Schumann would always refer to it as the “A Minor Concerto… there is only one.” Schumann’s sole piano concerto from the 1840s was written in the very same key.
Also well worth checking out is the piano-based chamber music Hummel was turning out at around the same time as these concerti, including the majestic 1819 Piano Sonata in F Sharp Minor op 81 (also greatly admired by Schumann) and his Piano Trio in E Flat Major op 93 (c1820). His essays in the latter are highly underrated and stand comparison with anything written by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. A complete recording of all Hummel’s seven piano trios can be found here.
Hummel also wrote a very fine Septet in D Minor op 74 (1816) for the unusual scoring of piano, flute, oboe, horn, viola, ‘cello and double bass. Liszt would write of it: “The logical progression of this work, the majesty of his style, the clarity and flexibility of his ideas make [this work] easy to understand. Moreover, each passage has so many individual details that they never fail to have an effect.”