Ausführliche theoretisch-practische Anweisung zum Piano-Forte-Spiel. (German Edition)
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Ausführliche Theoretisch-practische Anweisung Zum Piano-Forte-Spiel: Vom Ersten Elementar-Unterrichte An Bis Zur Vollkommensten Ausbildung
Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Haslinger, 1828
Music; Musical Instruments; Piano & Keyboard; Music / Musical Instruments / Piano & Keyboard
Sonatas, Rondos, Fantasies and Other Works for Solo Piano (Dover Music for Piano)
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A favored student and comrade of Mozart, and Haydn's su...)
A favored student and comrade of Mozart, and Haydn's successor as music director to the Esterházy court, Johann Nepomuk Hummel (17781827) was considered in his lifetime to be one of Europe's greatest composers and pianists. For his craftsmanship and sense of 18th-century style, Hummel was thought to be a true representative of his age, an "elder statesman of Viennese Classicism" (Grove). His compositions for solo piano reflect his essential qualities of classical grace, melodic elegance, and brilliant virtuosity fully evident in this compilation of 15 of Hummel's most important keyboard works: Rondo, Op. 11; Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 13; Fantasie, Op. 18; Rondo-Fantasie, Op. 19; Sonata in F Minor, Op. 20; Caprice, Op. 49; "La Bella Caprissiosa" (Polonaise), Op. 55; Variations, Op. 57; 24 Preludes, Op. 67; Sonata in F-sharp Minor, Op, 81; Sonata in D Major, Op. 106; "La Contemplazione," Op. 107, No. 3; Rondo all'Ungherese, Op. 107, No. 6; Rondo Brillante, Op. 109; "La Galante" (Rondeau Brillant), Op. 120.
Now pianists and music lovers can enjoy a treasury of Hummel's most representative piano music in this attractive, durable, and inexpensive edition, reproduced from authoritative Universal-Edition scores, edited by Charles de Béroit.
(The Concerto in E-flat Major by Johann Nepomuk Hummel was...)
The Concerto in E-flat Major by Johann Nepomuk Hummel was written in 1803 for the inventor of the keyed trumpet, Anton Weidinger. The movements are: Allegro con spirito, Andante, and Rondo.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel was an Austrian composer and virtuoso pianist. His music reflects the transition from the Classical to the Romantic musical era.
Background
Johann Nepomuk Hummel was born on the 14th of November 1778 at Pressburg, in Hungary.
His father, Johannes Hummel, was the director of the Imperial School of Military Music in Vienna and the conductor there of Emanuel Schikaneder's theatre orchestra at the Theater auf der Wieden; his mother, Margarethe Sommer Hummel, was the widow of the wigmaker Josef Ludwig.
The Hummel family relocated to the glittering Austro–Hungarian capital city, with its flourishing cultural climate, and young Hummel emerged as a child prodigy there.
Education
He received his first artistic training from his father, himself a musician.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the pianist and composer who was then enjoying the height of fame in Vienna, soon heard of the boy's talents, and personally instructed him for two years.
In 1793, after spending nearly five years on tour, Hummel went back to Vienna to continue his studies.
Career
He enjoyed immense fame during his lifetime, and critics of the day termed him the equal of Ludwig van Beethoven. The Austrian pianist and composer's musical legacy was eclipsed, however, by the romantic composers who immediately followed, and his works were largely forgotten a century later.
He was feted as the next musical genius to emerge from Vienna, and his first piece, a string quartet, debuted in Oxford, England.
The Trumpet Concerto was performed on New Year's Day of 1804, and features references to two significant musical styles.
For some years he held the appointment of orchestral conductor to Prince Eszterhazy, probably entering upon this office in 1807.
His gift of improvisation at the piano was especially admired, but his larger compositions also were highly appreciated, and for a time Hummel was considered one of the leading musicians of an age in which Beethoven was in the zenith of his power.
Infinitely more important are his compositions for the pianoforte (his two concerti in A minor and В minor, and the sonata in F sharp minor), and his chamber music (the celebrated septet, and several trios, &c. ).
Hummel would spend several years at the Esterházy court in Eisenstadt, near the border of Austria and Hungary, and gradually took over more and more duties as Kapellmeister there.
Hummel stayed in Eisenstadt until 1811, and taught in Vienna thereafter.
His compositions did not stand the test of time, but one of them, noted Klein in the New York Times, survived the ages.
The orchestration shows great understanding of the resources of the instruments.
In all, the concerto is easily the equal of Mendelssohn's and Chopin's concertos, and is a worthy companion of the majority of Mozart's.
After a tour of Germany in 1816, Hummel settled in Stuttgart to serve as Kapellmeister for the Duchy of Württemberg's royal seat.
In 1819, he took a similar position as the Grand Ducal Kapellmeister in Weimar, a position he held until his death nearly 20 years later.
He continued to tour regularly, however, and earned a rather good income from this.
He was a particular favorite with French and English concertgoers, and made stops in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1822, Belgium and the Netherlands in 1826, and Warsaw in 1828.
Paris and London served as his mainstay, however, and he toured both in 1830, and in London again in 1831 and 1833.
It is known that in 1827, he went to pay his respects to Beethoven when the esteemed figure was deathly ill, and took a lock of his hair.
But by the 1836, musical tastes had begun to change, and Hummel's reputation suffered somewhat in Germany and Austria.
German romantic composer Robert Schumann, who published the Die neue Zeitschrift für Musik, reviewed a Dresden concert in April of 1834 and asserted, "Hummel should make no further concert tour, at least not in Germany and France, where piano playing has reached the pinnacle of culture and only the most extraordinary can please, " according to Joel Sachs' Kapellmeister Hummel in England and France.
He significantly debases his well–earned fame thereby.
His palmy days are long gone.
Hummel's health deteriorated in his later years, and he died on October 17, 1837, in Weimar, Germany.
His works were soon forgotten in the subsequent era, though there have been periodic predictions of a revival for his reputation.
Yet near the end, Rice found a reference to Cherubini's Les Deux Journees, a very popular opera at the time that had recently made its way from Paris to Vienna.
By introducing Cherubini's march from Les Deux Journees into the finale of his 'New Year' Concerto, Hummel made sure that a work largely concerned with the glories of Vienna's musical past ended with a celebration of its musical present.
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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Hummel's A minor Piano Concerto is an example, and Chopin's two piano concertos betray an obvious indebtedness. "
Hummel, noted New York Times critic Howard Klein, "produced much music in a style between Mozart and the early romantics—good music, not great, possibly, but with much intellectual and musical content. "
As Schonberg noted in the New York Times, Hummel "was the last of the true Classicists, and yet his piano music prefigures some of the techniques and actual ideas that went into Romanticism. "
"This time he was a mature artist, and his clean, Classical, elegant piano playing was the talk of Europe, " noted Harold C. Schonberg in the New York Times.
The A Minor Piano Concerto, Klein wrote, features "three movements full of lovely, simple themes which are richly ornamented in Hummel's flowing piano style.
According to an essay in Music & Letters by John A. Rice, "Hummel's references in the opening Allegro con spirito of the Trumpet Concerto to the first movement of Mozart's 'Haffner' Symphony are obvious and have been pointed out more than once. "
"He was not a prepossessing figure.
He was corpulent, had a pockmarked face, had rather crude manners and dressed ostentatiously.
Yet he must have had intellectual qualities of a high order, " citing his friendships with leading names of the day, including Goethe. "
Connections
On the 18th of May 1813 he married Elisabeth Rockl, a singer, and the sister of one of Beethoven's friends.