# Hummel



## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

Did he miss the boat, so to speak, as to becoming as famous as Beethoven, or was he just not talented enough? Some of his music is really powerful stuff but then some is rather banal as if he was churning music out like Czerny. His fantasie op.18 is enjoyable along with most of his piano sonatas and piano concertos 2 and 3.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

I think you've summed it up already. He played it safe and just wasn't the innovator that Beethoven was. Some of his piano sonatas with those lyrical melodies deserve more love.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I've been buying a bit of Hummel over the last few weeks. He did live long enough to flirt with Romantic elements on some of his later works but it was Romanticism with a small 'r', I think. He was essentially a classicist but I find his works no less enjoyable because of his relative orthodoxy - new favourites are his piano concertos ops. 85 & 89, the Septuor Militaire op. 114 and the 5th piano sonata op. 81. He also wrote fine sacred works - I have a Naxos disc with the Missa Solemnis from 1806 and a Te Deum from the same year (he composed these sacred works for the Esterhazy house as the incumbent Kappellmeister Haydn's health was beginning to fail and presumably felt obliged to follow in Papa's footsteps).


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I am quite a fan of Hummel's work. He had the misfortune of being Beethoven's contemporary - had it not been for that, he might have been more famous.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

From the 1980 _Grove_:


> Hummel's music reached the highest level accessible to one who lacks ultimate genius. Yet while his compositions have not fulfilled the promise of immortality, they and his style of performing had a lasting importance. As perhaps the finest and, in his time, the most renowned representative of late Classicism, he clearly linked the styles of Clementi and Mozart, in a line that bypassed Beethoven, with those of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, early Liszt and Schumann, some of whom came to rebel against the very man whose music did so much to form their own. Hummel's essential conservatism brought the Viennese style to its ultimate fruition and decay, for in completing the work of the 18th century he prepared the way for the violent reaction of his juniors. His final significance, however, depends not on the fame of those who followed him, but on his own position as the true representative of his age. Through Hummel, not Beethoven, may be seen the crucial phase in which the Classical style outlived its usefulness, as the old virtues of clarity, symmetry, elegance and 'learnedness' yielded to the new 'inspiration', emotionalism, commercialism and bombast.


Hummel's probably a good example of history being written by the victors - no place reserved in Romanticism for his "evolutionary dead-end".
Mind you, given that these days the Classical-Romantic transition is just a dot on the horizon and we don't care so much who was innovating 200 years ago, a canny marketer might stand a chance of reviving Hummel as "Mozart's successor".


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Hummel was good enough for Joseph Haydn himself to put in writing recommending their wealthy employer to appoint Hummel as Haydn's successor.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Hummel wrote an excellent trumpet concerto and his a minor piano concerto is excellent too.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Hummel also wrote excellent masses. There are a few on the Chandos label under Richard Hickox.


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## pjang23 (Oct 8, 2009)

I'm always searching for great piano chamber music, and I've been very pleased with Hummel's works. I haven't gone through all of his works, though his piano trios, cello sonata, and piano quintet have all been nice finds.

Hummel definitely deserves to be played more often.


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

Interesting what you can uncover nowadays, what with spotify. I found another contemporary of Hummel in Dussek and very similar as in writing some nice piano sonatas.


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

I love his music but is tinged with only belonging to his own era, as in not having a universal appeal. Worth listening to the piano concertos etc. & you will find many good things in this composer's music.


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## Gangwolf (Apr 26, 2014)

Alydon said:


> Worth listening to the piano concertos ...


Totally agree. The Howard Shelley concertos on Chandos are very enjoyable, and so are the Ian Hobson sonatas on Arabesque.


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