Hummel Note
Research notes of composer Hummel
Testimony of Carl Czerny
Regarding Hummel’s playing, there is an account in the autobiography of Carl Czerny—who was both a student of Beethoven and a teacher of Liszt—which I will introduce here.
For several years, from around 1802 to 1804, I used to visit, together with my father, the home of Mozart’s widow (*Constanze Mozart), where musical evenings were held every Saturday. There, Mozart’s son (*Franz Xaver Mozart, the youngest son of Mozart, born in 1791), who was also a pupil of Streicher, performed with remarkable skill.
On one such evening, there were far more people gathered than usual. Among the many elegant ladies and gentlemen, however, I noticed a young man whose appearance struck me as rather peculiar.
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A face that twitched constantly, coarse and unpleasant
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Extremely poor taste in clothing
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A light gray frock coat
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A long crimson waistcoat and blue trousers
From his appearance, one might have taken him for a village schoolmaster; yet, in contrast, every one of his fingers was adorned with expensive rings, all glittering together.
The concert proceeded as usual, but toward the end, this young man—who seemed to be a little over twenty—was invited to play.
What a magnificent master I heard that day!
By that time, I had already often had the opportunity to hear Genserich, Lipavsky, Wölfl, and even Beethoven himself; yet the playing of this poorly dressed man struck me like an entirely new world. Never before had I heard:
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Such a new and brilliant technique
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Such pure, elegant, and delicate expression
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Such a richly conceived fantasy, unified with refined taste
When he later performed several of Mozart’s sonatas together with Krommer on violin, even those works, which I had long known, appeared to me as if transformed into something entirely new.
Immediately after the performance, I learned that this young man was named Hummel, that he had once been a pupil of Mozart, and that he had recently returned from London (where he had studied with Clementi).
From the autobiography of Carl Czerny (written in 1842)
On Hummel and Beethoven
If Beethoven’s playing stood out through its astonishing power, dignity, unprecedented virtuosity, and mastery, then Hummel’s playing, by contrast, represented the purest and clearest model of execution, and a paradigm of the most captivating elegance and delicacy. Ever since Hummel skillfully adapted both Mozart’s manner of playing and that of the Clementi school to suit the instrument, his greatest aim had always been to achieve the highest and most striking effects.
Hummel’s followers, for their part, spoke ill of Beethoven, saying: “He mistreats the piano and produces nothing but confused noise,” and “his works are unnatural, affected, unmelodic, and irregular.”
On the other hand, Beethoven’s admirers claimed: “Hummel lacks true fantasy in everything. His playing is monotonous like the clavichord; his fingers cling like spiders. His compositions are nothing more than reworkings of motives from Mozart and Haydn.”
— from the memoirs of Carl Czerny
What should be noted here is Czerny’s own remark:
“I myself was influenced by Hummel, insofar as I came to strive for greater purity and clarity.”
In fact, when one listens to Czerny’s piano works—his solo pieces, chamber music, and piano concertos—it becomes clear that many of them employ a style of writing and playing that could easily be mistaken for Hummel rather than Beethoven.
This becomes especially evident when compared with the works of Ferdinand Ries (1784–1838), another student of Beethoven, whose music is unmistakably Beethovenian in character.
— from Czerny’s autobiography (written in 1842)