Hummel Note
Research notes of composer Hummel
7. Aesthetic Rupture and the Dawn of a New Era: Hummel’s Later Years and His Friction with Franz Liszt
Artist: Friedrich Pecht — German history painter and portrait artist Year of creation: 1845
Collection: Goethe Museum (Düsseldorf, Germany)
The Twilight of the Hummel Style
By the 1830s, a decisive aesthetic shift had taken place in the European musical world. In 1828, Hummel published his monumental pedagogical work, A Complete Theoretical and Practical Course of Instruction on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte, in three volumes totaling around 500 pages and containing over 2,000 musical examples. This work established a landmark in piano pedagogy, was eagerly sought after by musicians across Western Europe, and exerted an immeasurable influence on later generations.
However, from this period onward, Hummel’s popularity as a performer began to show a clear decline. A new generation of virtuosi—represented by figures such as Franz Liszt and Niccolò Paganini—captivated audiences with storm-like passion and dazzling displays of technical brilliance (bravura) that pushed the limits of performance.
In contrast, Hummel’s refined classical balance and his smooth, pearl-like playing style came increasingly to be regarded as “old-fashioned.” During his London performances in 1831, for instance, his reputation suffered in comparison to the sensational flair of Paganini.
As his compositional output gradually slowed and his health deteriorated, the death of Goethe in 1832 likely dealt a significant emotional blow to the Hummel couple’s intellectual and spiritual life in Weimar.
On October 17, 1837, Johann Nepomuk Hummel himself passed away in Weimar. The death of one of the last great masters directly connected to Mozart can be seen as symbolizing the end of an era.
Conflict Between Old and New in Weimar: Franz Liszt
After Hummel’s death, Elisabeth remained in Weimar as the “widow of the Court Kapellmeister” (Hofkapellmeisters Witwe), living out nearly half a century of her later life there. In October 1837, she took action to secure her financial and legal rights, for example by sending an official letter to the Viennese musicians’ support society (Tonkünstler-Societät) regarding her widow’s pension.
In her private life in Weimar, she was generally known among close acquaintances as “Betty” and lived quietly together with her brother Alexander Röckel, who served as a court official.
However, the musical environment of Weimar underwent another dramatic transformation after 1848. Franz Liszt—then the most celebrated musical figure in Europe, who had once performed Hummel’s Piano Concerto in A minor at his Vienna debut—arrived in Weimar as the new Court Kapellmeister.
While Liszt himself undoubtedly held Hummel in high esteem as both an artist and a composer, Elisabeth, along with other members of the Hummel family and Hummel’s distinguished pupil Ferdinand Hiller, reportedly felt strong resistance and friction toward Liszt’s appointment and presence in Weimar.
One reason was likely their fear that Liszt’s overwhelming charisma would completely overshadow the memory and achievements of Hummel, the great predecessor. A deeper cause, however, lay in aesthetics: Liszt’s radically Romantic piano style—marked by extreme emotional intensity and powerful, almost violent expression—was seen as a betrayal of the disciplined, balanced classical pianism inherited from Mozart and brought to its height by Hummel. In their view, Liszt’s approach failed to do justice to Hummel’s works.
At one point, Liszt even lived near the house on Marienstrasse where the Hummel family had long resided. Yet it is recorded that Elisabeth never accorded Liszt the same level of respect she had shown her husband as a musician.
This personal tension was more than a mere emotional disagreement; it symbolized a broader cultural conflict at the forefront of a major aesthetic paradigm shift in the mid-19th century—between the conservative lineage of Classicism and the emerging, progressive movement later known as the “New German School,” centered around Liszt.
8. The Paths of Their Two Sons
Hummel and Elisabeth had two sons who pursued artistic careers, and their lives illustrate how the cultural legacy inherited from their parents was both preserved and transformed across different fields—music and the visual arts.
In particular, the artistic success of their younger son Carl can be understood in light of the financial stability that allowed him to devote himself fully to landscape painting as a form of self-expression. This stability was made possible by his father—a great composer who amassed wealth through international concert tours and copyright negotiations—and by his mother Elisabeth, whose strong managerial support helped sustain and expand that success.
Eduard Hummel, Porträt (Aquarell) von Henry Hawkins, London 1838
Eduard Joseph Hummel 1814–1892
The elder son was born in Vienna in 1814. He pursued a career in music as a pianist, conductor, and composer. However, he was often overshadowed by his great father, and although he possessed considerable talent, he was unable to develop it consistently. Some sources even describe him rather harshly as a “missratener Sohn” (a “wayward” or “unsuccessful son”).
After marrying in Weimar in 1841, he emigrated to the United States in search of a new musical base. In the prosperous city of Troy, New York, he worked as a professor of music, contributing to the transmission of European musical culture to the New World. He spent the remainder of his life there and died in 1892 at his son’s home.
Carl Maria Nicolaus Hummel 1821–1907
The younger son was born in Weimar in 1821. Unlike his elder brother, he pursued a career in the visual arts. He studied at the Weimar Art School under Friedrich Preller.
From 1842 onward, he traveled extensively through Italy, Sicily, and Corsica, where he drew inspiration from the light of Southern Europe and from what were known as “heroic landscapes.” In 1860, he was appointed professor at the Weimar Art School.
His landscape paintings—particularly those depicting Italy and the Tyrolean Alps—were highly acclaimed, and his works are held in collections such as the Musée de la Vie Romantique in Paris and the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. His art vividly embodies the cultivated visual Romanticism nurtured in the intellectually rich environment of Weimar centered around Goethe.
During a family visit to Vienna in 1830, when Chopin was also staying there, the two met again. On that occasion, Carl painted a portrait of Chopin.