Johann Nepomuk Hummel

Johann Nepomuk Hummel was born on 14 November 1778 in Pressburg, today’s Bratislava, then a city in the Kingdom of Hungary. His father, Johannes, was a music master who became musical director of a Vienna theatre, where the family moved in 1786. A child prodigy, Johann played the piano from the age of four. Mozart heard him and, impressed, took him into his home as a pupil: for two years the boy lived with the Mozart family and received free lessons from the master.

In 1788 his father took him on a grand concert tour across Europe: Germany, Denmark, Scotland, England and the Netherlands. In London he studied with Muzio Clementi and played for Haydn, who reportedly dedicated a sonata to him. Back in Vienna in 1793 because of the war with revolutionary France, he completed his training with the best masters: counterpoint with Albrechtsberger, singing and opera with Salieri and organ with Haydn. His fellow student was Beethoven, with whom he had a friendship of admiration and rivalry.

In the 1790s Hummel made a name in Vienna as a teacher and pianist. His elegant, clear, brilliant playing was much admired, and many preferred it to Beethoven’s more powerful and tempestuous style. In 1803 he composed the Trumpet Concerto in E major for the trumpeter Anton Weidinger, inventor of a keyed trumpet able to play every note of the scale. This concerto is now one of the most performed in the trumpet repertoire.

In 1804, on the recommendation of the ageing Haydn, he became Konzertmeister to the Esterházy princes at Eisenstadt, in effect running the music in his master’s place. He composed sacred music, operas and ballets. But he sometimes neglected his duties, and Prince Nikolaus II dismissed him in 1811. Hummel returned to Vienna, where in 1813 he married the singer Elisabeth Röckel, sister of a friend of Beethoven’s.

In 1816 he became Kapellmeister in Stuttgart and in 1819 in Weimar, where he stayed until his death. Weimar was then the intellectual centre of Germany, and Hummel became a friend of Goethe. He directed the court orchestra and opera and every year undertook major concert tours: Russia, Paris, London, Poland. He was regarded as one of the greatest pianists in Europe, and his improvisations were legendary.

In 1827, learning that Beethoven was dying, he travelled to Vienna with his wife and his pupil Ferdinand Hiller to see him one last time. At the funeral he was one of the pallbearers, and he improvised at a memorial concert. In 1828 he published a large, highly detailed three-volume Piano Method, which was very successful and helped establish modern fingering. He also campaigned for composers’ copyright.

Hummel died in Weimar on 17 October 1837. In his lifetime he was one of the most famous composers in Europe; his piano concertos, his Septet and his Piano Quintet in E flat minor — with the same scoring as Schubert’s “Trout” — were admired. His brilliant style directly influenced Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. Forgotten after his death, overshadowed by Beethoven, he is now being rediscovered as a master of the transition from Classicism to Romanticism.