J. N. Hummel.
Engraved by Fr. Wrenk (1766-1830), after the portrait by Catherine von Escherich
(beginning of 19th century)
The index to Cramer’s works does not look promising. The Variations, Impromptus, Rondos, Divertissements; the Victory of Kutusoff; the Two Styles, ancient and modern; the Rendezvous à la Chasse; un jour de Printemps; Hors d’œuvre, grande sonate dans le style de Clementi; or the combined composition, in the fashion of the time, by Cramer, Hummel, Kalkbrenner and Moscheles, of variations on Rule Britannia—all these are equally unattractive. The hundred and five sonatas are almost unknown. Cramer’s importance lies entirely in his Études, which have been frequently reprinted and arranged. Of the various editions the finest is Pauer’s English “édition de luxe,” which is adorned with a fine engraving of Cramer. Here he is all genius and sensibility. The somewhat highly-coloured nose, on which he himself used to jest, attracts no notice in the portrait. “It was Bacchus who put his thumb there,” he would say; “ce diable de Bacchus!” The whole delicate spirit of Cramer breathes in these Études, which to-day are unforgotten and unsurpassed in their kind. Their instructive value lies in the isolation of the technical exercise, which is made less exacting by skilful introduction of contrary motion at the proper point, while the most noble musical forms mount up from them. They are pieces full of character, and without titles, to be heartily reverenced. On the other hand “Cramer’s Pianoforte School,” which went through countless editions in his own time, has now become useless. The most noteworthy thing we find in it is a preface on preludes and codas, which, unlike Clementi’s, does not simply copy the approved models, but sets forth theoretically a series of “styles” in such improvisations, from the simplest chords to melodic development. In the period of public improvisations such instructions were not without their use. Preluding is still a “style” with us; codas we excuse ourselves. But in those days a player saw nothing out of place in the direct connection of such free inventions with the piece before him. And Cramer was still old-fashioned enough not to object to interweave with pieces of Mozart all kinds of flourishes—often, as Moscheles assures us, trivial indeed.
Over against Clementi, the genius of teaching, and Cramer, the genius of technique, stands Hummel as the inventor of the modern piano-exercise. Dussek had already, by his unusually full collection of exercises, accustomed the public ear to the new state of things; but Hummel brought the charm of the pianoforte and the effects of the seven octaves within the reach of all. What our amateurs, from the days of Chopin, know so well, that full and satisfying tone, that blazing colouration, is all in Hummel.
In his huge Piano School a combination in Hummel of the old master and the modern player is very visible. He systematises fingering into the following divisions: (1) advancing with simple finger-order in easy figure-successions; (2) passing the thumb under other fingers or other fingers over the thumb; (3) leaving out one or more fingers; (4) changing a finger with another on the same key; (5) stretches and leaps; (6) thumb and fourth finger on the black notes; (7) the passing of a long finger over a shorter, or of a short under a long; (8) change of different fingers on a key, with repeated or not repeated touch, and often the repeated use of the same finger on several keys; (9) alternation, interweaving, or crossing of the hands; and, finally (10), the legato style. A stupendous work indeed; and for every head of the fingering, for every technical possibility, a number of examples are introduced, with the completest calculation of permutations ever seen. There are in all two thousand two hundred examples, and more than a hundred exercises develop the possibilities of playing between C and G. Before every exercise stand the harmonic ground-chords. And thus comes to pass the great miracle, that by means of the utmost conceivable combinations, by means of the hundred chromatic subtleties, musical figures are formed which no composer had previously invented, and which lead on to sound-effects never before suspected. In the examples of an exercise-book lay undreamed-of novelties in piano-composition.
Hummel himself had a very modest opinion of his own compositions. He knew that he had made no advance in the path of Beethoven; and that no greatness was possible outside of it. “It was a serious moment for me,” he said once at Weimar to Ferdinand Hiller, “when Beethoven appeared. Was I to try to follow in the footsteps of such a genius? For a while I did not know what I stood on; but finally I said to myself that it was best to remain true to myself and my own nature.” With this determination Hummel founded the new, rich school of piano-playing, delighting in sound, and revelling in execution, in which even seriousness and passion are expressed with pomp and circumstance. Brilliancy has expelled grace, and the pompous the lightness of the dance.
Like most of his contemporaries he composed at the piano, making pencil-notes the while. But he heard it as though he were his own audience. “When I sit at the piano,” he said, “I am standing at the same time in yonder corner as a listener, and what does not appeal to me there is not written.” This was not Beethoven’s method. Such a conscious striving after effect was not consistent with absolute sincerity. The concerto was the mainspring of Hummel’s creativeness. The innumerable concertos and concert-fantasias take the first rank among Hummel’s works. They appeared also with quartet-accompaniment, and also with a second piano, or arranged for one piano. He wrote, unlike Clementi, far more concerto-pieces than sonatas. All kinds of Variations, Rondos, Capriccios, and “Amusements,” gratified his publishers. He wrote dances in the profusion characteristic of the time. The Sonata in A flat for two pianos is precisely in harmony with the age. It is only in the second half of the century that original works of this kind begin to lose vogue, while the duet confines itself to the drawing-room. The Duet attained its highest point in Schubert.
Hummel in his later years.
From a steel engraving by C. Mayer.
Hummel’s works bristle with sound-effects. We observe many full chords, as in the orchestra, when all the groups of single instruments are employed in full harmony. The treble of the instrument is for the first time properly used in the grand style, a noble contrast to the melodic, burlesque, dæmonic, firework style of Steibelt and the rest. We meet the genuine pianoforte charm of sharp chromatic successions, where a Bacchanalian tumult of colour appears to sound a rattling fire of sensuous effects. Even modulations are conceived from the side of technical effectiveness; and chromatic insertions or sudden third-passages, charming us in the vigorous voice of the piano, are of common occurrence. The various registers of the piano, the bass, the middle, and the treble, are applied to surprising effects; a note of one register suddenly thrown into the other gives a colour of its own. Passages rapidly gliding through the various registers give a glittering spectrum. Take, for example, such a development as that of the second solo conclusion in the last movement of the A minor concerto. Here, starting at the con dolcezza, we find the pianoforte bringing into play most of the effective methods of the concerto style. The simply-harmonised cantabile, for the solo instrument alone; the repetition of the melodic phrases by the clarinet, etc., with an arpeggio accompaniment on the pianoforte; the ornamentation of the phrase by delicate scale-passages; the closing lines of bravura for the right hand; the showy chromatic scales, accented by superimposed thirds on the first of every group of four semiquavers; the sequences of semiquavers descending chromatically; the string of shakes for both hands which introduce the final point d’orgue (four bars in strict tempo); all these are commonplaces of Hummel’s style, and are of interest as an illustration of the fashionable music of the time.