Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) was born in Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia), one of the most beautiful cities in the Habsburg Empire, a “jewel in the crown” of Empress Maria Theresa 1. Soon after Hummel’s father Johannes discovered that his son was a prodigy on both piano and violin, he decided to move to Vienna to pursue better educational opportunities for the young virtuoso, and to further his own career. He was successful on all counts, particularly because he convinced Mozart to serve as Hummel’s teacher for two years, and even live with the Mozart family. Father and son then embarked on a five-year concert debut tour that would take them throughout Europe, Scandinavia and the British Isles. With his reputation established, Hummel returned to Vienna in 1793, studied with Haydn and became Beethoven’s major competitor at the keyboard. The two artists would have a volatile relationship during the next three decades, but as we will see below, they parted at Beethoven’s death bed in 1827 as friends and colleagues.
Hummel occupied several important positions throughout his career. He succeeded Haydn as the Concertmaster at the Esterházy court (1804-1811), returned to Vienna to reestablish himself as one of the city’s leading free-lance pianists and piano teachers, and then accepted the position of Kapellmeister at the Stuttgart Court in 1816, where he stayed for only two unhappy years. In 1819 Hummel therefore eagerly accepted an invitation to serve as Kapellmeister for the enlightened court of Weimar, where he would remain, happy and productive, until his death in 1837.
During his lifetime, Hummel was considered by most of his contemporaries to be the greatest piano virtuoso of Europe (Carl Friedrich Zelter once dubbed him “the first Liszt”), and one of the most popular composers and teachers of the era. Trained in the classical style of Haydn and Mozart, he became an influence on and a mentor to the next generation of composer-pianists of the Romantic era, such as Schubert, Schumann, Chopin and Liszt.
Hummel and Copyright Protection
Hummel also became a leading proponent for the establishment of copyright protection for himself and his fellow composers, who were often at the mercy of dishonest and unscrupulous music publishers who felt no compunction in printing and selling compositions without the composers’ approval, and certainly without paying them for the rights and privileges to do so. Very often, they would publish works under the composer’s name, especially if they were famous and would therefore generate more sales, even though the composer never wrote the piece, or at the very least, composed it for a different instrumental combination.
Hummel complained bitterly and often about those unethical publishers who copied publications of his music originally brought out by a reputable firm like Peters or Haslinger, and sold them as their own. Not only were such “pirate” publications illegal, but they were often sloppy and contained numerous errors. This was infuriating to a composer as careful and conscientious as Hummel, who sometimes drove his publishers and copyists to distraction with his demands for error-free editions. Moreover, every copy of a pirated edition meant one less sale for the legal publisher. This hit Hummel in one of his most vulnerable areas—his pocketbook. For example, after a tour to the Netherlands, Hummel was so annoyed by the Dutch pirate editions he discovered that he wrote to Peters on 29 November 1823 complaining that he could find “no music from one honest German publisher, but rather nothing but Paris scrawls or aftermarket engravings, and mostly from “the two rotten note thieves of Mainz and Bonn” (i.e., Schott and Simrock).
Finally, Hummel had had enough with the thefts of his artistic creations and decided to do something about it. He submitted petitions signed by the leading composers of Europe to the Deutscher Bund, the heads of Germany’s numerous states and principalities, and to just about any other organization or individual that might be of use.
One of the signatories, however, was probably the most important—that of Beethoven, who signed the petition on his deathbed at Hummel’s personal request. Beethoven wrote:
The undersigned have agreed to present to the high Bund . . . the attached petition and humble proposal for a negotiation to eliminate the damaging reproduction of musical works in Germany . . . presenting in humble hope . . . that a high Bund would be inclined to promote [and foster] German music and be in agreement with this proposal….he asks at this time that the high Bund take this into consideration in order to protect him as well as the law abiding publishers of his collected works from the illegal copies in Germany.”
Hummel’s decision to impose on Beethoven during his final days was more than justified, since without Beethoven’s written support, it is doubtful that Hummel’s plan would have succeeded. The negotiations would go on for many years after that auspicious moment and involved complicated political and legal issues that took a considerable amount of time to resolve. Nevertheless, Hummel’s goals were ultimately realized: a German Composer’s Union that would protect their copyrights was indeed created, although its formal establishment did not come until after his death. 2
Unfortunately, the works on this recording did suffer from the problem of “pirate” editions and “note thieves,” since a German Composer’s Union was very far in the future when they appeared. The Variations For Flute and Piano on a Romance from the opera Une Folie by Étienne Méhul, op.14 was indeed composed by Hummel for flute and piano, but as we will discuss below, the three sonatas of opus 5 were not originally written with a flute in mind, but rather violin and viola, and there is no documentation of Hummel ever writing La Valse Favorite. Nevertheless, there is an old saying that “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.” That is, the actual music in these unauthorized editions of opus 5 was indeed composed by Hummel (or at least most of it), and the versions for flute (or other instruments) provide a wonderful opportunity to hear the music in a different sonority, very much in the spirit of flexibility with regard to instrumentation that characterized the performance practices of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In fact, it is very possible that Hummel might have enjoyed hearing his music with the flute, and even given his approval—as long as he received the proper financial compensation.
“Flute” Sonatas Op. 5
These three sonatas were published around 1798, with the title “Trois Sonates pour le Piano-Forte. Les deux premieres avec Accompagnement d’un Violon, la troisìeme avec Alta Viola oblig.,” and dedicated to “Madame la Princesses Royal de Dännemarc.” That is, the first two were originally written for piano with the accompaniment of a violin and the third for piano with the accompaniment of a viola, an unusual choice of instrument at this point in time. They proved to be very popular, a reviewer writing that “only a few among the numerous and skillful keyboard composers could write something in this style as interesting as does Kapellmeister Hummel.”
Variations For Flute and Piano on a Romance from the opera Une folie by Étienne Méhul, op.14
As mentioned above, this is authentic, authorized Hummel. Une Folie, a comic opera by Méhul premiered at the Paris Opéra-Comique in 1802, proved to be very successful and popular, and inspired many composers to write works based on its music. They included Ludwig Spohr, who composed his Variations on “Je suis encore dans mon printemps” for harp, op. 36, based on the aria in Act 1, Scene 2 of the opera. Hummel’s variations, which are indeed composed with the flute (or violin) accompanying a significant and challenging piano part, are equally notable. They were published a year after the premiere of the opera, in 1803, with the title Variations pour le Pianoforte avec accompagnement de Flûte ou Violon oblig. sur une Romance de Mehul, and dedicated to “Mademoiselle Anne Schiffenhuber,” obviously a patron of the composer.
Le Valse Favorite in F Major
for Flute and Piano
Although there is no record that Hummel composed such a work, it is certainly possible that it might be found one of these days. In any case, it is a delightful example of Hummel’s style of writing during the early years of his career, in which both instruments play in equal partnership, a musical “conversation” as it was called at that time.
Mark Kroll
Brookline, MA
November 19, 2023
1 For a detailed study of Hummel’s life and works, see Mark Kroll, Liner Notes of Volume 1 of this series of recordings; Kroll, Johann Nepomuk Hummel: A Musician and his World (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2007, rev. second edition Bratislava: Hudobné Centrum, 2022); and the article Joel Sachs and Mark Kroll, Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, Grove Music Online.
2 For an excellent article on this subject, see Joel Sachs, “Hummel and the Pirates: The Struggle for Musical Copyright,” Musical Quarterly 59 (1973): 31–60.