When I (and many of you, I imagine) learned music history in school, there seemed to be a massive, unbridgeable valley between the classical and romantic periods.
Thank you so much for bringing Johann Nepomuk Hummel to your readers' attention!
I absolutely adore Hummel! I wish his music were performed much more often and that he were regarded much more highly by the classical music establishment / academy.
I tried to request the biography by Mark Kroll from the LINK+ interlibrary borrowing system, but evidently only one library in the entire library ecosystem in which my local libraries participate (in California) even owns the book; it's stashed away in that library's basement, (that's precisely what the internet listing says about its location), and it's unavailable to be lent out to anyone! However, I was able to request Joel Sachs's biography (Kappelmeister Hummel in England and France) and I plan to read that.
In searching for those two biographies, I learned that Hummel wrote a four volume treatise on the art of playing keyboard instruments. I'm paraphrasing C.P.E. Bach's title for his own treatise, which (translated into English) is Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, which I read many years ago and still own to this day. I requested one volume of Hummel's treatise, too, out of curiosity about what he wrote. (The library system only allowed me to request one of the four volumes.)
I'm actually very curious to see what Hummel says in this book. I was into authentic performance practice before most of my peers, when I was a teenager, in the late 1960s and 1970s, and I retrained myself to play the piano in a stylistically more authentic manner than the way I'd been taught. I wish I'd owned a piano created in the style of the keyboard instruments that were being crafted in the early-to-mid-1800s.
This is related to something I thought of writing in the comments section following one of your recent posts, but didn't at the time. You wrote something somewhat derogatory about Schumann's ability to orchestrate effectively or imaginatively. (I'm paraphrasing; I don't recall the exact words you used.) My response was and is that if one listens to Schumann's orchestral works played on authentic instruments of his day, and conducted at appropriately lively tempi, by musicians who play in stylistically accurate ways in terms of phrasing, articulation, etc., Schumann's symphonic works are crystal clear, vibrant, indescribably intense and alive, brilliant and emotionally moving beyond belief.
I'm not so much a fanatic about playing on authentic instruments as to believe or say that musical compositions should only be played on stylistically correct instruments, but I do think that they can only be fully appreciated when played on authentic instruments, by musicians who are trained in the performance techniques of the era in which the music was composed.
Thank you so much for bringing Johann Nepomuk Hummel to your readers' attention!
I absolutely adore Hummel! I wish his music were performed much more often and that he were regarded much more highly by the classical music establishment / academy.
I tried to request the biography by Mark Kroll from the LINK+ interlibrary borrowing system, but evidently only one library in the entire library ecosystem in which my local libraries participate (in California) even owns the book; it's stashed away in that library's basement, (that's precisely what the internet listing says about its location), and it's unavailable to be lent out to anyone! However, I was able to request Joel Sachs's biography (Kappelmeister Hummel in England and France) and I plan to read that.
In searching for those two biographies, I learned that Hummel wrote a four volume treatise on the art of playing keyboard instruments. I'm paraphrasing C.P.E. Bach's title for his own treatise, which (translated into English) is Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, which I read many years ago and still own to this day. I requested one volume of Hummel's treatise, too, out of curiosity about what he wrote. (The library system only allowed me to request one of the four volumes.)
I'm actually very curious to see what Hummel says in this book. I was into authentic performance practice before most of my peers, when I was a teenager, in the late 1960s and 1970s, and I retrained myself to play the piano in a stylistically more authentic manner than the way I'd been taught. I wish I'd owned a piano created in the style of the keyboard instruments that were being crafted in the early-to-mid-1800s.
This is related to something I thought of writing in the comments section following one of your recent posts, but didn't at the time. You wrote something somewhat derogatory about Schumann's ability to orchestrate effectively or imaginatively. (I'm paraphrasing; I don't recall the exact words you used.) My response was and is that if one listens to Schumann's orchestral works played on authentic instruments of his day, and conducted at appropriately lively tempi, by musicians who play in stylistically accurate ways in terms of phrasing, articulation, etc., Schumann's symphonic works are crystal clear, vibrant, indescribably intense and alive, brilliant and emotionally moving beyond belief.
I'm not so much a fanatic about playing on authentic instruments as to believe or say that musical compositions should only be played on stylistically correct instruments, but I do think that they can only be fully appreciated when played on authentic instruments, by musicians who are trained in the performance techniques of the era in which the music was composed.