An examination of the composer/performer relationship in the piano style of J.N. Hummel

Our age sees in Hummel the "transitional" figure par excellence. A pupil of Mozart, Haydn, Clementi, Al-brechtsberger and Salieri, he carried the Classical piano style to its limits, frequently trespassing on the Romantic, and his importance for the subsequent development of music in that era was considerable. His piano style was the result of the reciprocal influence of the composer and the performer in his make-up and these, in turn, were shaped to a great extent by external factors in the period. I have examined the general background, to the period in Section I, and the second Section is devoted to Hummel's own compositional and performance styles. Creator and executant fuse in improvisation, and its prevalence during, the period of Hummel’s life is well-known. He himself was possibly the greatest improviser of his time, and this extempore facility affected him both as composer and as performer, and I consider it to be the most important single musical factor in his piano style. Section III deals with improvisation generally and the final Section (IV) seeks to draw attention to the traces it has left in particular genres of his work.