Quartet for Clarinet & String Trio

Johann Nepomuck Hummel

edited by Alan Hacker

Clarinet, Violin, Viola, ‘Cello

   If you would like to hear some excerpts from each movement in turn of this wondeful quertet,  click on  the quaver sign. It may take a few seconds to load your windows media player but we hope they will tempt you to buy the work so that you can enjoy it in full

Hummel was born in Hungary in 1778 and lived for 59 years. His first tutor was his father who, when Johann was 17,  moved to Vienna as conductor of the Theater der Wieden.  By this time, the young Hummel was a brilliant pianist and spent two years as a pupil of Mozart before touring the Netherlands, Germany and Great Britain - whilst in London studying with Clementi.  In 1793 he returned to Vienna and studied composition with Salieri and Haydn before replacing Haydn at the court of Esterhazy from 1804 to 1819. For the last 18 years of his life, he divided his time between court posts (Stuttgart and Weimar) and touring - often in London. He composed six operas, seven piano concertos and a variety of chamber music.  Today,  he is probably best remembered for this work and his Trumpet concerto.

This edition of his Clarinet quartet has been prepared using a copy of the manuscript which is held in the British Library and we are grateful to them for making it available. The editor was Alan Hacker who writes:-

“To my knowledge, Hummel’s Clarinet Quartet is unique in the clarinet repertoire.  In Mozart’s Quintet the clarinet (or, rather, basset clarinet) is an honoured guest at the string’s table with the obvious difference of the two types of instrument - the clarinet acts as a natural soloist.  Because of its rainbow range of tone it can also take on more integrated and ambiguous roles - Brahms used all of these possibilities in his quintet, no doubt as a result of his study of Mozart’s.  It is these very qualities that make Hummel’s work so notable and satisfying and all the more remarkable in that he achieves it with one clarinet and three strings.

Hummel’s music is little known today - though it has a vague reputation for being vapid and virtuosic. Here, nothing could be further from the truth. This pupil of Mozart and successor to Haydn at Esterhazy (what credentials!) has written a lengthy, engaging work with a wide emotional range that sets it apart from the “little concerto” quartets by Carl Stamitz, Hoffmeister, Krommer and even Crusell.

The String parts have some of the difficulty both in technique and intonation found in classical string trios. The clarinet part is however not difficult; it is a good piece in which to try out a boxwood six keyed clarinet.”

The movements are:-

1. Allegro Moderato
2. La Seccatura (“The Joke” - the joke being that each part is written in a different time signature, which keeps changing.  If you start together and concentrate it looks much worse than it proves to be)
3. Andante
4. Rondo Allegretto

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