The Musical Bee: References to Mozart and Cherubini in Hummel's "New Year" Concerto

Abstract

The trumpet virtuoso Anton Weidinger played Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Trumpet Concerto in E Major for the first time at the imperial court in Vienna (not, as often claimed, at a residence of his future employer Prince Esterházy) on New Year's Day, 1804. After placing that performance within the context of New Year's Day celebrations at court, this article discusses Hummel's allusions to existing music, which exemplify his fondness for musical pastiche. In the opening Allegro con spirito Hummel came close to quoting from the first movement of Mozart's Haffner Symphony, K. 385. He transferred some of the melodic and textural features of the Andante of Mozart's Piano Concerto in C, K. 467 to own Andante. 

    Hummel's concluding Rondò is puzzling in its structure. It begins conventionally enough with a galloping melody in the tonic followed by contrasting material. The main theme returns, as expected, followed by a second episode labeled "Minore." The trumpet's repeated Bs at mm. 154–55 seem to promise a return to E major and the galloping rondo theme; but contrary to the traditions of rondo form, we never hear the main theme again. Another theme in E major (m. 167) replaces it, dominating the rest of the movement. Hummel borrowed that theme from Luigi Cherubini's Les Deux Journées. 

    First performed in Paris in 1800, Les Deux Journées reached Vienna just two years later. The Viennese adored this opera, which they could enjoy in two different German translations. The music that Hummel used in his Trumpet Concerto is a march from the finale of act 2, accompanying the voices of soldiers who anticipate the arrest of Count Armand: "Allons, marchons, en diligence! / Observons tous le plus profond silence! / Il est à nous! Il est à nous!" Cherubini presented the march in E major, and Hummel borrowed the key as well as the tune: his decision to write his Trumpet Concerto in the unusual key of E major must have been made in conjunction with his decision to quote Cherubini's melody. Hummel's soloist must have been aware of a peculiarity of Cherubini's opera: it has no trumpet parts. By quoting from Les Deux Journées in the Trumpet Concert, Hummel cleverly gave Weidinger an opportunity to take part in a performance of music from which he was otherwise excluded.

This article, which appeared in Music & Letters LXXVII (1996), 401-424, is available on Academia.edu. For further discussion of the issues raised, see Elisa Koehler, "In Search of Hummel: Perspectives on the Trumpet Concerto of 1803," International Trumpet Guild Journal, January 2003, 7–17; Rohan Stewart-Macdonald, "The Undiscovered Flight Paths of the "Musical Bee": New Light on Hummel's Musical Quotations," in Eighteenth-Century Music 3 (2006), 7–34; Edward Phillips, Mozartean Gesture and Rhetoric in Hummel's Concerto for Trumpet, DMA dissertation, University of North Texas, 2008; Edward H. Tarr's introduction to the facsimile edition of the Hummel Trumpet Concerto (Vuarmarens, 2012); Bryan Proksch's review of the facsimile edition; and Martin Skamletz, "... und gar nichts, wodurch sich der eigene schöpferische Geist des Komponisten beurkundete": Cherubini, Hummel, Konzerte, Opern, Quodlibets und Trompeten in Wien zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts. Teil 1: Reminiszenzen und ein Zitat," Romantic Brass: Ein Blick zurück ins 19. Jahrhundert, Symposium 1, ed. Claudio Bacciagaluppi and Martin Skamletz (Schliengen, 2015), 40–58.