I reconnected with an old friend of mine who I knew in grade school, jr. high and high school. In Jr. High, we were both in the orchestra, he played trumpet and I played the French Horn. By the way, at that time I did not like classical music, I didn't get into that until age 19.
Anyway, my friend isn't too computer savvy and didn't even really know that there's classical music for the trumpet. I decided to send him musoc from youtube. As long as I was doing that, I thought I'd post it here as well.
The first piece is the Trumpet Concerto by Franz Joseph Haydn, one of the greatest classical composers. In a book I own rating the 50 greatest classical composers, Haydn rates number 5. They don't name a #1. #2 or #3. They choose J.S. Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart as being tied for first, second and third place. For fourth place, I don't know how they came up with this selection but they award 4th place to Richard Wagner. The other members of the top 10 are Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Handel and Tschaikovsky. To me, Wagner, who wrote only operas should not be #4.
Here is the Hadyn Trumpet Concerto, 3rd movement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASB6hFUat4g
My second selection is by a relatively unknown composer. He is Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Hummel did not make even #50 in my book and probably, if the book was extended to the top 100, he wouldn't make that either. Probably he would show up around #115 or so. That is a shame because based on talent alone, this man should probably be on the top 50 list. He was 10 years younger than Beethoven's age and the fact that their careers overlapped was a major reason why Hummel is no longer remembered. No one could compete with Beethoven after Beethoven hit his stride.
A little about Hummel: He was a child prodigy, similar to Mozart but he didn't make as big of a splash. Hummel's father brought his son to see Mozart about 4 years before Mozart died. The father begged Mozart to teach his son. Mozart listened to the boy play the piano and agreed that he was very gifted and took Hummel into his house where Hummel lived for 2 years. He was Mozart's greatest protege.
When Mozart died in 1791, Haydn was acknowledged as the greatest composer in the world but Haydn was in his 60's, which was quite old in those days. As Haydn stopped composing, around 1800, Hummel assumed the title of the western world's greatest composer.
Beethoven, in the meantime had not reach greatness yet. As Beethover matured, there was a debate whether Hummel or Beethoven was the top composer and pianist. Hummel did have a liability however, he had been trained by Mozart and he learned the Mozart style of playing piano and composing. This type of music became known as the Viennese Classical school.
Beethoven started out being trained in this manner as well. However, after writing in that style for about 10 years, Beethoven decided to abandon that genre and forge his own genre. I believe that two things motivated Beethoven. #1, he could see that Mozart took that genre of music to it's absolute pinnacle, there was no way to improve on Mozart's work as long as one remained composing in that genre. #2 was Beethoven's personality. He wanted to be the best composer ever and he preferred more emotional music with more power than what was possible staying within the confines of the Haydn and Mozart school. He was living when Napolean made his bid to conquer Europe and he got caught up in that. He was very strong willed. He believed not in allowing destiny to control his life but rather, he was determined to control his destiny.
As a result, Beethoven decided to create a new genre of classical music which offered more leeway in expressing emotion and this led to the Romantic style of classical music. Beethoven did retain the classical forms which Haydn and Mozart had established but he greatly changed the emotional content of the music. Mozart's musics was based on good taste and clever nuances of sound. Beethoven tended more toward bombastic power and inner emotional conflicts in his music.
A brilliant pianist, Mitsuku Uchida. who plays them both par excellance summed it up simply: "Mozart is Conversational while Beethove is Confrontational".
Once Beethoven hit his stride, he was in a league of his own. For a few years, the earlier classical school tried to keep the old music popular but by around 1803, with the publication and performance of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony #3, Beethoven, now in his prime, eclipsed all other composers. Haydn, then 71 year old actually attended a performance of Beethoven's 3rd Symphony. Those trained in the older school, such as Hummel, suddenly became totally passe and were yesterday's news.
Hummel quickly went from being number one to being forgotten. Not only that, regardless of genre's, Beethoven had more talent than Hummel and Hummel knew it. BTW, Beethoven liked Hummel throughout his life and treated him as an artist of equal stature, when it was true and even after Beethoven surpassed Hummel, he always treated him with respect as an equal.
To show you how good a composer Hummel actually was, I offer the 3rd movement of his Trumpet concerto. The soloist in both selections is a young Norwegian female trumpeter by the stange name of Tine Thing Helseth. With all that being said here is the Hummel piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR8H8CSojis
Lakey
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