Notes on Bertold Hummel

Reinhard Schulz

The disintegration of unity within contemporary music is reflected not least in the fact that the musician is in danger of falling by the wayside. The unity between the musical gesture and the weight of the statement seems to be undermined. The debate about whether new music belongs in the subscription programme or whether it would be better to look for alternative spaces also essentially addresses this dilemma. In the meantime, however, young performers are growing up who feel - at least in part - let down by their fellow composers. They demand the highest levels of technique, flexibility and concentration from orchestral musicians, while the need for comprehensive presentation is given far less attention. Critics, in particular, began to criticise the "play music", saying that it only went round in its own circles and did not take into account the advanced tendencies of the material.

But the deficit remained. In order to counter this, a compositional direction emerged in Germany that was particularly orientated towards the work of Paul Hindemith. Today, this movement is once again being listened to far more resolutely. It also includes Bertold Hummel, who can be regarded as Hindemith's "grandson" through his teacher Harald Genzmer. There is no fear of contact when it comes to musical forms of playing, including pedagogical aspects of music-making. The fact that this meets with a great response is proven by the performance figures alone, which often far exceed those of the avant-garde.

Bertold Hummel, born in 1925 in Hüfingen, close to Donaueschingen, where Hindemith installed his concerts of contemporary music at the time, does not count himself among this avant-garde with its tendencies towards self-isolation and home-made ghettoisation. He never sought to break out of the framework of traditional concert forms with his music; he regarded them as a traditional form of musical communication with its wide range of possibilities from the large concert hall to the church. Church music is therefore also one of Hummel's main areas of activity as a Catholic. Last year, he composed a monumental, two-and-a-half-hour major work, the oratorio "The Shrine of the Martyrs", which was premiered in Würzburg, where he has taught composition since 1963. Between 1979 and 1997 he was president of the university, and from 1963 to 1988 he also directed the Würzburg Studio for New Music.

Many of Hummel's compositions were written in connection with the concerts at the Studio for New Music, also in collaboration with Siegfried Fink's percussion school. These works combine a pedagogical approach with a very personal musical style.

Originality and "applicability" of the music were always at the centre of Bertold Hummel's compositional thinking. He certainly relied on baroque or classical musical schemata; the sonatina, the divertimento or even the suite were repeatedly used as the basis for the works, especially when the playful moment was at the centre in connection with the pedagogical one.

In more independent, perhaps more substantial works, a "tonal colour style" was also created in an examination of more recent experiences of avant-garde compositions , which particularly suited Hummel's extraordinary instrumentation skills. Here too, however, he saw himself on the side of the "user", just as he generally recognised two types of artists and composers in history: the "inventive natures" (Hummel referred to them as "lighthouses", to which he counted Haydn, Beethoven, Liszt, Debussy and Schoenberg, for example) and the "amalgamating natures", to which he counted Bach, Mozart and Brahms. Hummel felt a closer connection to the second group in his work, always trying to integrate experiments and their results harmoniously into his compositions, making them available to the interpreter, as it were, through his own glasses. Of course, this always harbours the danger of schematism, but this is countered by the moment of originality. This is what ultimately proves the success of a work. However, it must withstand the pressure between pedagogical impetus, play music attitude and individual note. Otherwise the work will fall under the wheels of banality or elitism.

(from the programme of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra: 2nd Chamber Concert, Munich 1990, p.4-5)

Classical order extended

Bertold Hummel - composer in the twentieth century

Claus Kühnl

Bertold Hummel, whose métier has been composing and not speaking and writing precisely about music, has, looking back on his work, occasionally described himself as an eclectic over the past five years. As he was of course aware that this term is generally used as a negative vocabulary - "eclectic" means: selecting from what already exists, therefore unoriginal - he sometimes spoke of a "creative eclecticism".

In his obituary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 12 August 2002, Michael Gassmann wrote: "He saw himself as someone who 'observed and analysed all experiments'.

Bertold Hummel was therefore everything that an avant-gardist is not - but he was an enthusiast."
This seems a little exaggerated to me, but it contains a kernel of truth. So how did Bertold Hummel's music-making differ from that of the avant-garde of the fifties and sixties, because these were the decisive years of his generation, and if he was an enthusiast, what was he enthusiastic about?

In his 1952/53 work report, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen formulated the aesthetic approach of the entire musical avant-garde as follows: "One can no longer rely on the immediate conception of sound. The conception of sound is determined by all the music one has heard so far. If it were still valid, one would still have to submit to the classical order." 1

As is well known, the creative alternative to continuing as before gave rise to serial and electronic music, the genesis of which was initially achieved using serial methods. Bertold Hummel did not, in fact, base any of his works on serial techniques. He once mentioned to me that in his early days he had carried out studies with total predetermination of pitches, durations and timbres, but was repelled by the results.
Hummel saw no need for himself to deny the validity of the classical orders. Of course, he did not want to submit to them without further ado. He wanted to expand these orders where his creative curiosity dictated and enrich them with his own solutions: This was his idea of originality, which he always emphasised at the beginning of my lessons with him. This is why, from the seventies onwards, he struggled with increasing tenacity for a personal style, while the avant-garde expressly renounced such endeavours and wanted to reinvent music with every work, so to speak. A sentence by the still young composer Isabel Mundry also points in this direction: "To distrust what one can do in a creative sense - I hope to preserve myself in this way and at the same time keep myself in motion. Perhaps one is more likely to achieve authenticity if one avoids cultivating it." 2

Are there perhaps two incompatible attitudes here?
The fact is that Bertold Hummel prioritised creative spontaneity with the subsequent meticulous shaping of every detail in his working process until the very end.
The fact that his idea of sound was influenced by "all the music that had been heard so far" was completely natural for him and no reason to rebel against this fact. Moreover, he was aware of the achievements of his era, even those whose blessings he did not accept. With regard to the music of his time, one could say that he was well informed and anyone who knew him knows that he could be found in Donaueschingen every year, hardly missed an important radio programme in his region and thought through everything that was presented to him with his former students. However, like every composer, he had certain preferences. He loved Gregorian chant, the classics, Anton Bruckner, Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith and Olivier Messiaen, to whom he also felt a connection when it came to revitalising Catholicism.

He was enthusiastic about them and their music passed through him, creating a new style by virtue of his transformative personality.

(Neue Musik Zeitung, November 2002)

1 Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Cologne 1963, p. 32
2 Isabel Mundry, booklet text for the CD of the German Music Council, WERGO

 

In our time, we have become all too accustomed to measuring a composer by what he has invented that is "new". New effects are perceived as sensational, and yet they are meaningless as long as they are not based on an inner necessity. In this sense, Hummel can certainly not be counted among the avant-gardists. However, the opposite would be equally wrong, namely to categorise him among the traditionalists. Hummel mastered all the essential newer compositional techniques and used them sensibly in his works. This is why his works are particularly suitable for experiencing new music spontaneously.

Claus Kühnl (1977, disc text: LP: Christophorus 73902)

Bertold Hummel

Plea for the original œuvre of the contemporary composer

Hans Maier

"He composes!" This reputation preceded the young cellist Bertold Hummel even at the time when he was studying at the Freiburg Music Academy in the first post-war years. We grammar school pupils, especially those who were interested in music, heard it with admiration. There were many young geniuses at this newly founded music academy after the war, the most famous being Fritz Wunderlich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, there were singers, violinists, harpsichordists, organists - but composers? That was something special. What does a composer actually do?

We imagined him trying out chords at the piano and sketching on a sheet of music; or we saw him sitting in front of huge score sheets with many staves and clefs - commanding the music like a ship's captain commands the sea and the waves. Our respect grew even more when a mass by the still unknown composer Hummel was premiered at the Donaueschingen Music Festival. The fact that Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt criticised the work and its performance did not affect us. We were proud of Bertold Hummel and angry at Stuckenschmidt (at that time a kind of Reich-Ranicki of music criticism!).

I remember a performance by Paul Hindemith at the Freiburg Musikhochschule, it must have been in 1949 or 50. Those interested in music from the Bertold-Gymnasium had skipped school to see the famous man. There was a huge crowd on the steps of the beautiful baroque palace on Münsterplatz when the small, lively, chubby Hindemith began to give an improvised but highly erudite speech on music theory at an incredible pace.

Harald Genzmer, Hindemith's pupil, professor of composition in Freiburg and Hummel's teacher, was also there. At the time, the thought was imprinted on my mind: Hindemith, Genzmer, Hummel - they must belong together! It was true; and today I see Stuckenschmidt's reaction in this light: it was simply unacceptable for something else, something independent, to emerge alongside the Viennese School, which he represented in his publications.

Fortunately, Bertold Hummel had good nerves and, despite his modesty, the necessary self-confidence. After completing his studies, he first went on concert tours that took him far away, as far as South Africa, where he performed as both cellist and composer. He then settled down, married the violinist Inken Steffen in 1955, worked as a cantor in Freiburg and as a freelancer for Südwestfunk Baden-Baden.

With mischief in his eyes, he told how the musicians had moaned and grumbled when practising one of his not-so-easy scores: "Mathematical music, that's what I like, sir!" Incidentally, he continued to work non-stop and gradually assimilated all of modernism, including the Viennese School. Even then, Bertold Hummel's stylistic breadth was astounding: he was able to write highly sophisticated and artistic compositions as well as very simple ones for amateurs, was able to engage with different abilities, was able to balance and equalise - just as he later encouraged melodic talents in counterpoint as a composition teacher and inspired rhythmists to write melodies.

Bertold Hummel's hour as a composition teacher came in 1963, when the Bavarian State Conservatory in Würzburg appointed him as a lecturer in composition. Since then, Würzburg has become the centre of life for him, his wife and his six sons - all highly musical, five of them musicians themselves! - has become the centre of their lives. He founded and directed the Würzburg Studio for New Music and can be regarded as the founding father of the Würzburg University of Music, of which he was a professor and later President and Honorary President for many years and remains a member to this day.

But he was also just as naturally involved in the cathedral's music. A bishop in the flesh, Paul Werner Scheele, wrote the libretto for his magnum opus of church music, the "Shrine of the Martyrs". This was at a time that was not exactly favourable for sophisticated contemporary church music and which, as early as 1979, led him to ask the sceptical question of whether it was still possible within the church "to conduct the dispute about spiritualisation, without which an upswing cannot be expected".
What is so impressive about Bertold Hummel's oeuvre, which consists of 100 opus numbers, manuscripts, scores, prints, numerous records and CDs? First of all, its unusual versatility. The 30-page catalogue raisonné, completed in November 1995, lists almost all genres of composition: Stage works, instrumental works, vocal works, stage, radio play and film music. A chamber opera, three ballets, three symphonies and numerous works for large and small orchestra, a wealth of chamber music for winds and strings, compositions for guitar, harp, piano, organ and - as a special accent - percussion. An extensive sacred vocal oeuvre comprising an oratorio, six masses, propers, motets, cantatas and solo songs, secular vocal works ranging from choral works and cantatas to solo songs.

Although Bertold Hummel knows and masters the idioms of musical modernism, his work cannot be reduced to a single formula. He is not a musical constructivist, a neo-classicist, a polystylist or an adept of postmodernism. Is he then - as the Hindemith and Genzmer students are sometimes scowlingly suspected of being - a "musician" committed to the rhythmic and motoric?

Anything but that: As much as his music is bursting with vital energy, the musical material is handled with care and awareness, wit and lucidity. Accurate craftsmanship is happily complemented by virtuosity and a colourful sense of sound. The solo parts in particular often become artistic and refined.
This music demands a lot from the listener. But it never loses sight or hearing. The triangle of composer - interpreter - listener remains, by Hummel's own admission, a constant challenge. In his opinion, the parameters of melody, rhythm and harmony must always be brought into an exciting balance. Hummel's music does not remain in a pathos of distance - it demands the listener. Of course, it doesn't just want to flatter him, or even lull him to sleep, it challenges him, wants to tell him something.

This also applies to Hummel's sacred music, which has a natural place in his oeuvre. For the sacred and the profane - the art of singing a Gloria or playing for a dance - do not fall apart in his music; they belong together and complement each other. Sacred music forms a continuum in the composer's work. It connects the different phases of his life.

Nothing is lost in Bertold Hummel's workshop. The nine-year-old heard Bruckner's Third Symphony in Freiburg and was convinced: "I must become a composer! He made a note of a four-bar chord sequence, which he quoted again long afterwards in his three-movement organ work "In memoriam Anton Bruckner", which was premiered at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1989.
Anton Bruckner and Olivier Messiaen impressed the church musician Bertold Hummel as much through their piety as through their avant-gardism. His own sacred music is also bold and austere, complex and demanding. Hummel repeatedly praised the French organ music of the 20th century: It had succeeded in anchoring the contemporary in the consciousness of the church people and avoiding the ghettoisation that elsewhere often relegated sacred music to the sidelines.

Bertold Hummel has been honoured many times. As early as 1956, he received a scholarship from the Federation of German Industries. In 1960 he received the Composition Prize of the City of Stuttgart, in 1961 the Robert Schumann Prize of the City of Düsseldorf and in 1988 the Cultural Prize of the City of Würzburg. In 1968 he was a fellow of the Cité des arts internationale de Paris. He has been a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts since 1982 and gives lectures at home and abroad. The greatest honour, of course, are the performances of his works all over the world: in addition to European countries, above all in the USA, South America, Canada, Russia, Japan and Australia.

One would like to see similar record numbers for Germany - and for Bavaria. The Prophet is not unknown in his own country - but he could become even better known. Because his music - as Karl Schumann said on Hummel's 65th birthday - "has what you want: substance and metier, originality and compositional polish, technical precision and depth ..." Last but not least, this composer also appeals to those "who overlook the details of the always idiosyncratic and sophisticated compositional techniques".

(Rheinischer Merkur, number 22, 30 May 1997)