commentary to opus 26a

Suite for Clarinet solo, op. 26a (1963)

I. Invocation

II. Interludium

III. Melodia

IV. Marche grotesque

V. Tarantella

First performance: December 10, 1963, Würzburg, Aula der Mozartschule
Ernst Flackus

Duration: 11 Minutes

Publisher: N. Simrock Hamburg-London (Boosey & Hawkes) ISMN: 9790221112545

With the Suite for Clarinet solo, op. 26a, - in five movements: Invocation, Interludium, Melodia, Marche grotesque and Tarantella - Hummel presents the first of a whole series of clarinet pieces. With the scurrilous Marche grotesque, he criticises militarism and releases himself from the stigmatisation of having taken part in the war as a youth. In the same humorous way as Hindemith, he pokes fun at the parade steps of the soldatesca and gives us a foretaste of what would be given clear utterance in later years in the anti-war piece, "The Last Flower".

Klaus Hinrich Stahmer (in "Kammermusik als persönliches Bekenntnis", Tutzing 1998)

The pianist Françoise Deslogères (1929-2020), who worked with the inventor Maurice Martenot and his sister Ginette Martenot on the electronic instrument Ondes Martenot from 1957, played ‘Interlude et mélodie’ from Hummel's Suite op. 26a on the Ondes Martenot in May 1969 at performances in Paris and Bordeaux.

Press

Tibia 1984

After the pieces for clarinet solo by Igor Strawinsky, a great number of solo works for clarinet came onto the market in recent times. Only a few composers, however, attained an originality comparable to the model; indeed, one could even go so far as to say that most of the solo pieces turned out to be nothing more than musically interesting studies. An exception, that cannot be too highly praised, is therefore the Suite for Clarinet solo written in 1963 by Bertold Hummel (born 1925), currently president of the music college in Würzburg. Hummel does his work without modern antics, i.e. he does not build his work up from new sources of sound, whose discovery is for many composers enough to justify creating a new composition, to which terms such as theme or melody have lost all relevance. From Hummel's pen, we have received a suite which ill-willed critics may well call conservative, but which in its honesty towards rhythm and melody, even in age of no-longer existent musical criteria, will very likely meet with success.

Dieter Klöcker