commentary to opus 26b

Suite for Oboe solo, op. 26b (1964)

I. Fanfare

II. Echo

III. Mobile

IV. Monologue

V. Fountain

Kurt Hausmann

Duration: 12 Minutes

Publisher: N. Simrock Hamburg-London (Boosey & Hawkes) EE 3303 / ISMN: 979-0-2211-2079-3

Video: Works by Hummel on youtube

It begins with a Fanfare, which should be also played - for a correct interpretation - with a pinch of irony, and here as well a grain of anti-war persuasion shines through, disguised as apparently harmless joy in playing. In the third movement, a Mobile, a constructional principle is used which we often find applied in a similar manner in later compositions - the permanent transforming of a short model of several notes, a cell, which in the course of constant rhythmic variation sounds always different and new. In this way, the music comes down to a constant metamorphosis of small, easily identified acoustic kernels. As in visual art in the Mobiles by Alexander Calder the repeated patterns are never the same within the absolutely endless series of possible constellations, in the same way here with Hummel there is as good as no recurrence of the same constellation.

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