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Summer 2011 Edition
Published: 24 March 2010
In a field of his own - John Field

John Field's musical legacy

Despite the sterling efforts of renowned Irish concert pianists John O’Connor and Miceal O’Rourke, the music of Dublin-born composer, John Field, has not retained the international status many believe it deserves. Part of the reason is that Field is almost exclusively remembered as a composer of nocturnes and while they are artistically exquisite, they are not on the same scale as full-blown piano concerti. As concert pianists generally make their living playing concerti by the big names in the classical canon, Field is rarely included in the mainstream concert repertoire. Consequently, his music, which once enjoyed widespread international popularity with a general audience, has now become niche.

John FieldHad Field only composed nocturnes that might be understandable. But here’s the rub: Field also composed seven piano concerti. The fact that they have been virtually forgotten is a source of some chagrin to Field champions such as Professor Julian Horton of the UCD School of Music.

In a nutshell, Horton believes Field is misunderstood. For years music critics and scholars have compared Field’s concertos, erroneously Horton would argue, with those of Mozart and found them wanting. Horton, on the other hand, believes that Field’s works can hold their own in the most august musical company and cites concerti numbers two, four and seven as worthy of particular attention.

"For I am full of it and can think of hardly anything sensible to say about it except unending praise."
Robert Schumann, reviewing Field's seventh piano concerto.

“When analysing the Field concerti, scholars typically turn to the body of theory that has grown up around describing Mozart’s work,” Horton says. “This fails to recognise that Mozart’s concertos did not generally influence Field. Field was born in Ireland, trained in London by an Italian and ended up living a large part of his life in Russia. That’s a very different musical heritage to Mozart’s Vienna. Critics argue that Field can’t control large forms and by comparison with Mozart’s concise approach to developing themes he is certainly more discursive. But what we’re looking at is a different approach to the composition of concertos. It’s time to develop a critical model that more accurately reflects the time and setting.”

Professor Julian Horton, UCD School of Music Professor Julian Horton, UCD School of Music

Changing the musical community’s perception of the Field concerti is a major undertaking and Horton is hoping that his essay in the current edition of the prestigious international Oxford journal of musical scholarship, Music & Letters, may help. In it Horton calls for a “more historically-nuanced formal theory,” against which to benchmark Field and a large proportion of subsequent repertory.

Encouraging the establishment to change its view of Field’s music is a major challenge and the task is not made any easier by the fact that getting access to Field’s work is difficult. “There is no complete edition of the concerti so it’s not just a question of picking up the score and playing it,” Horton says. “Varying levels of reconstruction are required to fill in the orchestral parts depending on which of the works someone wants to play. Three of the concertos have never been published in modern editions, and the only concerto that survives complete in manuscript is the seventh.”

There is no national Field archive in Ireland (or anywhere else) and while much of his material is still in Russia, more is scattered internationally with papers in the National Library in Dublin and in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Horton would love to see a Field archive established at UCD and for a complete edition of the concerti to be compiled. “It would be difficult to resource something like this in the current climate but Field is one of our greatest composers and probably the best known internationally. It seems fitting that this should be formally recognised,” he says. 

To some extent Field also suffered at the hands of fashion. In his day he was the equivalent of a modern superstar especially in Russia where he exerted a huge influence over the development of Russian music and is still considered a towering figure there. Field also enjoyed peer recognition and two of his biggest supporters were concert pianist Clara Schumann for whom Field’s second piano concerto was core repertoire and her composer husband, Robert, whose music shows clear Field influences. “Those who ignore Field’s piano concertos can’t possibly fully understand Schumann’s, while Field was also a major influence on Chopin” Horton says.

“In the late 19th century, however, musical taste and opinion became quite polarised and Field found himself on the wrong side of the divide,” Horton says. “If music is not sustained in the repertoire it simply fades away and that is exactly what happened. Why he went out of fashion is linked to the development of public taste at that time. Field’s music and style of playing were quite refined when compared with the bombast and keyboard gymnastics of Liszt, which had become very popular. Field got caught between the virtuosic style of Liszt and the symphonic concertos of Beethoven. He doesn’t fit into either camp and suffered as a result.”

The man behind the music

John Field was born in Dublin in 1782. His father was a violinist and his grandfather an organist and young Field showed great musical promise from an early age making his concert debut aged nine. The Fields moved to London when John was 11 years old and he went to study under one of the most famous musicians of the time, Muzio Clementi.

Field became a much sought after concert pianist and played throughout Europe before settling in Russia where he became a major influence of the development of Russian music. Today, Field is primarily remembered as the father of the nocturne.

 

Professor Julian Horton was in conversation with freelance business journalist Olive Keogh (MA 1984)
Produced by UCD University Relations