John Field Free Sheet Music Program Notes Recordings and Biography

The Boy in the Showroom: A Prodigy's Apprenticeship

In the late 1790s, visitors to the London piano showroom of the famous composer and manufacturer Muzio Clementi were often treated to a remarkable sight. A quiet, red-headed Irish boy would sit at the finest new instruments, his fingers gliding across the keys to produce music of breathtaking delicacy and beauty. He was there for hours every day, a "living advertisement" demonstrating the quality of Clementi's pianos. This was not a concert; it was his job. The boy was John Field, a prodigious talent bound in apprenticeship to a stern master, his early life a mixture of artistic brilliance and thankless drudgery. This strange beginning, however, was the first step on a journey that would take him from London's showrooms to the palaces of St. Petersburg, where he would become a legend and invent a new, enduring musical genre: the nocturne.

Early Life in Dublin and London

John Field was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1782 into a musical family. His father was a violinist and his grandfather a church organist who gave him his first piano lessons. His talent was immense and immediately apparent. He made his public debut in Dublin at the age of nine to rave reviews. Seeking greater opportunities, his family moved to London, where in 1793 the young Field was apprenticed to the powerful Muzio Clementi.

Clementi was a towering figure in the music world—a celebrated composer, a sought-after teacher, and a shrewd businessman with a successful piano-making firm. He recognized Field's genius but exploited it ruthlessly. The apprenticeship was harsh. Field received invaluable instruction, developing a masterful technique under Clementi's watch, but he was also put to work. His main duty was to demonstrate the firm’s pianos in the salesroom, a task he performed for several hours each day. While it honed his skills and exposed him to a constant stream of new music, it was a life of servitude that the young Field resented.

The Russian Adventure

In 1802, Clementi embarked on a major European tour to sell his pianos, and he took the 20-year-old Field with him as his star demonstrator and sales assistant. They traveled to Paris and then Vienna, where Field briefly took lessons from Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, a former teacher of Beethoven. Their journey eventually led them to St. Petersburg, Russia. The Russian aristocracy, eager to embrace European culture, was a lucrative market for Clementi's instruments and Field's talent.

The sophisticated Russian audiences were utterly captivated by Field's lyrical, poetic playing style, which was so different from the muscular virtuosity then in vogue. Seeing his own potential, Field made a life-altering decision. He broke with Clementi and chose to remain in St. Petersburg. It was here, far from his domineering master, that his career truly began. He was an immediate sensation. He established himself as the most fashionable piano virtuoso and teacher in the city, commanding enormous fees for lessons and concerts. He lived a life of luxury, adored by the nobility and celebrated as one of Russia’s leading musical figures.

The Invention of the Nocturne and Musical Style

John Field's most important contribution to music history is his creation of the nocturne. While the term had been used before, Field was the first to define it as a specific type of short, lyrical piano piece. His nocturnes are characterized by a beautiful, song-like melody in the right hand floating over a widely-spaced, broken-chord accompaniment in the left. He was a master of the sustaining pedal, using it to create a wash of sound and a dreamy, atmospheric resonance that was entirely new.

His style was one of intimacy and poetic expression. He was not a showy virtuoso like Franz Liszt would later become; instead, his playing was praised for its delicate touch, its nuance, and its "singing" tone. This legacy was most famously inherited by Frédéric Chopin. The young Polish composer knew and deeply admired Field's nocturnes. He adopted the form and texture, expanding its harmonic complexity and emotional depth to create the iconic nocturnes we know today. Without John Field, however, the Chopin nocturnes would not exist.

Beyond the nocturnes, Field was a brilliant composer of piano concertos. He wrote seven of them, which are filled with beautiful melodies and sparkling passage-work. They serve as a crucial link between the classical concertos of Mozart and the great romantic concertos of Chopin and Schumann.

Fame, Decline, and Final Years

For nearly three decades, Field reigned as a musical king in Russia, primarily in St. Petersburg and later Moscow. His success brought him great wealth, but his lifestyle was famously bohemian and undisciplined. He was known for his heavy drinking, lavish parties, and a general disregard for convention. This indulgent life eventually took a toll on his health.

By the 1830s, his health was in serious decline, likely from cancer, and his concert appearances became less frequent. In 1831, he embarked on a final grand tour of Europe. The tour was a disaster. His playing, once so pristine, had become sloppy, and his health failed him completely. In Naples, he was hospitalized for months and reportedly found in a state of destitution. He was eventually rescued by a wealthy Russian noble family who arranged for his transport back to Moscow. He arrived there in 1836 and gave a few last concerts before his death in January 1837.

Legacy

John Field is a pivotal figure in the history of the piano. As the "Father of the Nocturne," he created a genre that would become central to the Romantic piano repertoire. He pioneered a new way of playing—one focused on tone, color, and lyrical expression—that directly influenced not only Chopin but also composers like Fauré, Liszt, and his own Russian students, including the father of Russian classical music, Mikhail Glinka. Though his name was for many years overshadowed by the composers he inspired, John Field is now rightfully recognized as a profoundly original and important voice of the early Romantic era.

Section 4: References and Further Reading

• Piggott, Patrick. The Life and Music of John Field, 1782-1837: Creator of the Nocturne. University of California Press, 1973.

• Gillespie, John. Five Centuries of Keyboard Music: An Historical Survey of Music for Harpsichord and Piano. Dover Publications, 1972.

• Todd, R. Larry, ed. Nineteenth-Century Piano Music. Routledge, 2013.

• Sadie, Stanley, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Macmillan Publishers, 2001. (Contains a detailed entry on John Field by Nicholas Temperley).