Hummel significantly influenced later piano music of the nineteenth century, particularly in the works of Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn.
At the age of eight, he was offered music lessons by the classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was impressed with his ability.
The two men became friends, and Hummel took part in several performances of Beethoven's orchestral work Wellingtons Sieg.
The older, Eduard [de], worked as pianist, conductor, and composer; he moved to the U.S. and died in Troy, New York.
Hummel visited Beethoven in Vienna on several occasions with his wife Elisabeth and pupil Ferdinand Hiller.
Hummel brought one of the first musicians' pension schemes into existence, giving benefit concert tours to help raise funds.
[16] In his fight against unethical music publishers, Hummel also was a key figure in establishing the principles of intellectual property and copyright law.
[17] In 1825, the Parisian music-publishing firm of Aristide Farrenc announced that it had acquired the French publishing rights for all future works by Hummel.
[18] In 1832, at the age of 54 and in failing health, Hummel began to devote less energy to his duties as music director at Weimar.
[11] At the end of his life, Hummel saw the rise of a new school of young composers and virtuosi, and found his own music slowly going out of fashion.
His disciplined and clean Clementi-style technique, and his balanced classicism, opposed him to the rising school of tempestuous bravura displayed by the likes of Liszt.
[19] Hummel bequeathed a considerable portion of his famous garden behind his Weimar residence to his masonic lodge.
Although Hummel died famous, with a lasting posthumous reputation apparently secure, he and his music were quickly forgotten at the onrush of the Romantic period, perhaps because his classical ideas were seen as old-fashioned.
As with Franz Joseph Haydn, whose musical revival had to wait until the second half of the twentieth century, Hummel was overshadowed by Mozart and especially, Beethoven.
While in Germany, Hummel published A Complete Theoretical and Practical Course of Instruction on the Art of Playing the Piano Forte (Anweisung zum Pianofortespiel, 1828).
Later nineteenth-century pianistic technique was influenced by Hummel, through his instruction of Carl Czerny who later taught Franz Liszt.
Czerny, Friedrich Silcher, Ferdinand Hiller, Sigismond Thalberg, and Adolf von Henselt were among Hummel's most prominent students.