Hommann: Chamber Music for Strings

This volume of the chamber music of Charles Hommann (1803–72) offers works published for the first time. Hommann, whose only musical training took place in the United States, lived in Philadelphia and New York. As some of the earliest chamber music to be written in this country by an American-born musician, Hommann's string quartets and string quintet, which date from no later than 1855, demonstrate how he absorbed the influences of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century European music to forge his own unique style. Hommann's skills as a violinist and violist are in evidence in his part writing; his theory studies with the Parisian-trained Léopold Meignen (1793–1873) gave him the ability to fashion sophisticated harmonic progressions. The publication of these chamber works for strings fills a gap in the knowledge of the music of nineteenth-century America.