John Field

Field’s music bridged the Classical and Romantic eras with his invention of a new form, the nocturne. Born in Dublin in 1782, he was a piano-playing prodigy who gave his first public concert at age 10. His family moved to London the next year, and Field became first a pupil, then a professional colleague of the composer, performer and piano manufacturer Clementi. In 1802, the two musicians’ business trip to Russia led to Field settling there. He evolved a style of composing for the piano that deployed long, intricately decorated songlike melodies above accompaniments of gently flowing harmony. This idiom flowered in his sequence of 18 nocturnes, a genre to be further developed by Chopin, while the deft virtuosity of Field’s seven piano concertos influenced those of Chopin and Liszt. In 1831, Field moved to London for treatment for cancer, and for a time he continued his performing career across Europe before returning to Moscow, where he died in 1837.