John Field, a British composer, born in Dublin, July 26, 1782, died in Moscow, Jan. 11, 1837. His father was a violin player in the orchestra of the Dublin theatre. He received his first instructions upon the pianoforte from his grandfather, who was an organist. Subsequently he became a pupil of Muzio Clementi, whom he accompanied to Paris, Vienna, and finally to St. Petersburg, where Field took up his residence, remaining after Clementi's departure in 1804. In 1822 he removed to Moscow, where as at the former city his concerts were attended with success and pupils flocked to him in great numbers. He visited London and Paris in 1832, proceeded thence to the south of France, passed a portion of 1834 and 1835 at Naples, where he was for nine months in a hospital, and in the latter year returned to Russia, broken down by sickness and poverty, the result of his two besetting faults, idleness and intemperance. His laziness was so great that it is related of him that when he dropped his cane in the street he stood till some good-natured passerby picked it up for him. As a pianist he was almost without a rival in respect to delicacy, poetic feeling, and grace of style.

He especially excelled in the finish with which he rendered the works of Sebastian Bach, which he made popular even in Paris. Among his chief compositions, which are not numerous, are seven concertos for piano and orchestra, three sonatas dedicated to Clementi, and 18 nocturnes. Of the last named form of composition, afterward so extensively used by Chopin, Kalkbrenner, and other composers, Field was the inventor; and his nocturnes are the most popular as well as the most meritorious of his works.