Having finished with his Chopin group, the pianist is apt to follow it
with his Schumann selections, and we meet with another original
musical genius. Robert Schumann was born at Zwickau in June, 1810. His
father was a book publisher and was in hopes that the son would show
literary aptitude. In fact, the elder Schumann discouraged Robert's
musical aspirations; and as a result, instead of receiving early in
life a systematic musical training, his education was along other
lines. He studied law at Leipzig in 1828 and in Heidelberg in 1829,
and was thus what is rare among musicians--a composer with an academic
education.
His meeting with the celebrated pianoforte teacher, Frederick Wieck,
the Leschetitzki of his day, determined Schumann to enter upon a
musical career. Wieck took him into his home in Leipzig and he studied
the pianoforte with a view of becoming a virtuoso. In order to gain
greater freedom in fingering, he devised a mechanical apparatus by
which one finger was suspended in a sling while the others played upon
the keyboard. Unfortunately, through the use of this contrivance he
strained the tendons of one hand and his dream of a virtuoso's career
vanished. Meanwhile he had fallen in love with his teacher's
daughter, Clara Wieck, and finally, after determined opposition on the
part of her father, married her in 1840. Later in life a brain trouble
from which he had suffered intermittently became more severe, and in
February, 1854, he became possessed of the idea that Schubert's spirit
had appeared to him and given him a theme to work out. He abruptly
left the room in which he was sitting with some friends in his house
at Duesseldorf and threw himself into the Rhine. Some boatmen rescued
him from drowning, but he had to be taken to an asylum near Bonn,
where he died in July, 1856.
These circumstances in his life are mentioned here not only because of
their interest, but because they explain some aspects of his music.
Schumann was of a brooding disposition, intensely introspective.
Compared with Chopin, his music lacks iridescence and shows a want of
brilliancy. This will be immediately apparent if at a recital a
pianist places the Schumann pieces after a Chopin group, as he is apt
to do for the sake of the very contrast which they afford. But if
Schumann's compositions are wanting in superficially attractive
brightness, they more than make up for it in their profounder
characteristics. All through them one seems to hear a deep-sounding
tone. One might say that his works for the keyboard instrument are
pianoforte music for the viola, and for that reason they appear to me
so expressive and so appealing. The harmonies are wonderfully compact.
One feels after striking a Schumann chord like stiffening the fingers
in order to hold it down more firmly, keep a grip on it, and let it
sound to its last echo.
Poet, Bourgeois, and Philosopher.
In Schumann's music the sensitive listener will find a curious
blending of poet, bourgeois, and philosopher. He had the higher
fancy, the warmth of the poet, a bourgeois love of what was
intimate and homely, and the introspection of the philosopher.
Sometimes he is so introspective that he appears to me actually to be
burrowing in harmony like a mole. The melodies are interwoven;
sometimes the upper voice flutters lightly down upon "contrapuntal
collisions in the bass"; frequently his rhythms are syncopated;
melodies are superimposed upon each other; he uses "imitations,"
canonic figuration, and often by introducing a single note foreign
to the scale, suddenly lowers or lifts an entire passage. There
are interior voices in his music, half suppressed, yet making
themselves heard now and then above the principal melody. He loves
"anticipations"--advancing a single note or a few notes of the
harmony and then filling in the sustained tone or tones with what
was at first lacking. These characteristics are so marked that it is
as easy to recognize Schumann as it is to distinguish Chopin in the
first few bars of a work by either. Each is _sui generis_, each
has his own hallmark, and it is a great thing in music, as in other
arts, to have one's product so personal that there can be no
mistaking whose it is.
Schumann made valuable contributions to so-called program music. His
pieces, besides intrinsic musical worth, have a distinct meaning,
usually indicated by the titles he gives them. And these titles
themselves often are suggested by the works of authors whom he
admired, or hark back to certain fanciful figures like harlequins and
columbines. His second work for the pianoforte, "The Papillons,"
derived its inspiration from the poet, Jean Paul, who was at that time
an object of his intense worship. But whoever expects to find
butterflies fluttering through these Schumann pieces will be mistaken.
They are rather symbols of thoughts still in the chrysalis state and
waiting, like butterflies, to cast off the shell and gain air and
freedom. This symbolism must be borne in mind in listening to "The
Papillons."
Schumann himself said, in a general way, regarding his programmatic
intentions in this and other works, that the titles given to his music
should be taken very much like the titles of poems, and that, as in
the case of poems, the music in itself should be beautiful,
irrespective of title or printed explanation. This is true of all
program music that has survived. It will be found beautiful in itself;
but it also is easy to discover that the titles and explanations which
are calculated to place the hearer in certain receptive moods vastly
add to his enjoyment.
"Carnaval" and "Kreisleriana."
I am always glad when a pianist elects to place the Schumann
"Carnaval" on his program, because it is so characteristic of the
composer's method of work and of his writing short pieces _en suite_,
giving a separate name to each of his diversions yet uniting them into
one composition by means of a comprehensive title. The complete title
to this work is "Carnaval Scenes Mignonnes sur Quatre Notes pour
Piano, Op. 9." The four notes are A S C H, and in explanation it
should be said that in German S (es) is E flat, and H the B of our
musical scale. Asch was the birthplace of Ernestine von Fricken, one
of Schumann's early loves. Three of the divisions of the "Carnaval"
are entitled Florestan, Eusebius, and March of the Davidsbuendler.
Schumann had founded the "Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik," and he
contributed to it under the noms-de-plume of Florestan, Eusebius and
Raro; while his associates were denominated the Davidsbuendler, it
being their mission to combat and put to flight the old fogies of
music, as David had the Philistines. Schumann himself is the looker-on
at this carnival, a thinker wandering through the gay whirl, drawing
his own conclusions, and noting down in music the varied figures as
they pass, and his reflections on them. We meet Chopin and Paganini,
each neatly characterized; Chiarina (the Italian diminutive of Clara)
and Estrella (none other than Ernestine herself); also Harlequin,
Pantalon, and Columbine. The Davidsbuendler march in to the strains of
the German folk-song,
"Grandfather wedded my grandmother dear,
So grandfather then was a bridegroom, I fear,"
and the whole ends in a merry uproar. He wrote another carnival suite,
Opus 26, the "Faschingschwank aus Wien," in which he introduced a
suggestion of the "Marseillaise," which was at that time forbidden to
be played in Vienna.
The title of another work which ranks among his finest productions,
the "Kreisleriana," also requires explanation. This he derived from a
book by E. T. A. Hoffmann, who sometimes is spoken of as the German
Poe, although he lacks the exquisite art of the American author--in
fact, is a Poe bound up in much heavy German philosophy and turgid
introspection. The _Kreisler_ of Hoffmann's book is an exuberant
sentimentalist, and is said to have had his prototype in Kapellmeister
Ludwig Boehner, who, after a brilliant early career, had become
addicted to drink and was reduced to maudlin memories of his former
triumphs. In Hoffmann's book there is a contrast drawn between this
pathetic character, whose ideals have become shadows which he vainly
chases, and the prosaic views of life as set forth by another
character _Kater Murr_ (literally _Tomcat Purr_). But these
"Kreisleriana," of which Bie says "the joys and sorrows expressed in
these pieces were never put into form with more sovereign power,"
should be entitled "Schumanniana," for although the title is derived
from Hoffmann, the content is Schumann.
Thoughts of His Clara.
Concerning the work as a whole he wrote to Clara while in the throes
of composition: "This music now in me, and always such beautiful
melodies! Think of it, since my last letter to you I have another
entire book of new things ready. I intend to call them 'Kreisleriana,'
and in them you and a thought of you play the chief role, and I shall
dedicate them to you. Yes, they belong to you as to no one else, and
how sweetly you will smile when you find yourself in them! My music
seems to me so wonderfully interwoven, in spite of all its simplicity,
and speaking right from the heart. It has that effect upon all for
whom I play these things, as I now do gladly and often." If Clara and
a thought of Clara play the chief role, what becomes of _Kreisler_ and
_Kater Murr_? Surely "Kreisleriana" are Schumanniana.
Full of varied characteristics are the "Fantasie Pieces." Among these
is the familiar "Warum," which one has but to hear to recognize at
once that it is no ordinary Why, but a question upon the answer to
which depends the happiness of a lifetime; "At Evening" (_Abends_),
with its sense of perfect peace; the buoyant "Soaring" (_Aufschwung_);
"Whims" (_Grillen_); "Night Scene," an echo of the legend of Hero and
Leander; the fable, "Dream-Whirls" (_Traumeswirren_) and the "End of
the Song," with its mingling of humor and sadness. These "Fantasie
Pieces" and the aptly named "Novelettes" seem destined always to
retain their popularity. And then there are the "Scenes from
Childhood," to which belongs the "Traeumerei"; the "Forest Scenes," the
"Sonatas;" the heroic technical studies, based on the Paganini
"Capriccios," and the "Etudes Symphoniques," and the "Fantasie," above
the first movement of which he placed these lines from Schlegel:
"Through every tone there passes,
To him who deigns to list,
In varied earthly dreaming,
A tone of gentleness."
Clara was the "tone," as he told her. It was largely through Madame
Schumann's public playing of her husband's works that they won
their way. Even so, owing to their lack of brilliancy and their
introspection, they were long in coming to their own. But the best
of them, including, of course, the admirable "A Minor Concerto," long
will retain their hold on the modern pianist's repertoire. William
Mason went to Leipzig in 1849. "Only a few years before I arrived at
Leipzig," he says in his "Memories," "Schumann's genius was so little
appreciated that when he entered the store of Breitkopf & Haertel
with a new manuscript under his arm, the clerks would nudge one
another and laugh. One of them told me that they regarded him as a
crank and a failure because his pieces remained on the shelf and
were in the way. * * * Shortly after my return from Germany (to New
York) I went to Breusing's, then one of the principal music stores
in the city,--the Schirmers are his successors,--and asking for
certain compositions by Schumann, I was informed that they had his
music in stock, but as there was no demand for it, it was packed away
in a bundle, and kept in the basement." What a contrast now!