in contemporary drawing-room music. But here there was nothing of
the drawing-room style. These butterflies seemed to come from the
regions where Schubert had found his flowers. Thence they brought
a breath of short lyrical songs--a concentrated breath of severe
and restrained beauty. A wonderfully penetrating heart-felt tone
breathed through them. The world had now to do with a reflective,
deeply musical nature, far removed from all the merely brilliant
virtuosity of the time: it was a romantic spirit. After the short
slow introduction came the waltz, whose outlines inevitably recalled
Schubert; but its emotions were personally felt. There were melodic
passages in octaves for alternate hands, dying away in the aria
with the “nachschlagbegleitung”[127] down to pianissimo, a splendid
fugato-march in spirited style, episodes of popular songs, sportive
whisperings, sparkling polonaise rhythms, melodious effects working
out of very gentle full chords, canonic melodies in lively motion,
repetitions of earlier bars in later sections to represent the
external unity of these little stories, and as a conclusion the
“Grossvater” song. The whole is united contrapuntally with the first
waltz. The carnival is silenced--this appears suddenly in words--the
tower-clock strikes six (and high enough on the upper A); a full chord
of the seventh piles itself up gradually and closes the piece.
No one knew what was the chief impulse which led Schumann to write
these “Papillons.” Those who corresponded with him alone knew that he
was thinking of the “Flegeljahre”[128] of Jean Paul. From Jean Paul
he received his spiritual nourishment, and those to whom his letters
came could tell that he hardly sent off one without including in them
a rhapsody for the Bayreuth poet. In this intermediate world between
the highest earnestness and endless laughter he preferred to live in
ironic love and loving irony. To reflect deeply on immortality, and at
the same time to drink in comfortably the sweet odour of the girdle
cake which the goodwife is cooking in the kitchen--it is in this
mixed light that the poet stands, who has so characterised himself.
The fantastic boundaries of the real and the imaginary world, of the
most insipid flatness of the animal nature and of the most ethereal
heavenly flights, alike attract him. His delicate soul flies to
Nature, and Nature is to him--so he writes to his mother--the great
outspread handkerchief of God, embroidered with His eternal name, on
which man can wipe away all his tears of sorrow. But the tears of
joy too--and when every tear falls into a rapture of weeping--whence
came these tones in the soul of a musician? The world had never yet
understood them. It knew them in literary circles, which busied
themselves with romantic new creations, where unknown regions seemed
suddenly to open themselves between the everyday and the legendary,
and which demanded new, painfully twisted words for the wild tumult of
their representations. Where pure music had long wandered alone, the
poets and the æsthetics had now penetrated; and was now a musician to
give them a hand to speak in their tongue? This was a surprising turn.
Upon the musical poet came the literary musician. The one could only
gain; had the other anything to lose? No; Schumann seemed musician
enough to prove that nothing was lost. None of his friends, to whom he
recommended the perusal of the conclusion of the “Flegeljahre”--whose
masked dance, he said, the Papillons were intended to transform into
tones--would have expected this pure and genuine music from him. I
imagine they all puzzled their heads to know what the wild Jean Paul
had to do with these dainty musical butterflies. And it is to-day even
harder for us.
A delicate musician read Jean Paul, and the grotesque figures of
this “Walt und Vult” combined in him with a world of tone, which
slumbered within him, in those deep regions of associated ideas which
stand at the basis of artistic creation. They there formed a special
union with their musical counterpart, the simplest, most natural, and
least academical creations which the art of tone ever saw--those of
Schubert. So early as 1829 Schumann, who was then a student, wrote to
Frederick Wieck from Heidelberg: “When I play Schubert, it is as if
I were reading a Romance of Jean Paul set to music.” Jean Paul and
Schubert are the gods in Schumann’s first letters and other writings.
He cannot shake off the ethereal melancholy, the “suppressed” lyrical
tone, in Schubert’s four-handed A major Rondo: he sees Schubert, as
it were, in bodily shape, _experiencing_ his own piece. No music,
he said, is so psychologically remarkable in the progress of its
ideas and in its apparently logical leaps. There is a rare fire in
him when he speaks of Schubert. How eager is he for new publications
from Schubert’s remains! Yet, while he is devouring a volume of his
national dances, he is weeping for Jean Paul. In the Papillons, we
hear, there was Jean Paul; and what we find in them, is Schubert. What
was to come of this conjunction?
This question was very satisfactorily answered in the next work (Op.
3). This was a collection of Études with a textual introduction on
motives after Paganini, but adapted to the piano. Considered as a
whole it was technical to a degree, yet without disguising the real
Schumann. And what was the meaning of the Introduction? Every great
pianist had already written his “School” or wanted to write it. Did
these barren finger-directions speak for the virtuoso Schumann?
The Intermezzi (Op. 4) answered in the negative. These were genuine
pure music without any external pretensions. It was possible already
to recognise the true style of Schumann: the characteristic features
were repeated. Dotted motives, built up in fugato style; delicate
melodies with the “nachschlag” accompaniment and with other melodies
superimposed; reflective repose in chords; syncopated rhythm;
parallelisms of the air in octaves; all these were as before. In
the slurred thirds and the sequences, and especially the diatonic
runs, which seem to gather their strength as they go, the model was
not Schubert but Sebastian Bach. There was something in this not
merely of his absolute, self-contained music, but even of his means
of expression. At this time of course this could do no harm. In the
fifth and sixth intermezzos Schumann’s personality would seem to
have entirely ripened. This marked propensity to “anticipations,”
those pianissimo unisons, those sharp detonations of C and C sharp,
D and D sharp; the singing legato middle voices developing in the
canonic manner, the absolute transference of whole passages by means
of a single note foreign to the scale, generally effected by an
anticipation; all this had grown into a definite musical picture,
extraordinarily sympathetic, in which soul and technique were united.
With stern sadness the hands grip one within another, to bring out the
“suppressed lyric” of the piano; and a delicate noble spirit guides
them, which delights to express strange things in strange forms. With
stern sadness, as in the style of Jean Paul, and right in the midst of
the music, where an answering voice intrudes itself, Schumann writes
over the notes the words, “Meine Ruh ist hin”--my peace has departed.
This is not as text, but merely as a comment by the way.
Then came Op. 5, free variations in romantic style, on a theme by
Clara Wieck; and Op. 6, called “Davidsbündlertänze.” They were
dedicated to Walther von Goethe, and bore as motto the old proverb:--
“In all’ und jeder Zeit verknüpft sich Lust und Leid;
Bleibt fromm in Lust, und seyd dem Leid mit Mut bereit.”
[In all and every time, our joy and sorrow meet:
Gird up thy loins and go, bravely thy fate to greet.]
In the later revised edition Schumann cut out this good old saying,
as he omitted so much of the first and heartfelt edition. “Two
readings may often be of equal value,” says Eusebius once in the
aphorisms. “The original one is usually the best,” adds Raro. Why did
not Schumann follow his own Raro? Raro was the most delicate of the
“Davidsbündler.” He was in his irony, which had drunk deep of worldly
wisdom, raised far above the storm and stress of Florestan and the
gentle, simple complaisance of Eusebius. In Florestan there was much
of Beethoven, in Eusebius an echo of Schubert. Raro was to surpass and
combine them in a higher unity. But Raro is just--rare.
The “Davidsbündler” declare war on the Philistines, and of an evening
bring their dances together, which are then published in a single
volume. Florestan contributes the stormy ones, Eusebius the gentle
ones; while Raro puts in his word as seldom as in actual life. Such
bands of Romanticists we have heard of before; we think of Hoffmann’s
Serapion Brothers, and their zeal against the Philistines. Herz and
Hünten, and all the musical lions of the drawing-room were to be put
aside. There was still music after Beethoven. David’s companions
meant, like their prototype, to put the Philistines under a harrow.
Even the explanatory notes of his “Bündler” were cut out by Schumann
in his later revised edition. He smiled perhaps at the beautiful
fancies of his youth, when he seemed to carry three temperaments
warring in his soul. And yet this fictitious society was the truest
expression of his romantic soul, in which living music and literary
reflection met together. They were his fellow-workers in his life’s
work, whom he could never renounce.
The moment had come when the world busied itself with Schumann in
somewhat wider circles. It asked after his private circumstances,
and gained the answer--surprising, and yet no longer utterly
surprising--that here an academically educated man had become a
musician--a phenomenon long unknown, and only possible in this new
era of art, in which one could give oneself up to composition without
having to wait for a commission for each single work.
[Illustration: Engraving by M. Lämmel]
Schumann had attended the Zwickau Gymnasium in due course; and at
eighteen, in 1828, he entered the legal profession at Leipzig. His
piano-lessons under Frederick Wieck of course attracted him far more
than jurisprudence; and when, after an interval spent at Heidelberg,
he returned to Leipzig, the die was cast. The letter to his mother in
which he announces his decision is to-day interesting for the light
it throws on his intentions. Naturally, he thought of the career of
a virtuoso; and, in order to make his fingers supple, he hung one
of them in a sling while practising, with the result that first the
finger and then the whole hand was maimed, and Schumann was saved
for pure composition. Composition is soon intimately knit with love
for Clara Wieck, the daughter of his teacher, whose great talent
was to compensate him for his own lost power. We cannot forget his
youthful letters to Clara, which form the conclusion of the edition
of “Schumann’s Letters,” which she issued. Never were more lyrical
letters written. He dedicates to Clara his whole power of creation;
it is she that lives in all his pieces, and to create was to think of
her. Before this he tells her legends and supernatural tales. “Look
now at your old Robert; is he not still the frivolous ghost-tale
teller and terrifier? But now I can be very serious too, often the
whole day long--but don’t trouble about that--they are generally
processes in my soul, thoughts on music and compositions. Everything
touches me that goes on in the world--politics, literature, people.
I think after my own fashion of everything that can express itself
through music, or can escape by means of it. This is why many of my
compositions are so hard to understand, because they are bound up with
very remote associations, and often very much so because everything
of importance in the time takes hold of me and I must express it in
musical form. And this, too, is why so few compositions satisfy my
mind, because, apart from all defect in craftsmanship, the ideas
themselves are often on a low plane, and their expression is often
commonplace. The highest that is here attained scarcely reaches to the
beginning of what is aimed at in my music. The former may be a flower,
the latter is the poem, so much the more spiritual; the one is an
impulse of raw nature; the other the work of poetical consciousness.”
In these words Schumann penetrated into his own heart; and there is
nothing to be added to this characterisation of his literary music.
The new type existed in its purity; namely, the musician, standing
on the height of the representative art of the time, of which type
Wagner was the best expression. There is a strange likeness in these
two opposed natures. What in Wagner passed over into the external, in
Schumann passed into the intimate. Where the one carries us along with
him in an intoxicating rush, the latter is a personal enjoyment for
retiring souls. The one lives in the orchestra, and plays the piano
badly; the other dreamed first for the piano, then for the chorus, and
never was able to express himself tolerably through the orchestra.
Wagner never burst into tears, like Schumann, when he before his
wanderings played for the last time on the beloved instrument which
had heard all the sorrows and joys of his youth. And Wagner never
wrote to Madame Cosima as Schumann wrote to Clara: “You speak in your
last of a cosy place where you would like to have me--do not aim too
high--I ask no better surroundings than a piano and you close by. You
will never be a kapellmeisterin in your life; but inwardly we are a
match for any pair of kapellmeisters, are we not? You understand me.”
This man of delicate feeling, who wished to reduce piano-culture to
a system, was editor of a paper, which he founded at Leipzig in the
year 1834, along with certain friends and men of like tastes, of
whom he seems to have valued most Schunke, who died very soon. This
“New Magazine of Music” was Schumann’s special medium, and in it he
published his splendid and very spirited criticisms and aphorisms;
later, when Brendel purchased it from him, it was of equal use to
Wagner, his exact opposite. Till 1844 Schumann edited it for the most
part personally; and his position aided the spread of his works,
which laid themselves out so little for popular success. Still more
effective was the career of his betrothed, who because of certain
awkward obstacles only became his wife in 1840. This was his most
productive year. It saw the appearance of a hundred and thirty-eight
songs, and of the cycle of Heine’s lyrics (Op. 24). If the betrothed
Clara and the piano were spiritually united, the married Clara and the
song were equally so. Thus the songs stand precisely midway between
his youthful piano-writings and the orchestral and choral efforts of
his later years. And indeed the piano succeeds better in them than in
any song hitherto written. The accompaniments of “Du, meine Seele” or
of the F sharp major “Ueberm Garten durch die Lüfte,” are minute and
scrupulous pieces of artistic work.
The eighteen “Davidsbündler,” Schumann’s first complete piano-work,
were composed in 1837. Clara contributed the first bars--a cheerful
musical motto. Schumann was fond of accepting his first bars as
gifts from friends. The Romancist was fond of these incursions into
actuality, this poetry in the real. As the letters A B E G G had once
taken his fancy, so later did A S C H. And once he wrote in Gade’s
family album a piece on “Gade, Ade” (Gade, farewell).
[Illustration: Clara Schumann, née Wieck.]
Schumann’s music is characterised in few strokes; it is never
hard to recognise its features. The interwoven melodies, the love
of “anticipations,” the rollicking humour, which might almost be
borrowed from old drinking songs, the contrapuntal collisions of the
bass on which the light waltz flutters down, the cheerfully pensive
codas, the restlessness of his syncopated rhythms, the sweet lulling
romantic tone mingled with wild and vigorous march-motives, the full
effect of broken chord passages of mounting fifths, the conclusions
of the sections abruptly broken off by a staccato chord--all these
were to be seen in spring-like freshness in the “Davidsbündler.” We
have there the “einfaches stück” of Eusebius, the free recitative
in No. 7 beginning with arpeggiando chords for the left hand. Next,
“Florestan’s lips quiver.” Then follow the extraordinarily beautiful
E flat major (No. 14) with its airy melancholy; the staccato, passing
humorously over into the “Wie aus der Ferne,” and finally “Happiness
speaks out of his eyes.” Nothing so wonderfully simple, so old-new,
so true, so German, had been painted on the piano since Schubert. And
here was a yet more modern spirit--a mind whose depths were not merely
over-flowed by the streams of music, but were pictured in delicate
musical emotion. The construction is clean and simple; the language
refined and lofty; the whole the consolidated improvisation of a mind
standing at the highest point of representative art. More perfect
improvisations it did not lie in the nature of the piano to produce.
It was the high-water mark of piano literature.
I pass rapidly over Op. 7, one of his earliest composed pieces,
the toccata, brilliant in colouring, delicately chased, bold in
construction, wonderful in technique; and Op. 8, a concert allegro,
in which he, certainly in an unusual way compared with the literature
of the time, sacrifices a little to popularity, and thereby crushes
out certain beauties. I pass on to Op. 9, the “Scenes Mignonnes” of
the carnival, in which neither technical nor concert problems were to
be mastered. The motive of the carnival is A S C H, which is the name
of the home of one of his musical lady friends and which contains all
the letters of Schumann’s name which are adapted to the stave.[129] A
bustling ball-play develops itself, Pierrot and Harlequin appear, a
Valse Noble unites the parties, the mask of Eusebius is seen through,
and the gentleness of Florestan is resumed, the Coquette frisks by,
Papillons flutter round, and the letters A S C H dance a rapid waltz.
Chiarina and Estrella, not unknown characters, are represented; and
Chopin appears in person between them. A short recognition scene in
the time of the Polonaise, in which we hear the dainty causeries
among the marching rhythms--the miniature ballet of Pantaloon and
Columbine--a comfortable allemande, into which Paganini suddenly darts
with his most extravagant leaps; in the distance a gentle confession
of love;--all comes again together in the polite and festal promenade
of the couples. There is a pause; and then reminiscences run through
the memory; one melody restlessly pursues another; room is made; the
final effect comes; the “Davidsbündler” begin an abusive march against
the Philistines; they roar out the Grandfather song--“Grandfather
wedded my Grandmother dear, so Grandfather then was a bridegroom, I
fear”--and the people enjoy it, till they all, with a “Down with the
Philistines,” join in, and a galloping stretto finishes the boisterous
amusement.
The inscriptions Schumann inserted later. He took a literary delight
in putting in an “Estrella,” as it is seen in old copper engravings.
It was the pleasure of the delicate man of taste in labelling. But he
laid no stress on this nomenclature; the relations indicated were as
wide as before, when there were none of these labels. We are reminded
of Couperin, whose miniature porcelain pictures were ticketed just
like this moving panorama of tunes, and in surprisingly similar
style. In both the titles were nothing but a halt in the midst of
full musical representation; they involved no limitation, no point of
departure. Under like tickets, works came into the world which were
separated in time and in tone by whole centuries. Schumann himself
almost thought the titles a trifle too theatrical. The Davidsbündler,
he said, are related to the carnival like faces to masks.
Among the works that followed, technical and purely musical gifts
alternated. As Op. 10 we have further Paganini Études, with wide
stretches, contrapuntal, transformed in the spirit of Schumann.
Here, as before, the order of publication did not correspond to
that of composition. The F sharp minor sonata (Op. 11) was begun
contemporaneously with the Impromptus. It was dedicated to Clara.
It is a romantic deepening of the sonata form, cast throughout in
these small lyrical sections which are peculiar to the time, but here
are held together by an internal unity. We must feel this unity in
order not to cut up the work into mere fragments. An oceanic vastness
spreads over it, whose tone is struck in the broad introduction. It
has a first theme, contrapuntal in style, and a second of full-voiced
melody; the working-out attaching new ideas half in imitative, half
in étude fashion. On the third, the A, which drags itself over, the
aria begins its deep-felt lament, in three melodies with the genuine
Schumann-like coda, sighing itself away under the final slurs. The
fresh staccato canon work of the scherzo carries us with it. Two
wonderful trios introduce themselves, the second with the remarkable
recitative. The conclusion is formed by a modest movement which is put
together like a mosaic out of a stormy quaver theme, two cantabiles,
a syncopated motive, a section in full chords and a stretto. We shall
only feel the unity if we give our playing a touch of improvisation.
In a word the case is this; in a sonata of Schumann what most charms
us is the movements regarded separately; and in the movements, the
separate passages. This Sonata, like the others of his works, must be
considered as a volume of lyrical poems.
The “Fantasie-stücke” were the next work. These again are a
completed picture, for the most part broader in conception than the
Davidsbündler, with which they were contemporaneous in composition.
They were the ideal of delicate piano composition, and have remained
so down to the present day. The sweet “Abendruhe,” the stormy
“Aufschwung,” the dainty “Warum,” the capricious “Grillen,” the gloomy
“Nachtscene,” in which Schumann was thinking of Hero and Leander, the
“Fabel,” alternating in Ritornell and Staccato; the “Traumeswirren,”
and the beautiful “Ende vom Lied,” whose humour sounds again
wonderfully in the intellectual augmentation at the conclusion--all
this formed an extraordinary picture-gallery. The height of art was
attained in the “Nacht,” where the dark rolling accompaniment, the
solitary sighs in the gloomy air, the deep returns to darkness, the
gently sounding and wild shrieking cries and emotional songs, over the
gurgling accompanying figure which runs through the whole, made one of
the immortal piano-pieces.
A more purely technical work was the Études Symphoniques, written in
1834 simultaneously with the Carnival, on a theme of Fricken’s. These
variations are as significant for Schumann as the Goldberg variations
for Bach or the Diabelli variations for Beethoven. They are a breviary
of all specialities in expression. All Schumann’s characteristics
were here: the strongly accented fugue, the tied notes with repeated
chord accompaniment, the cantabile with broken chords, the staccato
chords in canon, the dotted rhythms of Var. IV., the complicated
syncopations of Var. V., the bold phrasing of Var. VI., the Bach-like
style of Var. VII., the hurrying rush of semiquavers in Étude IX., the
duet of voices with tremolo accompaniment in Var. IX., the march with
contrapuntal treatment on pedal points which concludes the work--all
was here; and all was made into a delicate étude in which that union
of technique and poetry was constantly completing itself in fresh form.