ROBERT SCHUMANN
Romantic music and romantic poetry--Schumann as a
song-writer--The earlier songs--The ‘Woman’s Life’ cycle; the
‘Poet’s Love’ cycle; the later songs--Schumann’s contemporaries.
Schubert died just before the great artistic outburst which we know
as the romantic period. We have seen elsewhere[23] how this force
grew and achieved expression in Paris, and thanks partly to political
conditions spread to all parts of Europe. Schumann, though not at all
interested in politics, felt this force in its artistic aspect, as did
all other sensitive men of the time. After Schubert, he was the one man
preëminently to express the new feeling in terms of song.
Much had happened between 1828, when Schubert died, and 1840, when
Schumann wrote his first songs. To put the case briefly, the romantic
movement in music had got under way. People had begun to know
Schubert’s songs and the later symphonies of Beethoven. The pianoforte
had grown to perfection and had come to have a technique and literature
of its own. The technique of harmony and polyphony had undergone
(partly at Schumann’s own hands) striking changes in the direction of
freedom and expressiveness. The short piece in free form had become
a recognized part of musical literature. The national movement in
Germany, with its extensive use of the folk-song, had been universally
accepted. The travelling virtuoso had become a fixed part of musical
life, and the musical centre of gravity had shifted from the nobles to
the masses. In short, people had come to look for intimate emotional
expression in music, and music had developed the means of supplying the
demand.
Since Schubert’s time, the text of a song had become a factor of
growing importance. Musicians began to recognize that it should
be regarded as equal in value to the music. And along with this
recognition arose a remarkable group of poets, as we have seen in the
last chapter--a group which have supplied German poetry with one of its
most brilliant periods. This group we have described as representing
the period of disillusionment following the shattering of the dreams
of German unity. For a time the hopes of the people had been directed
toward the political and social field; what the best literature had
expressed was the feelings and aspirations which were common to men.
Now that all the fair dreams had been shattered by the selfishness
of the courts and the bickerings of politicians, men asked, ‘What is
the use?’ Turning inward to examine their own souls, they produced a
delicate lyric poetry which contained just what the art-song of the
time needed--the intimate and personal. No grand emotions ring in
this period. In the whole list of Schumann’s songs there is hardly
one whose words could be put into the mouth of a hero. By far the
greater portion are pessimistic. What the poet remembers is a beguiling
hour in the shade of a tree. What he looks forward to is a smile
from his sweetheart. Every man tries to snatch his own small portion
of happiness from this life--and generally makes a poor job of it.
Nevertheless, a man usually tells more of the truth about himself when
he is discouraged than when he is self-satisfied. And in the lyric
poetry of the time we get charming and truthful analyses of human
emotions and moods. The literary standard is perhaps higher than at any
previous period (excepting, of course, the work of the giants like
Goethe and Schiller). Versification is smoother, form is more pleasing,
and words are used with more regard for their suggestive connotations.
In short, men are looking at details in this romantic poetry, even as
in romantic music.
High above all poets of the time stood Heine. No German poet, except
possibly Goethe, ever produced such a quantity of short poems which
have become the property of every German child. The whole literature of
lyric poetry can show only three or four men who can equal him in brief
and direct expression. It was Heine who brought German literature down
from the mountain tops and made it inhabit the homes of men. His poetry
was no ‘mighty line,’ with inverted phrasings and high astounding
polysyllables. He never spoke the speech of the gods, as did Schiller.
He had no use for the paraphernalia of Greek mythology that had been
popular in the _Sturm und Drang_ period. He spoke a German that easily
fits into men’s mouths as they converse with their neighbors. Out of
this he fashioned poetry. His syntax is as simple as that of the King
James Bible (a rare thing in German literature). Each statement is a
unit. And so with each of his thoughts and observations. Each comes to
us in its simplest terms. Heine’s vocabulary (in his poems) is that
of a child. His thoughts are those of any callow love-sick youth. His
statement is so literal that it seems always to be on the verge of
foolishness. He even seems careless in literary art; his lines are
uneven, his rhymes the simplest imaginable, his rhythm disordered. Yet
beneath and beyond this simplicity is the art of a careful workman, and
the charm of a sensitive observer of men. Heine’s poems have the true
lyric quality in that their real charm can never be finally analyzed.
We can only say that beneath those childlike statements of the obvious
was the genius of a poet.
Heine’s genius, like that of Rückert, Platen, Chamisso, Kerner,
Eichendorff, and other contemporaries mentioned in the preceding
chapter, always tended a bit toward the morbid. These poets partook of
the common malady of over-individualism. ‘It is not good for man to
be alone.’ The commonest and truest of truths is that man is a social
animal. It is impossible for him to conduct his life except in company
with others. The stories of hermits who have gone mad with loneliness
have an excellent foundation in fact. And just as man seems meant to
act socially, so he seems obliged to feel socially. It is a spiritual
necessity to think a good deal of others. ‘Whoso saveth his soul shall
lose it.’ The man who seeks to discover all the treasures within him
usually ends by finding nothing there. And when it is the literary
fashion (as it was in Schumann’s time) to look exclusively within
one’s own soul, the age ends in helplessness with a moan of despair.
This condition is implicit in the poetry of Heine. It is, as we have
said, never the poetry of a hero. It can console us in our leisure; it
can never inspire us in our labor. Yet the fault is not so serious as
it may sound. Few people have contracted serious spiritual diseases
from Heine’s poetry. The very simplicity and brevity of it prevent the
reader from taking it too seriously. Read before the fire in the still
hours of the evening Heine cannot harm the tenderest soul of a child
of twelve. He was too genuine a humanist, as well as too excellent
a literary man, to be utterly removed from health. He is a far more
harmless amusement than Byron, for instance, just as he was a far
greater poet than Byron. He was, of course, taken much more seriously
in his day than we can take him in ours. Schumann in particular shows
that he regarded his poet as a text for the highest tragedy and passion
of which he as musician was capable. Yet even in his own time Heine’s
influence must have been essentially healthy. For he had in abundance
two qualities that always tend to keep men in the path of health,
simplicity and humor. The mind that can think simply is not wholly
diseased. And we need never fear the pessimist who can laugh at his own
despair.
I
Two things preëminently Schumann brought to his songs beyond what any
composer had brought previously. First there was an accurate regard
for the text. It is not to belittle Schubert to say that he did not
show Schumann’s accurate regard for the words. Schubert’s regard for
the text was conscientious and faithful; his melodies are marvellously
faithful to the spirit and his musical prosody never does violence
to the metre and accent. But Schubert was working under a somewhat
different tradition from Schumann. He is more the melodist, pure and
simple. His attitude toward musical prosody was somewhat negative;
he demanded of his melody only that it should not do violence to the
metre; beyond that it could follow its own musical course. Hence, we
not infrequently in his songs have such passages as this, from _Die
Allmacht_:
[Illustration: Music score]
verkünden seine Macht
This, of course, is in no way reprehensible or violent to the canons
of art. But it differs from Schumann’s method in that it puts a higher
value on pure song--on the mere joyous exercise of the vocal organs.
Schumann’s attitude toward musical prosody was more positive; he
demanded of his melody not only that it should do no obvious violence
to the metre, but that it should take pains accurately to fit the
minor accents and quantities. He tried to make the text as sung not
very different from the text as declaimed. True, he sometimes wrote
mere lyric passages of melody on an open vowel, like that in the above
example from Schubert. But such passages in Schumann are far more rare.
And the whole body of his songs shows that he took the text more as his
collaborator in matters of detail. His songs are not valuable primarily
because of their melody. He has written many lovely melodies, but a
large proportion of his songs would be of comparatively little musical
value (at least in the voice part) without the words. And his melodic
invention, taking his songs as a whole, is far below the exalted work
of Schubert. Besides, Schubert’s texts, though not generally chosen
without discrimination, do not show the same careful selection as those
of Schumann. The poems of the latter are carefully selected for the
purpose of specific musical treatment, and in consequence seem to have
a higher literary value, whether they have or not. Finally, Schumann
had the immense advantage of possessing nearly all of Heine’s wonderful
lyrics to choose from, a fact that in many an instance gave him the
opportunity of writing immortal music ‘married to immortal verse.’
The second all-important factor which Schumann, over and above
Schubert, brought to his song-writing was a matured harmonic and
pianistic technique for the accompaniments. However truly Schubert
divined the possibilities of the modern pianoforte, just nearing
perfection in his day, he never wrote thoroughly in the new style. His
chords in the bass were apt to be heavy and thick, his accompaniment
is not spread as widely as it might advantageously be, and his inner
voices never show the free and sprightly polyphony which is peculiarly
adapted to the piano. Had he lived he would doubtless have become one
of the greatest masters of the new pianoforte style. But it was left
for Schumann consciously and reverently to take up the work. Schumann
did not write a single song, for publication at least, until he had
been working for full ten years for the piano. His first enthusiasm
was for the piano. The shattering of his hopes to become a virtuoso
forced him to turn his enthusiasm toward piano composition. And in
his early years of creative activity he developed the possibilities
of the new instrument with all the enthusiasm of his youthful nature.
His first twenty-three works, written between the years 1830 and
1840, were almost exclusively for the piano. In them he developed
a pianoforte idiom which was unique in its day. With this new and
mature technique he approached his song writing. Inevitably he looked
as lovingly toward the accompaniment as toward the voice part--some
critics say even more so. He had learned how to make the most of the
mechanical peculiarity of the piano--its _struck_ strings which are
incapable of a true sustained legato; he treated the piano, in other
words, essentially as a hammer instrument and not as a wind instrument,
like the organ. He developed a surprising adeptness at enharmonic
modulation, for which the complete piano keyboard is so peculiarly
adapted. He learned the full use of the damper pedal--not so much
for sustaining chords as for permitting a wide separation of notes.
He learned how to make his inner voices pianistic instead of vocal,
making them depend wholly on their contour and position (as opposed to
tone quality) for their independence. Finally, he had learned how to
give each composition a style of its own--a peculiarity of pianistic
manner over and above its individuality of musical content. All these
qualities of Schumann’s piano technique should be kept in mind in
studying his accompaniments. They represent a good half of the musical
value of Schumann’s songs. If the vocal parts of the _Dichterliebe_
cycle had never been written the accompaniments would still have a high
value as proof of Schumann’s mastery over pianistic writing. Without
an appreciation of the pianistic side of Schumann’s vocal work no
singer can begin to appreciate the songs; he cannot even satisfactorily
sing his part of them. A large share of Schubert’s accompaniments can
be played satisfactorily by a pianist of slight ability, if only he
have the knack of following the singer. But scarcely any of Schumann’s
accompaniments can be played satisfactorily except by a performer who
is an artist at his instrument.
II
Schumann’s songs can be easily divided into two groups. The first,
comprising about a hundred, was composed in 1840, the year of the
composer’s marriage, and of his most fertile and romantic productivity.
After writing these, he professed himself satisfied with what he had
done (well he might be) and doubted whether he should ever write songs
again. His most fervent admirers cannot help wishing that he had kept
to his purpose. A dozen or so indifferent songs were produced in the
next ten years, and then, from 1850 to 1852, when his mental powers
had begun seriously to fail, he turned out more than a hundred. The
contrast between the two groups is striking. The first is nearly all
genius; the second nearly all mediocrity. At best, two or three songs
from this whole later period are worth knowing. Of the first group
there is scarcely one which does not show high creative excellence and
there are at least fifty of the finest quality or close to it.
By far the greater part of the songs of the earlier period are grouped
in cycles. Of these, however, there is only one which contains that
most distinctive quality of the cycle, a unified narrative--as in
Schubert’s _Müllerlieder_. This is the immortal _Frauenliebe und
Leben_. Another, the _Dichterliebe_, is closely bound together and
primarily intended to be sung as a unit.
[Illustration: Robert and Clara Schumann]
_After a daguerreotype from life._
Three more cycles, while looser than the one just mentioned, are
like it in being set solely to the words of one author. And another,
_Myrthen_, has little beyond a common title for unification. A few
other songs have no grouping except that of an opus number.
The first of the songs form a _Liederkreis_ (song-cycle), opus 24,
words selected from Heine. This is obviously an experimental work,
though it contains several fine numbers. _Ich wandelte unter den
Bäumen_ delicately maintains its mood. Number 5, _Schöne Wiege meiner
Leiden_, is pure melody with a simple accompaniment in Schubert’s
style, one of the most affecting of all Schumann’s songs. Sung with
a constant and rich legato, and with well-chosen modulations of
tone quality, it is immediately effective. Number 9, _Mit Myrthen
und Rosen_, is much admired by musicians; it is unlike most of
Schumann in giving an unusual lyric freedom to the voice part, but
the accompaniment, with its delicate inner voices, suggests what was
to come later. The _Myrthen_ of opus 25 include some of Schumann’s
finest. The very first, _Widmung_ (‘Dedication’),[24] is one of the
great songs of all time. Such passionate ardor a composer has seldom
been able to compress into a few notes. The fine legato contrasting
melody, introduced by an impressive enharmonic change, is the purest
of German lyricism. The accompaniment, while conventional enough in
its relation to the voice part, shows the freedom, and especially
the wide separation of notes, which was to flower so magnificently
in the _Dichterliebe_. The great danger in singing this song is that
of making it sound hurried or ‘choppy.’ Here, as so often in song
singing, the correct tempo is half the battle. Let the singer aim to
avoid ‘choppiness,’ on the one hand, and dragging, on the other, and
the correct tempo will come almost automatically, though, of course, no
tempo can hold a song together if there is not a firm legato behind
it. _Der Nussbaum_ (‘The Almond Tree’) is another immortal melody. In
this song the accompaniment enters as a lyric element, as it rarely
does in Schubert except in interludes. The half-phrase of the voice
with its answering phrase from the piano--this is an effect of striking
charm. The supporting part of the accompaniment shows the principle of
the simple broken (or ‘harp’) chord used more freely than had been the
common custom. In _Die Lotusblume_ (‘The Lotus Flower’) the novelty
in the accompaniment is very different--a slow and impressive melody
arising out of the lowest bass notes of the harmonic support.
In these songs we see the piano beginning to sing with the voice on
terms of equality. In number 15, one of the ‘Hebrew Melodies’ of Byron,
we see the formal accompaniment very highly developed. It has become
quite pianistic, with much figuration, and a profusion of chromatic
passings which remind us of Schumann piano pieces. Yet this is a true
accompaniment in the old-fashioned sense, and not, as in some of the
later songs, an independent piano composition. _Lass mich ihm am
Busen hängen_ and _Du bist wie eine Blume_ are charming examples of
Schumann at his simplest. We cannot point out the precise elements of
beauty, yet we feel that the music subtly matches the simplicity of the
words. In other terms, we see in these two songs that ultimate test
of artistic mastery--the command over style. And in these instances
the style subsists quite as much in the voice as in the piano part.
The great piano stylist of the preceding decade has begun to turn
his peculiar gifts to pure vocal music. The grandiose _Talismane_
(‘Talismans’) is perhaps not of high value musically, but it shows the
engaging freshness of Schumann’s romantic invention. The three Burns
songs--‘Somebody,’ ‘The Highlander’s Farewell,’ and ‘The Highland
Cradle Song’--are simply melodies of great beauty and are to be sung
as such. The last-named offers a problem to the singer in the need of
combining the somewhat jerky, rocking motion of the cradle with the
calm monotony which overspreads the whole.
The five songs, opus 27, need not detain us. Of the three songs
from Emmanuel Geibel the last, _Der Hidalgo_ (‘The Hidalgo’), is
particularly interesting. As an attempt at local color (which was never
Schumann’s _forte_) it has no special value. But the vigor of the
accompaniment, with its varied bolero rhythm, and the quiet passages on
the words ‘_Die Schönen von Sevilla_,’ suggest once more some of the
wonderful piano passages of the _Dichterliebe_.
Of the three songs, opus 31, we must note _Die Löwenbraut_ (‘The Lion’s
Bride’) as a fine example of the larger ballad form. This form Schubert
frequently attempted without ever achieving better than mediocrity.
And Schumann himself failed miserably at it in his later years. But in
the present instance he gave us a model. The declamatory voice part
agrees accurately with the prosody of the text without ever quite
losing a melodic value. The accompaniment of the first section consists
only of occasional supporting chords. It is recitative, but, unlike
the _recitativo secco_ of Italian opera, it is recitative raised to
the status of music. The singer should be careful never to lose the
musical beauty of the voice part and at the same time not try to force
it into a formal melody. The middle section illustrates admirably a
device which Schumann used better than any other of his time. This
is the development of a long passage of vocal music from a single
phrase. The vocal part in this middle section is scarcely more than
the repetition, in many forms and keys, of one short and very lovely
phrase. This device is peculiarly suited to the ballad, which, being
in constant forward motion, is liable to lose coherence if the music
does not offer some basis of unification. Schumann used the same device
later in his ballad, _Blondels Lied_ (‘Blondel’s Song’), and here with
even more poetic fitness; for the phrase on which the piece is built up
is that accompanying the constantly recurring refrain of the text and
as it develops seems to infuse the whole work with this single burning
message.
One more of Schumann’s ballads should be mentioned in this place--the
universally known _Die beiden Grenadiere_ (‘The Two Grenadiers’).
Technically the song offers little of interest beyond the composer’s
clever and appropriate abbreviation of the _Marseillaise_ at the end.
The overwhelming gusto of the ballad is too obvious to demand more than
passing mention.
III
The twelve songs to words by Kerner, opus 35, include several of
especial interest. In this group we see Schumann’s development of the
piano part well under way. Each song offers an accompaniment which is
a study in pianistic style. Number 2, _Stirb, Lieb’ und Freund_, has
an austere polyphonic support, in the style of Bach, suggesting the
majesty of some old cathedral. Number 3, _Wanderlust_, is a buoyant and
youthful melody, and number 6, _An das Trinkglass_, a fine romantic
chorale. Numbers 6 and 8, _Stille Liebe_ and _Stille Thränen_, are
intimate psychological studies. In the former the sustained bass
melody beneath the hesitating treble of the accompaniment suggests the
apprehension of the lover who is obliged to wait in silence. The latter
obtains a charming effect with the soft repeated chords of the piano
part and offers a typical Schumann ending in the intermingling melodies
of the close. The six songs opus 36 contain one which has become a
German folk-song--_An den Sonnenschein_, a melody which concentrates
the spirit of dignity and sincerity of German popular music.
In the Eichendorff _Liederkreis_, opus 39, there are four songs of the
very highest rank. Number 2, _Intermezzo_, with its soft syncopation
in the accompaniment, offers a suggestive contrast with the songs
of Schubert and shows how far musical technique had moved in ten or
fifteen years. It is the simplest of melodies, but one with a certain
atmospheric indecision, strongly contrasting with the downrightness
and clearness of outline which Schubert best loved. Number 3 in this
group, _Waldesgespräch_, is as lovely a melody as Schumann ever wrote.
It might be called a ballad, with its story of the knight who wandered
into the forest at night, finding there a lady in distress, attempting
to help her, and discovering that he was in the power of the witch,
the Lorelei, who lies in wait for strong men. The lovely thirds of the
accompaniment seem to spread the mystery of evening over the song, and
when the witch announces her identity the music takes on a momentary
grandeur that suggests the old tales of gods and heroes. The song
is full of fine and expressive effects. But these do not exist in
detail; they rather spring unconsciously out of the musical design.
The singer who attempts to make the song too expressive is sure to go
astray. If it is sung primarily for its musical beauty it becomes of
itself a masterpiece of expressive story-telling. Above all, as so
often in great songs, a good legato is the first and chiefest of the
virtues. Number 12 of the Eichendorff series is the _Frühlingsnacht_
(‘Spring Night’), with its magical triplet accompaniment. Number 5
is the famous _Mondnacht_ (‘Moonlight Night’). Here again we have a
song that quite defies analysis. The voice part consists solely of
a two-line phrase several times repeated. The first three times it
closes on the dominant, the last time on the tonic, with a deep and
satisfying sense of repose. In any but a master hand this form would
become monotonous. But with Schumann’s mysterious accompaniment it
is all magic. The close is peculiarly characteristic. The voice part
comes, as we have said, to a tonic close, but the accompaniment makes
a false cadence of it and the piano part continues to its own logical
ending. The piano part has become utterly organic and independent.
Played by itself, it would offer no clew as to where the voice part
ended. That deceptive cadence is Schumann’s ultimatum to the singer.
‘The song is not ended,’ he seems to say, ‘merely because you have
finished singing. The song is the voice part _and_ the piano part one
and indivisible. If you hurry through the postlude, or belittle it, or
treat it as a useless appendage to the voice part, you are no artist.
If you consider the voice part more important than the piano part, or
yourself more important than the song you are singing, go and give your
feeble talents to vaudeville songs.’ And for audiences, too, this song
has a message: the listener who begins to applaud before the piano
part is finished (and there are few even to-day who do not) is no true
listener. Let him go and listen to a brass band; he has no business
with the art-song.
The five children’s songs, opus 40, offer little of interest. But
the cycle, _Frauenliebe und Leben_ (‘Woman’s Life and Love’), is
undoubtedly the most famous and possibly the greatest song cycle in
all musical literature. The poet, Adalbert von Chamisso, selects eight
crucial moments in woman’s life and puts into her mouth for each of
the eight an exquisite lyric, expressing with wonderful delicacy her
emotions and moods. The poems are perhaps a trifle exaggerated in the
romantic fashion of the time and certainly do not altogether tally
with the emotions of the modern woman. But the groundwork of typical
psychology is expressed with such persuasive eloquence and such
literary charm that no one can read the poems without feeling that he
has lived through, in some measure, the experience of which they tell.
In the first song, _Seit ich ihn gesehen_, the young girl has just
seen her hero; in a moment, almost, she has cast her young girlhood
behind her; she feels strange presentiments; she no longer cares for
the games of her sisters; she wishes to be alone; the personality of
her hero seems to be ever present. In the second song she has come to
know him. She makes no secret of her love; she sings it openly; she
is proud of it before the world. In the next song she has heard his
proposal. ‘_Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben_’ (‘I cannot grasp
it, I cannot believe it’), she says, torn between joy and terror. But
in the next song, _Du Ring an meinem Finger_, she is apostrophizing her
engagement ring and looking at the long vista of life ahead. Number 5,
_Helft mir, ihr Schwestern_, is sung on the bridal day. Next, she is
in her own home, in the arms of her husband, vainly attempting to make
him understand why she weeps when she is happiest. In number 7 she is
singing a lively but tender lullaby to her newborn child. In the last
song she is singing her grief at the death of her husband. ‘This is
your first cruel act toward me,’ she says to the dead body. She sees
before her a life of voluntary loneliness, assuaged by memories of her
former happiness.
The music with which Schumann interprets these songs may justly be
called psychological. The term ‘psychological’ is applied freely and
indiscriminately to music and usually without justice. Properly, music
is far too abstract an art to carry any precise meanings. Yet with
the gradual and persistent process of six centuries, whereby certain
musical styles and progressions have come to be associated with
definite moods, there has grown up a technique which, with a properly
sympathetic audience, may be manipulated to express states of soul.
Whatever this technique is worth, Schumann, in his _Frauenliebe und
Leben_, has used it with masterly power. In the first song he writes
a simple, timid melody, the rhythmic flow interrupted as though by
the hesitation of a fluttering heart. ‘Since my eyes first beheld
him I seem to have been blind.’ The emotion rises. ‘I care no more
for the games of my sisters. I had rather weep.’ Then comes a lovely
phrase of tender sweetness. Weeping for love is a precious delight.
The broken melody continues. Not until the last bar does the hearer
become conscious of its full charm and formal beauty. The second song,
‘He, the Noblest of All,’ is in a very different mood--proud and
exuberant expression. It has a grand lyric sweep which only a fine
artistic taste can restrain from a somewhat cheap pompousness. The
middle section returns for a moment to the girl’s feelings of timidity.
‘Turn from me before it is too late,’ she says; ‘I am not worthy of
you.’ Schumann has chosen not to interrupt the flow of his song here.
To express the more timid mood he employs dissonance and chromatic
progression, which finally resolves into the original clear-cut strain.
Throughout the symphonic unity of the song is preserved. The third
song, ‘I cannot grasp it,’ returns to the spirit of the first. It is
an agitated allegretto movement. The voice part follows the words with
utmost faithfulness; it is almost a free recitative, interrupted only
by one gentle lyric phrase on the words, ‘I am thine forever.’ Yet
here, again, there is a true melody throughout, and a charming one, but
it seems only to peep out from behind the detached notes. The fourth
song, ‘Thou, Ring upon My Finger,’ has much the design and movement
of the second, though quieter. In the fifth, too, melody is dominant.
In the sixth the composer returns to the declamatory style. Here the
delineative music lies chiefly in the accompaniment, with lovely
modulations and snatches of melody suggesting the timid wonder of the
wife in her happiness. The voice part hardly comes to an end at all,
but fades away on the words ‘Thy picture,’ while the piano takes up the
tale. The next song, the lullaby, musically the least important of the
eight, is a simple strophic melody with a broken chord accompaniment.
The last is recitative pure and simple. The rests between phrases
seem broken with sobs, out of which there rises the heroism of a
determination to face life alone and without complaint. The emotional
power of those few notes of recitative is beyond description. The
stark tragedy of the opening lines becomes clouded over, as it were,
with tears, and the music melts into calm grayness as the woman sings,
‘The veil falls; I withdraw into myself, where I have thee and my lost
happiness.’ And then, as the great quiet of loneliness settles down,
the piano sings softly the whole of the first song, the early glow of
delicate color when the girl first beheld her hero. And we seem to see
ahead the years of loneliness softened only by sweet memory.
No group of songs has ever more perfectly achieved the union of words
and music. The faults of this cycle on the artistic side are the faults
of the generation. People’s views of life have changed much since
Chamisso set maiden hearts a-fluttering. The notion of the wife as
the bounden slave of her husband--a notion only a step or two removed
from the theory of the harem--has given place to the healthier view
of the wife as one of two high contracting parties. One cannot help
noticing in Chamisso’s poems how small a part the child plays in the
woman’s life. And the idea that upon the death of the husband the
woman’s thoughts should be solely of her own past rather than of her
child’s future is little short of repulsive. These are the faults of
an individualistic, a pessimistic, an over-sentimental age. They are
reflected in the spirit of the music. Since then our art, if it has
become more sensuous, has also become more vigorous. Schumann’s work
was for an age rather than for all time.
In the singing of these songs the singer must avoid stressing too much
the declamatory character of the three slow ones as well as the melodic
exuberance of the others. The songs seem on paper to be detached and
broken. All the more they must be sung smoothly, discreetly, without
undue emphasis. The singer will not go far wrong in following the
notes and the time signatures quite literally. Many a singer has been
astonished by that old miracle of art--that if the notes are sung as
written they will work their own magic. The composer has seen to that.
If a song relies wholly on a ‘singer’s personality,’ the composer has
failed. So in these songs pure intonation, just rhythm, and careful
diction will interpret the poet truly. If the singer finds that with
the observance of these values the songs do not express what they
should, let him put them aside for a while. As his technical artistic
powers grow he will find that the songs have grown along with them.
If he is much concerned about bolstering up the song by giving it
‘expression,’ he is sure to be on the wrong track.
Of the ‘Romances and Ballads,’ opus 45, we need only notice the
spirited _Es zogen zwei rüst’ge Gesellen_. Opus 48, however, is the
immortal _Dichterliebe_ series, probably the most individual of all
Schumann’s song works. Here, again, we find Schumann suffering somewhat
from the faults of romanticism. To put the case briefly, he took Heine
seriously. Heine himself, we cannot but feel, was not so taken in by
his own poetry. In addition to the ever-present grin which is in almost
every one of his lyrics there is a certain playful quality, as though
he were only teasing the sentimentalism of the human heart. If Heine
suffered only a hundredth part of the pangs described in his mass of
short poems he must have had more love affairs than any one man could
attend to in three lifetimes. The truth is, Heine was dealing with
moods, and Schumann supposed he was dealing with emotions. We see the
contradiction to an almost grotesque degree in the song _Ich grolle
nicht_ (‘I do not complain’). Here the poet tells his love that he
will not complain of his unhappiness because, though she goes about
in diamonds, he has seen in a dream that she, too, is unhappy. This
is pretty sentiment and charming playful heroics. Tragedy it is not.
But Schumann’s music is tragedy of the noblest strain. It strikes an
emotional depth which the composer rarely equalled. To such music the
Puritans of Cromwell’s time might have left their wives and children to
go out and fight on the side of the Lord. We have said that Heine has
nowhere in his poems written words that might be put into the mouth of
a hero. But in this case Schumann wrote music that a hero might have
sung. Perhaps if Schumann’s sense of humor had been a little more human
and a little less literary he might have seen the incongruity. But it
would have been an unfortunate event, for it would have cost the world
the wonderful music of this song. Indeed, many of the greatest works of
art would never have been created if their authors had possessed a keen
sense of humor.
Generally, however, Schumann did not make this mistake. In nearly
every other one of the _Dichterliebe_ songs he found music which was
as gossamer, as little fundamental, as Heine’s words. To some students
they may seem at first cold and pedantic. Certainly they do not draw
their greatness from melodic charm. Merely as melodies, few of these
songs would have lived to this day. Undoubtedly their first appeal is
a technical one--to the musical theorist and the pianist as well as
to the singer. But this is by no means to say that they lack poetry.
It is merely that their poetry is concealed and reveals itself only
to him who has mastered and understood their finer technical appeal.
Take, for instance, the ninth song, _Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen_
(‘I hear the flutes and violins’). The rejected lover hears from a
distance the orchestra playing for dancing at the wedding of his
beloved. The accompaniment is a waltz rhythm, with repeated notes
deftly inserted to suggest perhaps the trumpets of the band. The waltz
is steady and continuous. It has none of the sensuous softness, none
of the simplicity and balance of phrase which we are accustomed to in
popular waltzes. It tinkles on continuously, without an opportunity to
draw a breath--and hence seems at first glance aimless. Instead of the
engaging warmth we expect from waltzes, it gives a chilling effect. And
that, of course, is exactly the effect it had on the rejected lover.
It is a tinkly, monotonous waltz, perhaps heard through the winter
air. The voice has a little half melodic, half declamatory complaint,
but it seems almost independent of the piano part. When the voice
rests that waltz is still going on, throbbing, monotonous. Now, any
indifferent pianist will make a sorry affair of this accompaniment.
It demands the most delicate and exact finger work, the nicest regard
for rhythm, the most delicate modulating of tone power. It must be
played almost without pedal, and it reveals instantly any slip in the
pianist’s technique. It might almost be published independently as
a piano étude. The singer must deliver his part with great delicacy
of diction and achieve expression on the most limited scale. The
piece has no contrasts. It is so closely bound together that a single
omission of a note will spoil the whole design. Decidedly this is not
an interesting song to a bad musician. Every detail is a difficulty.
If he cannot master it, it remains to him cold and austere. But to him
who can master it, it becomes a rare delight. Each technical difficulty
becomes an expressive quality; the austerity becomes only poetry more
delicately refined. The whole is a challenge to the taste of the singer
and the accompanist. The song, within its limits, is without a flaw.
Much the same can be said of every one of the _Dichterliebe_ songs.
There is no superficial similarity between any two. Each one uses
technical means which are employed in no other. In each the technical
means are nicely adapted to the character of the music. Each one of the
accompaniments calls upon a different department of the pianist’s art.
Each is developed, technically, in its own manner and in the manner
of no other one of Schumann’s songs. In other words, each of these
remarkable songs has that thing known as style. Each has a personality
as distinct as the personality of one interesting man is distinct from
that of another. The accompaniments might be published alone as Essays
in Style. Such an achievement marks a development of detailed technical
resource hitherto unheard of. From it all later German and French
song writers directly derive. Nor must it be assumed that the voice
parts are uninteresting or unvocal. Quite the contrary. Only in these
songs, as in none that had preceded them, the voice parts are not the
songs, nor a small part of the songs; the songs are inconceivable, are
non-existent, except as voice and piano parts intimately combined.
Songs 1 and 2, ‘In the Wondrous Lovely Month of May’ and ‘From Out
My Tears,’ are simple melodies, charming, but little self-conscious,
demanding something of the singer’s art and learning if they are not to
sound trivial. The third song, ‘The Rose, the Lily, the Dove, the Sun,’
is a technical _tour de force_, an extremely brief and rapid little
piece, demanding the utmost delicacy of intonation and enunciation,
which might almost be sung in a single breath. The fourth song,
‘When I Look Into Thine Eyes,’ is a sort of duet between the voice
and the piano. Each phrase from the singer is tenderly echoed in the
accompaniment. The whole melody has a touching simplicity. Number 6
looks austere. Here Schumann’s effort to maintain a single style (both
technically and poetically) throughout has perhaps led him to dispense
with detailed expression. ‘In the Rhine, the Holy River,’ runs the
first line, and the accompaniment depicts the Rhine flowing, ever so
slowly and majestically, past the Cathedral of Cologne. And, since he
is particularly interested in these songs in homogeneity of style, he
makes the whole song flow along to this type of accompaniment. If the
singer is chiefly interested in exhibiting his voice, he will leave
this song in disgust as cold and unpoetic. But let him beware that his
real motive be not the difficulty he experiences in singing it well.
The following song is the famous _Ich grolle nicht_[25] (‘I do not
complain’), which is easily one of the great songs of the world.
Accepting the words as real tragedy, we must pronounce the music one
of the noblest expressions of emotion in all song literature. The
quiet and dignified melodic line of the voice part seems to suggest
the hero’s stoic acceptance of his fate. The repeated chords of the
accompaniment, moving in solemn progression, reflect the calm of a
great soul. And the marvellous bass part, moving deeper and deeper
down the scale, calling forth from the modern grand piano its most
terrible and wonderful tones, till the very soul seems to quiver in
response--this furnishes a foundation of grandeur which might have
served for a tragedy of Æschylus. But Schumann rarely repeated this
achievement. He was a gentle poet or an ardent technician, or, in his
later years, a verbose bore, but only rarely, as in this instance, a
tragedian.
The eleventh song of the cycle, ‘A Young Man Loved a Maiden,’ has a
simple melody suited to the spirit of the words, supported by a lilting
accompaniment admirably unified in style. The next song, ‘On the
Bright Summer Morning,’ is dignified by the device of the continued
downward arpeggio in the accompaniment. The thirteenth song, ‘I Wept
in My Dreams,’ is especially interesting. The voice part is almost a
recitative, and the accompaniment a sort of orchestral commentary.
Sometimes deep chords form the only support for the singer, sometimes
little rhythmical phrases tell their message. The whole suggests
admirably the effort of the speaker to disentangle his dreams from the
mental mist that surrounds them. The fourteenth song, ‘Each Night in
Dreams,’ is one of the most appealing melodies Schumann ever wrote.
The last of the series, _Die alten, bösen Lieder_ (‘The Old and Evil
Songs’), is a magnificent example of Schumann’s power to put subtle
moods into his accompaniment. The mocking spirit of the words, the
grandiose strutting of little emotions, the legendary paraphernalia
which is invoked by the poet--these seem to be embalmed in this tricky
but brilliant accompaniment. The postlude to the cycle is the melody of
song number 12, freely developed.
The later songs of Schumann can be summed up in a few lines. There were
a few written in the 1840 period, apparently cast aside as unworthy
and inadvisedly published later when Schumann’s matchless faculty of
self-criticism had become weak and dim. Opus 51 contains a delightful
folk-like song, ‘When I into the Garden Go.’ Opus 53 contains the
fine ballad, _Blondel’s Lied_, already described. Opus 79 is a book
of songs for children, containing two or three, notably _Käuzlein_,
_Sandmann_, and _Marienwürmchen_, which bring back a breath of the
youthful romantic Schumann. But nothing could be more pitiful than
the settings which Schumann about this time gave to some of Goethe’s
finest poems--especially the _Wilhelm Meister_ and the ‘Western Divan’
songs. The settings of Queen Mary Stuart’s poems, published in 1852,
are perhaps better than the other pieces of the period, especially
the prayer, which has an appealing melody and much harmonic freedom
in the accompaniment. But the ballads of this later period--including
Schiller’s ‘The Glove,’ Hebbel’s ‘Fair Hedwig,’ and others--are mere
collections of musical bombast. Let us draw the veil. For soon Schumann
was to throw himself into the Rhine in attempted suicide, a martyr to
the vigorous activity of fifteen years--years, one of which produced
the remarkable songs which we have just been studying, by which alone
his name need be known in song literature.
IV
Among Schumann’s contemporaries in song literature we may mention his
wife Clara, his friend and rival Mendelssohn, together with several
lesser known composers--Reinecke, Volkmann, and Jadassohn--and,
finally, two important men, Chopin and Glinka. Clara Schumann (born
1819, Clara Josephine Wieck, died 1896) was a talented composer and
a virtuoso pianist who worked throughout her married life in closest
sympathy with her husband. Three of her songs appear in Schumann’s
opus 37--namely, numbers 2, 4, and 11, _Er ist gekommen_, _Liebst du
um Schönheit_, and _Warum willst du and’re fragen?_ These songs must
be ranked high, for their scholarly command of style and their general
finish, though they are obviously not works of special inspiration.
The best of the three is probably the second, in which the composer
makes extensive use of one of her husband’s devices, that of repeating
a single phrase in various forms and building up the song as out of a
single shape of stone. The last named of the three songs also has a
good melody to its credit.
Mendelssohn wrote many songs during his short lifetime and was probably
the best known of all song-writers of the forties. But his work in this
department has all but passed into oblivion. They are not ambitious
efforts. They make no attempt to strike out new paths; they have no
interest in sounding depths of emotion; they are content with the old
forms and the old formulas of accompaniment. The best that can usually
be said of them is that they are pleasing in melody and faultlessly
graceful according to canons of correctness. On the whole, the ones
best worth singing are those which are consciously _volkstümlich_.
Among these we may name the very beautiful _Es ist bestimmt in Gottes
Rath_, opus 47, No. 7; _O Jugend, O schöne Rosenzeit_, opus 57, number
4; _An die Entfernte_, opus 71, number 3; and _Das Lieblingsplätzchen_,
opus 99, number 3, words from _Des Knaben Wunderhorn_. ‘Italy,’ in opus
8, and _Im Herbst_, in opus 9, have a very real charm. _Neue Liebe_, in
opus 19, suggesting the elf riding through the forest, is about as near
as Mendelssohn ever got to descriptive music in his accompaniments.
The _Frühlingslied_ in opus 71 is by all means one of the best of his
songs, showing contrast and depth of mood and rising to a thrilling
climax on the words _Bist nicht allein_.
Another song writer of peculiarly Germanic cast was Karl Reinecke
(born 1821), friend of Schumann and Mendelssohn and protégé of the
latter, who was for thirty-five years director of the Gewandhaus
concerts at Leipzig. Reinecke’s songs cannot be called great, but they
have to a remarkable degree insinuated themselves into the affections
of the German people. They are at their best when they are nearest
to the _Volkslied_, showing the German genius of achieving deep and
noble expression in the simplest forms. We may mention especially the
Children’s Songs, opus 37, of which the best are the lilting lullaby,
_Wenn die Kinder schlafen ein_, and the moving _Gebet zur Nacht_. The
essential wholesomeness of his talent is shown in the _Singspiel_,
_Ein Abenteuer Händels_ (‘An Adventure of Handel’s), of which the
very simple song, _Lied so treu und herzlich_, is typical. His song
cycle, _Schneewittchen_ (for soprano and contralto with chorus of
women’s voices), is excellent in its way. The simple prologue is a
thing of great beauty, and _Schneewittchen’s_ song, _In seiner Kammer_,
has a charming archaic style, recalling the long and flowing lines
of the Minnesong. Salomon Jadassohn (1831-1901) and Robert Volkmann
(1815-1883) were likewise successful song writers whose lyric work has
largely passed into obscurity. Carl Friedrich Curschmann (1805-1841),
a pupil of Spohr, was a prolific and extremely popular writer of songs
in a sentimental and popular vein, marked by the sensuous quality which
Franz Abt used so richly. An artist of more varied talents was Karl
Gottfried Wilhelm Taubert (1811-1891), who held important official
positions in Berlin, chiefly in the Royal Opera, and composed numerous
songs. The best of these are the _Kinderlieder_, of which the charming
‘Lullaby’ is still popular.
Chopin’s Polish Songs, opus 74, are his only vocal works. They purport
to be arrangements of Polish folk-songs, but it is to be doubted
whether they are to any great extent popular melodies. Probably Chopin
drew freely on Polish motives and rearranged them to suit himself.
However that may be, some of them are masterpieces. ‘The Maiden’s
Wish’ is well known to concert audiences through Liszt’s arrangement
of it for piano. The _Bacchanal_ is a glorious piece, admirable for
an encore number, the simplest of quatrain tunes, but overpowering in
its frenzied energy. ‘The Spring’ is a charming thing, undoubtedly of
folk origin, a tender alternation of major and minor which would become
monotonous except for its ineffable beauty. ‘Melancholy,’ a folk-like
tune with a genuine Slavic touch, is likewise among the best, and ‘My
Sweetheart,’ which recalls the Tyrolese folk-songs, is well worth
knowing. These songs are of the simplest character. The last two of the
collection, the ‘Lithuanian Song’ and ‘Poland’s Funeral Song,’ are
more pretentious--rather like scenas than _Lieder_--and in spite of
certain beauties are overweighted with pretense.
Another song writer who does not usually find his way into song
lists should be mentioned here. This is Michail Ivanovitch Glinka
(1804-1857), founder of the national school of Russian music. Glinka
was a man of remarkable talent, one who was able to fuse Italian grace,
French subtlety, and German solidity into an individual style of his
own, and to develop out of it an original native touch which had never
appeared before in Russian music. Of his eighty-five or more songs
(exclusive of those in his operas) a great number are in the thin and
pretentious style of the day. But from a few of them there speaks
real genius--the forerunner of the wonderful Russian song literature
of recent times. The grand Hebrew Song from the incidental music to
‘Prince Kholmsky’ is the work of a man in whom much learning could not
stifle the personal message. Another song, ‘Our Rose,’ is in a mixed
rhythm which foreshadows the wonderful songs of Moussorgsky, and yet
another, a ‘Traveller’s Song,’ makes use of the lively two-four rhythm
which has since come to be associated with the Russian Cossacks. The
lyric known as ‘Ilia’s Song’ and that entitled ‘Deserted Land’ both
show the personal genius of the composer. We should also mention
‘Doubt,’ _Meine Ruh’ ist hin_, and ‘The Lark’ as among his best. It
is not likely that singers will dig up these old songs for study, but
Glinka’s distinguished name should not be forgotten in the examination
of the wonderful Russian song literature which took its rise from him.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Vol. II, Chapter VI.
[24] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).
[25] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).