ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

Unlike most composers I have previously written about Robert

Schumann was not possessed of a ready to wear biographical
outline. He is in many ways just plain different. Difficult also to
define what direction he was seeking to take. One might well
ponder what it was that makes him so prominent in the great
catalogue of composers. He was a composer who did not start
out on that as his chosen path. In contrast to Haydn, Mozart
and Beethoven his career as a composer was not as a result of
some trail blazing mission. He clearly saw himself very much in
the shadow both of his predecessors and indeed his
successors alike. Alright, Beethoven started out as a common
or garden court musician and organist but soon enough found
himself committed to composing side by side with performing.
Schubert remained virtually unknown till he died but he was
striving to break through which he did posthumously through
undoubtedly the efforts of Robert Schumann, no less, who first
discovered him just a year after Schuberts death.
When we come to Schumanns own music, and that is
something on the whole I should leave to Matthew who is as
ardent a fan of Schumann as I shall ever meet, the first thing to
remark is that it does not seek to shock or to reach unexplored
territory as do the late Beethoven quartets. With Schumann you
wont find fate knocking at the door, more a softer form of
romanticism. Coupled with that is an awareness of an emerging
gentle German nationalism which was clearly a very digestible
and acceptable form of the new music of the 1840s. His
influences seem to be from Weber (1786-1826), Schubert
himself and to his great friend and exact contemporary, Felix
Mendelssohn, who was the dominant figure in German music
post Beethoven. Mendelssohn was the heavy weight of his
time, to fill the hole left by Beethovens departure in 1827.
Whilst Mendelssohn was still a know it all teenager, Schumann
in comparison seems to have carried an inferiority complex with
a mix of obsessional and erratic behaviour. He was to hold the
line until overtaken in popularity by his contemporaries, Liszt
and Wagner on the one hand and the emergence of the young
Johannes Brahms who came on the scene just in time to put
his seal on the achievements of Schumann.
Schumanns manner of production line composition was as
eccentric as it was compulsive. Once he got a bee in his
bonnet as to his chosen medium he would go on producing the
same genre day in and day out over a year before switching to
something else entirely different and then fixing this as the
programme for the next year. So it came about that, after
writing nothing except piano music over ten years, he declared
1840 to be his Year of Song. He then wrote over 150 of them in
that that one year. Yet in his capacity as editor of the Die Neue
Zeitschrift fr Musik he reckoned song as inferior and passed
on its criticism for someone else to do. Most composers vary
their output, switching from one form to another, but in this
Schumann remained steadfastly to the plan until the year had
run out. For 1841 he switched again. First the year of the
orchestra; then the year of chamber music was under way. I
reckon that had gas or electricity been available he would have
definitely switched each year. Even when he did eventually mix
it a bit one can still take note that he was writing works of one
type all in close proximity in time to each other. His
symphonies are mostly written in groups of two in quick
succession. His concertos are all written over a couple of
years. Pre-occupation became a form of mono-obsession.
Was this a portent of the mental problems from which he was
soon to suffer? Perhaps, but there could be another possible
explanation which occurs to me. I have found little evidence of
Schumann having undergone formal music study apart from
lessons in piano technique from Friedrich Wieck, his father in
law to be. It seems he learned as he went along. Whilst
practising playing the piano, his proposed career ended
abruptly when he developed an incapacity to his hand resulting
in his decision to switch from playing the piano to composing
for it instead. What then, after ten years, turned him into a
writer of songs and where did he learn this art? Perhaps his
year of song was his intensive way of learning on the hoof.
When he turned to chamber music, it was yet another learning
curve for himself. Most, nearly all, composers have varied their
output as they have gone along, usually sometimes when they
have been commissioned to write for a particular instrument or
combination or otherwise to diversify and to alternate what they
produce.
One other aspect of Schumanns standing is that amongst his
contemporaries his reputation stood as high as anyone else of
his time. Composers from far and wide, from Berlioz to Glinka,
knew of him and admired his achievement. His reputation as a
discerning critic was second to none. It was he who with his
future father in law founded and edited Die Neue Zeitschrift fr
Musik (New Music Journal), in which he analysed and
assessed and promoted music of his contemporaries, known
and unknown. Sibelius famously proclaimed that no-one has
ever erected a statue to a critic. Yet if one critic were deserving
of such, it would be Schumann. When Hector Berlioz, himself a
critic, was fighting rejection from his native Frenchmen he was
warmly applauded and encouraged by Schumann. Another
French composer, still rarely recognized was Berliozs
contemporary, Georges Onslow, who was quickly recognized
by Schumann and dubbed the French Beethoven! On the other
hand, Schumann showed little fondness for either Liszt or
Wagner.
By the early 1850s Schumanns mental state was one of near
nervous breakdown and his ending followed after a botched
suicide attempt. Against that background let us go back to the
beginning and follow the life and career of this reluctant
pioneer.
Schumann was born in the town of Zwickau in Saxony, the fifth
and last child of a family, the father being a bookseller,
publisher and novelist. It was to music than literature that
Schumanns artistic gene would lean. He took piano lessons
from a local school teacher, my authorities varying his start
from age 7 to 10. He displayed early interest in creating musical
imagery, making his friends laugh at his attempts at musical
cartoons, which Matthew himself has illustrated.
His interest in music is said to have been sparked off by his
going to hear a performance by the great pianist, Ignaz
Moscheles, coupled then with a developing interest in the
works of Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn. His father
had encouraged his sons musical interest but he would die in
1826 when Schumann was 16. He was left a legacy but
conditional on his studying law. Little wonder his mother put the
dampers on his pursuing a career in music. In 1828 Schumann
left school and went to Leipzig to start law studies, continuing
on in Heidelberg. In 1829 he first came across the songs of
Schubert who had died only a year before. He was at this time
still continuing his law studies but, as with many composers
before him, he proved to be unenthusiastic as a law student
before eventually throwing in the towel altogether and turning
to music.
In 1830 he heard Paganini, the renowned Italian virtuoso
violinist, violist, guitarist, and composer who was playing in
Frankfurt. He was still divided between music and law but by
Christmas that year he was back in Leipzig, at age 20, now
taking piano lessons from his former teacher, Friedrich Wieck,
who foresaw him emerging as a successful concert pianist after
a few years' further study with him. During those studies,
Schumann managed to permanently injure a finger on his right
hand. Wieck claimed that this had resulted from Schumanns
use of a mechanical device designed to strengthen the weakest
fingers by his clamping one finger down whilst at the same time
exercising the weaker ones. Clara Schumann (Wiecks
daughter and later Schumanns wife) would later dispute this.
She claimed the problem was chronic and affected the whole
hand. Dare I, a lawyer with no hope of switching to composing
or medicine, suggest it might have been a case of carpal tunnel
syndrome?
Whatever the cause of these problems was, Schumann had to
accept that he was not going to make it as a concert pianist and
instead he decided to devote himself to composition. It was
only then that we find that he began a course of study of music
theory under Heinrich Dorn, a German composer six years
older than him who was conductor of the Leipzig Opera. It was
perhaps this connection that prompted Schumann to begin
writing an opera of his own based on Hamlet. It is the first and
only inkling of his having received any proper musical training.
His compositional output through the 1830s was concentrated
on his own instrument, the piano. Papillons, his opus 2, was a
musical portrayal of events taken from Jean Paul's novel Die
Flegeljahre. The novel aspect of this work is that he was
writing programme music, that is music composed to illustrate
the drama of the subject tale. Schumann was not the first
programme music composer but what is unusual is to find
programme music conceived and written for solo piano as
opposed to the orchestra. As it turns out, it was by sheer
coincidence that, at much the same time, Berlioz had written
his Symphonie Fantastique in 1830, which was scored for the
largest orchestra of its day. Papillons has been suggested as a
version expressed in musical terms of one of his own written
musical critiques, an 1831 essay he wrote on some Chopin
variations. In the music for Papillons, Chopin's work is
discussed pianistically by two imaginary characters Schumann
had created, Florestan (the embodiment of Schumann's
passionate, voluble side) and Eusebius (his dreamy,
introspective side).
In the winter of 1832, Schumann, had a go at writing a
symphony in G minor and managed to get the first movement
performed at a concert at which the 13 year old Clara Wieck
was appearing. This work was not published during
Schumanns lifetime but it has been unearthed and played and
recorded in recent times.
The following year Schumann encountered for the first time a
bout of depression as a result of the deaths from cholera of
both his brother and his wife. By the following spring, he had
recovered, fit enough to launch the new magazine, Die Neue
Zeitschrift fr Musik, in which he was to publish most of his
critical writings. As a critic he became the scourge of the trendy
taste for flashy technical displays. Schumann regarded the
composers of these works as inferior. Room 101 for Liszt. On
top of piano composition, his time was taken up with his
editorial duties although during the summer of 1834 there was
a romantic interlude between him and the 16-year-old Ernestine
von Fricken, the adopted daughter of a rich Bohemian
nobleman. They quickly became engaged. However, our
romantic hero then learned that Ernestine was illegitimate and
that she would have no dowry. She immediately lost her
attraction and he ditched her, as one would do, realizing her
limited means would leave him having to earn his living like any
casual labourer. At the same time his attentions were becoming
diverted towards the physically developing Clara Wieck. She
was by then 15. He had reached 25. They had met again in
Zwickau, where Clara was making a concert appearance.
There, they first expressed their true love for each other. But
the path of true love would be made difficult for them as we
shall find out anon.
Already, Schumann had written Carnaval, in 1834 when still in
his Ernestine period. There was no way to write her name
Ernestine in musical notation. He therefore composed a
musical cryptogram based on the notes that spelt the name
Asch, which was the Bohemian town where Ernestine was
born, and with the notes also spelling the letters in Schumann's
own name. I would like to call this his Bletchley Park period. He
also reproduced in Carnaval the two characters, Eusebius and
Florestan, and he also included musical references to Chopin
and Paganini. It was at this time that he had met Mendelssohn
at Wieck's house in Leipzig, who would become a lifelong
friend. In 1837 Schumann went on to publish his Symphonic
Studies, a complex set of variations written for piano. That year
he published his Davidsbndlertnze, Dances of the League of
David", said to be an embodiment of the struggle between
enlightened romanticism and musical philistinism. Kreisleriana,
in 1838, is considered one of Schumann's greatest works.
Johannes Kreisler was a fictional poet created by the poet, E.
T. A. Hoffmann, and characterized as a "romantic brought into
contact with reality". Schumann used the figure to express what
in music was the fantastic and the mad, a spin off perhaps from
the world of Berlioz and his Symphonie Fantastique?
These piano works of Schumann have been illustrated already
for us by Matthew in a far better way than my inadequate words
can express. They were largely written post-Ernestine after the
beginning of what would be the explosive affair between Clara
and himself. When news of their liaison got out and reached
her father, Friedrich Wieck, he brought it all to an end, forbade
them all further meetings and ordered that all their
correspondence should be burnt. They were kept apart, just
trying to manage secret meetings, putting the couple under
enormous strain. Her income legally belonged to her father and
would later become that of her husband. Wieck was no doubt
the villain of the piece who sought to retain the status quo and
refused his permission for them to marry. Mind you, look at it
from Wiecks point of view. Clara was only 15. She was turning
out to be a good money earner to boot. Schumann was 25 and
his prospects were none too good! An opportunist and possible
fortune hunter. I reckon her fathers objection was entirely
understandable. Eventually in 1840 the young couple, now five
years on, took her father to court and gained official permission
to marry. By then she was one day short of 21 and could have
by the next day married without permission anyway. There is
some similarity in their plight and parental relationships to that
of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. All we have to do is
to rename the play, Die Wiecks von Wimpolestrasse. Meantime
life had to go on despite Robert cracking up at various times.
Clara was the strong one.
Schumann had visited Vienna the previous year where he had
met Ferdinand Schubert, older brother of the composer and
was shown the score of Schubert's previously unknown
Symphony No. 9 (then known as No 7), the Great C major.
Ferdinand had tried out the last movement in 1836. Now he
gave Schumann a copy of the score which he took back to
Leipzig, where Mendelssohn conducted a shortened version at
the Gewandhaus. Schumann famously hailed the symphony for
its 'heavenly length'. It proved extremely taxing for orchestras
to play because of its extremely lengthy woodwind and string
parts. Both in Paris in 1842 under Habaneck and in London in
1844 under Mendelssohn, orchestras refused to go on. In
London the violinists collapsed in laughter when rehearsing the
second subject of the finale. It did not receive its first proper
performance in England until 1856 at a Crystal Palace concert
under August Manns and then the first three movements were
played on one evening and the last on another! I dont suppose
the newly formed London General Omnibus Company had a
horse drawn 202 going from Blackheath Standard to the newly
re-erected Crystal Palace at the time.
After their marriage, the Schumanns settled down to the
business of his composing music, her giving concert
performances and the two of them producing babies. Over 12
years they had eight children, one of whom died in infancy.
Clara was the promoter, critic, and driving force for her
husband. Despite her delicate appearance, she was an
extremely strong-willed and energetic woman, who kept up a
demanding schedule of concert tours in between bearing her
brood of children. Two years after their marriage, Friedrich
Wieck at last became reconciled, no doubt eager to see his
grandchildren.
Up to 1839, Schumann had written almost exclusively for the
piano. Now in 1840 came both the year of marriage and the
year of the of the song of which there would be a
superabundance.
In 1841 he turned his attention to the orchestra. We know he
had already tried his hand at a symphony but now he was to be
persuaded by Clara that he was a natural orchestral composer.
He wrote two of his four symphonies, No. 1 "Spring" and the
first version of what would eventually be numbered as his
fourth. The final version in 1851 was an early attempt at 'cyclic
form', as would be adopted later by Csar Franck in the 1880s.
Included in this year of the orchestra was his Overture, Scherzo
and Finale.
Next in line followed the year of chamber music, which was
new to him but in which he was soon very much at home. 1842
included his three string quartets in quick succession and the
leisurely piano quintet, one of his most relaxed works. Just
listen to second subject of the first movement and you may
think you are hearing the inspiration for Marilyn Monroe singing
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The string quartets follow
the traditional combination of two violins, viola and cello. There
had been a movement towards deepening the resonance of
chamber music by the introduction of the double bass into the
ensemble, found in Schubert (the Trout Quintet) and in the
larger chamber works of Mendelssohn and Ries. Schumann
put chamber music back firmly on its conventional tracks. The
piano quintet, is an ensemble of string quartet with piano added
and this is the first for the medium. (There were quintets in the
late eighteenth century by Boccherini but they were different in
nature with the keyboard written for an accompanying lesser
powered fortepiano). Often coupled on disc with his quintet is
Schumanns piano quartet which engenders considerable more
energy. In 1843 he wrote Paradise and the Peri, his first shot at
choral music in an oratorio style. Looking through the catalogue
of his choral music one finds a requiem and a mass which do
not seem to get any playing these days. After this, his
compositions were no longer confined to any one form during
any particular period.
From 1844 to 1853 he was on and off engaged in setting
Goethes Faust to music. This adaptation is a mixture of opera,
oratorio and drama. Its three parts were written at different
times and in different styles. It is now described by some as his
magnum opus although it only resurfaced in the 1980s. Faust
was the popular subject of the day with a Faust Overture by
Wagner, a Faust Symphony by Liszt and Beethoven before
them at the end of his life planning on his tenth symphony
based on the Faust legend. At that time Berlioz wrote Eight
Scenes from Faust, later absorbed into Damnation of Faust in
1846. Despite the Schumann and Berlioz renditions being near
contemporaneous the Berlioz turned out initially to be a flop
and was pulled after only two performances. Hardly likely that
Schumann would have heard it.
Schumanns life took a different course from the mid 1840s. Up
till then he was feeling his way as a composer but he was not a
person to seek to proclaim himself. His life took on a new
pattern with a new addition to the family at regular intervals. He
accompanied Clara on tour in Russia during the first half of
1844. On returning to Germany, he decided to give up his
editorial work perhaps with a view to devoting himself more to
composition. The family moved from Leipzig to Dresden. Now
Schumann began to suffer more and more from what were
becoming persistent nervous breakdowns. As soon as he
began to work, he would be seized with fits of shivering and an
apprehension of death, experiencing an abhorrence of high
places, all metal instruments (even keys), and drugs. He
recorded in his diary his hearing a continuous note in his head.
This has been ascribed both to his worsening mental condition
and to tinnitus.
His unease is reflected in his next symphony number two. On
the other hand his piano concerto in A minor which was
published in 1845 shows no such apprehensions. Quite the
contrary, it is very much in the mood of the piano quintet and
the most gentle of concertos and one of the most frequently
performed and recorded works. That can be explained in that it
was originally conceived as a Fantasy for piano and orchestra
in one movement in very happy times of 1841. It was not in
Schumanns nature to write a majestic piano concerto such as
the Beethoven Emperor (1809), nor with the muscular strength
of the Brahms first piano concerto (1858). Schumanns
success and charm derives from his restraint and gentle nature.
By 1846 he was showing signs of recovery from his fitful
attacks. His only opera, Genoveva, Op. 81, was written in 1848
in which he did away with recitative, which he regarded as an
interruption to the musical flow. This would have an influence
on Wagner who was a comparative latecomer on the scene, yet
born only three years after Schumann. In 1849 Schumann
wrote ,music for Byron's Manfred. In Byron we find another
popular 19th century hero version of James Bond, swimmer of
the Hellespont notwithstanding a deformed foot. Berlioz
already had written Harold in Italy ten years earlier. Liszt
identified Byron through his symphonic poems, Tasso in 1849,
the same year as Schumanns Manfred, and Mazeppa in 1851.
(Actually, the orchestration was not by Liszt himself but ghosted
by Joachim Raff). Verdi in his turn wrote two of his lesser
known operas on Byronic subjects, I Due Foscari and I
Masnadieri, but best of all for me, let me be honest, is
Tchaikovskys Manfred Symphony. To-day, I think it is tragic
that a Google search on Byron produces first of all a burger
chain. In 1850, Schumann took up conducting when he
obtained the post of musical director of the Dsseldorf
Orchestra, not one that has ever been in the top rankings. He,
not the orchestra, turned out to be a poor choice with his
direction causing friction with the musicians. It was soon
apparent that he could not cope on the rostrum and his contract
was eventually terminated by the Brgers of Dusseldorf.
Between 1850 to 1854, Schumann composed in a wide variety
of genres. Critics differ between themselves as to the quality of
his work at this time, some holding the view that his music
shows the signs of his impending mental breakdown, a classic
situation of being wise after the event and music critics
metamorphosing into authorities on psychology. In 1851 he
completed his Symphony No. 3, "the Rhenish," a symphony
inspired by the River Rhine and Cologne Cathedral. I
remember with pride in the 1950s answering a question on
Round Britain Quiz which the experts could not solve. What is
the convivial connection between these two pieces of music?)
(which they played). I had recognized both the Schumann
symphony no 3 and the Mendelssohn symphony no 3. The
convivial connection was Rhenish (wine) and Scotch (whisky).
On 30 September 1853, the 20-year-old composer Johannes
Brahms, a complete stranger, to the Schumanns, turned up
unannounced at the door with a letter of introduction from the
violinist Joseph Joachim. Brahms amazed both Robert and
Clara with his playing, stayed on with them for several weeks,
and became a close family friend. Mind you, he can never
compete with Willie Walton as the guest who could turn up
uninvited at dinner time and stay indefinitely.
Again, Schuman began to suffer with a renewal of the
symptoms that had threatened him earlier. In addition to the
single note sounding in his ear, he imagined hearing voices and
angelic music. One night he suddenly left his bed, having
dreamed that a ghost, purportedly of either Schubert or
Mendelssohn, had dictated a spirit theme to him. It turned out
to be a good story and the theme was to be used several times,
notably in the slow movement of his violin concerto which came
to light as late as 1933.
Looking again at the period between 1850 to 1854 we now
have a composer who seems to have lost total confidence in
himself and his own abilities and yet now producing varied
works where he has emerged at the top of his form. He may
have felt his powers waning when he proclaimed in his
magazine that Brahms was Beethovens successor almost as if
he was renouncing any claims for himself and handing over the
baton. It did not do Brahms much good either as he from then
on felt the heavy burden of Beethoven on his shoulder. From
there it took him 20 years to write his first symphony. In late
February 1854, his condition worsened. The visions were of
demons. He felt he was losing control of his actions and
warned Clara of his fear that he might do her harm. So troubled
was he that he attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself
from a bridge into the Rhine. Poor man, he could not even
manage this successfully and he was rescued by a boatman
and taken home. There seemed no other solution and he
sought admission to an asylum in Bonn. Clara was not allowed
to see him this was not something for a woman to witness -
and she was the one to call upon Brahms for his help, unaware
that he had fallen for her but had remained silent about it .
Brahms, a man, all of 21 years, was permitted to visit
Schumann. Clara was finally allowed to visit her husband at the
asylum just two days before he died. He appeared to recognize
her, but he could utter only a few words. Robert Schumann
died on 29 July 1856 at the age of 46
Brahms and Clara remained close for 40 years but he never
sought to take it further. Maybe he felt he was betraying his
mentor. Or perhaps he was too mean. The more likely answer
was that she was thirteen years older than him and with a
family of seven children in tow. More pertinently, he had his
own hang ups. His mother had run a brothel in Hamburg where
he played the piano when he was a child. His view of women
was somewhat distorted from early on and that is how he would
later derive his own pleasures. He probably held Clara in such
untouchable esteem that he was unable to imagine a
relationship involving that in which he enjoyed indulging.
As to Robert Schumann, you will see that I have had some
difficulty in pinpointing his achievement. Pleasure and measure
are both subjective. For most he is charming and pleasurable
and for many worthy of his place in the pantheon. For me he
seems to lack that extra wow factor. Happily I am no Simon
Cowell. Matthew will often comment on this composer or that
being good second division. I would not say that of Schumann,
no way. He is top flight premiership alright, but mid-table
somewhere nearer the relegation area, not Manchester United,
more like his own local team, Fortuna Dusseldorf. Let us look at
it another way. Schumann was so admired by his
contemporaries as the leading figure of his day, including
countries further afield, and by such composers for example as
Borodin. Read any account of any English composer of the late
nineteenth century - William Sterndale Bennett, Charles Villiers
Stanford, Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar - and time and again
the great god was Schumann, his complexes and shortcomings
irrelevant. Then move to today and listen to Matthew Taylors
eulogies. Thinking about it, I have decided that if there is a
problem it is not that of Schumann at all, but mine. In the final
analysis it seems to me on all the evidence that Schumann is a
composers composer.