The philosophic calm thus gained by habits of regular work was soon to be sorely taxed; for in that very year all Schumann's hopes of ever becoming a piano virtuoso were shattered by an accident to his right hand. With characteristic impatience he had devised a mechanism for hastening the independence of the refractory fourth finger by holding it up with a string while the others practised. Of course the result of this violence was a permanent lameness. Under this affliction, however, was hidden an incidental benefit; for piano playing became now no longer one of the many things that he did badly, as he had complained, and he had at last all his attention to concentrate upon composition. He had written his opus 1, "Variations on the name of Abegg," in 1830; he now followed this up with an endless stream of charming piano pieces, the like of which had never before been seen. In 1830-31 came the "Papillons," opus 2, and the "Allegro," opus 8; in 1832 the "Studies after Paganini" (in which the technical interest of the virtuoso is still paramount), the "Intermezzi," and the fascinating "Impromptus on a Theme of Clara Wieck"; 1833 added to the list two more primarily technical works, the "Concert Études on Caprices of Paganini" and the splendid "Toccata," opus 7; and in the next six years, up to 1839, came a long series of unique and lovely things, among which stand forth in especial prominence those romantic whimsicalities, the "Davidsbündlertänze," the "Carnaval," and "Kriesleriana," the somewhat less successful, because more ambitious, Sonatas, opuses 11, 14, and 22, and the more mature "Symphonic Études," "Kinderscenen," "Phantasie," and "Novelettes."
These piano works, conceived with most daring originality and executed with inimitable verve, deserve to take rank with Schubert's songs, Mendelssohn's overtures, and Chopin's nocturnes and preludes, among the very few supreme and perfect attainments of the romantic spirit in music. Their exuberant vitality, their prodigal wealth of melodic invention, their rhythmic vigor and harmonic luxuriance, their absolutely novel pianistic effects, their curious undercurrent of fanciful imagery and extra-musical allusion, the peculiarly personal, even perverse, idiom in which they are couched, all conspire to make them unique even among their author's works, and in some respects more happily representative of him than the later productions in which he was more influenced by conventional or borrowed ideals. In them we have the wild-flavored first fruits of his genius, fresh with all the aroma and bloom of unsophisticated youth.
A curious feature of most of these early pieces, due to the literary cultivation and to the fanciful bias of their composer's mind, is their constant reference to all sorts of extra-musical interests. Schumann, at this time almost as much a man of letters as of tones, took pleasure in equipping his pieces with an ingenious and amusing series of allusions to places and people, real and fictitious, a kind of running commentary of footnotes on the music, comprehensible only to the initiated. This is managed partly by means of spelling out words in the letters which stand for musical tones,[4] partly by directions printed above the music, like stage directions in a play, and partly by mottoes, both musical and literary, and quotations of original and other melodies. The "Variations," opus 1, are founded on a theme which spells A-B-E-G-G—a pseudonym given by Schumann to a lady whose beauty he had admired.
Figure V.
Most of the pieces in the "Carnaval" are founded on four tones spelling A-S-C-H, in honor of a friend who lived in the town of that name, the rhythms being so ingeniously varied that each theme sounds new in spite of its set tonal basis.
