Figure VIII.
Another is the first trio of the scherzo in the second symphony. Curiously oblivious of tonal monotony, he cast this passage entirely for the strings, despite the fact that they had been prominent throughout the whole of the preceding scherzo. It was Mendelssohn who suggested the use of the wood-wind instruments here, certainly a marked improvement. Isolated errors or miscalculations like these, however, are much less serious than the pervasive heaviness and muddiness of scoring that constantly mar the sound-mass. A mistaken desire for richness of color led him to double his instruments until all transparency was lost. It is as if a painter should use all his pigments all the time: the potency of each would be cancelled by the others, and the eye, through a surfeit of impressions, would become dulled and jaded. Only by the silence of some instruments can others come into relief. "Schumann's symphonies," says Mr. Weingartner,[10] "are composed for the pianoforte, and arranged—unhappily, not well at that—for the orchestra. Whenever I compare, as a conductor, the labor of the rehearsals and the performance with the final effect, there comes over me a feeling similar to that I have towards a person in whom I expected to find mutual friendship and was disappointed. No sign of life gleams in this apathetic orchestra, which, if given even a simple Mendelssohnian piece to play, seems quite transformed." There are, it is true, as Mr. Weingartner would doubtless admit, many single passages of great tonal beauty and originality scattered here and there in these overladen scores. Such are the sombre trombone harmonies at the end of the slow movement of the B-flat Symphony, the celestial violin melody in the adagio of the C-major Symphony (to which Mr. Weingartner gives the highest praise), and the violin solo in the Romance of the Symphony in D-minor. Above all, there is the wonderful horn-call in the "Genoveva Overture"—one of the loveliest moments in all music.
Figure IX.
But these are the high lights in a picture which for the rest is too often gray and blurred. In the chamber music, too, we feel the same shortcomings. The three quartets sound patchy or dry, like piano pieces played without pedal;[11] only in the quintet and the quartet with piano does Schumann's favorite instrument introduce elasticity and sparkle.
Another problem, even more fundamental than that of instrumentation, which Schumann, in approaching the larger forms, had to solve as best he could, was that of melodic variety and breadth. Here again he was at a disadvantage. All his experience had been with short lyrical melodies or germs of melodies such as are appropriate to piano pieces in the romantic vein and to songs; but larger works require a wider sweep in the initial themes, a more complex differentiation of themes, and a power of mental synthesis that can combine the most diverse elements in a coherent organism. Mr. Hadow[12] names the two types of melody, which are suitable respectively to the large and to the small forms, the "Continuous" and the "Discrete." "In the former," he explains, "a series of entirely different elements is fused into a single whole: no two of them are similar, yet all are so fitted together that each supplies what the others need. In the latter a set of parallel clauses are balanced antithetically: the same rhythmic figure is preserved in all, and the differences depend entirely upon qualities of tone and curve. The former is the typical method of Beethoven, the latter that of Schumann." And he cites as examples Beethoven's violoncello sonata in A, and the opening movement of Schumann's piano quintet. Now, the construction of extended works out of melodies of the discrete or lyrical type presents certain inevitable difficulties that the romantic composers, who instinctively think only in such melodies, are always having to meet in one way or another. We have already seen[13] how Schubert, on the whole, failed to solve the problem, and contented himself with monotonous repetitions of his ideas, or with variations of their mere ornamentation or timbre. We shall later see how Chopin declined, and how Berlioz and Liszt evaded, the same embarrassment. It will be enlightening to examine how far Schumann succeeded and how far he failed in readjusting his musical imagination to the new requirements.
In many cases he fails as Schubert failed. Beginning a symphonic movement with a song-like melody, grouped in parallel phrases, generally of four measures' length, he is able to proceed only by more or less "vain repetitions." The result is a monotony, a flatness and lack of contrast and relief, something like that of a wall-paper with its endless re-presentations of a single pattern. This defect is especially felt in the development sections of his first movements and finales, in which he has, by the compulsion of circumstances, to forego the charm of melodic novelty. In the allegro of the first quartet, the development is founded on two or three patterns, many times reiterated in various keys. The first movement of the piano quartet, in spite of its harmonic originality, is open to the same criticism, as are also, in fact, most of the development sections in all four of the symphonies. A welcome contrast is found in the corresponding parts of the first movement in the quintet, where an ingenious "diminution" of the theme gives opportunity for much genuine variation, and of the finale of the concerto, with its inexhaustible fertility of rhythms and melodic figures. It must be added, also, that even when Schumann is most helplessly shackled to his initial themes, these are of such intrinsic beauty that the effect is infinitely to be preferred to that of more skilful mediocrity.
Next to the primordial charm of his melodies, his most efficient aid in the solution of the problem is his instinct for counterpoint, with all its matchless power to vitalize the musical tissue. This instinct was educated by a long and earnest study of Bach. As early as 1829 he made thorough acquaintance with the "Well-tempered Clavichord." In 1832 he writes: "I have taken the fugues one by one, and dissected them down to their minutest parts. The advantage of this is great, and seems to have a strengthening effect on one's whole system; for Bach was a thorough man. There is nothing sickly or stunted about him, and his works seem written for eternity." One of the most striking passages in the letters is that which acknowledges the supreme importance of such study to the romantic composers. "Haydn and Mozart," he says, "had only a partial and imperfect knowledge of Bach, and we can have no idea how Bach, had they known him in all his greatness, would have affected their creative powers. Mendelssohn, Bennett, Chopin, Hiller, in fact all the so-called romantic school, approach Bach far more nearly in their music than Mozart ever did: indeed all of them know Bach most thoroughly. I myself confess my sins daily to that mighty one, and endeavor to purify and strengthen myself through him." Besides this general purification and strengthening of his musical thought, Schumann found in Bach an invaluable antidote for his wayward, youthful subjectivism; for Bach is of all composers the most deeply and abstractly musical, the most thoroughly founded on natural tonal laws, the least infected with extraneous ideals and meretricious methods. His art is wholly objective, quite universal; he makes no concession to vulgarity or to insensibility, and his taste is as exacting as his skill is impeccable. Technically, too, he gave Schumann, too long habituated to the narrow scope and rigid rhythmical balance of the lyrical forms, just the emancipation, the mental liberation and broadening, which he needed. The way of escape from the prosodic monotony of the song lies through polyphony, through the conceiving of music as a group or bundle of melodies each of which has its own vitality and its own provocation to fancy. Once the composer learns to follow each strand in this web, for its own sake, and to attain coherence by the persistence of characteristic motives of all types, rather than by a slavish alternation of phrase and equal counter-phrase, the creation widens in his view, and he writes with a hitherto undreamed-of elasticity.