IV.
Robert Schumann, the loving critic, admirer, and disciple of Schubert in the province of song, was in most respects a man of far different type. The son of a man of wealth and position, his mind and tastes were cultivated from early youth with the utmost care. Schumann is known in Germany no less as a philosophical thinker and critic than as a composer. As the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, he exercised a powerful influence over contemporary thought in art-matters, and established himself both as a keen and incisive thinker and as a master of literary style. Schumann was at first intended for the law, but his unconquerable taste for music asserted itself in spite of family opposition. His acquaintance with the celebrated teacher, Wieck, whose gifted daughter, Clara, afterwards became his wife, finally established his career; for it was through Wieck’s advice that the Schumann family yielded their opposition to the young man’s bent.
Once settled in his new career, Schumann gave himself up to work with the most indefatigable ardour. The early part of the present century was a halcyon time for the virtuosi, and the fame and wealth that poured themselves on such players as Paganini and Liszt made such a pursuit tempting in the extreme. Fortunately, the young musician was saved from such a career. In his zeal of practice and desire to attain a perfectly independent action for each finger on the piano, Schumann devised some machinery, the result of which was to weaken the sinews of his third finger by undue distension. By this he lost the effective use of the whole right hand, and of course his career as a virtuoso practically closed.
Music gained in its higher walks what it lost in a lower. Schumann devoted himself to composition and æsthetic criticism, after he had passed through a thorough course of preparatory studies. Both as a writer and a composer Schumann fought against Philistinism in music. Ardent, progressive, and imaginative, he soon became the leader of the romantic school, and inaugurated the crusade which had its parallel in France in that carried on by Victor Hugo in the domain of poetry. His early pianoforte compositions bear the strong impress of this fiery, revolutionary spirit. His great symphonic works belong to a later period, when his whole nature had mellowed and ripened without losing its imaginative sweep and brilliancy. Schumann’s compositions for the piano and orchestra are those by which his name is most widely honoured, but nowhere do we find a more characteristic exercise of his genius than in his songs, to which this article will call more special attention.
Such works as the “Études Symphoniques” and the “Kreisleriana” express much of the spirit of unrest and longing aspiration, the struggle to get away from prison-bars and limits, which seem to have sounded the key-note of Schumann’s deepest nature. But these feelings could only find their fullest outlet in the musical form expressly suited to subjective emotion. Accordingly, the “Sturm and Drang” epoch of his life, when all his thoughts and conceptions were most unsettled and visionary, was most fruitful in lyric song. In Heinrich Heine he found a fitting poetical co-worker, in whose moods he seemed to see a perfect reflection of his own—Heine, in whom the bitterest irony was wedded to the deepest pathos, “the spoiled favourite of the Graces,” “the knight with the laughing tear in his scutcheon”—Heine, whose songs are charged with the brightest light and deepest gloom of the human heart.
Schumann’s songs never impress us as being deliberate attempts at creative effort, consciously selected forms through which to express thoughts struggling for speech. They are rather involuntary experiments to relieve oneself of some woeful burden, medicine for the soul. Schumann is never distinctively the lyric composer; his imagination had too broad and majestic a wing. But in those moods, peculiar to genius, where the soul is flung back on itself with a sense of impotence, our composer instinctively burst into song. He did not in the least advance or change its artistic form, as fixed by Schubert. This, indeed, would have been irreconcilable with his use of the song as a simple medium of personal feeling, an outlet and safeguard.
The peculiar place of Schumann as a song-writer is indicated by his being called the musical exponent of Heine, who seems to be the other half of his soul. The composer enters into each shade and detail of the poet’s meaning with an intensity and fidelity which one can never cease admiring. It is this phase which gives the Schumann songs their great artistic value. In their clean-cut, abrupt, epigrammatic force there is something different from the work of any other musical lyrist. So much has this impressed the students of the composer that more than one able critic has ventured to prophesy that Schumann’s greatest claim to immortality would yet be found in such works as the settings of “Ich grolle nicht” and the “Dichterliebe” series—a perverted estimate, perhaps, but with a large substratum of truth. The duration of Schumann’s song-time was short, the greater part of his Lieder having been written in 1840. After this he gave himself up to oratorio, symphony, and chamber-music.
Note by the Editor.—The above account of Robert Schumann does not give an adequate impression of the composer; the following remarks are therefore appended, based in most part upon J. A. Fuller Maitland’s “Schumann” in The Great Musicians Series. In 1832 the poet Grillparzer, in a critical article published in the Wiener Musikalische Zeitung, recognises that Schumann “belongs to no school, but creates of himself without making parade of outlandish ideas, ... he has made himself a new ideal world in which he moves about as he wills, with a certain original bizarrerie.” Moscheles, a friend of Schumann, wrote in his diary—“For mind (Geist) give me Schumann. The Romanticism in his works is a thing so completely new, his genius so great, that to weigh correctly the peculiar qualities and weakness of this new school I must go deeper and deeper into the study of his works.” In the Gazette Musicale for November 12, 1837, Franz Liszt wrote a thoroughly sympathetic criticism of the composer’s works, as a whole, and says—“The more closely we examine Schumann’s ideas, the more power and life do we discover in them; and the more we study them, the more we are amazed at the wealth and fertility which had before escaped us.” And Hector Berlioz, the great French Romanticist, looked upon him “as one of the most remarkable composers and critics in Germany.” As a musical critic Schumann ranks very high. In 1834 he, with several friends, started a critical paper, Neue Zeitschrift für Music, in order “no longer to look on idly, but to try and make things better, so that the poetry of art may once more be duly honoured.” The paper was very successful, and had a considerable influence in the musical world—more especially as it supplied a distinct want, for at the time of its appearance “musical criticism in Germany was of the most futile kind, silly, superficial admiration of mediocrity—Schumann used to call it ‘Honey-daubing’—or the contemptuous depreciation of what was new or unknown; these were the order of the day in such of the journals as deigned to notice music at all.” Schumann possessed all the qualities which are required in a musical critic, and it is said of him that in that capacity he has never been excelled. His aims were high and pure—to quote his own words, “to send light into the depth of the human heart—that is the artist’s calling,”—and the chief object of his critical labour was “the elevation of German taste and intellect by German art, whether by pointing to the great models of old time, or by encouraging younger talents.” His connection with the paper lasted ten years as a constant contributor, though he continued to write for it from time to time. The last article published by him in it was one written in favour of Johannes Brahms, who had been sent to him with a letter of introduction by Joseph Joachim, the violinist, “recommending to his notice a young composer of whose powers the writer had formed the highest opinion.” “At once Schumann recognised the surpassing capabilities of the young man, and wrote to Joachim these words, and nothing more—‘Das ist der, der kommen musste’ (‘This is he was wanted to come’).” The article was entitled “New Paths,” and is one of his most remarkable writings. “In it Schumann seems to sing his ‘Nunc Dimittis,’ hailing the advent of this young and ardent spirit, who was to carry on the great line of composers, and to prove himself no unworthy member of their glorious company.” The concluding sentence of the article, which contained the composer’s last printed words, is not a little remarkable, for it gives fullest expression to that principle which had always governed his own criticism. “In every age there is a secret band of kindred spirits. Ye who are of this fellowship, see that ye weld the circle firmly, so that the truth of art may shine ever more and more clearly, shedding joy and blessing far and near.”
As a man Schumann was kind-hearted, generous, devoid of jealousy, and always ready and willing to recognise merit, great or small, in those with whom he came in contact. It was always easier for him to praise than to blame; so much so that in conducting an orchestra in rehearsal, it became impossible for him to find fault with the performers when necessity arose, and, if they did not find out their mistakes themselves, he allowed them to remain uncorrected! Although a faithful friend, he was eminently unsociable; he was very reserved and silent, and this peculiarity became more marked towards the latter part of his life, when his terrible malady was spreading its shadow over him. An amusing account of his silence is given in E. Hanslick’s Musikalischen Stationen—“Wagner expressed himself thus to the author in 1846—‘Schumann is a highly gifted musician, but an impossible man. When I came from Paris I went to see Schumann; I related to him my Parisian experiences, spoke of the state of music in France, then of that in Germany, spoke of literature and politics; but he remained as good as dumb for nearly an hour. One cannot go on talking quite alone. An impossible man!’” Schumann’s account, apparently of the same interview, is as follows:—“I have seldom met him; but he is a man of education and spirit; he talks, however, unceasingly, and that one cannot endure for very long together.”