These circumstances in his life are mentioned here not only because of their interest, but because they explain some aspects of his music. Schumann was of a brooding disposition, intensely introspective. Compared with Chopin, his music lacks iridescence and shows a want of brilliancy. This will be immediately apparent if at a recital a pianist places the Schumann pieces after a Chopin group, as he is apt to do for the sake of the very contrast which they afford. But if Schumann’s compositions are wanting in superficially attractive brightness, they more than make up for it in their profounder characteristics. All through them one seems to hear a deep-sounding tone. One might say that his works for the keyboard instrument are pianoforte music for the viola, and for that reason they appear to me so expressive and so appealing. The harmonies are wonderfully compact. One feels after striking a Schumann chord like stiffening the fingers in order to hold it down more firmly, keep a grip on it, and let it sound to its last echo.
Poet, Bourgeois, and Philosopher.
In Schumann’s music the sensitive listener will find a curious blending of poet, bourgeois, and philosopher. He had the higher fancy, the warmth of the poet, a bourgeois love of what was intimate and homely, and the introspection of the philosopher. Sometimes he is so introspective that he appears to me actually to be burrowing in harmony like a mole. The melodies are interwoven; sometimes the upper voice flutters lightly down upon “contrapuntal collisions in the bass”; frequently his rhythms are syncopated; melodies are superimposed upon each other; he uses “imitations,” canonic figuration, and often by introducing a single note foreign to the scale, suddenly lowers or lifts an entire passage. There are interior voices in his music, half suppressed, yet making themselves heard now and then above the principal melody. He loves “anticipations”—advancing a single note or a few notes of the harmony and then filling in the sustained tone or tones with what was at first lacking. These characteristics are so marked that it is as easy to recognize Schumann as it is to distinguish Chopin in the first few bars of a work by either. Each is sui generis, each has his own hallmark, and it is a great thing in music, as in other arts, to have one’s product so personal that there can be no mistaking whose it is.
Schumann made valuable contributions to so-called program music. His pieces, besides intrinsic musical worth, have a distinct meaning, usually indicated by the titles he gives them. And these titles themselves often are suggested by the works of authors whom he admired, 137 or hark back to certain fanciful figures like harlequins and columbines. His second work for the pianoforte, “The Papillons,” derived its inspiration from the poet, Jean Paul, who was at that time an object of his intense worship. But whoever expects to find butterflies fluttering through these Schumann pieces will be mistaken. They are rather symbols of thoughts still in the chrysalis state and waiting, like butterflies, to cast off the shell and gain air and freedom. This symbolism must be borne in mind in listening to “The Papillons.”
Schumann himself said, in a general way, regarding his programmatic intentions in this and other works, that the titles given to his music should be taken very much like the titles of poems, and that, as in the case of poems, the music in itself should be beautiful, irrespective of title or printed explanation. This is true of all program music that has survived. It will be found beautiful in itself; but it also is easy to discover that the titles and explanations which are calculated to place the hearer in certain receptive moods vastly add to his enjoyment.
“Carnaval” and “Kreisleriana.”
I am always glad when a pianist elects to place the Schumann “Carnaval” on his program, because it is so characteristic of the composer’s method of work and of his writing short pieces en suite, giving a separate name to each of his diversions yet uniting them into one composition by means of a comprehensive title. The complete title to this work is “Carnaval Scènes 138 Mignonnes sur Quatre Notes pour Piano, Op. 9.” The four notes are A S C H, and in explanation it should be said that in German S (es) is E flat, and H the B of our musical scale. Asch was the birthplace of Ernestine von Fricken, one of Schumann’s early loves. Three of the divisions of the “Carnaval” are entitled Florestan, Eusebius, and March of the Davidsbündler. Schumann had founded the “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,” and he contributed to it under the noms-de-plume of Florestan, Eusebius and Raro; while his associates were denominated the Davidsbündler, it being their mission to combat and put to flight the old fogies of music, as David had the Philistines. Schumann himself is the looker-on at this carnival, a thinker wandering through the gay whirl, drawing his own conclusions, and noting down in music the varied figures as they pass, and his reflections on them. We meet Chopin and Paganini, each neatly characterized; Chiarina (the Italian diminutive of Clara) and Estrella (none other than Ernestine herself); also Harlequin, Pantalon, and Columbine. The Davidsbündler march in to the strains of the German folk-song,
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“Grandfather wedded my grandmother dear, So grandfather then was a bridegroom, I fear,” |
and the whole ends in a merry uproar. He wrote another carnival suite, Opus 26, the “Faschingschwank aus Wien,” in which he introduced a suggestion of the “Marseillaise,” which was at that time forbidden to be played in Vienna.