"I am told that he is not well disposed toward me. I should feel sorry if that were true, since I am conscious of having preserved noble sentiments toward him. If you know anything let me hear it on occasion; that will at least make me cautious, and I do not wish to squander anything where I am ill-spoken of. Concerning my relations toward him as a musician [1838], I am quite aware that I could learn of him for years; but he, too, some things of me. Brought up under similar circumstances, destined for music from childhood, I would surpass you all—that I feel from the energy of my inventive powers."
Concerning this energy he says, some time after this, when he had just finished a dozen songs: "Again I have composed so much that I am sometimes visited by a mysterious feeling. Alas! I cannot help it. I could wish to sing myself to death, like a nightingale."
One of the most interesting bits of information contained in this correspondence is that, when quite a young man, Schumann commenced a treatise on musical æsthetics. In view of the many epoch-making thoughts contained in his two volumes of collected criticisms, it is very much to be regretted that this plan was not carried out. On one question of musical psychology light is thrown by several of these letters. Like many other composers, it seems that Schumann often, if not generally, had some pictorial image or event in his mind in composing. "When I composed my first songs," he writes to Clara, "I was entirely within you. Without such a bride one cannot write such music." "I am affected by everything that goes on in the world—politics, literature, mankind. In my own manner I meditate on everything, which then seeks utterance in music. That is why many of my compositions are so difficult to understand, because they relate to remote affairs; and often significant, because all that's remarkable in our time affects me, and I have to give it expression in musical language." One of the letters to Clara begins: "Tell me what the first part of the Fantasia suggests to you. Does it not bring many pictures before your mind?" Concerning the "Phantasiestücke" he writes: "When they were finished I was delighted to find the story of Hero and Leander in them.... Tell me if you, too, find this picture fitting the music." "The Papillons," he says once more, are intended to be a musical translation of the final scene in Jean Paul's "Flegeljahre."
Believers in telepathy will be interested in the following additional instance of composing with a visual object in mind: "I wrote to you concerning a presentiment; it occurred to me on the days from March 24th to 27th, when I was at work on my new composition. There is a place in it to which I constantly recurred; it is as if some one sighed, 'Ach, Gott!' from the bottom of his heart. While composing, I constantly saw funeral processions, coffins, unhappy people in despair; and when I had finished, and long searched for a title, the word 'corpse-fantasia' continually obtruded itself. Is not that remarkable? During the composition, moreover, I was often so deeply affected that tears came to my eyes, and yet I knew not why and had no reason—till Theresa's letter arrived, which made everything clear." His brother was on his death-bed.
The collection of Schumann's letters so far under consideration met with such a favorable reception that a second edition was soon called for, and this circumstance no doubt promoted the publication of a second series, extending to 1854, two years before Schumann's sad death in the lunatic asylum near Bonn. This second volume includes a considerable number of business letters to his several publishers. In one of these he confides to Dr. Härtel his plan of collecting and revising his musical criticisms, and publishing them in two volumes. But as this letter was, a few months later, followed by a similar one addressed to the publisher Wigand, who subsequently printed the essays, it is to be inferred that Breitkopf & Härtel, though assured of the future of Schumann's compositions, doubted the financial value of his musical essays—an attitude pardonable at a time when there was still a ludicrous popular prejudice against literary utterances by a musician. In 1883, however, after Wigand had issued a third edition of the "Collected Writings on Music and Musicians" (which have also been translated into English by Mrs. Ritter), Breitkopf & Härtel atoned for their error by purchasing the copyright.
Schumann's letters to his publishers show that he used to suggest his own terms, which were commonly acceded to without protest. For his famous quintet he asked twenty louis d'or, or about $100; for "Paradise and the Peri," $500; the piano concerto, $125; Liederalbum, op. 79, $200; "Manfred," $250. He frequently emphasizes his desire to have his compositions printed in an attractive style, and in 1839 writes to Härtel that he cannot describe his pleasure on receiving the "Scenes of Childhood." "It is the most charming specimen of musical typography I have ever seen." The few misprints he discovers in it he frankly attributes to his MS. In a letter to his friend Rosen he writes that "it must be a deucedly comic pleasure to read my Sanskrit." But his musical handwriting appears to have been nearer to Sanskrit than his epistolary, if we may judge by the specimen fac-similes printed in Naumann's "History of Music."
The promptness with which all the leading music publishers of Germany issued complete editions of Schumann's vocal and pianoforte compositions, as soon as the copyright had expired, shows how profitable they must be. But during his lifetime it was quite otherwise, and in a letter to Kossmaly he adduces the following four reasons for this state of affairs: "(1) inherent difficulties of form and contents; (2) because, not being a virtuoso, I cannot perform them in public; (3) because I am the editor of my musical paper, in which I could not allude to them; (4) because Fink is editor of the other paper, and would not allude to them." Elsewhere he remarks, concerning this rival editor: "It is really most contemptible on Fink's part not to have mentioned a single one of my pianoforte compositions in nine [seven] years, although they are always of such a character that it is impossible to overlook them. It is not for my name's sake that I am annoyed, but because I know what the future course of music is to be." It was in behalf of this tendency that he toiled on his paper, which at first barely paid its expenses, having only 500 subscribers several years after its foundation. And he not only avoided puffing his own compositions, but even inserted a contribution by his friend Kossmaly in which he was placed in the second rank of vocal composers! Yet, though he printed the article, he complains about it in a private letter: "In your article on the Lied, I was a little grieved that you placed me in the second class. I do not lay claim to the first, but I think I have a claim to a place of my own, and least of all do I wish to see myself associated with Reissiger, Curschmann, etc. I know that my aims, my resources, are far beyond theirs, and I hope you will concede this and not accuse me of vanity, which is far from me."
Many of the letters in the present collection are concerned with the affairs of Schumann's paper, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, detailing his plans for removing it to a larger city than Leipsic, and the atrocious red-tape difficulties and delays he was subjected to when he finally did transfer it to Vienna. Although the paper was exclusively devoted to music, the Censur apparently took three or four months to make up its mind whether the state was in danger or not from the immigration of a new musical periodical. The editor confesses that he did not find as much sympathy as he had expected in Vienna; yet the city—as he writes some years later at Düsseldorf—"continues to attract one, as if the spirits of the departed great masters were still visible, and as if it were the real musical home of Germany." "Eating and drinking here are incomparable. You would be delighted with the Opera. Such singers and such an ensemble we do not have." "The admirable Opera is a great treat for me, especially the chorus and orchestra. Of such things we have no conception in Leipsic. The ballet would also amuse you." "A more encouraging public it would be difficult to find anywhere; it is really too encouraging—in the theatre one hears more applause than music. It is very merry, but it annoys me occasionally." "But I assure you confidentially that long and alone I should not care to live here; serious men and affairs are here in little demand and little appreciated. A compensation for this is found in the beautiful surroundings. Yesterday I was in the cemetery where Beethoven and Schubert are buried. Just think what I found on Beethoven's grave: a pen, and, what is more, a steel pen. It was a happy omen for me and I shall preserve it religiously." On Schubert's grave he found nothing, but in the city he found Schubert's brother, a poor man with eight children and no possessions but a number of his brother's manuscripts, including "a few operas, four great masses, four or five symphonies, and many other things." He immediately wrote to Breitkopf & Härtel to make arrangements for their publication.
It is anything but complimentary to the discernment of Viennese publishers and musicians of that period that, eleven years after Schubert's death, another composer had to come from Leipsic and give to the world the works of a colleague who not only had genius of the purest water, but the gift of giving utterance to his musical ideas in a clear style, intelligible to the public. Schubert died in 1828, and in 1842 Schumann could still write to one of his contributors: "It is time, it seems to me, that some one should write something weighty in behalf of Schubert; doesn't this tempt you? True, his larger works are not yet in print. But his vocal and pianoforte compositions suffice for an approximate portrait. Consider the matter. Do you know his symphony in C? A delightful composition, somewhat long, but extraordinarily animated, in character entirely new." To a Belgian friend who intended to write an article on the new tendencies in pianoforte music, he wrote: "Of older composers who have influenced modern music I must name above all Franz Schubert.... Schubert's songs are well known, but his pianoforte compositions (especially those for four hands) I rate at least equally high."