"Above me shall ride then my Emp'ror so brave,
While swords are flashing and clashing,
While sabres are fiercely contending,—
In that hour of his need I will rise from the grave,
The cause of my Emp'ror defending!"
And in his song-cycle Frauen-lieben und Leben (Woman's Life and Love) he has evinced "extraordinary depths of penetration into a side of human character which men are generally supposed incapable of understanding—the intensity and endurance of a pure woman's love."... Yet who should know it if he does not?...
Towards evening, various folk drop in by ones and twos,—musical acquaintances, it need hardly be said, for there is no other topic than that of their art which they can discuss with Robert Schumann. The discussion may possibly be on their part only, with a man like this, of whom it is told that one day he went into a friend's house, whistling softly sotto voce,—and, with nothing but a cheery nod, walked to the piano and opened it,—played a few chords,—made a modulation, and returned to the original key,—shut the piano, gave another courteous nod, and—exit, in utter silence! He is, indeed, capable of sitting for hours in the midst of a merry chattering company, completely lost in thought, employed upon the evolution of some musical thought. But when he does speak, his words are all altruistically ardent, full of eager praise and joyful appreciation for the great names of music, whose excellencies he loves to point out. "The great masters, it is to them I go," he avows with the humility of a child,—"to Gluck the simple, to Händel the complicated, and to Bach the most complicated of all." His admiration of "John Sebastian" is boundless. "I always flee to Bach, and he gives me fresh strength and desire for life and work.... The profound combinations, the poetry and humour of the new school of music principally emanate from Bach."
THE TWO GRENADIERS.
To France were returning two Grenadiers,
In Russia they long did languish,
And as they came to the German frontier,
They hung down their heads with anguish.
(Die Beiden Grenadieren).
Mozart is to him, as to all great artists, a veritable divinity. "Do not put Beethoven," says he, "too soon into the hands of the young: steep and strengthen them in the fresh animation of Mozart.... The music of the first act of Figaro I consider the most heavenly that Mozart ever wrote." And with his customary absolute freedom from professional envy, he terms Mendelssohn "the Mozart of the nineteenth century," and will not even sit in the same room with anyone who disparages him. He has upheld with noble enthusiasm the merits of such rising stars as Chopin, Heller, Gade, Sterndale-Bennett, Berlioz, Franz, and Brahms. He has, it may be said, only one bête noir, the blatant and flamboyant Meyerbeer. Regarding Wagner, his opinion is in abeyance. "Wagner is a man of education and spirit ... certainly a clever fellow, full of crazy ideas, and audacious to a degree.... Yet he cannot write or think of four consecutive lines of beautiful, hardly of good, music." So Schumann has delivered himself at one time; but he is ready to revoke this judgment, and to declare, "I must take back one or two things I said after reading the score of Tannhäuser; it makes quite a different effect on the stage. Much of it impressed me deeply."
When his guests depart, Schumann accompanies them a little way, that he may, according to his invariable custom, spend an hour or so of the evening at Popper's Restaurant. There, should his friend Verhulst be present, he enjoys what is for him a free and animated conversation—otherwise, among the chink of glasses and clank of plates, he remains aloof and meditative.