This man of delicate feeling, who wished to reduce piano-culture to a system, was editor of a paper, which he founded at Leipzig in the year 1834, along with certain friends and men of like tastes, of whom he seems to have valued most Schunke, who died very soon. This “New Magazine of Music” was Schumann’s special medium, and in it he published his splendid and very spirited criticisms and aphorisms; later, when Brendel purchased it from him, it was of equal use to Wagner, his exact opposite. Till 1844 Schumann edited it for the most part personally; and his position aided the spread of his works, which laid themselves out so little for popular success. Still more effective was the career of his betrothed, who because of certain awkward obstacles only became his wife in 1840. This was his most productive year. It saw the appearance of a hundred and thirty-eight songs, and of the cycle of Heine’s lyrics (Op. 24). If the betrothed Clara and the piano were spiritually united, the married Clara and the song were equally so. Thus the songs stand precisely midway between his youthful piano-writings and the orchestral and choral efforts of his later years. And indeed the piano succeeds better in them than in any song hitherto written. The accompaniments of “Du, meine Seele” or of the F sharp major “Ueberm Garten durch die Lüfte,” are minute and scrupulous pieces of artistic work.
The eighteen “Davidsbündler,” Schumann’s first complete piano-work, were composed in 1837. Clara contributed the first bars—a cheerful musical motto. Schumann was fond of accepting his first bars as gifts from friends. The Romancist was fond of these incursions into actuality, this poetry in the real. As the letters A B E G G had once taken his fancy, so later did A S C H. And once he wrote in Gade’s family album a piece on “Gade, Ade” (Gade, farewell).
Clara Schumann, née Wieck.
Schumann’s music is characterised in few strokes; it is never hard to recognise its features. The interwoven melodies, the love of “anticipations,” the rollicking humour, which might almost be borrowed from old drinking songs, the contrapuntal collisions of the bass on which the light waltz flutters down, the cheerfully pensive codas, the restlessness of his syncopated rhythms, the sweet lulling romantic tone mingled with wild and vigorous march-motives, the full effect of broken chord passages of mounting fifths, the conclusions of the sections abruptly broken off by a staccato chord—all these were to be seen in spring-like freshness in the “Davidsbündler.” We have there the “einfaches stück” of Eusebius, the free recitative in No. 7 beginning with arpeggiando chords for the left hand. Next, “Florestan’s lips quiver.” Then follow the extraordinarily beautiful E flat major (No. 14) with its airy melancholy; the staccato, passing humorously over into the “Wie aus der Ferne,” and finally “Happiness speaks out of his eyes.” Nothing so wonderfully simple, so old-new, so true, so German, had been painted on the piano since Schubert. And here was a yet more modern spirit—a mind whose depths were not merely over-flowed by the streams of music, but were pictured in delicate musical emotion. The construction is clean and simple; the language refined and lofty; the whole the consolidated improvisation of a mind standing at the highest point of representative art. More perfect improvisations it did not lie in the nature of the piano to produce. It was the high-water mark of piano literature.
I pass rapidly over Op. 7, one of his earliest composed pieces, the toccata, brilliant in colouring, delicately chased, bold in construction, wonderful in technique; and Op. 8, a concert allegro, in which he, certainly in an unusual way compared with the literature of the time, sacrifices a little to popularity, and thereby crushes out certain beauties. I pass on to Op. 9, the “Scenes Mignonnes” of the carnival, in which neither technical nor concert problems were to be mastered. The motive of the carnival is A S C H, which is the name of the home of one of his musical lady friends and which contains all the letters of Schumann’s name which are adapted to the stave.[129] A bustling ball-play develops itself, Pierrot and Harlequin appear, a Valse Noble unites the parties, the mask of Eusebius is seen through, and the gentleness of Florestan is resumed, the Coquette frisks by, Papillons flutter round, and the letters A S C H dance a rapid waltz. Chiarina and Estrella, not unknown characters, are represented; and Chopin appears in person between them. A short recognition scene in the time of the Polonaise, in which we hear the dainty causeries among the marching rhythms—the miniature ballet of Pantaloon and Columbine—a comfortable allemande, into which Paganini suddenly darts with his most extravagant leaps; in the distance a gentle confession of love;—all comes again together in the polite and festal promenade of the couples. There is a pause; and then reminiscences run through the memory; one melody restlessly pursues another; room is made; the final effect comes; the “Davidsbündler” begin an abusive march against the Philistines; they roar out the Grandfather song—“Grandfather wedded my Grandmother dear, so Grandfather then was a bridegroom, I fear”—and the people enjoy it, till they all, with a “Down with the Philistines,” join in, and a galloping stretto finishes the boisterous amusement.
The inscriptions Schumann inserted later. He took a literary delight in putting in an “Estrella,” as it is seen in old copper engravings. It was the pleasure of the delicate man of taste in labelling. But he laid no stress on this nomenclature; the relations indicated were as wide as before, when there were none of these labels. We are reminded of Couperin, whose miniature porcelain pictures were ticketed just like this moving panorama of tunes, and in surprisingly similar style. In both the titles were nothing but a halt in the midst of full musical representation; they involved no limitation, no point of departure. Under like tickets, works came into the world which were separated in time and in tone by whole centuries. Schumann himself almost thought the titles a trifle too theatrical. The Davidsbündler, he said, are related to the carnival like faces to masks.
Among the works that followed, technical and purely musical gifts alternated. As Op. 10 we have further Paganini Études, with wide stretches, contrapuntal, transformed in the spirit of Schumann. Here, as before, the order of publication did not correspond to that of composition. The F sharp minor sonata (Op. 11) was begun contemporaneously with the Impromptus. It was dedicated to Clara. It is a romantic deepening of the sonata form, cast throughout in these small lyrical sections which are peculiar to the time, but here are held together by an internal unity. We must feel this unity in order not to cut up the work into mere fragments. An oceanic vastness spreads over it, whose tone is struck in the broad introduction. It has a first theme, contrapuntal in style, and a second of full-voiced melody; the working-out attaching new ideas half in imitative, half in étude fashion. On the third, the A, which drags itself over, the aria begins its deep-felt lament, in three melodies with the genuine Schumann-like coda, sighing itself away under the final slurs. The fresh staccato canon work of the scherzo carries us with it. Two wonderful trios introduce themselves, the second with the remarkable recitative. The conclusion is formed by a modest movement which is put together like a mosaic out of a stormy quaver theme, two cantabiles, a syncopated motive, a section in full chords and a stretto. We shall only feel the unity if we give our playing a touch of improvisation. In a word the case is this; in a sonata of Schumann what most charms us is the movements regarded separately; and in the movements, the separate passages. This Sonata, like the others of his works, must be considered as a volume of lyrical poems.
The “Fantasie-stücke” were the next work. These again are a completed picture, for the most part broader in conception than the Davidsbündler, with which they were contemporaneous in composition. They were the ideal of delicate piano composition, and have remained so down to the present day. The sweet “Abendruhe,” the stormy “Aufschwung,” the dainty “Warum,” the capricious “Grillen,” the gloomy “Nachtscene,” in which Schumann was thinking of Hero and Leander, the “Fabel,” alternating in Ritornell and Staccato; the “Traumeswirren,” and the beautiful “Ende vom Lied,” whose humour sounds again wonderfully in the intellectual augmentation at the conclusion—all this formed an extraordinary picture-gallery. The height of art was attained in the “Nacht,” where the dark rolling accompaniment, the solitary sighs in the gloomy air, the deep returns to darkness, the gently sounding and wild shrieking cries and emotional songs, over the gurgling accompanying figure which runs through the whole, made one of the immortal piano-pieces.