The last piece in Schumann’s “Kreisleriana,” main movement. After the autograph in the possession of Baroness Wilhelm von Rothschild, Frankfort a.M. Differs from the printed edition, being simpler and more massive.
The Kreisleriana are dedicated to Chopin; the Fantasia Op. 17 to Liszt. We are on the height on which the first artists of the piano are greeting each other; on which breathes the purest atmosphere of this intimate music; we are on the heights of a culture which has become the dominating power of the world. The Fantasia is, so to speak, a confession of this devotion. In its first movement there is an undefinable romantic feeling as of the words woven round a legendary theme (he called it first the “Ruin”), with mysterious passages, answering voice-parts, mystic ghostly calls. In the second there is the grand triumph, a panegyric on technique and toil—he called it the “Gate of Victory.” In the third is the poetic transfiguration (at first called “Star-picture”), with its ethereal dances and the dying sound of harps, and the sweeping mist, broken chords with pedal, resolved in rubato, over which descend the mournful melodies.[130] The first movement is not free from the variation-technique of the time; the second is a tribute to virtuosity; the third, a half Schubert. Contrasted with the Kreisleriana of 1838 we recognise an earlier style of 1836, and we wonder at the strong power of progressive development in Schumann—a power, which, strange to say, some would deny to him. But the Fantasia was so happily felt that it despised time and still to-day stands in the forefront. As there are Études which seem to hold out a hand to Romance, so here Romance held out a hand to technique; and the Fantasia, in its three forms, remained a classic monument of all the contemporary tendencies. When Schumann published it he cut out the old inscriptions, its profits being devoted to assisting in erecting the Beethoven monument at Bonn, and wrote above the first movement this motto from Schlegel: “Through every tone there passes, to him who deigns to list, in varied earthly dreaming, a tone of gentleness.”
In the productive year 1838, before the Scenes of Childhood, Schumann had written three books of “Novellettes,” which were now published for the first time and dedicated to Henselt. Springing from his happiest period the music flows as if of its own accord, and its framework is admirable. They are the most subtle pieces conceivable for the piano, and the most popular of his compositions, neat and regular music. Their construction is transparent; the sections arranged for contrasted effects. In the first piece we have the March, the Cantabile, and the Canon; in the second the glitter of semiquavers and the delicate rocking Intermezzo; in the third the humorous Staccato and the wild B minor section; in the fourth the dance and the song mingle with the staccatos of the sequences; in the fifth a Polonaise, in a style approached by few, and Intermezzi in legato, cantabile, and staccato; in the sixth and seventh the effective contrasts of scherzo, canon, and cantabile; in the eighth an air in duet alternates with several trios; all kinds of sections are attached, a voice from afar, and free repetitions, as if everything left over had been thrown into it. They are unsurpassed, wonderfully dainty pieces; but the Kreisleriana were an experience.
The charming smoothness of the Novellettes was no longer alien to Schumann’s feelings. The older he grew the more he strove to attain a “dry light,” which might easily prove dangerous to his romantic temperament. He began to despise the exuberance of his youthful works. We cannot, in reading the last piano works of Schumann, restrain a certain feeling of pain. Where once the stream bubbled and sparkled, it now flowed too evenly; where before the music was felt, it is now constructed. A new ideal comes slowly into the circle of Schumann’s sympathies, and that was Mendelssohn. He not only admired Mendelssohn’s greatness, placing him perhaps even above Chopin, but, as his works show, he envied his constraining plastic art, which possibly he mistook for monumental calm.
In piano-literature Mendelssohn is the composer for young girls, the elegant romancist of the drawing-room. From the sphere of polite literature, where passion must be trimmed and neat, and where there is no sentence passed without amiability, and a smiling laissez-faire rules the day, there penetrates into glowing romance the limitation of this neatness, and a formality well adapted to the drawing-room. The old Volkslieder, the simple Ritornells, the tones of aspiration in forgotten old airs, the dances of elves, the moonlight love-scenes, are all brought on to a parquet for the delectation of comfortable people. It is a gilt-edged lyricism, without any unbefitting exhibition of unseemly feeling; a mere art of perfumery compared with Bach and Schubert. The development of the pieces shall exhibit nothing to shock; it shall run on in the most intelligible manner. A dainty accompaniment-figure is formed, which plays some bars alone; then follows the melodious and soothing theme, which moves in certain sequences and delights to rock itself to and fro on related degrees of the scale. The strophic divisions are clearly defined; small cadenzas mark the main sections; and at the conclusion there appears a miniature canon or a vigorous episode, which leaves behind a good impression on the mind of the satisfied listener.
At the head of this enormous branch of piano-literature stands Mendelssohn. His “Songs without words,” of which six books appeared in his life and two more after his death, gave the decisive form to this class of Short Story in music. All the technical devices of the time, the wide stretches, the broken accompaniments, the multiplicity of rhythms, are here adapted to the drawing-room. The Volkslieder are put, as it were, into evening dress. That in A minor is surrounded towards the conclusion with octaves, which are merely technical, and without emotional significance. The Funeral March, compared with that of a Beethoven, is as if it were written for a set of marionettes. The Spring Song is, so to speak, set on wires. And all is so beautiful, so objectionably beautiful! It tells us all through that it is beautiful, and the composer moves his head to and fro with the music, and says, “How beautiful it is!” Until at last, when we have grown to man’s estate, we can endure it all no longer; or at most we take up once again from time to time this or that song, preferably one in quick time—perhaps the Spinning-Song, the best of all.[131]
From these drawing-room romances of Mendelssohn one piece is to be taken apart, as equally pleasing both to young and to old. This is the Elf-music. Such music, with its gay dancing of gnomes, intermingled with a slightly sentimental air, was wonderfully suited to Mendelssohn’s genius. He never surpassed his overture to the Midsummer-Night’s Dream, written at seventeen. There are four of these “Elf” or “Kobold” pieces for the piano. The first, in the Character-Pieces, Op. 7, begins in E major, shoots rapidly past, and ends very daintily in the minor. The second, Op. 16, 2, begins on the contrary in E minor, and concludes in a very spirited fashion in the major—a very poetical little Battle of the Mice, with tiny fanfares and dances, all kinds of squeaks, and runnings to and fro of a captivating grace. The third is the Rondo Capriccioso (Op. 14), for which all piano-players have a deadly hatred, but which is much prettier than we are inclined to think to-day, when it is worn out. Finally we have the F sharp minor Scherzo, which was written for the “Album des Pianistes,” with dotted, staccato, and singing themes, and stands out among his pieces.
Head of Mendelssohn, after Hildebrand.