SYMPHONY NO. 2, IN C MAJOR, OP. 61
I. Sostenuto assai; allegro ma non troppo II. Scherzo: allegro vivace. Trio (1); Trio (2) III. Adagio espressivo IV. Allegro molto vivace
With the exception of the introduction to the first movement and the adagio, in which the romantic dreamer Schumann is revealed, the symphony has aged. And in this symphony, more than the other three, the orchestration seems hopelessly crude, ineffective, distressing to the ear, while the musical contents are seldom worthy of a more tasteful dress.
Yet there are few adagios to be compared with this dramatic song of Schumann. If he had only had the courage to cut out that meaningless and incongruous little episode, too deliberately contrapuntal.
In October, 1844, Schumann left Leipsic, where he had lived for about fourteen years. He had in July given up the editorship of the Neue Zeitschrift; he had been a teacher of pianoforte playing and composition at the Leipsic Conservatory from April, 1843. A singularly reserved man, hardly fitted for the duties of a teacher and without pupils, he was in a highly nervous state, so that a physician recommended a change of scene and told him he should not hear too much music. Schumann therefore moved back to Dresden. “Here,” he wrote in 1844, “one can recover the old lost longing for music, there is so little to hear. This suits my condition, for I still suffer very much from my nerves, and everything affects and exhausts me immediately.” He saw few people; he talked little. In the early ’eighties they still showed in Dresden a restaurant frequented by him, where, seated in a room with his head against a wall, he would sit for hours at a time, dreaming daydreams. In 1846 he was very sick, mentally and bodily. “He observed that he was unable to remember the melodies that occurred to him when he was composing; the effort of invention fatigued his mind to such an extent that it impaired his memory.” When he did work, he applied himself to contrapuntal problems.
The Symphony in C major, known as No. 2, but really the third—for the one in D minor, written first, was withdrawn after performance, remodeled, and finally published as No. 4—was composed in the years 1845 and 1846. The symphony was published, score and parts, in November, 1847. The symphony was first played at the Gewandhaus, Leipsic, under Mendelssohn’s direction, on November 5, 1846.
Schumann wrote from Dresden on April 2, 1849, to Otten, a writer and conductor at Hamburg, who had brought about the performance of the symphony in that city: “I wrote the symphony in December, 1845, when I was still half sick. It seems to me one must hear this in the music. In the finale I first began to feel myself; and indeed I was much better after I had finished the work. Yet, as I have said, it recalls to me a dark period of my life. That, in spite of all, such tones of pain can awaken interest, shows me your sympathetic interest. Everything you say about the work also shows me how thoroughly you know music; and that my melancholy bassoon in the adagio, which I introduced in that spot with especial fondness, has not escaped your notice, gives me the greatest pleasure.” In the same letter he expressed the opinion that Bach’s Passion according to John was a more powerful and poetic work than his Passion according to Matthew.
And yet, when Jean J. H. Verhulst of The Hague (1816-91) visited Schumann in 1845 and asked him what he had written that was new and beautiful, Schumann answered he had just finished a new symphony. Verhulst asked him if he thought he had fully succeeded. Schumann then said, “Yes, indeed, I think it’s a regular Jupiter.”
There is a dominating motive, or motto, which appears more or less prominently in three of the movements. This motto is proclaimed at the very beginning, sostenuto assai, 6-4, by horns, trumpets, alto trombone, pianissimo, against flowing counterpoint in the strings. This motto is heard again in the finale of the following allegro, near the end of the scherzo, and in the concluding section of the finale. (It may also be said here that relationship of the several movements is further founded by a later use of other fragments of the introduction and by the appearance of the theme of the adagio in the finale.) This motto is not developed: its appearance is episodic. It is said by one of Schumann’s biographers that the introduction was composed before the symphony was written, and that it was originally designed for another work. The string figure is soon given to the wood-wind instruments. There is a crescendo of emotion and an acceleration of the pace until a cadenza for the first violins brings in the allegro, ma non troppo, 3-4. The first theme of this allegro is exposed frankly and piano by full orchestra with the exception of trumpets and trombones. The rhythm is nervous, and accentuation gives the idea of constant syncopation. The second theme, if it may be called a theme, is not long in entering. The exposition of this movement, in fact, is uncommonly short. Then follows a long and elaborate development. In the climax the motto is sounded by the trumpets.