The ‘Songs without Words’ were published in six groups of six pieces each during his life. After his death in 1847 two more sets appeared. The influence of all these was widely felt, particularly among composers of mediocre gifts. Chopin had no liking for them. In fact, Mendelssohn’s music was more than ordinarily distasteful to him; and he is said to have declared that Mendelssohn never wrote anything better than the first song without words. In some respects this is true. Schumann had a great admiration for Mendelssohn; admired his orderly style and manner. But Schumann’s individuality was far too pronounced, especially in pianoforte predilections, to submit to the milky sway of Mendelssohn.
In pianoforte music, William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875) carried on the Mendelssohn tradition quite undefiled. Bennett was more than a pupil of Mendelssohn; he was a devoted and unqualified admirer. His own pianoforte works are numerous, but they have suffered something of the same malice of Fate that still preserves the ‘Songs without Words’ chiefly for fun. They include four concertos, and many short pieces, studies, diversions, impromptus. They have the merits of their prototypes, clear, faultless writing and melodiousness.
A contemporary of Mendelssohn whose life led him finally to Petrograd, is still remembered by one or two of his studies. This is Adolf Henselt (b. 1814-89). Henselt’s work is really independent of Mendelssohn. His style was founded upon a close acquaintance with Weber’s. In 1836 he gave private recitals in Berlin and was especially prized for his playing of the Weber sonatas. Two sets of concert studies were published as opus 2; and in them is the still famous and delightful Si oiseau j’étais. Besides these he composed numbers of Rhapsodies, Ballades, and other short pieces in the romantic style; all of which together show distinctly more originality in the treatment of the piano than Mendelssohn showed.
II
Meanwhile Robert Schumann was composing sets of pieces which have been and long will be regarded as one of the most precious contributions of the Romantic movement to pianoforte literature. Schumann was an enthusiast and an innovator. He was a poet and a warm-hearted critic. He was the champion of the new and the fresh, of self-expression and noble sentiment. In his early manhood a strained finger resulted from over-enthusiastic and unwise efforts to make his hand limber, and cut short his career as a concert pianist, for which he had given up his study of the law, not without some opposition. He turned, therefore, with all fervor to composing music for the pianoforte, and before his long-delayed marriage with Clara Wieck, daughter of his teacher, had published the sets of pieces on which a great part of his fame now rests.
Schumann was steeped in romantic literature, particularly in the works of Jean Paul Richter and E. T. A. Hoffmann; and most of his works show the influence of these favorite writers upon him. One finds symbolical sequences of notes, acrostics in music, expressions of double and even triple personalities; but these things are of minor importance in his music. The music itself is remarkably warm and poetic, remarkably sincere and vigorous whatever the inspiration may have been. It is happily sufficiently beautiful in itself without explanation of the cryptograms which oftener than not lie underneath it.
He was, as we have said, an explorer and an innovator by nature; and his music is full of signs of it. Though his treatment of the piano lacks the unfailing and unique instinct of Chopin, nevertheless his compositions opened up a new field of effects. Not all of these are successful. Experiments with overtones such as one finds, for instance, at the end of the Paganini piece in the Carnaval can hardly be said to be worth while. The result is too palpably an isolated effect and nothing more. It is too self-conscious. But he was of great significance in expanding the sonority of the instrument, in the use of the pedal, in the blending of harmonies, in several finer touches of technique. The combination of two distinct themes in the last movement of the Papillons, the fluent and sonorous use of double notes in the Toccata, the wide skips in the ‛Arlequin’ and the ‛Paganini’ numbers of the Carnaval, the latter with its cross-accents; the Reconnaissance in the same series, with its repeated notes; the rolling figures in the first movement of the Kreisleriana; these, among other signs of his originality, are new in pianoforte music.
His compositions demand from the pianist an unlimited and a powerful technique, yet it cannot be said of any that it is virtuoso music. He employed his skill not so much to display as to express his ideas. Nowhere does the pianoforte seem more the instrument of intimate and highly romantic sentiment. Of figure work and ornamentation there is very little. His music is not at all dazzling. Much of it is veiled. At the most he is boisterous, as in parts of the Faschingsschwank and the last movements of the Études Symphoniques. He rather avoids the high, brilliant registers of the keyboard, stays nearly constantly in the middle of things, deals in solid stuff, not tracery.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of his style is his frequent use of syncopated rhythms. This becomes at times an obsession with him; and there are many passages in his music so continuously off the beat, that the original measure is quite lost, and the syncopation is to all practical purpose without effect. In such passages it seems hardly possible that Schumann intended the original beat to be kept in mind by the accentuation of notes that are of secondary importance; unless, of course, the interest of the music is chiefly rhythmical. Yet in some passages of purely melodic significance this may be done without awkwardness, producing an effect of dissociation of melody and harmony which may be what Schumann heard in his mind.
These are problems for the pianist, but a few of them may be suggested here. The last movement of the very beautiful concerto is in 3/4 time. There is no change of time signature for the second theme. This, as first announced by the orchestra in E major and later taken up by the piano solo in B major, is none the less in 3/2 time. Such must be the effect of it, because the passage is long and distinct enough to force the 3/4 beat out of the mind, since no note falls in such a way as to accent it. But when the orchestra takes up this theme, again in E major, the piano contributes a steadily flowing stream of counterpoint. In this it is possible to bring out the original measure beat, throwing the whole piano part into a rhythm counter to the rhythm of the orchestra. Such an accentuation is likewise out of line with the natural flow of the counterpoint; yet it may be what Schumann desired here, as well as in the following section, where, though the orchestra is playing in 3/2 time, the pianist may go against the natural line of his own part and bring out a measure of three-quarter notes.