The middle section of the second movement of the great Fantasy in C major presents the same problem. Here we have a melody in long phrases. The notes of it are off the beat, the chords which furnish its harmony are on the beat. Every eight measures the natural rhythm asserts itself; yet even these periodic reminiscences of the measure cannot serve to throw the whole melody into syncopation. The melody is too strong and its phrases too long. More than the occasional measures, it must, if allowed fully to sing, determine the rhythm of the passage. So it is usually played; so, without special effort to the contrary, it will impress the ear. Now is it possible that Schumann intended the accompanying chords to be distinctly accented? Such an accent, delicately applied, with the skillful use of the pedal, will create a wholly new effect, which can be drawn from all the succeeding passages as well.
Other passages offer no alternative. There is no way to suggest the original beat except by movement of the body, or by grunting; both of which are properly discountenanced. Examples may be found in the first movement of the Faschingsschwank and elsewhere.
Most of Schumann’s pianoforte music is made up of short pieces. Such are the Papillons, the Carnaval, the Davidsbündler Dances, the Faschingsschwank, the ‘Symphonic Studies,’ and the Kreisleriana. Each of these is a cycle of pieces, and is at best only loosely held together by one device or another. The Papillons are scenes at a fancy dress ball. The return of the first piece at the end gives a definite boundary, as it were, to the whole. The Faschingsschwank are pictures of a fête in Vienna. There is no structural unity to the work as a whole. The fanciful idea upon which it rests alone holds the pieces loosely together.
The Carnaval, likewise a scene at a fair, representations in music of various people, sights, and sounds, is built on three series of notes which Schumann called ‘Sphinxes’ and which he had published with the music. It is very doubtful whether the employment of these sequences in one form or another gives to the whole series an organic interdependence. Only with care can the student himself trace them, in such varied guises do they appear; and to be left in entire ignorance of them would hardly interfere in the least with an emotional appreciation of the music. The return at the end of some of the movements and passages heard at the beginning, however, rounds off the work and makes an impression of proportions. Moreover, within the work many of the pieces lead without pause into the next, or are without an end at all, like the Florestan, which is left fulminating in the air.
In the Davidsbündler there is again the return at the end of familiar phrases, but the Kreisleriana is like the Faschingsschwank without structural unity. Yet perhaps none of the Schumann cycles is less friable than the Kreisleriana. It is long and it is varied; but here, perhaps more than in any other similar works of the composer, there is a continuous excellence of workmanship and intensity of expression.
Besides these cycles there are sets of short pieces which are independent of each other. Such are the ‘Fantasy Pieces,’ the Novelettes, the ‘Romances,’ and the Bunte Blätter, among others. These may be fairly compared with the ‘Songs without Words’ of Mendelssohn. How utterly different they prove to be, how virile and how genuinely romantic! They are not only the work of a creative genius of the highest order, they show an ever venturesome spirit at work on the keyboard. Take, for example, the ‘Fantasy Pieces.’ The first, called Des Abends, is as properly a song as any of Mendelssohn’s short pieces which are so designated. The very melody is inspired and new, rising and falling in the long smooth phrases which are the gift of the great artist, not the mere music-maker. The accompaniment appears simple enough; but the wide spacing, the interlocking of the hands, above all, its rhythm, which is not the rhythm of the melody, these are all signs of fresh life in music. The interweaving of answering phrases of the melody in the accompaniment figures, the contrast of registers, the exquisite points of harmonic color which the accompaniment touches in the short coda, these are signs of the great artist. It is remarkable how little Mendelssohn’s skill prompted him to such beautiful involutions; how, master as he was of the technique of sound, he could amble for ever in the commonplace. And Schumann, with far less grasp of the science, could venture far, far beyond him.
The second of the ‘Fantasy Pieces,’ Aufschwung, calls imperiously upon the great resources of the pianoforte. There is power and breadth of style, passion and fancy at work. It is a wholly different and greater art than Mendelssohn’s. It is effective, it speaks, it proclaims with the voice of genius. And in the little Warum? which follows it, skill is used for expression. There is perhaps more appreciation of the pianoforte in this piece, which by nature is not pianistic, than there is in all the ‘Songs without Words,’ an appreciation of the contrasting qualities of high and low sounds, of the entwining of two melodies, of the suggestive possibilities of harmony.
Take them piece by piece, the Grillen with its brusque rhythms, its syncopations, its rapidly changing moods; the In der Nacht, with its agitated accompaniment, its broken melodies, and the soaring melody of the middle section, not to mention the brief canonic passages which lead from this section back to the wild first mood; the delicate Fabel, the Traumes Wirren with its fantastic, restless, vaporish figures and the strange, hushed, shadows of the middle section; and the Ende vom Lied, so full for the most part of good humor and at the end so soft and mysteriously sad; these are all visions, all prophecies, all treasure brought back from strange and distant beautiful lands in which a fervid imagination has been wandering. Into such a land as this Mendelssohn never ventured, never even glanced. For Schumann it was all but more real than the earth upon which he trod, such was the force of his imagination.
The imagination is nowhere more finely used than in the short pieces called the Kinderscenen. Each of these pieces gives proof of Schumann’s power to become a part, as it were, of the essence of things, to make himself the thing he thought or even the thing he saw. They are not picture music, nor wholly program music. They are more a music of the imagination than of fact. Schumann has himself become a child in spirit and has expressed in music something of the unbound rapture of the child’s mind. So, even in a little piece like the ‘Rocking Horse,’ we have less the picture of the ‘galumphing’ wooden beast, than the ecstasy of the child astride it. In the Curiose Geschichte there is less of a story than of the reaction of the child who hears it. In the Bittendes Kind and the Fürchtenmachen this quality of imagination shows itself with almost unparalleled intensity. The latter is not the agency of fear, it is the fear itself, suspense, breathless agitation. The former does not beg a piece of cake; it is the anguished mood of desire. Only in the last two pieces does Schumann dissociate himself from the moods which he has been expressing. The former, if it is not the picture of the child falling asleep, is the process itself; the latter is, as it were, the poet’s benediction, tender and heartfelt.
The whole set presents an epitome of that imagination which gave to Schumann’s music its peculiar, intimate, and absorbing charm. His might well be considered the most subjective of all pianoforte music. It is for that reason dull to practice. The separate notes of which it is composed give little objective satisfaction. The labor of mastering them routs utterly in most cases the spirit which inspired them. Fine as the craftsman’s skill may prove to be in many of the pieces, it is peculiarly without significance, without vitality, until the whole is set in motion, or set afire by the imagination.