ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856) EARL WILD in Concert
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EARL WILD In Concert 1983 & 1987 SCHUMANN Papillons Op.2 Sonata No.1 Op.11 Waldszenen Op.82 ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856) EARL WILD in Concert Papillons, Op. 2 Sonata No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 11 Waldszenen, Op. 82 “As if all mental pictures must be shaped to fit one or two forms! As if each idea did not come into existence with its form ready-made! As if each work of art had not its own meaning and consequently its own form!” (Robert Schumann) No composer investigated the Romantic’s obsession with feeling and passion quite so thoroughly as Robert Alexander Schumann. For most of his life he suffered from inner torment - he died insane - but then some psychologists argue that madness is a necessary Robert Schumann attribute of genius. He was virtually self-taught (there were no musical antecedents in his family) which may account in part for having no qualms about dispensing with traditional forms of music and inventing his own (though in later years he wrote symphonies and quartets). Few men of his day knew more about music and musical theory than Schumann, but right from the start he was an innovator, a propagandist for the new, in love with literature almost as much as he was with music. His boldest contribution was to translate in his own picturesquely-entitled music - Arabesque, Kreisleriana, Carnaval, Papillons, Kinderszenen - his innermost thoughts and – 2 – emotions, unhindered by academic form. To Schumann, the pure idea from a cre- ative mind was itself sufficient aesthetic justification of its existence and for its form and content. The correct working of a fugue, a rondo or a sonata was of far less importance than of conveying mood, colour, atmosphere and allusion. Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony, on 8 June 1810, the son of a bookseller and publisher. Piano lessons began at the age of ten but, though encouraged in his musical ambitions, he was persuaded to study law as a career in nearby Leipzig, thence to Heidelberg for a Schumann as a child year. In 1826, a chain of events began that twisted and turned the path down which Schumann might have expected to travel trou- ble-free. His elder sister, Emilie, committed suicide (only one of Schumann’s three brothers survived to middle age) and shortly afterwards his father died at the age of fifty- three from an undiagnosed nervous disorder. In 1830, Schumann persuaded his moth- er and guardian to allow him to drop his legal studies and pursue a career in music. He was recommended to a piano teacher in Leipzig named Friedrich Wieck, a man who was to have the profoundest effect on Schumann’s life. Schumann boarded in his tutor’s house, determined to become a world famous virtuoso, sharing his life with the Wiecks and their prodigiously talented young pianist daughter, Clara. His mature career as a composer dates from this time. But a second tragic event put an end to his ambitions as a concert pianist. He developed an ailment in the index and middle fingers of his right hand and, in an attempt to remedy the defect, was perma- – 3 – nently crippled by a mechanical device that pur- portedly helped strengthen and lift the middle finger. Some theories have it that the original problem was due to the side-effect of mercury treatment for syphilis. Whatever the truth, from this date onwards he noted unaccountable peri- ods of angst and momentary losses of conscious- ness, bouts of breathing difficulty and aural hal- lucinations. He suffered from insomnia and acrophobia. Entries in his diary as early as 1833 reveal his fear of becoming insane. With his first compositions published, Schumann launched into a parallel career as a writer on music. His sharp and perceptive views made him one of the leading and most influen- tial critics of the day. In 1834, he decided to start his own magazine, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896) At the same time, he fell in love with Clara Wieck. Perhaps surmising that Schumann was an unstable character, Friedrich Wieck violently opposed the relationship, and his actions over the following seven years won him a place in musical history, not as the obscure teacher of a great composer or as the father of a great pianist (which Clara would become) but as the disagreeable father-in- law who thwarted young love. He forced the couple to separate, opened their love let- ters and initiated a campaign of personal vilification against Schumann, so set was he against his daughter’s marriage. Ironically, the benign effect of this was to inspire in Schumann music of a depth and passion which (who knows?) he may not have reached had he not been prevented from marrying Clara Wieck. Carnaval, the Davidsbündlertänze, Kreisleriana, Kinderszenen, the Sonatas No. 1 in F sharp minor and – 4 – No. 2 in G minor, as well as the monumental Fantaisie in C major all stem from this period. (Strangely, however much Wieck objected to Schumann as a son-in-law, he did not reject him as a composer. In fact, it was Wieck who gave Papillons to Clara to learn. One of the things that defined Clara’s later career was her promotion of her husband’s music and Papillons was one of the first of his pieces she performed.) The affair ended in court, judgement went against Wieck and the happy couple were mar- ried on 12 September 1840, the day before Clara’s twenty-first birthday. Was it a successful marriage? It would seem so. Schumann’s career as a composer entered a new stage: in 1840 alone he composed over 100 songs and in 1841, over just four days, he sketched out his ‘Spring’ Symphony Robert and Clara, 1850 No. 1. Ambitious as she was for herself, Clara was even more ambitious for her husband - a difficult balance when a pianist needs to prac- tice and a composer has to work in silence. Having been brought up by her father in strict classical mode, as it were, she felt that unless Robert wrote symphonies and operas he could never fully realise himself and attain the heights reached by Beethoven and other symphonic heroes. So, from the last fifteen years of his life come the four Symphonies, the magnificent Piano Concerto, the three String Quartets, the E flat Piano Quartet and the pioneering Piano Quintet Op. 44. From the mid 1840s onwards, Schumann’s mental health began to deteriorate pro- gressively. He resigned from the teaching post Mendelssohn had created for him at his new Conservatory in Leipzig, and his time as Director of Music in Düsseldorf proved to – 5 – be a disaster. Schumann was no conductor, a talent that the position demanded, and with his natural reserve now exaggerated by his inability to communi- cate and, at times, unaware of his surroundings he was forced to step down. Plagued by aural and mental hal- lucinations, in February 1854 he tried to kill himself by drowning in the Rhine. He was rescued and, at his own request, placed in an asylum at Endenich near Bonn. Here, Brahms was one of the few welcome vis- itors. Some sources say that Schumann refused to see Clara or any of their children, others that Clara would not visit for fear of upsetting him. Schumann lived on in this unhappy state for a further two years. Robert and Clara had eight living children and two miscarriages. The living children were: Marie (1841- Schumann, 1830 1929), Elise (1843-1928), Julie (1845-1872), Emil (1846-1847), Ludwig (1848-1899), Ferdinand (1849-1891), Eugenie (1851-1938) and Felix (1854-1879). Robert never met his son, Felix, because he was institutionalized before his son was born. Opinions vary as to whether the final cause of death was tertiary syphilis, sclerosis of the brain (his own doctor’s verdict), dementia praecox or starvation induced by psychot- ic depression. Whatever, it was the cruellest and most un-Romantic of ends. 1 Papillons, Op. 2 (1829/31) Dedicated to Therese, Rosalie and Emilie [Performance recorded in concert in Montreal, 4 November 1983] Papillons - Butterflies. But these are not the delicate winged creatures depicted by – 6 – Grieg and Rosenthal in their keyboard minia- tures. These are revellers at a costume ball. Schumann grew up surrounded by books and, of all the great composers, none attempted such a fusion between music and literature. He read voraciously - Goethe and Shakespeare, of course, but particularly the leading romantics of his day: Byron, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Klemens Brentano, Ludwig Tieck and, especially, Jean Paul, the pseudonym of the visionary writer and humorist Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825). Born in northern Bavaria, Jean Paul worked as an impoverished tutor until his first literary success in 1793 with Die unsichtare Loge (The Invisible Lodge), followed by Hesperus (1795) and Campanerthal (1797). The romance Titan (1800-03) he considered his masterpiece, while Schumann, 1850 Dr. Katzenbergers Badereise (Dr. Katzenberger’s Trip to the Spa) (1809) is said to be the best of his satirico-humorous writings. For a time Jean Paul was idolised. Schumann worshipped him, devouring his remarks on music, such as: “Sound shines like the dawn and the sun rises in the form of sound; sound seeks to rise in music, and colour is light... It is music alone which can open the ultimate gates to the infinite.” ‘If everybody read Jean Paul,’ Schumann wrote to a friend when he was eighteen, ‘we should be better but more unhappy. Sometimes he almost clouds my mind, but the rain- bow of peace and the natural strength of man bring sweet tears, and the heart comes through its ordeal marvellously purified and softened.’ The Jean Paul novel which – 7 – inspired the brief introduction and twelve short pieces of Papillons was Flegeljahre, a title which might be translated as ‘That Awkward Age’ or ‘Cubhood’.