Schumann on Music: A Selection from the Writings

281 Pages·1988·1.29 MB·English

by  Robert Schumann

Radio Times Hulton Picture Library

Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
AN OPUS 2
HENRI VIEUXTEMPS AND LOUIS LACOMBE
THEODOR STEIN
Études, Opus 125
NEW YEAR’S EDITORIAL
FLORESTAN’S SHROVETIDE ORATION
FERDINAND HILLER - Études, Opus 15
JOSEPH CHRISTOPH KESSLER
FROM THE DAVIDSBÜNDLER ARCHIVES
LOUIS SPOHR’S ‘WEIHE DER TONE’
CHRISTIAN GOTTLIEB MÜLLER - Symphony No. 3
SOME NEW PIANO SONATAS
‘FURY OVER THE LOST PENNY’
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE KEYS
LETTERS FROM A (MUSIC-) LOVER
BERLIOZ’ ‘SINFONIE FANTASTIQUE’
PIANO SONATAS BY MENDELSSOHN AND SCHUBERT
A MONUMENT TO BEETHOVEN - FOUR VIEWS
THE PRIZE SYMPHONY
THEODOR DÖHLER
Piano Concerto No. 7
Piano Concertos Nos. 5 and 6
Piano Concerto No. 2
CHOPIN’S PIANO CONCERTOS
WILLIAM STERNDALE BENNETT
THE MUSEUM
(A Report to Jeanquirit in Augsburg)
THE OLD CAPTAIN
‘THE HUGUENOTS’
SCHUBERT’S GRAND DUO AND THREE LAST SONATAS
String Quartet No. 1 in E flat
PIANO CONCERTOS
GOTTFRIED PREYER’S SYMPHONY
Piano Concerto No. 2
Études, Opus 145
LISZT’S ÉTUDES
Concerts in Dresden and Leipzig
SCHUBERT’S SYMPHONY IN C
THE MUNICIPAL AND COMMUNAL MUSICAL SOCIETY OF THE
CITY OF KYRITZ
CHOPIN’S SONATA
(A Charity Recital for the Musicians’ Pension Fund)
Grand Fantasy
CHOPIN
MENDELSSOHN’S ‘SCOTTISH’ SYMPHONY
Sixth and Seventh Symphonies
RUDOLPH WILLMERS
ROBERT FRANZ
NIELS GADE
‘A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM’
Concerto without Orchestra
NEW PATHS
INDEX
A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF
INTEREST
INTRODUCTION
ROBERT SCHUMANN founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (literally, ‘New
Periodical for Music’) in 1834 when he was not yet twenty-four. He was its
owner, editor and principal critic until 1844 when he turned it over to a
colleague and moved to Dresden.
Nearly a decade later, after he and Clara had moved from Dresden to
Düsseldorf, and when he was once more suffering from symptoms of the mental
disease that would soon cost him his life, he began to assemble and edit the
hundreds of essays, articles, reviews, feuilletons, aphorisms, etc., that he had
written for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. They were published in 1854 as
Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker (‘Collected Writings about
Music and Musicians’) in two volumes.
There have been two previous attempts to translate Schumann into English.
The first was by Fanny Raymond Ritter1 who, in 1876-1880 brought out Music
and Musicians in two instalments designated, respectively, as First and Second
Series. Her arrangement of the material was influenced by the fact that the First
Series was published with no certainty that a Second Series would follow. For
obvious reasons she selected what appeared to her to be the best of the crop for
this First Series, including all the major set pieces such as Florestan’s
‘Shrovetide Oration’, the essays on Berlioz’ Sinfonie Fantastique and Schubert’s
Symphony in C major, the ‘Letters of a (Music-) Lover’, ‘A Monument to
Beethoven,’ ‘The Editor’s Ball,’ etc.
In so doing she disregarded the chronological order which Schumann had
chosen for his book. Lesser items were grouped according to forms, i.e. under
‘symphonies’, ‘overtures’, ‘studies for the pianoforte’, ‘concertos’, etc. This
system was continued more consistently in the Second Series. Schumann had
also used it, both in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and, chronologically, in his
Gesammelte Schriften, but Mrs. Ritter, in abandoning chronology, also
abandoned that continuity of history and style which is essential to an
appreciation of Schumann as writer and critic.
Her accomplishment in translating the whole two volumes was formidable,
Her accomplishment in translating the whole two volumes was formidable,
but the English is so dated and the error count so high that her work could not be
allowed to stand for ever as the English-speaking music lover’s only insight into
the literary and critical gifts of Robert Schumann. The volumes are, moreover,
almost totally devoid of annotation.
A second attempt was made under the sponsorship of the New Friends of
Music, of New York, in 1946 with the late Paul Rosenfeld as the translator. It
was published in the United States by Pantheon Books Inc. and in England by
Dennis Dobson. This time no effort at completeness was made, and again the
chronological order was disregarded. Instead, the emphasis was on what
Schumann had written about the great masters. All that he wrote on Beethoven,
for instance, was assembled under the heading, ‘Beethoven’, and all that he
wrote about Chopin under ‘Chopin’, including fragments culled from articles not
solely devoted to the composers concerned. Thus, of ‘The Editor’s Ball’, one of
Schumann’s most imaginative and literate pieces, we get only an excerpt dealing
with Chopin. The English, if hardly exemplary, is an improvement upon Mrs.
Ritter’s, and the error count is low. The annotation is meagre.
In plotting my own attempt I have been prompted by the conviction that a
chronological arrangement of the material selected is essential to an
understanding of Schumann’s progress as a writer and critic and also of the
evolution of music in Germany during a decisive decade; further by the thought
that Schumann’s position as a critic cannot be gauged simply by the glowing
words he had for the masters. If there are comparatively few among us today to
whom Spohr, Moscheles, Hummel, Thalberg, Hiller, Herz, Field, Kalkbrenner,
Cramer, Henselt, Heller, Loewe, Franz, Bennett and Gade are familiar, it does no
great credit to the way musical history is taught nowadays. They were
Schumann’s contemporaries. Many of them were his friends. They were famous
in their time; that they were eventually overshadowed by the larger figures of
Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, Chopin, Mendelssohn and Schumann himself is no
reason to condemn them to oblivion. In some ways, indeed, a knowledge of their
music and the details of their lives are more important to an understanding of the
musical life of Europe in the immediate post-Beethoven era than is familiarity
with the masterpieces, if only because they were relatively minor figures,
lacking that universality which confounds fashion, and therefore most
instructively typical. They were all a part of Schumann’s life and times, and
what he has to say about them tells us much not only about them, but also about
himself and the period in which he lived.
I have not, of course, attempted completeness. I have sought rather a cross-
section designed to reveal Schumann as fully as feasible, as writer and critic and
section designed to reveal Schumann as fully as feasible, as writer and critic and
to place him in perspective among his fellow musicians. He was, with Berlioz,
the first of the composer-critics. Unlike Berlioz, he wrote for a periodical that he
himself had founded and in accordance with policies of his own which had led to
its founding. About the latter there is no need to add to Schumann’s own
statements included in this selection, notably in the Preface and in the New
Year’s Editorial for 1835. It should be recorded, however, that Schumann’s
literary enterprise was successful. The circulation of the periodical was
numbered only in the hundreds, and Schumann made no personal fortune out of
it. But it was widely and effectively influential, and played a major part in
making Europeans, particularly Germans, aware of their musical heritage and the
obligations this heritage imposed upon them. It also furthered the early careers
of many fine young musicians whose names first came to public notice in its
pages, among them Chopin, Henselt, Heller, Hiller, Gade, Bennett and, of
course, Brahms.
Translating Schumann is not easy. As a writer he was rather the gifted
dilettante than the professional master. In the early years he was decisively and
excessively influenced by both the mind and the style of Jean Paul Richter.
Among the consequences were numerous passages abounding in metaphors
(often mixed), obscure allusions, coy disguises, mysteries, riddles and
ambiguous syntax. In other words, he tended to be self-conscious, high-falutin’
and pretentious, and succeeded, from time to time, in being only a bit silly. In
later years his writing became simpler, more to the point, more professional—
and rather less charming. He was composing music at a tremendous pace, and
his life was clouded for a time by Friedrich Wieck’s desperate efforts to frustrate
his courtship of Clara. There also appeared at this time the first manifestations of
his mental disorder. Writing was becoming a chore, and he no longer had the
time, probably no longer even the desire, to bring to the writing task the
enthusiasm, the concentration and the dedication required for those set pieces
that so distinguished the first years of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and which
show what a fine writer he might have become had writing been his sole
preoccupation.
He should probably be ranked, nevertheless, among the great critics of
European music. He lacked Hanslick’s easy mastery of the writer’s craft, his
breadth of experience and the elegance of his prose style. He lacked Berlioz’ gift
for the imaginative turn of phrase and his infectious pleasure in the ridiculous
and outrageous. He lacked Debussy’s sense of proportion, and he was rarely as
cutting or savage as Hugo Wolf. Many critics, German, French, English and
American have surpassed him in learning. He was, indeed, rather provincial.
Aside from a youthful vacation trip to Italy and tours with Clara to St.
Petersburg and Holland, he knew little of the world outside Germany, and his
prejudice against most things Italian and all things French (except Berlioz) was
pronounced and benighted. His denunciation of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots
merits inclusion among the stuffiest notices ever written. And yet his articles are
illuminated by a knowledge and appreciation of the composer’s craft unmatched
by any other critic, and inspired by the noblest concept of the composer’s
calling. They are also distinguished by a most uncommon decency. In reading
his enthusiastic comments on such men as Hiller, Kessler, Chopin, Mendelssohn,
Heller, Bennet, Gade, Henselt, etc., it should be remembered that they were all
his competitors. Such generous acknowledgement of their gifts, in most cases
inferior to his own, is eloquent testimony of high principle and purpose. And in
the case of composers whom he takes to task it is usually for failure to fulfil
earlier promise. It is often implied and sometimes stated that Schumann’s pen
has been sharpened by a sense of having been let down.
He was an idealist, then, who was guided by the most exalted examples, both
musical and literary, and who proved himself worthy of his models. If he was, as
a critic, not quite a Hanslick—well, Hanslick, in more ways than one, was no
Schumann.
H. P.
1
(1840-1890), a Philadelphian, wife of Prédéric Louis Ritter (1834-1891), an
Alsatian musician, active for many years as choral conductor in Cincinnati and
New York and, from 1874, Director of the Music Department at Vassar College.
Mrs. Ritter also wrote an original work, Womun as a Musician, published in
1877.