Stories of Symphonic Music / A Guide to the Meaning of Important Symphonies, Overtures, and Tone-poems from Beethoven to the Present Day

SCHUMANN

(Robert Schumann: born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, near Bonn, July 29, 1856)

SYMPHONY No. 1, IN B-FLAT MAJOR ["SPRING"]: Op. 38

Andante un poco maestoso; Allegro molto vivace
Larghetto
Scherzo: Molto vivace
Finale: Allegro animato e grazioso

Although Schumann never publicly avowed it, the inspiration for this symphony sprang from a poem by Adolph BÖttger (1815-1870), O Geist der Wolke. The music was composed early in 1841. In October of the following year Schumann sent a portrait of himself to his friend BÖttger, accompanied by an inscription consisting of the opening phrase of the symphony in notation, and the words: "Beginning of a symphony inspired by a poem of Adolph BÖttger. To the poet, in remembrance of Robert Schumann."

The verses of BÖttger have been translated (in prose) as follows:

"Thou Spirit of the Cloud, murky and heavy, fliest with menace over land and sea; thy gray veil covers in a moment the clear eye of heaven; thy mist seethes up from afar, and Night hides the Star of Love. Thou Spirit of the Cloud, murky and damp, how thou hast frightened away all my happiness, how thou dost call tears to my face and shadows into the light of my soul! O turn, O turn thy course—In the valley blooms the spring!"

The crux of this poem, and the key to an understanding of the mood of Schumann's music, lies in the concluding line:

"In the valley blooms the spring!"

("Im Thale blÜht der FrÜhling auf!")

Schumann himself spoke of this work as "a Spring symphony," though it is not so titled on the score. In a letter to Spohr he wrote (November 23, 1842): "I composed the symphony ..., if I may say so, under the impulse of that vernal ardor which sways men even at the most advanced age, and seizes them anew each year. I did not aim to portray or to describe; but I do believe that the season in which the symphony was conceived influenced its character and its form and made it what it is." He wrote also, on January 10, 1843, to Wilhelm Taubert (who was to produce the symphony in Berlin): "Could you imbue your orchestra with something of the springtime mood, which I had particularly in mind when I wrote the symphony in February, 1841? The trumpet-call at the entrance I should like to have sound as if it came from on high like an awakening summons. By what follows I might then suggest how on every side it begins to grow green; how, perhaps, a butterfly appears; and, by the Allegro, how gradually all springtime things burst forth. These, it is true, are fancies which occurred to me after I had finished the work. I should like to say, however, concerning the last movement, that I imagined it to suggest the departure of spring, and I would have it played in a manner not too frivolous." It will be observed that Schumann makes no reference whatever in these elucidations to what he has elsewhere alleged as the particular source of his inspiration.

That the composer originally intended to give descriptive titles to the different movements has been declared with particularity, and these are said to have been the superscriptions he planned to use: (1) "Spring's Beginning" (FrÜhlingsbeginn); (2) "Evening" (Abend); (3) "Merry Companions" (Frohe Gespielen); (4) "Spring at the Full" (Voller FrÜhling). The last of these would seem to conflict with what Schumann himself wrote to Taubert concerning the Finale.

OVERTURE TO BYRON'S "MANFRED": Op. 115

For Byron's dramatic poem, "Manfred," Schumann, in 1848, wrote incidental music, which was first performed at Weimar under the direction of Liszt on June 13, 1852, in connection with a version of Byron's work prepared by Schumann for the stage. The overture has, not unnaturally, survived the rest of the music to the poem, and has long been a familiar number in the concert-room. It is, of all Schumann's works, says Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, "the most profoundly introspective. It is, as consistently as the prelude to Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde,' an effort to delineate soul states and struggles without the help of external things. To understand it one must recall the figure in Byron's poem—the strong man torn by remorse, struggling with himself, bending supernatural powers to his will, yearning for forgiveness and death, tortured by a pitiless conscience, living in a solitude which was solitude no more, 'but peopled with the furies,' condemned by his own sin to number

'Ages—ages—
Space and eternity—and consciousness,
With the fierce thirst of death—and still unslaked!'

"The mood of the slow introduction, into which the listener is plunged at once by the three syncopated chords at the opening, is the mood of Manfred weighed down by the reflection:

"'Old man! there is no power in holy men,
Nor charm in prayer—nor purifying form
Of penitence—nor outward look—nor fast—
Nor agony—nor, greater than all these,
"The innate tortures of that deep despair,
Which is remorse without the fear of hell,
But all in all sufficient to itself
Would make a hell of heaven—can exorcise
From out the unbounded spirit, the quick sense
Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge
Upon itself; there is no future pang
Can deal that justice on the self-condemn'd
He deals on his own soul.'"

"The sombreness," says Mr. Frederick Niecks, "is nowhere relieved, although contrast to the dark brooding and the surging agitation of despair is obtained by the tender, longing, regretful recollection of Astarte, the destroyed beloved one. And when at last life ebbs away, we are reminded of Manfred's dying words to the Abbot:

"'Tis over—my dull eyes can fix thee not;
But all things swim around me, and the earth
Heaves, as it were, beneath me....
Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die.'

"From the first note to the last," says Mr. W. H. Hadow, "it is as magnificent as an Alpine storm—sombre, wild, impetuous, echoing from peak to peak with the shock of thunderbolts and the clamor of the driving wind."

Clyx.com