Awesome Music / Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann is another master of the early Romantic Era, and more than delivers on the awesome front.

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• Initially, Schumann focused exclusively on composing for solo piano, and his output includes countless gems.
  • The piano sonata was in something of a rut as a musical form by the time Schumann was established as a composer, and although he tried his luck with sonatas a few times, his most enduringly popular multi-movement work for solo piano is the Fantasie in C, dedicated to Franz Liszt and intended to help raise funds for a monument in memory of Ludwig van Beethoven in the latter's birthplace of Bonn.^note  It took nearly a decade for the monument to go from conception to completion; Liszt contributed by far the largest share of the money (some of which he raised by giving two concerts with Frédéric Chopin in Paris in 1841, their last joint appearances). The statue was unveiled in 1845 in front of an audience that included Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, but Schumann was unable to attend due to illness. The first movement sonata allegro opens in passionate, dramatic style, ultimately settling into a quiet coda. The marchlike second movement rondo is noted for its buoyant yet technically demanding coda, full of rapid contrary motion leaps in both hands (Liszt was among the few pianists of the day equal to the challenge). The slow finale rounds things off in contemplative mood, all making for a worthy homage to the musical tradition Beethoven helped to re-define.^note  The Adagio coda of the first movement quotes Beethoven's "Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder", the sixth song from the cycle An die ferne Geliebte (To the distant beloved, which struck a chord with Schumann, who composed the first movement while he was pining for his eventual wife, Clara Wieck, following their forced separation by her father); Schumann did not acknowledge this at the time, and it is believed to have escaped the notice of performers and listeners until 1910!
  • Among Schumann's single-movement works, the Toccata in C is a huge adrenaline rush for both pianist and listener with its dense double notes, scalar runs, and intricate counterpoint. The fluid Arabesque in C contains some of his most charming melodies and holds a surprise by slowing down significantly for a serene coda.
  • But it is as a composer of suites of short pieces that Schumann is best known.
    • Papillons is a charming set of waltzes and polonaises that conjures up images of an early 19th century masked ball. Schumann quoted snippets of the melodies in several of his later suites.
    • Davidsbündlertänze, contrary to the name, is not a set of dances but a spirited dialogue about contemporary music between Schumann's fictional characters Eusebius and Florestan (respectively representing his inner dreamer and his more passionate side, originally invented to hold imaginary conversations in his articles as a music critic) that ends with twelve low Cs representing a clock striking midnight.
    • Carnaval is a witty collection of character pieces, nearly all based around one or more of three musical cryptograms,^note  A-E♭-C-B, or A.Es.C.H. in German notation; A♭-C-B, or As.C.H.; and E♭-C-B-A, or Es.C.H.A. The two cryptograms rendered as "Asch" represent the birth town (now called Aš) of Schumann's then fiancée, Ernestine von Fricken, part of the word "Fasching" (German for "carnival"), and part of Schumann's own name, Robert Alexander Schumann. "Scha" features the same letters in the order in which they appear in "Schumann". The movement "Sphinxs" consists, in its entirety, of the three cryptograms, though it is usually dropped in performances and recordings. depicting masked revellers (including various Commedia dell'Arte characters such as Pierrot and Arlequin, Schumann's own creations Eusebius and Florestan, and his friend and fellow composer Frédéric Chopin) at the pre-Lent festival of Carnival.
    • The Symphonic Studies double as technical exercises and a set of twelve variations on a theme by Baron von Fricken (father of Schumann's then-fiancée), with the melody rather than the harmony providing the foundation for the variations.^note  Apart from Nos.3 and 9, which have little connection to the theme, and No.12, which is instead based on "Du stolzes England freue dich" from Heinrich Marschner's opera Der Templer und die Jüdin, a loose adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Schumann changed his mind many times about which variations to include in the final set (at one point imagining them as yet another conversation between Eusebius and Florestan), but whatever the version, they represent some of his most difficult piano works, and any pianist who can get through them without stumbling is sure to bring the audience to their feet.
    • The childhood-inspired works in Kinderszenen are many intermediate piano students' introduction to Schumann.^note  Apart from Album für die Jugend, which, per the title, is intended for young pianists and contains such children's lesson staples as "Wilder Reiter" ("Wild Rider" or "Wild Horseman") and "Fröhlicher Landmann" ("Merry Farmer" or "Merry Peasant"). Highlights include the mystical opening "Von fremden Ländern und Menschen" ("From Foreign Lands and Peoples") and "Träumerei" ("Dreaming"), perhaps his single most popular composition for solo piano due to its heart-stopping beauty and serenity.
    • Kreisleriana contains some of Schumann's most intense solo piano works, taking its inspiration from E. T. A. Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler. As with its namesake (and the ongoing dialogue Schumann imagined between his own characters Eusebius and Florestan), each piece is defined by the contrast between moments of high drama and moments of songlike lyricism to create a masterwork of which Schumann was justly proud in later life.
• The Piano Concerto in A minor is 35 minutes of pure awesome and stands as one of the masterpieces of the genre. Schumann originally planned the first movement as a standalone fantasy, and he gets going straight away with an opening flourish for solo piano before the woodwinds introduce a melody that manages to keep sounding fresh and new even as it permeates the entire movement - solemn, then playful for the exposition and recapitulation, heartfelt in the slow interlude, and determined as the piano and orchestra charge together through the coda.^note  As with his solo piano works, Schumann had his fictional characters Eusebius and Florestan in mind when composing the concerto, the first movement's main theme represents Eusebius, while Florestan gets the syncopated secondary theme. But in the years following the work's premiere, Schumann decided to continue the story of the fantasy with a charming Intermezzo that leads, via hints of the first movement's main theme, straight into a finale celebrating triumph over adversity. Edvard Grieg liked the piece so much, he based his own piano concerto on it (using the same home key, an opening flourish in the piano, and even similar main themes).
• Though Schumann was not a prolific chamber music composer, he still left his mark on the medium with several enduring classics.
  • The jewel in Schumann's chamber music crown is the delightful Piano Quintet in E-flat major, widely regarded as second only to the Brahms quintet among supreme examples of the form. The joyful opening movement has plenty of interplay between the piano and strings, and is followed by an eerie, marchlike slow movement, a boisterous scherzo with two trios (one serene, one frenzied^note  The second trio was added at the recommendation of Schumann's friend Felix Mendelssohn, who played the piano part at the work's first (private) performance in 1842 after the intended pianist, Clara Schumann, was taken ill.), and a masterfully constructed finale that starts out as a sonata allegro (while deferring a resolution into E-flat major until the recapitulation) before entering an epic-length coda that culminates with a double fugue on the main themes of the first and fourth movements.
  • Composed at the same time as the quintet, the Piano Quartet in E-flat major is likewise one of the finest examples of the form.^note  Both pieces take inspiration from Schubert's Piano Trio No.2 - which is also in E-flat major. Opening with a sonata allegro in which the slow introduction gives a preview of the main theme and then returns at several key structural moments, it moves onto a jittery scherzo, and a slow movement of pure tranquility in which the cellist is instructed to tune the C string down to B-flat for the coda - a coda in which the piano, violin, and viola gradually piece together what will become the main theme of the exuberant finale, which climaxes, like the finale of the quintet, with a fugue based on the two ideas that make up the movement's main theme.

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