CENTRO STUDI "ERIC SAMS"
per la ricerca sul Lied tedesco
Direttore Erik Battaglia
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CENTRO STUDI "ERIC SAMS" per la ricerca sul Lied tedesco
Direttore Erik Battaglia
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by John C. Tibbetts
© John C.
Tibbetts, 2004 (In The World of Robert Schumann Series)
[I’m much
obliged to Dr. Tibbetts for the kind permission to reprint from his web-site
www.johnctibbetts.com]
This
interview transpired on
Tibbetts—First,
locate us geographically. Where are we from
Sams—Okay,
well we live here in Sanderstead,
Q—Located
here, are you in proximity to some of the important library resources that you
need?
A—Yes, I mean
the essential thing for the researcher is to belong both to the British Library,
the Library of the British Museum and the Students’ Room where they have all the
great manuscripts including some Schumann and Schubert and Mozart and in many
ways, best of all, the London Library which has a million books and is well
stocked in music and the German nineteenth century which I try to specialize in
and gives you access to the shelves which is the main thing. You don’t have to
wait for your books.
Q—You must
have had occasion then to travel as well. Where have you gone to research
outside of
A—Well, I
haven’t done much research outside of
Q—Although we
will talk about Schumann presently, could you briefly recount some of your other
projects, and especially the recent ones?
Shakespeare
And Various Projects
A—Yes, well at
the moment I’m deeply concerned with Shakespeare, the early Shakespeare plays.
The point being that Shakespeare is alleged not to have written any major or
known work until he was twenty-seven which strikes me as somehow inherently
implausible. He’s not mentioned in the literature until 1592, that’s his
twenty-seventh year and he must have written plays or something before then just
as Mozart must have written music before he was twenty-seven. This much is
manifest. And the question is, where are these plays now so one can cheerfully
spend a long lifetime or two considering the literature and identifying the
plays. I’ve recently edited one which I believe to be Shakespeare’s called
Edmund Ironside which was produced at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival,
Q—It’s
remarkable how an endeavor like this would seem to be so completely separated
from your musical studies.
A—Well, I
think that there are various interconnections. There are bound to be connections
in all one’s fields of interests and they may be more apparent to other people
than they are to one’s self. But I’m essentially, I think, a sort of small scale
student of the small scale motif—the image and the motif in music and the image
in poetry and, at the same time, concerned, perhaps for that very reason, though
I haven’t thought about it, with the union of words and music, the actual point
or root where these two great disciplines intermingle, mate and marry and
produce interesting offspring.
Q—For those of
us who associate you, musically speaking, with Schumann in our first breath,
tell us what else you’ve been doing.
A—Well, a lot
of the time I’ve been researching the byways of musical experience, illness and
health in musicians. I’ve done some work on the diseases of Schumann and
Schubert. I’ve published work on that and I’ve looked at the work of Elgar, as
well as Schumann, and the link there is my interest in historical cipher and
shorthand of all kinds. I began my working career as a cryptographer in the
English Army Intelligence Corps in wartime and that interest has never left me.
I mean it was a passionate boyhood interest about codes and ciphers generally
and I find that sort of thing in music, and I find it also, actually, in the
archives all over the world if you consider the world as a kind of ‘collection
of archives’ a great deal of it is still hidden in darkness, shorthand people
can’t read, codes and ciphers that people can’t read. The English Civil War, the
American Civil War, The American War of Independence, and all manner of
shorthand diaries like Pepys and Cromwell’s secretary in
Q—I was
wondering about Dickens’ shorthand. Would you call that a kind of code?
A—No. I think
Dickens wrote shorthand as a kind of speedwriting. His mind was so alert and
active to the point in incoherence quite often that he simply had to get
everything down on paper at a very great speed. The same is true of Bernard
Shaw. They both learnt the same shorthand for the same reason. I think in the
first place getting everything down out of their heads as soon as possible onto
paper for reference purposes and also in Dickens’ case, it was working as a
shorthand reporter in the House of Commons. That was profession on his part, but
other shorthands are used for, like Pepys, for private diary entries and those
are the ones that I find interesting. John Thompson, the Prime Minister of
Canada, whose diaries were left in comprehensive form in booklet form and were
unreadable, but actually the shorthand involved, once you start counting and
classifying it, is quite easily retrievable if you’re interested in that kind of
thing, so now all those shorthand diaries and records can be read and have been
transcribed and are used by historians for biographies.
Q—Help me
separate now your interest in the codes and Schumann’s music or did the interest
in the music come first and was it fueled then by your interest in codes? Let’s
begin with where you began.
A—Well, I
think, in a sense, these things are aspects of one basic similar impulse, and I
have some reason for thinking that because when I was young and interested in
cipher, and volunteered for the intelligence corps—this happened to be, I
discovered later, at a time when Churchill had decreed that secondary schools
and young persons generally be combed and groomed and, if possible, be recruited
for this very purpose—and the interviewer had certain questions to ask, and one
of them was, “Can you play chess?” as you might imagine and the second was, “Do
you like crosswords, and are you good at them?” and so on, but the third was,
“Do you like music and can you read a musical score?” and it seemed to me then
and it seemed to me every since that a clear correlation between interest in
music and interest in cryptology. One point being, for what it’s worth, that
generations of composers, whether they’re interested in cipher, or not, have
thought of music as a kind of communication and, in particular, a secret
language which is accessible only to the initiated. It’s often thought of like
that exactly and that I think clear structural resemblances also exist between
music and cipher.
Ciphers In
Schumann
Q—And when did
you begin to arrive at the impression that Schumann represents a significant
figure in this regard?
A—Well, I
heard that in the music. I heard it when one’s interested in Schumann of course,
because, in my case, because I began as a linguist in the intelligence corps
when I had to know a bit of German, and I offered that, and then if you’re
interested in music and in German, well you’re bound to be interested in Lieder.
So I was interested in that, but I didn’t hear cipher in Schumann until I heard
the D Minor Symphony and what you hear in that is what everyone had heard in
different generations. You hear monothematicism, to use one word for it. You
hear the same thing and the same theme and almost in the same meaningful sense
over and over again repeated almost obsessively. It’s not obtrusive when you
first hear the Symphony, but when you get to hear this motif in your mind, this
main theme that goes all through the work, you can’t get it out of your head
that it is saying something and you wish to know what it is saying.
Q—And what was
that pattern of notes?
A—Well, I
think it is something like—well, you hear it in the Romance and you hear it at
the beginning of the Symphony most clearly, and what it says is C,
B, A, G#, A—in
other words, C, something, A, something, A, and it’s perfectly clear that what
it’s actually saying is Clara. I don’t mean that it’s actually depicting her in
her various moods, but I mean that Schumann throughout the length of the
Symphony had his wife and his relationship to her and his own feelings of guilt
and unworthiness in that connection and his hope for later triumph and future
happiness all go into the Symphony, and I think they all come to the ears of the
listener through an awareness of that theme.
Q—Now the
movements are interconnected, of course, but can you find four separate
manifestations then of that motto?
A—I think that
motto occurs well over a hundred times. I’m speaking now of the first version of
the Symphony. Well over a hundred times in the first movement alone, and it is
the opening statement of the theme, and if I can just say to you—well, as you
know, it begins with this theme (Sams plays) many times repeated and that’s a
slow introduction to a later idea which goes like this (Sams plays)—and those
last five notes are insistently repeated. And then, when the main theme begins
(Sams plays), you hear it again and so on. Now I’m exaggerating the effect by
just bringing out those notes, but if you listen with those notes in mind, you
hear things like this (Sams plays) and what you’re hearing there with the last
note omitted. When you next move to the Romance—and this is more overtly
affectionate and tender music of the kind one might specifically consider to be
love music—you hear this (Sams plays), and very beautiful it is too. And what
that theme is, if you listen to it closely, is simply this (Sams plays)
decorated. (Sams plays). And just as if to confirm that, as soon as that theme
is completed, you hear the opening theme which you heard at the very beginning
stated again on the strings (Sams plays). Then you say to yourself at this point
and even earlier, something’s going on here. What is this theme that keeps going
C, something, A, something, A? You can’t help saying to yourself, this must be
an incitement on some method or other, perhaps arbitrary, perhaps on some
predesigned plan but it’s an incitement of the name Clara and then you have that
idea in your mind and you later come to read Schumann’s diaries and letters, and
you see that in 1841, he says, “I will call my next symphonie ‘Clara’”—and
really nothing could be clearer than even before reading that; and that is what
happened. I’m quoting here from the second version, which is the first version
heavily rescored and reorchestrated. Another thing you’ll find about the first
version is Schumann referred to it as the “Clara Symphony.” It was his birthday
present to her on
Q—It’s
the only symphony that he revised—
A—Well, that’s
true. This symphony bridges the years from 1841 to 1853. The
Q—Do you see a
unifying motif in the Third Symphony? A motto, say a rising arpeggio?
A—Yes, I think
that in all these symphonies there is some basic motif, a kind of seed, a
musical seed from which the entire work grows, and this was in many ways a novel
method of composition. And it’s absolutely characteristic of Schumann, it seems
to me, because he begins with the word in his songs; certainly, the seed is the
word. Everything grows from that, and from the poem. You can hear it. Hugo
Wolf heard that, and it was an inspiration to him, and what you hear in Schumann
is a word or name, a basic central idea from which the whole marvelous music
evolves; and I daresay, in many cases the first idea was just such an incitement
as this in the D minor.
Literary
Background
Q—And of
course we can’t leave this without noting briefly that the literary background
which Schumann had came to him via a very natural source, his father. Any
comments on the extent of that exposure through his father that he had?
A—Well, it’s
quite profoundly said, “Like father, like son.” There can be no clearer case
than Schumann, whose father was certainly among the most literary persons of his
generation. Not especially creatively gifted, but the most bookish person it is
possible to imagine, someone who actually had his own lending library, his own
bookshop, who edited, who wrote a bit, who contributed to gazetteers, who
produced in Zwickau near Leipzieg a personal one-man revolution in the history
of German publishing which is not to this day been sufficiently documented or
studied. He was exceedingly influential, not only through his son, but at the
production at an early informative stage of German literary studies in cheap
pocket editions for the ordinary persons. The social significance of this was
far-reaching.
Apprenticeship
Q—Is it safe
to say that when Schumann first began his own journeys as a young man, from
Heidelburg—he went to
A—Well, two or
three things really: First of all, the young German of the time traveled
extensively. That was the way of the young German cultivated artist ever since
Goethe. As in the earlier centuries, the young Englishmen have done the Grand
Tour. Since Goethe, everyone had to go to
Schumann’s
Dual Nature
Q—Before we
get to the songs specifically, you mentioned manic depression a moment ago. We
think of the Florestan-Eusebius-Raro triumvirate there. What is this telling us
about Schumann, specifically, that he would adopt a strategy like this in his
writing and in his music?
A—Well, I
think what the Romantic artist does is to relate himself directly to the world.
Not merely in a trivial romantic way by his telling us all about his life and
loves and so on, but in a serious romantic way because it’s a music of the brain
as well as the heart. He ought to tell us about his intellectual experience and
the way he conceives the world philosophically; to see the world through his own
eyes and his own personality. And in Schumann’s case, that personality, perhaps
not by chance, happened to be dual. It is a feature of the German Nineteenth
Century that its songwriters certainly had cyclic tendencies, to put the thing
mildly. In extreme cases they were manic-depressive psychotics. One could put it
that way.
Q—And then
when you say manic-depressive, you mean Florestan as the former and Eusebius as
the latter…?
A—Well, I
think that’s a useful general equivalent. Those ideas, I’m sure, were borrowed
from the German novelist Jean Paul Richter, especially in a book called Die
Flegeljahre, which is about two brothers, Walt and Vult, who indeed show
these characteristics—but in Richter, particularly and in the German Romantic
Movement generally. Everything stems from, as it were, two different poles of
our perception. It’s like stellar parallax—if you have your two observatories a
long way away from each other, you can see stars that are much farther away.
It’s like that, and if you understand the heights of exultation and the depths
of despair through personal experience, you’re that much better equipped as an
artist, I reckon, to interpret and describe.
Q—Does this
dichotomy have anything to do with incipient signs of mental illness, in your
opinion?
A—Well, I
think not. I’ve never heard Schumann’s music or his personality or his
psychology as one reads it in his notebooks and diaries as anything other than
basically sound, sane, human and, if in any way unusual, unusual only in its
genius not in any way neurotic or, least of all, psychotic.
Q—Let me state
it another way. Might it have been a way for him to heal himself at maybe a
critical point in his youth? A—That may well be the case. He, as we know, had a difficult youth. He was fatherless in his formative years and spent many years undisciplined in a kind of mental chaos, but this is regular routine for Romantic artists. Nothing is special or unusual in that. It’s the way the world of art had evolved. It was then an emphasis not on society as an ordered structure, but society and human aspiration as perceived through the prism of the individuals. That was his real function as an artist, to join in that movement and express it thus and his psychological difficulties were, I’m sure, expressed in a way, the way, his way of dealing with them is as of two personalities. He started a novel, after all, on the same lines as Richter in which there are these two contrasting characters which were his own, but I think he was saying, telling us no more than something rather deep and significant about the human artistic creative personality
Q—Nonetheless,
you see this as more than mere imitation of Jean Paul. This is a significantly
Schumannian thing to do?
A—It is a
significantly a Schumannian thing, but within the context of the Romantic
Movement of the nineteenth century. Schumann is not alone in this regard. There
are many, many parallels in music and in other arts, and in
Schumann As
Critic
Q—Is it
significant for you that Schumann would also use these persona, not just for
musical utterance, but for speech utterance in his music criticism?
A—Well,
I think that’s a very sound point. What you’re hearing in the best kind of
Romantic music is not just the composer but the whole man. He’s speaking as an
artist, as a musician, certainly, but also in his capacity as writer. He was a
great prose writer, and reader, the kind of words he uses, the kind of music he
prefers, all his utterances in any art form whatever, and, I’m sure, also, in
his ordinary daily social intercourse made up of this same pattern, this same
genetic pattern which, in a way, one can’t choose. It’s part of his endowment,
also significantly part of his artistic development, the expressive genius. Not
only of Schumann, but of Elgar. I’m sure he was heavily under Schumann’s
influence.
RARO
Q—Among the
three persona we’ve mentioned, however, I’m most perplexed by Raro. R-A-R-0. Now
as a cryptographer, you must make a great deal of that.
A—Oh, I can
make something of it straight away, and that is, it is simply the end of Clara
and the beginning of Robert, and where the two join. It’s symbolic of their
marriage and their union and it was Schumann’s name.
Q—So now
whenever we hear utterances like the poet speaks or the epilogues to some of the
song cycles, there are those who would suggest this is a “Raro voice” speaking,
a mediator, an assessor of things.
A—Well, for
one thing, I think we can be fairly sure that is one aspect of Schumann wearing
one or another of his magic robes and perhaps his Raro is his incantatory,
Prospero-like persona; but I think it would be also true to say that all these
appearances and apparitions are, first of all, aspects of Schumann but most of
all, above all, aspects of the human situation, the human personality, the human
problem as he saw these things. He wished to be a universal artist, not merely
autobiographical, but to record the whole of human experience, and I think he
did so with great success.
Davidsbuendler Dances
Q—Which brings
us inevitably, to the “Davidsbundler Dances,” one of the most remarkable works
of this time, certainly. Is this music that you’ve ever studied in this regard?
What impressions might you offer on it?
A—Well, I
think the “Davidsbundler Dances” is one of a series of—it’s very hard to
describe these ideas because no one else has ever had them quite so clearly as
Schumann did—but essentially, it’s conceiving the world, the universe, the
cosmos as a kind of dance, especially one’s own personal circle. The personal
circle begins as a dance, and you imagine in it all one’s friends, all one’s
acquaintances, all those who one has loved, living or dead, are suddenly present
as musical entities and are dancing and delighting us in their dancing but also
the same time saying something significant about human life and circumstance.
“Davidsbündler,”
as the name implies, are about his various friends and allies in the new German
music that he was driving towards and did so much to establish in reality. And
they’re also notable, I think, for a Clara theme which unifies them and which is
the theme I’ve drawn attention to in the D Minor Symphony, but reversed simply.
One can’t, after all, over and over use the same theme, but “Davidsbundler” has
that theme in retrograde form, that is to say, B, A#, B, C#. Well, the whole
work begins with what’s called a motto from Clara Wieck—her initials again.
Schumann liked to be as mystifying as possible, even when the thing was entirely
clear and simple.
And it
begins (Sams plays), and that is a quotation from a mazurka that the young Clara
had written; but it’s also reminiscent of a German folksong, (Sams plays). It’s
about a new dawn in Schumann’s life, as much of his music is. Each of his ideas
takes on new and novel turns, and he’s writing music which predicts himself into
the future, (Sams plays), which is the Clara motif transposed and simply
reversed. This kind of motif makes a great deal of the music, and you hear it
throughout, just at the opening of various pieces like this—(Sams plays several
simple five-note themes). There are others here (Sams plays). These are the
beginnings of various pieces. Here’s another. (Sams plays).
Papillons
And this all
begins, I think, in “Papillons.” Schumann has discovered a kind of theme which
joins his name to Clara’s. He calls himself “Florestan” and “Eusebius,” and
these are F, F#, actually, and E. And then we have a Clara theme (Sams plays),
and then you come back again. And you can play that in any way you like. You can
invert it. Instead of having (plays) it going down and then up, you can go up
and then down (plays). “Papillon,” of course, was one of his very first piano
pieces, and the idea is the same— that here we have partners, friends, and
lovers, allies in the great struggle, all dancing together and appreciating each
other’s life and art. It’s a “papillon” because it’s the same backwards and
forwards, and if you imagine to yourself what a butterfly looks like (Sams
plays) and draw that piece on a modern piece of manuscript paper, you can see
that the idea that it’s a butterfly’s wings. And there’s another tie-up, which
is this: In German, “larva” means the larva of a butterfly, but it also means a
mask. Every time he writes these pieces, the idea is presenting a masked entity
projecting onto music paper the personality of a friend, exactly as Elgar was to
do later in the "Enigma Variations."
Carneval
And he comes
to write “Carnaval” which is another exactly similar set of pieces—a dance, as a
carnival would imply. They’re carnival dances and each one of them has a
different title including “Florestan and Eusebius,” it’s himself in all his
various guises. It’s Clara in all her various guises and disguises, dancing at a
masked ball; and the notes used are the musical notes in Schumann’s own name,
that is to say the note A, the note S (which happens to be Es in German,
pronounced S, but which is German for E), C (which is C and H, which in German
means the note B). So (Sams plays) that makes straightaway a theme you can use.
And
another thing he does, which I’m sure, no one has done before or thought of
doing, is to play these notes A-S-C-H. AS in German means the note A; C is the
note C; and H, as we saw, is the note B. And what he does is to play them
together, as a chord (plays), and a very nasty noise it makes! That would occur
to him really quite naturally and simply as a way of writing a word or an idea.
Abegg
Variations
When he comes
to write the “Abegg Variations,” his first piano piece, he invents a name “Abegg.”
It was actually someone’s name but that’s not the main point. It’s a character
drawn in music. A, B—which is B is German, ABEGG. And there you use the same
idea a little lower (plays) and and then you have a very sweet tune which you
can improvise on. But later on that same tune disappears. We have Abegg—A, and
then the three notes together as a chord, (plays) and slowly each one of them is
taken off and this happens again in “Papillons” and it means the idea of
disappearance. The imaginary figure is as if in a dream, and it disappears in
front of your very eyes. The whole music is meant to symbolize a vanishing,
which is a very strange thought, but then Schumann in many ways had a very
strange mind.
Q—And might I
also propose that Keats’ line, “music heard is sweet, music unheard is sweeter?”
A—Well, that’s
a very good example of it, isn’t it?
Q—Does it also
indicate an interest in pure sound at this point?
A—Yes, and I
think that Schumann’s interest in pure sound, as you say, in pure sonority and
what could be done with veils of sound, veils being withdrawn or veils being
added, had a great influence on the later French school who, I’m sure, were very
strongly influenced by Schumann in that regard as in many others.
Whither
Florestan and Eusebius?
Q—As follow-up
to this issue of personalities and their translation into notes—in his later
music Florestan and Eusebius seem to disappear. At least they disappear in terms
of his employment of the names. In your opinion, do the characteristics of both
continue in the later music?
A—Well, I
think two things happened. I think first of all the idea, perhaps, was arguably
overworked. It never became outworn. It retained its freshness to the last. The
musical differentiating in “Florestan” and “Eusebius” in all the piano works,
including the sonatas, is always very effective. But two things happened. First
of all one tired of it a bit as an idea; secondly, the personality became better
integrated. I don’t mean by that that the dual personality was in any way, in
any serious way, neurotic. It’s simply that with advancing age, the two halves
or the two different aspects of one’s personality, as in that respect as in
others, alas, do begin to foreclose. One gets a kind of foreshortening of the
personality so that it seems it may even be a kind of deterioration that age
brings, but it can be represented also as a better integrated personality.
Q—Would that
be part and parcel of the suggestion that once he’s a married man and father
that a greater conventionality would then reduce his reliance on such devices?
A—Well, it’s
partly, isn’t it, the orderly progression from youth to maturity to middle age
and later life? One does begin, as a young person, full of amazing notions,
including various rebellions, revolutionary ideas, quite original ideas which
are to change the world. And later on one discovers the world is on the whole
very much the same place, though enriched by it, in Schumann’s case, to a very
great extent. But he would have certainly seen there was no longer the need for
him to have such amazingly original and unusual notions. In the first place, it
would be true to say they would not be well-received in the Germany of his time
and it may well by the case as one has heard said that his wife Clara was more
Biedermeier, more bourgeois in her attitudes, and would have suggested to him
that it was really time to settle down musically as well as domestically. But I
think I hear such remarks as calumnies against Clara who was, it seems to me, in
many ways the ideal musician, and who was really never, never opposed to
invention or originality on any kind of basic principle, but really speaking
always from her musical heart and saying sincerely what she felt. And she was
herself no mean composer, so it’s hard for me to believe that she would have
chided Schumann for originality. I think it’s just the ordinary progression of a
composer’s development. In many ways youth is the time for experimentation, and
maturity is the time for retrenchment, and I think Schumann in that respect, as
in so many, was typical of his age and indeed of great art generally.
Researching
Schumann—The “Hand” Controversy
Q—Let’s do
change the course a bit. Place in time when you began to research relatively
non-musical problems, like that of Schumann’s hand.
A—Well, what
happens is that one begins to research Schumann, and then, when you do that, you
move into every known area of his life and work. Of course, the big problem
about him, one problem everyone comes up against straightaway, is what happened
to his hand. There have been various theories about that, but it was always
clear to me that there was something very mysterious about it. For example,
Clara Schumann, in later life, when asked which finger he had done absolutely
could not remember, and it strikes me that there’s something very strange indeed
about that. If one actually has damaged a finger because of, as has often been
suggested, injudicious over-exercise at the keyboard, Clara Schumann (who knew
him well at this time) would surely know what the cause of it was, what damage
had been done, and how and what finger was affected. But these things she did
not know and the conclusion from that is, it seems to me, that no such thing had
actually occurred; that he had not damaged his finger in the course of ordinary
overexertion at the keyboard.
Another
reason for thinking that is almost nobody else has done that. There have been
many pianists and many assiduous practicers, but records of people who have
practiced so assiduously as to cripple or disable themselves at the keyboard are
very rare. It would be a very peculiar and odd thing to do so. One has to look
for some other explanation. One can’t help noticing that the German biographies
say pretty clearly or hint rather extensively that Schumann suffered from
syphilis, as a great many poets and composers did in the nineteenth century. And
this was the reason for his later insanity, as in many other cases—Baudelaire
instantly comes to mind, and many others, like Holderlin, a German poet of the
period. And then one has to have regard to principles of economy in reasoning.
Is it possible to suggest that there is some one cause which unites al1 these
three things and explains the whole of Schumann’s medical history, including the
damage to his finger? I daresay that he did damage his arm or his finger
mechanically by a fall or something, and the medical evidence seems to suggest
that that is the case. Not by practicing, but simply by falling over, perhaps in
one of his tipsy fits because he drank very heavily in his youth, in his
university days at the time when this injury occurred.
Q—And at this
moment, I might ask what your reaction is to Dr. Ostwald’s supposition that it
is the trigger finger of the right hand that is affected—at the very moment that
he’s eligible for military service?
A—Well, I
happen to think that no doubt it was the trigger finger that was affected
because there was damage to the hand and it did last, and I think the archive
evidence that I turned up does really rather suggest that there was genuine,
actual damage to the hand and the actual incidence was not in any way what is
called psychosomatic. I find that very hard to believe that there was actually
nothing wrong with his hand. Clearly something was wrong with his hand.
Q—So the
exemption from the military service was just a by-product of this. It was not
the stimulating cause?
A—I wouldn’t
have thought so. I think that the evidence in the notebooks and in the letters,
in absolutely manifest and clear. Something was wrong with the hand. But what
caused it? I think not piano playing or piano practice. That would really be too
absurd for Schumann who was not only a great composer but also a pianist of
potentially world-class, according to Friedrich Wieck, who was well placed to
judge. He was going to make Schumann into a pianist of the capabilities of Franz
Liszt, and turn him into a touring virtuoso. And indeed so much of the Schumann
piano music does suggest that his technical abilities were of the off-the-list
category, and he was able to play and write music even when his hand was
damaged. Although something was wrong with it, one has to wonder what it was and
whether it had remissions and so on. And I happened to see in a German medical
encyclopedia what kind of treatments were recommended for the kind of condition
that Schumann had, and I discovered that the treatments that he was prescribed
by his doctors were treatments for, according to this encyclopedia, damage to
the nerves, peripheral neuritis or palsy caused by metal poisonings. You know,
mercury was used by other professions, like hatters in the nineteenth century,
hence the expression “mad as a hatter,” because it gives you the shakes and the
palsy. And I reflected, might not Schumann’s hand injury been caused by mercury
medication, mercurical medication, which he would have been given in the
ordinary course of his syphilis? That seems a plausible explanation to me.
The
Syphilis Theories
Q—Now, there
are then those who say it would be unusual that a symptom of syphilis would be
confined to the hand.
A—Perhaps I
haven’t made myself clear. I think that the hand injury was caused by mercury
poisoning, and he was given the mercury for his syphilis. Now the syphilis
hypothesis explains all the manifestations of illness that Schumann had from the
initial contraction, the expansion of the pupils to the final general paralysis
of the insane. The whole case history is a classic case of nineteenth century
syphilis, of which there is a great deal of medical record and expert testimony.
All the illnesses and symptoms, including a genital lesion, which he describes
in his diaries, are explained very simply. From that first genital lesion to the
final death by general paralysis, the history of nineteenth century syphilis
could not be more classical or characteristic.
Q—When did you
first publish this research?
A—Well, I
think I would have to consult my records for that. It was first published in
December, 1971, and later taken up by a great authority on both psychiatry and
general medicine, Dr. Elliot Slater. He is notable in this country for his work,
and in an article published in the Schumann Symposium, argued that this was a
plausible explanation of the hand injury, of the aggravation of the hand.
injury.
Q—How long did
it take people to respond to the article after it was published?
A—The article
about the hand injury? Well, I’ve had almost no reaction to any of these
articles. I mean, one doesn’t expect—one or two people might write in and make
points, make contributions, offer comments, new information, new ideas, which is
interesting. There’s a certain amount of correspondence, which develops with
people over the years; but I would very surprised if, in this field there were
any striking reactions. It hasn’t been the case.
Q—The 1985
biography by Dr. Peter Ostwald does present a counter response, however.
A—Well, I
haven’t read his book for some little time. I did review it for the Sunday
Times when it first appeared. My impression was that it doesn’t rely as much
as it should on actual hard evidence. What one has to do, I’m sure, in
considering this or any other question, is to begin by soberly setting out the
facts, and on that basis, offering some kind of general hypothesis on the basis,
purely, of the facts as they are recorded and documented in archives. And one
begins by setting out on a piece of paper what those facts are and what their
sources are. If one does that, I think one comes to the kind of conclusion that
music historians have come to about Schumann throughout the ages, namely that he
was, alas, a syphilitic. It seems sensible to explain all his physical ailments
and symptoms, and indeed some of his psychic ailments and symptoms, as well on
those grounds and those grounds alone, unless one has clear evidence or proof of
other intercollated conditions.
Q—The fact
that in Schumann’s life and work there is a sporadic returning to creative
exuberance in no way minimizes your theory, then?
A—Well, I
think on the contrary. It’s entirely consistent with the theory that Schumann
was a sane, ordinary, generally a rather happy human being who was prone
occasionally to melancholy as many people are who happen to suffer from
syphilis; and therefore, was transformed into a hypochondriac as well as a very
ill person because he knew, you see, because knowing the study of the textbooks
of the time, he knew where that road led. He knew that it would lead to his
madness and general paralysis of the insane which is exactly where it did lead.
A person who knows his fate that far ahead may be forgiven for occasionally
having certain misgivings and indeed exhibiting psychic symptoms of one kind or
another. Anyone would do that, any ordinary, normal person with that sort of
Damocles hanging over their heads would respond in exactly the same way. Now I
think that if Schumann had been a schizophrenic in the clinical sense, his
creativity would certainly have been damaged. Creative schizophrenics, so far as
I’m aware, who are at a very high level of artistic genius have not been
observed. The fact is that schizophrenia damages creativity, and Schumann’s
creativity was not damaged. It’s perfectly clear to me, therefore, that he was
not a schizophrenic in any sensible sense of that term, certainly not in your
accredited clinical sense of that term.
Q—Is there
anything about the subsequent treatment and aftermath of Schumann’s
incarceration that bothers you, frustrates you, leaves you full of questions?
A—No, I think
that the Schumann story is, alas, in many ways too clear. It is the classic
syphilitic syndrome of its time leading to madness, attempted suicide—exactly as
in the case of Hugo Wolf, who was also syphilitic and attempted death by
drowning. The clinical picture seems to me absolutely clear, and many
distinguished philologists and venereologists have said exactly the same, and I
think they’re right.
Q—So, in
short, nothing that has been suggested by other biographers that has changed
your mind?
A—Put like
that, it sounds just a little hidebound. My position is that one has to have
regard to the evidence, and the evidence and the consensus is absolutely,
certainly, beyond any possible doubt that Schumann was a syphilitic. Everyone’s
been saying this ever since he first went into the hospital at Endenich about
150 years ago, but I see no further actual evidence from the archive to dispose
anyone to change that view.
The
Schumann Children
Q—What about
the children that came after? Anything about their lives that either supports or
denies that idea?
A—Well, the
Schumann children had a very unfortunate medical history. Some of the girls were
quite long-lived and presumably they weren’t touched by the illness at all. It
is something, after all, that has its effects in rather unpredictable ways. But
it is worth noting that Ludwig spent all his days in an asylum, and he suffered
from some disease of the spinal marrow which is consistent with a syphilitic
parentage. There were various miscarriages, and other of the Schumann children
died young—Felix from tuberculosis, I think at a very early age, and Julie,
also, early. The clinical picture is, again, consistent with the history of
syphilis.
Q—Does this
include Clara, then?
A—Well, I
think Schumann as a proper citizen with special probity would have made
absolutely sure that in accordance with the medical knowledge at the time at
least, that he was healed before he married.
Q—Now, when
you say healed, that is to say, the ongoing illness could not be arrested, but
the immediate problem was healed. Is that what you mean?
A—I think that
he was not infectious.
Q—Would Father
Wieck have known anything about this or suspected?
A—I’m sure.
And I’m sure that’s why he objected so strenuously to the marriage. He objected
strenuously really beyond the bounds of all reason and conscience. He’d made
incredible efforts. He was determined to stop that marriage, and if your
prospective son-in-law had syphilis, wouldn’t you?
Q—Would he
then, have been justified in saying so straight out? I don’t think he ever
really did.
A—It was the
kind of thing that wasn’t said, and perhaps he wasn’t in a position to say so.
However, when Schumann first consulted a doctor, it was Wieck who went with him
because Schumann’s father had died and Wieck was in loco parentis. He was
the only father that Schumann had, and they went together to consult the doctor.
Q—Does it
bother you, however, that there’s not a single reference to it in anything we
know that Wieck wrote or said?
A—In the first
place, I think these things were unmentionable. In the second place, Wieck was
not in a position wholly to be sure. Everything he could conceivably accuse
Schumann of, like drunkenness, he did. But Drunkenness was comparatively
respectable. Syphilis was, I suppose, the equivalent to AIDS now. One would be
reluctant to make precise accusations if one wasn’t actually medically sure
oneself.
Q—Dr. Ostwald
suggests that the immediate cause of Schumann’s death was self-starvation. Does
that in any way invalidate or confirm your own theory?
A—I don’t know
of any reason for thinking that. I think it’s quite common of cases of paresis,
that during the ultimate stages of general paralysis the patient stops taking
food. But that Schumann deliberately did so in order to starve himself to death
seems to me merely theoretical, not to say hallucinatory.
Research
and “Detection”
Q—Whether we
talk about music or the biography, we seem to be employing a kind of detective
inquiry, don’t we?
A—Well, I
think that’s the right way to approach all problems. It’s not coincidence that
people like Sherlock Holmes and other detectives in fiction, or Hercules Poirot,
are notorious for approaching the problem always in the same kind of way which
is to set down the facts. In many of the stories, part of the novel, part of the
actual fiction is taken up by telling the reader certain lists of suspects,
motives and so on and the actual facts of the case, especially times and dates
and alibis, where were certain people on certain dates and so on. I think you
have to begin with a meticulous survey of the actual dates and facts, in so far
as they’re known. Of course, the process of inductive inference is dependent on
getting, if possible, all the facts and getting the right facts. And you might
by unfortunate mischance get the wrong facts or the facts might lead you to a
mistaken conclusion, but there’s no cure for that,. The process is ineluctable.
You have to follow these steps in the solving crossword puzzles. You have
certain conditions you have to comply with. You can’t just write in anything
that comes into your head. It has to be the right number of letters long and so
on, and chess problems are faced with the same predicament that you actually
have a design or pattern on the board which is there, which is given. So, yes,
you have to begin with the data. And the only way from the data to conclusion is
by means of these accredited processes of inductive inference.
The Song
Research
Q—Does that
mean that I can suggest that you approach the body of songs with something of
that spirit?
A—Well, I
would like to think so. I mean one of the things one is doing for better or for
worse, in discussing any kind of art form, is saying what one likes personally;
and the fact of personal liking or affinity gives one a certain reason at least,
if not a certain right, for talking about a particular thing with enthusiasm and
love so that one’s very favorite things are discoursed upon with hopefully as
much pleasure as they have given. So there’s first of all the aesthetic affinity
of pleasure or love, to find no better word. But then having said that, there
are also certain problems to solve if you’re talking about any corpus or body or
work. Some question arises like what is the date of this work? Is it late or
early? Some of the Schumann songs have late dates, but they look remarkably like
the early style, so it’s possible to say in some cases by applying what seem to
be the right principles of research, to give reasons for saying this is an early
work and then later on, if a manuscript, an early draft turns up with an early
date, well, that’s very gratifying.
Q—Among all of
your works about all kinds of subjects, your book on the songs may not be the
most widely disseminated, even though it’s the work that most identifies you in
the minds of so many with a particular subject. Is it one of your significant
products?
A—Well, I
would like to think that the main works are the books on the songs. Wolf was my
first love. The first love of any songwriter who’s any critic, who’s also a
musician and a poet is bound to be Schubert because that’s where song as I
understand it really begins and ends. It happens to be, not by any coincidence,
a nineteenth century art form. The birth of Schubert to the death of Wolf is the
nineteenth century minus or plus three years. This is not coincidence. It is a
romantic and individualized art form. But what you’re attending to is the
significant marriage of music and words so that at every turn, one is confronted
by problems which one tries to resolve, like the question of dating. Another
thing I’ve done is to try to establish the worklist for Schubert and Wolf and
Schumann in
Q—For
a person who is confronted with a bookshelf of treatments of the Schubert and
Schumann songs, how then does yours assume an identity separate from those?
A—Well, the
identity offered—I mean the persona offered—is one of a perceiving person who
has the basic qualification for discourse on these topics—that is to say, in the
first place, loving most of them and liking, or at least respecting all of them.
I heard my very first Schubert song sung fifty-two years ago, so I’m quite
familiar with these masterpieces now and have been familiar with them for some
time. So the first qualification is love and respect and knowledge. And then the
second impulse is to say something about them to people who might not have had
the chance I have had to know them quite so well. So it’s two things really.
First of all, having received from Schubert, or whoever it may be, some impulse
and then one wishes to just propagate that wave like a radio wave in others and,
if possible, to make converts to this great music which I have no doubt at all
enriches and enhances life beyond measure for those fortunate enough to
participate in it.
Q—How could we
even begin to be able to sum up? The wealth of wonders, especially communicable
ones, that you find in the Schumann songs. You’ve talked about one motif of
Clara being in the D Minor Symphony. Have you smelted down a collection of
motifs into one or is there a multitude of them?
Songs and
Language Motifs
A—There are a
multitude of them. What I’ve tried to do in the Schumann book and in the Wolf
book is to compile a kind of breviary, a vocabulary of meaningful motifs.
Wagnerians know that there are motifs in the various operas and they have the
great advantage of having them classified alphabetically at the beginning of the
vocal scores. If you want to know what the “Swan” motif is in Parsifal, look it
up under “Swan.” And that’s a kind of code, incidentally, the purpose of which
is to symbolize, almost in a codified way, the ideas you’re supposed to have
when you hear this music. Well, the relationship of opera to song is something
like this—that an opera is a much more public thing, and a song is a much more
private thing. The motivic elements of song, are much less public, much less
overt, much less deliberate than they are in Wagner, and some might say for that
very reason more interesting. They operate at the purely intuitive, subconscious
level where, for many people, great art is at its most effective. It’s worth it,
I think, to try to register and classify the motivic ideas of Hugo Wolf when he
wanted to express such notion as the increasing effects or intensities of light.
He has a musical way of doing that which one can hear, but which might not be
obvious to everyone. It is, therefore, worth noting this so that when you hear
it or see it in the words and listen to it in the music, you get an extra added
idea. Music, especially the song, is greatly enhanced by approaching it with
one’s own personal imagination, right or wrong. One actually has to contribute
something to the music as well as having it contribute to one’s own psyche and
pleasure. You have to bring something to it as if it were a person. The idea is
to establish a kind of lexicon or breviary of motifs in Schumann and Wolf. I can
help towards the appreciation of those masters. And I have ready, more or less
ready, for when the time comes, a comparable lexicon of motific writing in
Brahms and in Schubert. But that’ll take a few more years yet.
Q—In your book
then, how do you communicate this to the reader? Do you give them some of these
motifs or motto in a simplified form?
A—Yes, well,
I’ve thought about this a great deal. In broadcasting or discourse you can
actually play the examples on the piano or you can do an excerpt from the song
and you can relate that to the words of the song. Thus, one makes one’s meaning
clear. In the form of the printed word, I think the only possible device is to
give a musical example. So the idea in the Schumann and Wolf books is to
illustrate with actual musical examples in given context with given meanings
what the music actually sounds like—whether in direct quotation or in a
simplified form—from the actual score on the page and rely on the reader to read
music.
Q—I’ve been
struck by the fact that the conversation I’ve had with pianist Joerg Demus some
time ago seems to be following a parallel track. He talked about the importance
of the piano writing, for example, in the Schumann songs. He finds lots of
figurations and things that you can trace back into the solo piano works where
you see parallels and consistencies.
A—Well, I
entirely agree with it. In the song-writing of great masters, especially
Schumann, you can certainly find parallels in the piano music. Indeed, I would
be prepared to argue this quite strenuously. What the German lied is, in its
essence, is a keyboard art form. This fact is usually withheld from singers
because it’s bad for their morale. But pianists know and musicologists know that
it is a keyboard art form. It develops from piano music.
Well,
one of the more obvious motifs throughout German music are the various of
depicting nature. And the German art song takes a great deal of its inspiration
from poetry which is drawn directly from descriptions of nature so you have to
have a musical palette, so to speak, like an artist has. You can dip in your
brush and musically, you can depict such ideas as the movement of leaves or the
movement of waves, the ripple of waves, the lisp of leaves and so on. And
Schumann has all these very typical associations. A song for example, the famous
"Der Nussbaum", has to depict the idea of waving foliage (Sams plays) like this.
Simple arpeggios throughout the piece which are entirely unobtrusive, but which
heard in conjunction with the melodic line and the words conjure up in your
mind, and are deliberately intended to, the picture of waving foliage. And there
are all sorts of movements of waves like this (Sams plays) in a song called “Die
Lorelei.” Now these movements are enhanced by further pictures which are derived
from the heart of the German woodland, and the main thing here is the so-called
“horn passage” (Sams plays). Anything like that means the hunt. And this can
appear in any sort of guise. In a song, for example, called “Im Walde,” there’s
a description of a hunting party that suddenly passes by and the music has (Sams
plays) the same kind of music that would be written for horns in couples or in
quartets. This helps to create atmosphere in songs that mere words don’t
actually tell you. And the music begins in a prelude and it is only later that
you hear the words and know what the music is about. When it begins like this
(Sams plays), that passage tells you that the scene is set in a woodland. So
that when the words begin, “It is already latest, it is already cold, why are
you riding lonely through the woodland?”, you know something before that word is
sung. You know already what the song is about. The scene is set. The ideal
Schumann song prepares the listener in various ways for the musical ideas that
are going to be expressed in the poem. It also enhances those ideas in quite
unexpected ways.
Q—You tell me.
What is a negative criticism you’ve received for this kind of work, and how do
you respond to that?
A—It’s quite
often said, and I have a certain sympathy for this asseveration, that music is
after all, music and cipher is cipher, and never the twain shall meet (or at
least they never meet in any significant measure). And I can see why that’s
said, but it seems to me to rest on a misapprehension. What cipher is when it
turns into music is music and that’s really all you hear. One might say, for
example, there can’t really be a Clara theme because the letter “B” isn’t really
“L” and thus can’t really mean “L.” On the other hand, the letter “C” isn’t
really the note “C,” either. It isn’t really that. All these things are symbols
and music itself is a symbol. Schumann did that, and Brahms did it too, and
Elgar certainly beyond any question. It can’t be any coincidence that great
composers happen to have minds that work in that way. It’s not a very common
characteristic among the populace at large. I should be surprised if more than a
tiny fraction of 1% of people were interested in such ideas, but a very high
proportion of great composers are interested in such ideas and they’re musical
and once you’ve translated the cipher notes or the idea into music, then what
you have is music. I’ve heard people who can actually read music in this rather
unusual sense. There’s quite a well known musical manuscript in which the
composer, John Field, thanks his hostess of the previous evening for the
delightful supper she had given him. He said it consisted of—(Sams plays); and
I’ve known people when that was played to them who heard in their heads straight
away, “B,E,E,F” and “C,A,B,B,A,G,E.” And what he was thinking of was beef and
cabbage. (And he said that he would be very grateful for a second helping of
either!). So to some people with really musical minds who are listening to the
notes at absolute pitch and are familiar with the letter names as of course one
is, when you hear this (plays), they just say beef. It spells beef.
Q—Are there
some questions yet to be answered?
A—I haven’t
studied them in depth for ten years. I’m waiting with interest when I resume
these studies as I propose shortly to do with a book on Brahms and that will
take the same form. I can’t think of any way of improving on these, the simple
textbook form that I have tried to adopt from the beginning—essentially text and
commentary and notes. Admittedly a didactic form, but the simplest way of
seeking to expound these masterpieces. And I want to do that for Brahms and
Schubert, if that’s possible. And in doing so, I want to say what their motivic
language is, also. And I’m looking forward to establishing, if this is possible,
if I have time, a complete breviary of motific writing—even to considering the
possibility of translating, let’s say, Schumann into Wolf or Schubert into
Brahms, as one might translate from one language into the other. Each is a
separate language. They all have a great deal in common. They all use the horn
passage, for example, to connote the open air, but they all have their
individual musical expressions as well, which have to be learned. So what I
would then like to do, if one had time to round off the whole study, is to do a
complete conspectus of musical language in the Lied, from Schubert to Wolf—in
effect spanning the whole German nineteenth century.
Q—Which is to
say they all belong to—say they’re the equivalent of the Romance languages. They
are languages that are interrelated.
A—Yes, I think
they are languages that are interrelated, precisely that; and interrelated
because in the same way that other languages, non-musical languages are, they
all stem from the same root. They all directly derive from the earlier, the
eighteenth century German tradition, from Bach through Haydn. It’s amazing how
many of these ideas you hear in the “Creation.” In the beginning was Haydn’s
motivic writing, which everybody heard and incorporated into the Lied, so what
you hear in the German nineteenth century is a bit of musical history. You hear
the initial sources of the eighteenth century broadening and deepening and then,
mystically, dwindling and ceasing altogether. What I think happened to the
German song after Wolf was that it became essentially popular music. It became
Gershwin and musical comedy and has broadened still further into pop music
nowadays.
Q—As a kind of
a nutshell thing, this Schumann body of songs—there are those who say that maybe
it’s the quintessence of his musical expression. How might you generalize about
your linguistic researches here?
A—Well, it
would be a very separate study to take each of the great songwriters, and there
are others we haven’t mentioned at all. I’m also interested in Mendelssohn and
Franz in
Q—Do you think
maybe—these are my words and not yours—they do represent a musical distillation
of Schumann’s best efforts?
A—I think
there are other things, other aspects of each composer which ought not to be
neglected if one’s interested in the composers as a whole. But what I’m very
sure of is this—if you’re looking for a way into their works, it helps,
particularly if you know some German. But that’s not essential, and in many ways
it’s better to approach German as a foreign language, as a native
English-speaking person would naturally do, because it has to sound like magic.
It must not sound like an everyday language so you have to know a bit of that;
but given that knowledge, the song approach is the direct and immediate way into
the heart of each writer’s creative output. Of this I’m very sure, and once
you’ve attained that central position, you can then look out and explore all
their other multifarious and fascinating facets.
Haunted
Landscape
Q—We’re going
to talk about the tradition of the “haunted landscape” in the sensibilities of
the time.
A—Well, there
are two sorts of German landscape, I think, in the nineteenth century. One
derives essentially from the poet Eichendorff, and he is of course a part of a
continuing German tradition. He didn’t invent these things, but it was him for
whom twilight scenes became a living and vivid actuality. In this way, he
inspired, I’m sure, all the French poets of the later nineteenth century. Any
poem about a formal garden illuminated by moonlight where peacocks walk, where
there are great extensive vistas like the garden of the Tuilleries. Poems of
that kind come from Eichendorff sources, and they also derive in part from “des
Knaben Wunderhorn”—that sensibility connected with the idea of
© John C. Tibbetts 2004 |
