Schumann: The Songs

Influences

No doubt it began with Schubert, whose instrumental music, as well as songs, always seemed to Schumann to be verbally expressive. His essay on Schubert’s great C major symphony, [4] which he had himself located in manuscript in Vienna, reaffirms those qualities. The stimulus of that experience may well have prompted the further exploration of Schubert's posthumous songs, then (1838­-1839) being published in Vienna.

     Beethoven, too, was a source of inspiration; his An die ferne Geliebte is freely quoted and adapted throughout Schumann’s C major Fantasie, op. 17 (1836), which was written as “a deep lament” for Clara Wieck. He must have played and sung Beethoven's song-cycle of the distant beloved very often, and in the most impressionable of moods. No wonder its pianistic style and cyclic form dominate his own love-songs.

     Another clear influence was Mendelssohn. Schumann’s review of St Paul [5] (1837) praises the “union of word and tone, language and music”; while in dis­cussing a set of the Songs without Words he gives an unconsciously prophetic description of his own songwriting style, thus:

     “Who has never sat at his piano in the twilight… and quietly sung to himself a tune while improvising? If you happen to play the melody and accompaniment together, and if (more to the point) you also happen to be a Mendelssohn, the result will be a beautiful Song without Words.” The resulting piano song is a con­cept explicitly avowed and defended in Schumann’s own critical writings. He described a set of songs by Kirchner as “self-contained instrumental pieces … often like translations of the poems into keyboard terms… like Songs without Words, but inspired by words… " [6] He also explained that the identification of piano and vocal lines, although admittedly limiting for the singer, comes naturally to a composer who has begun with instrumental composition and proceeded thence to songwriting. [7]

     Hindsight reveals how and when Schumann himself came to take that turning. By early 1839 he was chafing at the limitations of the keyboard. “I could smash the piano,” he writes; “it constricts my thinking. One day I shall master orchestral technique, though I've had little experience of it as yet." [8] Perhaps he never really broke with the piano. His symphonies may have been conceived in keyboard terms; the 1840 songs certainly were. But at least songwriting, like his forth­coming marriage, offered some escape from an increasingly convoluted world of private fantasy. Clara herself had suggested that his piano music was too cryptic for the general public. [9] Then, as now, vocal music was more widely popular. So Schumann in his marriage year of 1840 needed a more accessible form of musical communication, for the sake of both love and money. In each respect he was to be outstandingly successful. The songs made him a good profit and a good name; and they also persuaded Clara that he was the finest living musician (an impressive tribute from one who knew Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn).

     There may have been earlier subconscious impulses to songwriting. In 1838 we hear of a work called Maultreiberlied [10] (Muleteer's song), now lost. It was perhaps a piano piece; but it is the first work even to be called “song” for ten years, and is thus of some historical interest. More evidentially, we can hear the piano music of 1839 adding a new voice, written on a third stave, as in the

 EX. 1

Romanze in F sharp major, op. 28 no. 2, or the Humoreske, op. 20, where it is described as an “innere Stimme”, or inner voice (Ex. 2).

EX. 2

      It seems likely that at least one of the 1839 piano pieces, the Scherzo, op. 32 no. 1, was later converted into the song Ich wandre nicht. [11] At the same time, Schumann’s prejudices against songwriting were fading. The discipline of regular critical writing may have helped him (as it did Hugo Wolf) to a closer understanding of the inner life of words. By 1839 his prose is better integrated; the quotations and allusions, at first merely scattered on the surface, become absorbed in his own style. By 1838, he was reading and writing verses in homage to Clara. [12]  By then, too, he had reviewed a number of songs and studied several others (as editor of a journal which regularly published a vocal music supplement).

     Thus strong forces and pressures were at work clearing a channel for song and diverting Schumann's spate of piano music into it. His self-erected dam of a priori objections would no doubt have been overwhelmed in any event. But there is evidence [13] that it was independently broken down; hence the flood of 1840 songs. These began on I February with a setting of Shakespeare (Schlusslied des Narren, Feste's last song from Twelfth Night) followed by one on a Biblical theme (Belsatzar). On 31 January his diary recorded a meeting with Mendels­sohn, whose musical treatment of Shakespeare (Midsummer Night's Dream) and the Bible (St Paul) Schumann had praised for its verbal expression. Furthermore, that first song echoes Mendelssohn’s Shakespeare music. The inference is plain. They had talked of songs and songwriting; Schumann had objected that the form was hybrid and depended too much on poetry; and had received the self-evident rejoinder—“very well; then choose great poetry”.