Schumann: The Songs
The Last Phase
Most daunting of all is the choice of poetic theme. The tide of musical invention continues to flow unabated; for example, the piano textures have not only orchestral effects but string quartet textures, as in Resignation of April 1850. But the words are already on the turn; resignation is their main theme. Then their life begins to ebb. By July 1850 the verbal features of the songs seem to be composing themselves for death. From then to the end of that year Schumann wrote 20 songs; four are about death, six about sorrow, and two about both. In 1851 he was outwardly happy and active; but of the twenty-one songs in that year, four are about sorrow and nine about death, varied with blood, killing, madness and prayer.
In 1852 he was again cheerful and busy; but of his seven songs all save one are about prayer or death, again with killing and blood. So the sad story continues, with the alienated mind eerily active to the last. For example the form of the large-scale declaimed ballad with piano accompaniment which Schumann had invented with Schön Hedwig in 1849, had two successors in 1852; one, Der Haidenknabe, op. 122 no. 1, is about death by murder, and the other, Die Flüchtlinge, no. 2, is about death by drowning. The last solo songs, in December of that year, are settings of texts allegedly by Mary Queen of Scots. The symbolic figure of that doomed heroine intones Schumann's requiem with her own. The five songs say, in pathetic broken chords, “I am going away; look after my new-born child; we must submit to fate; I must die; Christ have mercy on my soul.” Sometimes this music is resurrected, presumably as an act of piety. But it would surely be a greater piety to leave its acrid dust undisturbed, and to remember Schumann the songwriter at his greatest.