Romantic Masterpieces

Schubert   and   Schumann

Last night I attended a concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that included two great romantic works, Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in a minor and Franz Schubert's Great Symphony in C Major.  Sometimes considered his greatest work, the Great C Major, his  9th Symphony,  was never heard by the composer, because the Viennese musicians considered it unplayable; rather, it was premiered in a Leipzig Gewandhaus concert in 1839 under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn.

Schubert's Symphony No. 9 begins with a noble, reflective theme that reappears throughout the first movement. Well after Schubert's death, the theme's grandeur and sense of space, together with the sheer length of the Symphony, helped to earn it the nickname the "Great C Major".  Robert Schumann, who brought it to the attention of Mendelssohn, referred to its length as "heavenly" in the critical music revue which he edited.  In fact, the nickname was first applied by a music publisher to distinguish the work from Schubert's shorter and less ambitious 6th Symphony, the "Little C Major." But the name aptly describes both Schubert's evident intent in writing the work, and the stature of the final composition.

Schubert profoundly revered Beethoven. He may have paid the older composer a single visit, but generally he kept a humble distance, content with attending Beethoven's concerts including most probably the premiere of Beethoven's Ninth "Choral" Symphony in 1824. He served as one of Beethoven's pallbearers at the great man's funeral. Perhaps his greatest tribute to Beethoven was his resolve to write a grand symphony with the breadth and profundity of his predecessor's; and his Symphony No. 9 was the result.

It was a perfect vehicle to show off the strengths of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Music Director Riccardo Muti, and their success was rewarded by the enthusiastic response of the audience.  Earlier in the evening the reknowned pianist Mitsuko Uchida played the Schumann concerto with sublime style.  Her experience in this repetoire, she first played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra almost thirty years ago, provided her with the ability to share deep insights into this familiar concerto.  The concert was another triumph for one of the great orchestras of the world.

Frauenliebe und Leben

Poetry from Frauenliebe und Leben, the song cycle by Robert Schumann *

Since I saw him

Since I saw him 

I believe myself to be blind, 

where I but cast my gaze, 

I see him alone. 

as in waking dreams 

his image floats before me, 

dipped from deepest darkness, 

brighter in ascent. 

All else dark and colorless 

everywhere around me, 

for the games of my sisters 

I no longer yearn, 

I would rather weep, 

silently in my little chamber, 

since I saw him, 

I believe myself to be blind.

*Frauenliebe und -leben (A Woman's Love and Life) is a cycle of poems by Adelbert von Chamisso, written in 1840. They describe the course of a woman's love for her man, from her point of view, from first meeting through marriage to his death, and after. Selections were set to music as a song-cycle by masters of German Lied, namely Carl Loewe, Franz Paul Lachner and Robert Schumann. I attended a performance of the setting by Schumann (his opus 42) sung by Jennifer Johnson Cano yesterday at the Chicago Opera Theater.

Robert Schumann

“To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.”

- Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann was born on this day in 1810 (died 1856) and was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is one of the most famous Romantic composers of the 19th century.

He had hoped to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist, having been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe. However, a self-inflicted hand injury prevented those hopes from being realized, and he decided to focus his musical energies on composition. Schumann's published compositions were all for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra, many lieder (songs for voice and piano), four symphonies, an opera, and other orchestral, choral and chamber works. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ("The New Journal for Music"), a Leipzig-based publication that he jointly founded. In 1840, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with his piano instructor (Wieck), Schumann married Wieck's daughter, pianist Clara Wieck, who also composed music and had a considerable concert career, including premieres of many of her husband's works. He died in middle age; for the last two years of his life, after an attempted suicide, he was confined to a mental institution at his own request.

Among my favorites of his works are the Kreisleriana (1838), a fantasia for piano that was one of Schumann's greatest works. Johannes Kreisler, the fictional poet created by poet E. T. A. Hoffman who is limned as a "romantic brought into contact with reality", was appropriated by Schumann who utilized him as an imaginary mouthpiece for the sonic expression of emotional states, in music that is "fantastic and mad." Another even greater work was the Fantasia in C, Op. 17, written in the summer of 1836, a work of passion and deep pathos, imbued with the spirit of late Beethoven. I also particularly enjoy his Piano Quintet in E flat (1842), and his four symphonies which were all written in the decade between 1841 and 1851. Much of his music reflects the two contrasting sides of his personality to which he gave the names "Florestan" and "Eusebius"; each depicts an aspect of his personality, the first being more flamboyant and the second more controlled. Overall he was the most romantic of the early Romantic composers.

Robert Schumann

Last night I attended a concert where David Zinman led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Robert Schumann's Second Symphony. This is an uplifting work in the key of C major whose sunny brilliance belies the composer's emotional turmoil during the months immediately preceding its' completion. Schumann would complete two more symphonic masterworks, and this joins them in the pantheon of musical romanticism.