Features / Classical

Robert Schumann's Other Writing

By Patsy Morita

Jun. 4, 2010

Robert Schumann's music is well-known and well-discussed, but although biographies always mention his work as a music critic, his critical writing is not as widely acknowledged or analyzed, or, sometimes, easy to find. (There are only a handful of books translating Schumann's original texts into English.)

Schumann's criticisms are found in the journal he established, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and in his personal journals. The pieces in the periodical usually appeared to have been written by "Florestan," "Eusebius," or "Raro," three fictional characters that Schumann created, each with distinct views toward music and the arts. However, the writing and opinions were all Schumann's.

His writing combines the poetic with the prosaic, in much the same way his music does. When his intention is to convey the feeling of the music or of a performance, his writing is full of metaphorical imagery. For example, here is his impression of Liszt performing a Konzertstück by Weber:

Beginning the piece with such a force and grandeur of expression that made one think of an attack on a battlefield, he carried this on with continually increasing power up to the passage where the player, as it were, places himself at the head of the orchestra, leading it forward in triumph. Here indeed he resembled that great commander [Napoleon] to whom he has been compared in personal appearance, and the tempestuous applause that greeted him was not unlike an adoring "Vive l'Empereur!"

There are entertaining moments also. In one article, describing the events of a ball he held for fellow artists, he writes about one guest who is not a particular friend: "Whenever I think of him I discover a whole Shakespearian dictionary of abuse within me" (tr. Fanny Raymond Ritter, 1891).

When Schumann writes about a piece of music in an analytical fashion, he is more grounded and straightforward and can be as dry as any other academic. But sprinkled throughout are phrases and sentences where the dreamer shines through. In talking about Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Schumann goes through the mechanics of each movement in detail. However, proceeding that is the line: "If only I might succeed in giving my reader, whom I would like to lead up and downstairs through this fabulous edifice, a picture of its various chambers!" (tr. Paul Rosenfeld, 1946). Even within the sere description of the first movement, there is this: "Completely fantastic forms; reminiscent only once, as though broken, of the older ones. Evanescence" (tr. Paul Rosenfeld, 1946). It's in passages such as this where it's hard to believe that Schumann started college as a law student and that he ever thought he would have succeeded as a lawyer. It's obvious that he had the analytical and reasoning skills, and it's not that lawyers are not inventive or imaginative, but Schumann's true path led toward a more freely creative and artistic career.

A few other examples of Schumann's writings:

On Schubert's C major Symphony, the manuscript of which he discovered while visiting Schubert's brother --

On hearing Schubert's symphony and its bright, flowery, romantic life, the city [Vienna] crystallizes before me.... Here we find, besides the most masterly technicalities of musical composition, life in every vein, coloring down to the finest gradation; meaning everywhere; sharp expression in detail; and in the whole a suffusing romanticism such as other works by Franz Schubert have made known to us.

On A Midsummer Night's Dream, by his friend, Felix Mendelssohn --

It seemed almost touching to hear fragments from the overture in some of his more recent compositions; but I could not wholly approve of the finale which almost literally repeats the close of the overture. The composer's intention in thus rounding off the whole is clear, but it seems to me too intellectual an achievement. He should have endowed this scene with his freshest tones; here, where music could have achieved the greatest effect, I would have expected something original, fire-new.

Finally, here are some of Schumann's Musical Rules of Home and Life, published in the second edition of his Album für die Jugend. The complete list may be found on the website of the Schumann Birthplace in Zwickau. Many might say that these are relevant today.