Part 6

Of all his compositions, the "Davidsbündlertänze" is fullest of this tricksy play of imagination, in which he took, as Oscar Bie says, "the pleasure of the delicate man of taste in labelling." From about 1834, when he founded his musical journal, the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_, the imaginary society of the _Davidsbund_ played an important part in his mental life. Believing that it was a part of his duty to oppose the philistinism, the dulness, pedantry, and sensuality which pervaded the music of the day, he dramatized the conflict as a struggle between the _Davidsbund_, or club of Davidites, and the forces of Philistia. His fancy played about this central conception until it had evolved a whole company of Davidites, individualizing each one. Several were merely single aspects of their creator's complex temperament. Florestan was the impassioned Schumann, Eusebius the dreamy and tender Schumann, Raro the philosophical mediator between the two. Others indicated friends: Felix Meritis was Mendelssohn; Chiarina, Clara Wieck; Estrella, Ernestine von Fricken, an early sweetheart. Once projected into the actual world, these figments of fancy became very real to their creator. His Sonata, opus 11, was originally printed as "by Florestan and Eusebius." Each of the numbers of the "Davidsbündlertänze" is signed "F.," or "E.," or "F. and E.," and the ascription is always conscientiously justified by the character of the music. In the first edition there are even "stage directions," such as, "Here Florestan stops, his lips trembling painfully," and "Eusebius said too much about this; but his eyes were full of joy." These finical particularities, however, as well as the motto in verse, were in the second edition stricken out.

All these elaborate paraphernalia with which Schumann equipped his first essays in composition are noteworthy not so much for any intrinsic significance as for the light they throw on his peculiar attitude toward an art which most of his predecessors had approached in a wholly objective and detached spirit. The persistent and minute subjectivity they reveal is remarkable in so young a man, working by instinct and in despite of the powerful influence of tradition. Most men approach music through a systematic technical discipline, and achieve individuality of style only with maturity; Schumann, reversing the process, turns to music at first simply as to one of several available ways of expressing a lively imagination, and gains technical skill but gradually and by arduous effort. His eloquence is that of a man filled with matter and enthusiasm, but untrained in oratory; he stammers, hesitates, coins words, improvises phraseology as he goes, and in the end attains fluency by dint of sheer earnestness and conviction. The inner impulse to expression creates its own medium, instead of being itself formed by the medium available; and while a language thus derived offhand has necessarily certain crudities, it has also, of course, a delightful freshness and happy spontaneity.

The inexhaustible tunefulness of the early Schumann is little short of marvellous. Few composers have been so prodigal of lovely melodies. They are like the king's daughters in the fairy tales, each more beautiful than the last; and though there is doubtless a family resemblance, each has a distinct physiognomy, a pronounced individuality. They are, for the most part, indeed, brief, striking motives rather than deliberately composed tunes, perfect but minute crystals of most various shapes, forming spontaneously in the highly saturated solution of the musical thought. No effort is made to purify, separate, or collect them; what their composer seems chiefly to value is their profusion and luxuriance. To state the same thing in more technical terms, there is next to no thematic development; there is simply the presentation of one charming phrase after another. The result is of course a certain fragmentariness and whimsicality; the music impresses us not by its cumulative power, its orderly advance, but by the sheer charm of its primitive elements.

The vigor of the rhythms never flags. Short notes in "dotted rhythms," holds from unaccented to accented beats, and all manner of devices for intensifying accentuation, give an inimitable elasticity to such things as the first of the "Intermezzi," the sixth, seventh, ninth, and final sections of the "Impromptus on a Theme of Clara Wieck," the ninth of the "Davidsbündlertänze," "Préambule," "Coquette," "Chiarina," "Valse Allemande," and the final march in the "Carnaval," "Aufschwung" in the "Phantasiestücke," and many others. There is to be observed also a constant tendency to emphasize the metre by slight but systematic deviations from it, such as syncopation and the shifting of motives into artificial relations to the measure, and the simultaneous use of two or more metrical schemes at once. Interesting examples of this sort of intensive syncopation occur in "Grillen," one of the "Phantasiestücke," in the B-flat major section of the eighth "Novelette," and in the "Faschingsschwank aus Wien." A delightfully quaint use of shifted motives is made in the finale of the Sonata, opus 11. The theme of the movement, though written in triple measure, consists entirely of two-beat motives, so that there is a constantly felt, and very exciting, opposition between metrical and rhetorical accents.

The motive of the scherzo of the same work is treated in a somewhat similar way. Of all the many instances which might be mentioned of a simultaneous use of two metrical schemes, one of the most consummate is the employment, in "Des Abends," of three groups of two sixteenth-notes in the melody, against two groups of three sixteenths in the accompaniment--a subtlety often missed by pianists, but essential to the charm of the piece. The first two numbers of the "Davidsbündlertänze" also present attractive oppositions of metre.

[Illustration: score] Figure VII.

The same waywardness finds further expression in certain harmonic eccentricities. Schumann loves to surprise, waylay, disappoint, and otherwise cajole his hearer. Strong unprepared dissonances, entrances of chords before we expect them, delays of the expected ones, entire evasions of the seemingly inevitable, and felicitous transitions into the seemingly impossible are a constant feature of his program. He loves to hit upon a note as if by accident, and then to justify and even emphasize it, as in the eighth and succeeding measures of the theme of the "Papillons"; to wound our ears with the harshest intervals, and then compel our acquiescence by a resulting felicity, as in the introduction to the F-sharp minor Sonata; to toss us restlessly upon a chromatic sea and bring us out at last into diatonic tranquillity, as in the first two pages of the "Toccata." At the beginning of the "Kreisleriana" he keeps the right hand half a pace ahead of the left, thus producing a great richness of tone as well as emphasizing the vigorous progression of the bass. In the first variation in opus 5 just the reverse of this occurs; the bass takes the lead, while the chords in the right hand lag behind, making temporary discords, but always coming out right in the end.

Many of these peculiarities of harmony are doubtless due simply to Schumann's sensuous susceptibility to good ear-filling sound, long intensified and developed by his habit of improvisation. Sir Hubert Parry remarks that "he loved to use all the pedal that was possible, and had but little objection to nearing all the notes of the scale sounding at once. He is said to have liked dreaming to himself, by rambling through all sorts of harmonies with the pedal down; and the glamour of crossing rhythms and the sound of clashing and antagonistic notes was most thoroughly adapted to his nature." There is, indeed, evidence of this taste for rich tonal effects on almost every page of his piano music. Like Chopin he finds a Mozartian clarity of sound a little tame, and prefers to obscure the outlines of his consonant chords by means of plentifully sprinkled dissonances; but while Chopin, more fastidiously delicate, makes his dissonances float like a diaphanous veil over the pure chords, Schumann, with true Teutonic luxuriousness, fills up all the chinks and crannies with suspensions and passing notes, and holds down the pedal to boot. His piano style is much more massive than Chopin's. He has the true Johnsonian taste for sonorousness and resonance. His ear is insatiably curious, too; witness the final chord in the "Papillons," with its tones released successively until but one remains sounding, the extraordinary clangor of low thirds and final emergence of ghostly pianissimo chord at the end of "Paganini" in the "Carnaval," and the many bizarre sonorities he obtains by making the left hand play above the right, as in the second of the "Abegg Variations" and in the section marked "Langsamer" in number two of the "Kreisleriana."

Taken all together, these piano compositions of the decade 1830-1840, which may be called the first period of Schumann's artistic life, reveal an extraordinarily mobile and fanciful temperament, working with the greatest freedom and spontaneity, though without the guidance of regular discipline. Their crudities are undeniable: the flights are short, the forms are fragmentary and often badly proportioned, the style is highly subjective, eccentric, arbitrary. Yet there is in these things such unflagging vitality, such rare and various beauty, such abounding youthful enthusiasm and freshness, that one would hardly sacrifice them for anything else that music has to offer, and it has even been questioned whether in the final analysis there is not more of the true Schumann in them than in the later, larger, and more technically perfect works. In a sense Hans von Bülow was right in saying that the _ipsissimus_ Schumann was to be found only in the early works up to opus 50.

However this may be, it is certain that at about his thirtieth year Schumann's artistic ideal began to undergo a gradual but radical transformation. We see him in the compositions of this time paying less and less attention to those purely personal whims and fancies that had at first dominated his imagination, and beginning to work very earnestly toward objective beauty and impersonal expression. The fictitious characters, the mottoes, the stage directions, the whole elaborate machinery of allusion to extra-musical interests, are forgotten, and the interest of the music itself becomes all in all. There had been already, among the works of his "storm and stress period," single compositions in which the dramatic interest was wholly subordinated to the musical, as, for example, the great "Toccata," opus 7, the "Allegro," opus 8, and the "Novelettes," opus 21; but now what had been only occasional in the days when fancy and a self-involved emotional life absorbed him grew to be normal and constant, and he became for the first time a liberal and devoted artist. Of the causes underlying this important change, the most fundamental was doubtless simply increasing maturity. Youth is naturally and innocently egotistical; the young man of sensibility loses himself in day dreams and whimsical fancies, which have no basis in experience, and no reference to anything beyond themselves; age brings a sense of the values of real life, sobers and domesticates the passions, and enlarges the interests until they spread from the self to all humanity. In an artistic nature this general change of attitude involves a change of artistic ideal; poignancy, intensity of expression, become less valued than justice and proportion; the merely self-expressive comes to seem trivial, and whimsicalities are discarded as interfering with the serenity of a universal beauty. Schumann's change of attitude was simply an unusually striking case of what happens to every perceptive mind when experience has been sufficiently assimilated.

The anxieties, doubts, fears, and disappointments connected with his courtship of Clara Wieck probably did more than anything else to chasten and to steady his character at this time.[6] The two artists, so diverse in talents, so remarkably at one in musical ideals, had first met in Leipsic in 1828, when one was a law student and amateur musician of eighteen, and the other an accomplished pianist, though only nine years old. Their relation was for a while purely musical; but as Clara's mind gradually developed, and especially after she began to play Schumann's compositions, they discerned more and more how deep-seated an artistic and personal congeniality was destined to bind them together. It is most interesting to trace in his letters and published music the successive steps of their comradeship. In 1832 he composes his "Impromptus on a Theme of Clara Wieck"; in 1833 he writes: "I have had a sympathetic idea, namely that to-morrow, exactly at eleven o'clock, I shall play the Adagio from Chopin's 'Variations,' and shall think intensely, exclusively, of you. My petition is that you will do the same, so that we may meet and communicate in spirit;" in 1834 he says: "When I am thinking of you very intently I invariably find myself at the piano, and seem to prefer writing to you in chords of the ninth, and especially with the familiar chord of the thirteenth." "Chiarina," in the "Carnaval," written in 1835 and 1837, is a musical portrait of the already beloved Clara, and the F-sharp minor Sonata, dating from the same period, one of his most romantic and impassioned works, is dedicated to her. The "Davidsbündlertänze" (1837) opens with a motive by her, and in 1839, while he is busy with the "Phantasie," he tells her, "I suppose you are the _Ton_ in the motto." As time goes on, musical sympathy merges more and more into love. "The 'Davidsbündlertänze,' and 'Phantasiestücke,'" he writes in January, 1838, "will be finished in another week. There are many bridal thoughts in the dances, which were suggested by the most delicious excitement that I ever remember. My Clara will understand all that is contained in the dances, for they are dedicated to her more emphatically than any of my other things. The whole story is a Polterabend."[7] In April he observes ingenuously, "I have just noticed that Ehe[8] [the German for "marriage"] is a very musical word, and a fifth, too." A year later he exclaims: "From your Romance I see plainly that we are to be man and wife. Every one of your thoughts comes out of my soul, just as I owe all my music to you.... Once I can call you mine you shall hear plenty of new things.... And we will publish some things under _our two names_, so that posterity may regard us as one heart and one soul, and may not know which is yours and which mine. How happy I am!"

Meanwhile, however, the narrow selfishness of the father, Friedrich Wieck, was raising all sorts of obstacles to this union. His daughter being, by her playing in public, a source of financial gain to him, he steadily opposed a marriage, as unfavorable to his interests. He forbade the lovers to meet, circulated false and damaging stories of Schumann, and when the couple, goaded to despair by his insensate obstinacy, had resolved to take matters into their own hands, thwarted even so radical a step by pretending to yield, but imposing conditions that could not possibly be carried out. On the whole, considering his impulsive temperament, Schumann bore this persecution with admirable patience, though not without an occasional plaint. "Your father calls me phlegmatic? 'Carnaval' and phlegmatic! F-sharp minor Sonata and phlegmatic! Being in love with such a girl and phlegmatic! And you can listen calmly to all this? He says that I have written nothing in the _Journal_ for six weeks. In the first place, it is not true; secondly, even if it were, how does he know what other work I have been doing? Up to the present the _Journal_ has had about eighty sheets of my own ideas, not counting the rest of my editorial work, besides which, I have finished ten great compositions in two years, and they have cost me some heart's blood. To add to all this, I have given several hours' hard study every day to Bach and Beethoven, and to my own work, and conscientiously managed a large correspondence. I am a young man of twenty-eight, with a very active mind, and an artist to boot; yet for eight years I have not been out of Saxony, and have been sitting still, saving my money, without a thought of spending it on amusement or horses, and quietly going my own way, as usual. And do you mean to say that all my industry and simplicity, and all that I have done, is quite lost upon your father?"

But all these difficulties and disappointments, all these occasions for patience, tact, industry, loyalty, and self-control, painful as they were to experience, were slowly transforming the capricious and dreamy youth into a man of mature will and seasoned resourcefulness. "No man is any use," says Stevenson, "until he has dared everything." Some such conviction must have been in Schumann's mind when at last, early in 1840, he resolved to avail himself of the law of Saxony that when parents withhold their consent to a marriage without good reason, the consent of the courts may be substituted. For such a man, so public a step in so sacredly private a matter must have been doubly difficult; to decide upon it must have involved a long mental turmoil. But he did finally take his case to the courts, and eventually married Clara Wieck, with the sanction of the law, in September, 1840. With this manly and courageous action his youth may be said to have ended, and the responsibilities, anxieties, labors, and sober joys of his manhood to have commenced.

It thus happens that the last purely lyrical expression of his essentially lyrical genius is to be found in the fine series of songs which he poured forth in 1840. In the early months of this, his "song-year," he was in a most sensitive and exalted state. The prospect of attaining the goal so long vainly striven for had fired his imagination to fever heat; and according to his habit he relieved this excitement by incessant composition. "Since yesterday morning," he writes in February, "I have written about twenty-seven pages of music (something new), and I can tell you nothing more about it, except that I laughed and cried over it with delight. Ah, Clara, what bliss it is writing for the voice, and I have had to do without it for so long!" This "something new" was the cycle of "Myrthen" songs, opus 25, among which are "Widmung," "Der Nussbaum," "Die Lotosblume," "Du Bist wie eine Blume," and others almost equally earnest, tender, and passionate. With his first published songs (nine lyrics by Heine, opus 24) he sends the message: "Here is a slight reward for your last two letters. While I was composing these songs I was quite lost in thoughts of you. If I were not engaged to such a girl, I could not write such music." "I have been composing so much," he writes in May, "that it really seems quite uncanny at times. I cannot help it, and should like to sing myself to death, like a nightingale. There are twelve songs of Eichendorff's [the 'Liederkreis,' opus 39, containing the dramatic 'Waldesgespräch,' the ethereal 'Mondnacht,' and the splendidly passionate 'Frühlingsnacht'], but I have nearly forgotten them, and begun something else."

All together, over one hundred songs were produced during this single year, including such immortal masterpieces as "Er, der Herrlichste von Allen," "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai," "Ich grolle nicht," "Ich hab' im Traum geweinet," and "Die Beiden Grenadiere," in addition to those already mentioned. In general, the songs have the same melodic freshness, richness of harmony, color, vigor of rhythm, and individuality of style that distinguish the earlier piano works. It is noteworthy, however, that in a certain directness of utterance, in freedom from eccentricities of manner and perversity of fancy, and in an increased breadth and coherence of structure, they show a distinct advance. They mark, indeed, a point of transition in Schumann's career, a point at which, still retaining the exuberance of youth, he has just learned to direct and control it by means of a more efficient artistry, and in the service of a maturer ideal. To most of his other works a strict criticism has reluctantly to admit the pertinence, on one side or the other, of the proverb "_Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait_"; but the songs seem as thoroughly achieved as they are richly inspired.

After his marriage he turned to the larger forms of composition, which he took up in a curiously methodical rotation. First came, in 1841, three symphonies, the B-flat major, opus 38, the so-called "Overture, Scherzo, and Finale," and the D-minor, published many years later as opus 120. The piano concerto was also begun. In 1842 his interest was shifted to chamber music, and the three quartets for strings, the piano quartet, and the piano quintet appeared in rapid succession. Not until 1843 did he essay, in "Paradise and the Peri," a large choral work, but thereafter several such works appeared from time to time. Thus we see that while his more romantic compositions were for the most part produced in the years of youth and courtship, he turned, when once he had begun to face life as it is, in all its tragedy and difficulty as well as its human beauty and sweetness, to the severer, grander forms of music. In spite of the happiness he found in one of the most perfect of marriages, we must remember that this union also involved new responsibilities, anxieties, and distractions. It brought with it novel social and professional duties, children to be protected, guided, and helped, and above all the grinding routine by which the daily bread of an artist has to be earned. How severe the conditions were we have only recently learned from the complete biography of Clara Schumann.[9] In her diary we read of the constant struggles of these sensitive people to get the mere necessaries of life; of the husband's steadily increasing ill-health, physical and mental, ending in insanity and early death; of enforced migrations to Dresden and Düsseldorf in search of more lucrative posts for him as an orchestral conductor, and of the defeat of even these efforts by the incompetence of disease; and of the wife's loyal resumption of concert playing, in order to fill the family purse. All this experience of the sordid actualities with which the world always tests its idealists was well calculated to make even Schumann take a sober, and at times a tragic, view of life; and though he is always noble and devoted, there is often in his chance remarks, as years go on, a note of weariness, melancholy, or philosophic resignation. It is not that he surrenders his ideals--only that he finds them more difficult of realization than he had supposed in the flush of youth, and under the buffets of fate retires somewhat into himself, and chastens his enthusiasm into a stoical faith and a more patient loyalty. This change of temper inevitably makes itself felt in such characteristic music as the solemn introduction and the aspiring adagio of the C-major Symphony, the mystical "Cathedral Scene" of the "Rhenish Symphony," the sombre and restless "Manfred Overture," the noble "Funeral March" in the Piano Quintet, and the infinitely tender Andante grazioso of the Piano Concerto. The same sincere, simple nature as ever is felt behind these things, but the stream of its emotion is now more profound and quiet, as a river, when it reaches the plains, no longer sparkles and bubbles, but flows tranquil and deep.