schumann -piano music for children (analysis)

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________

I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of:

in:

It is entitled:

This work and its defense approved by:

Chair: _______________________________

_______________________________

_______________________________

_______________________________

_______________________________

Themes of Childhood: A Study of Robert Schumanns Piano Music for Children

A doctoral document submitted to the

Division of Research and Advanced Studies

of the University of Cincinnati

In partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

In the Keyboard Division

of the College-Conservatory of Music

2006

By

DONG XU

B.M., Central Conservatory of Music, China, 1996

M.M., Eastman School of Music, 1999

Committee Chair: Frank Weinstock

ABSTRACT

Robert Schumanns piano music for children, including the Kinderszenen, Album

for the Young, Waldszenen, Three Piano Sonatas for the Young, and three piano duets

Twelve Four-Hand Piano Pieces for Small and Big Children, Ball Scenes, and Childrens

Ball, has remained the most characteristic and successful example of his engagement

with the theme of childhood, a popular topic in Romantic art and culture. Although the

techniques required within these collections are not as difficult as those found in

Schumanns other piano works, they embrace some of the finest and most rewarding

instances of Schumanns piano writing, and demonstrate their innermost poetic quality

and evocative imagination. The purpose of this document is to explore the expressiveness

of these works by revealing the sources of their emotional content, their musical

originality and characteristics through a historical study and musical analysis.

The first chapter addresses Schumanns personal and family life and the influence

of childhood on him to explain why the theme could have affected his affinity for music

related to children. The second chapter provides an overview of Schumanns music for

and about children in genres other than piano. This chapter also discusses the quality and

styles of Schumanns late works, with emphasis on Hausmusik, a German term

suggesting domestic music making found throughout in his piano music for children and

many of his late compositions. The following two chapters present detailed studies of

Schumanns four piano solo works for children. To uncover their musical effect and

characteristics of the theme of childhood, the compositional background, thematic

treatment, harmonic design, and formal structure are analyzed in detail, as individual

pieces and coherent sets. The last chapter is devoted to the three piano duets for children,

and identifies their musical traits that are found throughout Schumanns other works

related to childhood. Appendices contain selected reviews of Schumanns piano music

for children by Franz Liszt, and Clara Schumanns explanation and interpretation of

pieces from the Album for the Young.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the course of preparing this document, several individuals have assisted me in

bringing the project to its completion, and it is my pleasure to acknowledge them here.

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my

piano teacher, advisor, and committee chair Professor Frank Weinstock, who has offered

constructive support, invaluable advice, and sensible guidance at every stage of the

project. He has been a source of inspiration during my doctoral studies and a model for

me as a pianist and person. Special and warm thanks go to my committee members, Dr.

Hilary Poriss and Mr. Michael Chertock, who have provided me with especially valued

insights and extremely helpful comments and suggestions.

I also wish to express deep thanks to my wife, Jing Ye, for her understanding,

patience, and encouragement, for helping me in countless ways in my life. And to my

son, Felix; it was because of his birth in 2004 that the idea for the topic first germinated. I

hope that one day he will want to read it. Finally, I would like to extend my heartfelt

thanks to my dear parents for their unconditional love and immeasurable support in my

musical education. I dedicate this document to them, with love.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES.. iii

LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES. iv

INTRODUCTION.. 1

Chapter

1. CHILDHOOD AND SCHUMANN

Schumanns Own Childhood.. 4

Schumanns Relationship with His Children. 9

Childhood in German Romantic Literature 13

Childrens Education: Social Influences on Schumann. 16

2. SCHUMANN: MUSIC FOR CHILDREN, THE LATE WORKS AND HAUSMUSIK

Schumanns Music for Children. 20

The Late Works and Hausmusik. 37

3. THE KINDERSZENEN AND THE ALBUM FOR THE YOUNG

The Kinderszenen: Schumann as a Poet. 45

The Album for the Young: Imaginative Miniatures of Childhood.. 56

4. THE WALDSZENEN AND THREE PIANO SONATAS FOR THE YOUNG

The Waldszenen: A Musical Mrchen... 76

Three Piano Sonatas for the Young: Musical Portraits of Three Daughters... 93

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5. THE THREE PIANO DUETS FOR CHILDREN

The Piano Duet and Schumann... 108

The Twelve Four-Hand Piano Pieces For Small and Big Children, Op. 85.. 111 The Ball Scenes, Op. 109 and the Childrens Ball, Op. 130.. 118

CONCLUSION... 128

BIBLIOGRAPHY... 130

APPENDIXES

A. Selected Reviews of Schumanns Piano Music for Children by Liszt 137

B. Clara Schumanns Explanation and Interpretation of Pieces from the Album for the Young.. 139

ii

LIST OF TABLES

1. Kinderszenen, Op. 15, key scheme and formal structure. 55

2. Waldszenen, Op. 82, key scheme and formal structure 81

3. The Twelve Four-Hand Piano Pieces for Small and Big Children, Op. 85, key and formal schemes 114 4. Walzer, from the Ball Scenes, Op. 109, No. 8, formal outline. 123

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LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES

1. Mond, meiner Seele Liebling, Op. 104, No. 1, mm. 1-8... 24

2. Der Zeisig, Op. 104, No. 4, mm. 1-11... 25

3. Der Rose Pilgerfahrt, No. 12, Op. 112, mm. 1-6.. 27

4. Der Rose Pilgerfahrt, No. 1, Op. 112, mm. 1-24.. 28

5a. Mrchenerzahlungen, Op. 132, 3rd movement, mm. 1-9.. 30

5b. Mrchenerzahlungen, Op. 132, 4th movement, mm. 1-7.. 31

6. Mignon, Op. 68, No. 35, mm. 1-10... 33

7. Heiss mich nicht redden, Op. 98a, No. 5, mm. 1-9 34

8. Requiem fr Mignon, No. 6, Op. 98b, mm. 355-371. 36

9a. Bittendes Kind, Op. 15, No. 4, mm. 14-17 48

9b. Glckes genug, Op. 15, No. 5, mm. 1-4 48

10. Kind im Einschlummern, Op. 15, No. 12, mm. 7-16. 49

11. Kind im Einschlummern, Op. 15, No. 12, mm. 25-32... 50

12. Der Dichter spricht, Op. 15, No. 13, mm. 1-12 50

13. Von fremden Lndern und Menschen, Op. 15, No. 1, mm. 1-4 52

14a. Kuriose Geschichte, Op. 15, No. 2, mm. 1-4 52

14b. Bittendes Kind, Op. 15, No. 4, mm. 1-3 53

14c. Frchtenmachen, Op. 15, No. 11, mm. 1-8... 53

15a. Wichtige Begebenheit, Op. 15, No. 6, mm. 1-4. 53

15b. Trumerei, Op. 15, No. 7, mm. 1-4... 54

15c. Ritter vom Steckenpferd, Op. 15, No. 9, mm. 1-8. 54

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16. Fr ganz Kleine. 58

17a. Little Fugue, Op. 68, No. 40, prelude, mm. 1-4 63

17b. Little Fugue, Op. 68, No. 40, fugue, mm. 1-4... 63

18a. A Chorale, Op. 68, No. 4... 64

18b. Figured Chorale, Op. 68, No. 42, mm. 1-8... 64

19a. Remembrance, Op. 68, No. 28, mm. 1-10. 67

19b. Intermezzo, from the Leiderkreis, Op. 39, No. 2, mm. 1-6... 67

20a. Op. 68, No. 21, mm. 1-4... 68

20b. Beethoven, Euch werde Lohn in bessern Welten in Act II from Fidelio, mm. 1-6. 68

21a. Op. 68, No. 21, mm. 14-18.... 69

21b. Fantasie, Op. 17, 1st movement, mm. 295-309. 69

22a. Soldiers March, Op. 68, No. 2, mm. 1-12 70

22b. Beethoven, Spring Sonata for piano and violin, Op. 24, 3rd movement, mm. 1-13 70

23. Northern Song, Op. 68, No. 41, mm. 1-4.. 71

24. Wintertime II, Op. 68, No. 39, mm. 1-6 72



27a. J.S. Bach, Peasant Cantata, BWV 212, No. 3, Recitative, mm. 4-9 74

27b. Papillons, Op. 2, finale, mm. 1-12 75

27c. Carnaval, Op. 9, finale, mm. 49-65.. 75

28a. Einsame Blumen, Op. 82, mm. 1-7... 81

28b. Verrufene Stelle, Op. 82, mm. 5-8 82

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29a. Herberge, Op. 82, mm. 37-40... 82

29b. Freundliche Landschaft, Op. 82, mm. 1-5 82

30a. Abschied, Op. 82, mm. 1-3... 83

30b. Herberge, Op. 82, mm. 1-2... 83

31a. Verrufene Stelle, Op. 82, mm. 33-35 83

31b. Vogel als Prophet, Op. 82, mm. 1. 84

32. Eintritt, Op. 82, mm. 1-4... 85

33. Jger auf der Lauer, Op. 82, mm. 1-4.. 85

34. Schubert, Frhlingsglaube, D. 686, mm. 4-7. 86

35. Schubert, Waltz, from 34 Valses sentimentales, D. 779, No, 13, mm. 1-6 87

36. Verrufene Stelle, Op. 82, mm. 1-8. 88

37a. Herberge, Op. 82, mm. 1-4... 89

37b. Waldesgeprch, from Liederkreis, Op. 39, No. 3, mm. 1-4... 89

38. Vogel als Prophet, Op. 82, mm. 1-5.. 90

39. Abschied, Op. 82, mm. 1-6 92

40a. Sonata No. 1, Op. 118, 3rd movement, mm. 1-4 97

40b. Brahms, Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115, 3rd movement, mm. 1-4 97

41. Sonata No. 1, Op. 118, 1st movement, mm. 1-4 98

42. Sonata No. 1, Op. 118, 2nd movement, mm. 1-3... 98

43a. Sonata No. 1, Op. 118, 3rd movement, mm. 1-4 99

43b. Sonata No. 1, Op. 118, 3rd movement, mm. 31-34 99

44a. Sonata No. 1, Op. 118, 4th movement, mm. 1-4 99

44b. Sonata No. 1, Op. 118, 4th movement, mm. 93-105.. 99

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46. Sonata No. 2, Op. 118, 3rd movement, mm. 1-5 102

47. Sonata No. 2, Op. 118, 4th movement, mm. 1-4 102


49. Sonata No. 3, Op. 118, 2nd movement, mm. 1-3... 105

50a. Sonata No. 3, Op. 118, 4th movement, mm. 32-38 106

50b. Sonata No. 3, Op. 118, 4th movement, mm. 43-50 106

51a. Brentanz, mm. 1-4... 113

51b. Brentanz, Op. 85, No. 2, mm. 1-4... 114

52. Turniermarsch, Op. 85, No. 7, mm. 1-6 115

53. Am Springbrunnen, Op. 85, No. 9, mm. 1-8. 116

54. Abendlied, Op. 85, No. 12, mm. 1-9. 117

55a. Walzer, Op. 109, No. 3, mm. 1-6.. 121

55b. Walzer, Op. 109, No. 8, mm. 1-12 122

55c. Walzer, Op. 130, No. 2, mm. 1-7.. 122

56a. Sonata No. 3, Op. 118, 1st movement, mm. 4-6 124

56b. Polonaise, Op. 130, No. 1, mm. 1-8.. 124

57. Ungarisch, Op. 109, No. 4, mm. 42-53. 125

58. Mazurka, Op. 109, No. 6, mm. 1-10. 126

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INTRODUCTION

In modern times the writing of simple piano works as educational music has

become a separate division of composition. However, in the nineteenth century it seemed

not so. Many piano pieces for children were written by great composers of all periods,

meeting the needs of beginners and young players. This type of musical literature

provides children with materials for developing their technical abilities and their musical

minds; it also offers them an opportunity to study the individual composers work in

miniature and to examine its relationship in style to their large-scale compositions. Many

of these piano pieces by great composers have proved to be of lasting value, not only as

teaching works but also as music.

Among the best of the piano music for children are some poetic and imaginative

collections composed by Robert Schumann (1810-1856). In his compositions, there was a

marked, lasting, and historical link with the world of childhood. The composer dedicated

many works to this topic, and a poetical element is never missing from these works. Even

when the reference is not explicit, the imaginative aspect always manages to appear.

Many of Schumanns compositions, therefore, are bound up with themes which are close

in spirit to the world of the child, not only those whose titles specifically point out this

fact.

2

The theme of childhood in the romantic experience was symbolic of the return to

the natural, poetic, and sublime soul of man. Based upon the great number of musical

compositions, there is reason to conclude that the idea of childhood greatly influenced

Schumann and his music. Schumanns fondness for childhood is first found in the

Kinderszenen, Op. 15, which was not written for the young but rather for an adults

recollection of childhood. The works he deliberately planned for children are, for

example, the Album for the Young, Op. 68, the Three Piano Sonatas for the Young, Op.

118, and some sets of piano duets. Interest in the serious study of Mrchen (fairy tale)

developed and flourished in the early nineteenth-century Germany. Schumann read them

to his children and, inspired by them, he wrote several musical works, including the

Waldszenen, Op. 82, and chamber pieces for small ensemble. As evidenced by the

composers musical references, the theme of childhood made a lasting impression upon

many of Schumanns creative inspirations.

Today most of Schumanns piano works for children are less known and rarely

performed, without having received any serious attention from pianists or critics.

Although extensive research has been done on Schumann and his compositions, a

comprehensive study and analysis of his piano music for and about children has not been

undertaken. The primary purpose of this document is to evaluate these childhood

collections (including the Kinderszenen, the Album for the Young, the Waldszenen, Three

Piano Sonatas for the Young, and the three piano duets Twelve Four-Hand Piano Pieces

for Small and Big Children, the Ball Scenes, and the Childrens Ball) and to draw

attention to the expressiveness of these works by revealing their musical originality,

emotional substance, and poetic quality through a historical study and musical analysis.

3

To understand the influence of childhood upon Schumann and to study his piano

music for children, this document will first discuss the reasoning behind Schumanns

personal identification with childhood. There is an important issue regarding his music

for children and about childhood: Schumanns relationship with his children. Examining

this issue leads to a better understanding of the simplicity, the characterization of

childhood, and the meditative attitude within the works. Next, the document will focus on

Schumanns music for children and his late works. Except the Kinderszenen, all the

works for and about children were composed during the last years of Schumanns career.

The concept of Hausmusik, a German musical and cultural movement in the 1840s, had

profound effects on Schumanns late music. This movement and Schumanns response to

it are important factors in the changes in his musical aesthetics. After synthesizing the

background information on Schumanns world of childhood and his late music, the

document will then explore the influence of the themes of childhood upon Schumanns

creations of each work. The analysis will concentrate on their compositional/historical

background, thematic treatment, harmonic design, and formal structure, as individual

pieces and coherent sets. From the early Kinderszenen to the final Childrens Ball, the

piano pieces for children prove themselves to be the significant points of contact with the

more nostalgic and intimate journey of Schumanns spirit.

CHAPTER ONE

CHILDHOOD AND SCHUMANN

Schumanns Own Childhood

Robert Schumann was born on June 8, 1810, in Zwickau in Saxony, a small town

of east-central Germany south of Leipzig. Zwickau was a beautiful and idyllic place,

described by his father as one of the loveliest and most romantic regions of Saxony,1

where Schumann spent his childhood and youth.

Schumanns own childhood was quite comfortable: the fifth and youngest child in

a household with a strong literary atmosphere. His father, August Schumann, was an

industrious publisher and bookseller. August Schumann received a good education and

displayed an unusual interest in literature and poetry in his early years. In 1795, he

married Johanne Christiane Schnabel, the daughter of a chief surgeon at Zeitz. The

couple moved to Ronneburg and first opened a grocery store. However, his passion for

literature persisted. In 1799, he abandoned the grocery business and turned to

bookselling, and eventually moved with his wife and four children to Zwickau in 1808,

where in partnership with his brother Friedrich he established the publishing firm of the

Brothers Schumann. His business soon began to flourish. By the time Robert was

1 August Schumann, Lexicon of Saxony, quoted in Georg Eismann, Robert Schumann: A

Biography in Word and Picture, trans. Lena Jaeck (Leipzig: VEB Edition Leipzig, 1964), 30.

5

born, August Schumann had become a notable citizen2 of Zwickau. At his death in

1826 he left an impressive estate, a sum that provided financial assurance to the family

and ultimately assisted Schumann in his music study and career.3 It was August

Schumann who watched the development of his youngest son Robert with great care. As

an affectionate father, he supervised and followed the gradual unfolding of Roberts gifts

with ardent interest. Schumann admired and loved his father throughout his life. In his

undergraduate room at the University of Leipzig, his fathers portrait held a place of

honor, together with those of Jean Paul and Napoleon.4 With the reverential memory, on

August 10, 1842, he noted the following words in his diary:

This day is the anniversary of the death of my good father, about whom I have often been thinking; he was often in Teplitz; if only he could also have seen us here together.5

Since his father was occupied with business, Schumann was brought up largely by

two women. His mother devoted herself with passionate tenderness to him, whom she

called the pretty child.6 Besides his mother, there was Eleonore Ruppius, the wife of a

Burgomaster, who was a very dear friend of the whole Schumann family. She took a

fancy to Schumann as a baby, and took care of him between his third and fifth years.7

2 Frederick Niecks, Robert Schumann (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1925), 25.

3 Alan Walker, Schumann and his Background, in Robert Schumann: The Man and His Music,

ed. Alan Walker (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1972), 3-4.

4 Niecks, 38.

5 The Marriage Diaries of Robert & Clara Schumann: From Their Wedding Day through the Russia Trip, ed. Gerd Nauhaus, trans. Peter Ostwald (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), 163.

6 Ronald Taylor, Robert Schumann: His Life and Work (New York: Universe Books, 1982), 24.

7 When Schumann was three, his mother caught typhoid. To avoid the infection, he was put into the care of Eleonore Ruppius. See Peter Ostwald, Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985), 15.

6

Although his stay in the Ruppius household has been viewed by Peter Ostwald as the

source of a separation anxiety that fed into the composers later depressive condition,8

Schumann seemed to have a loving memory of that period of time. He later wrote in his

autobiography:

I at first was put for only 6 weeks to the house of the present burgomaster Ruppius; I was fond of her, she became a second mother, in short, I stayed two and a half years under her truly motherly care9

Schumann possessed at an early age a marked talent for both music and literature.

He began his earliest education with a resident tutor, who taught him some basis of

music. At the age of six, he was sent to a private preparatory school of the archdeacon

Hermann Dhner, where he remained for four years. Here, Schumann was first brought

into contact with a number of children of his age. When he was seven, he began piano

lessons with Johann Gottfried Kuntzsch (1775-1855), the organist and choirmaster of the

Marienkirche, the largest church in Zwickau. Although Kuntzsch was not a great

musician, he stimulated Schumanns musical interest, nourished his remarkable ability,

helped him release the powerful musical impulse, and provided constant support.

Throughout his life, Schumann held Kuntzsch in high regard. In a letter dated July 27,

1832 to Kuntzsch, he wrote:

You will hardly believe, my most honoured teacher and friend, how often and how gladly I think of you. You were the only one who recognized the predominating musical talent in me and indicated betimes the path along which, sooner or later, my good genius was to guide me.10

8 John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1997), 21, quoting Peter Ostwald, Leiden und Trauern im leben und Werk Robert Schumann, in Schumanns Werke, ed. Mayeda and Niemller (Mainz: Schott, 1987), 122; Ostwald, Schumann, 15-16, 20.

9 Eismann, 32.

10 Niecks, 32.

7

Years later, in 1845, Schumann expressed sincere gratitude by dedicating to him his

Studies for Pedal Piano, Op. 56, and in 1852, near the end of his life, he wrote a grateful

letter to congratulate the fiftieth anniversary of Kuntzschs installation as a music

teacher.11

In addition to the most favored piano, Schumann also learned to play the cello and

the flute. He made his first attempt at composition, a set of little dances for the piano

(now lost) at the age of seven or eight. At the age of ten, Schumann entered into the

Zwickau Lyceum, where he soon began playing the piano at amateur concerts. He

organized a youth orchestra made up of his little friends and, when he was eleven,

performed his first large composition, a setting of Psalm 150 for chorus, piano, and

orchestra. His talent for improvisation was also displayed at the time. In a supplement to

the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung issued April 1850, in the 52nd volume of the

publication, a biographical sketch of Schumann noted:

It has been related that Schumann, as a child, possessed rare taste and talent for portraying feelings and characteristic traits in melody, ay, he could sketch the different dispositions of his intimate friends by certain figures and passages on the piano so exactly and comically that every one burst into loud laughter at the similitude of the portrait.12

Another childhood stimulation to Schumanns musical imagination was especially

significant. In the summer of 1819, when he was nine, Schumanns mother took him to

Carlsbad in Bohemia where, in a concert, he saw Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870), a

distinguished and great piano virtuoso of that time. The dazzling occasion seems to have

made a deep and lasting impression on him. He kept the concert program as a sacred

11 Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski, Life of Robert Schumann, trans. A. L. Alger (Detroit:

Information Coordinators, 1975), 18.

12 Ibid., 18-19.

8

memento and determined to become a piano virtuoso himself.13 Thirty-two years later in

a letter thanking Moscheles for the dedication of his E Major Cello Sonata, Op. 121,

Schumann recalled that very occasion: more than thirty years ago, in Carlsbad, how

little did I dream that I should ever be thus honored by so illustrious a master!14

Reading literature attracted him as much as music. Schumanns father insisted

that all of his sons should be well educated. Literary pursuits were strongly encouraged in

the household; therefore, in addition to music, much of Schumanns energy was directed

to literature. He found rich opportunities to go over the classics of literature in his fathers

bookstore; he read the lives of the poets, studied the dramatic works, and developed a

taste for Jean Paul and E.T.A. Hoffmann. He also helped his father, along with his

brothers, collect and translate essays and organized various literary clubs. These early

tasks no doubt stimulated his intense love for literature. In addition to his early music

compositions, Schumanns first literary works originated simultaneously: poetry, essays

and fragmentary novels.15 Later when he gave up study of the law and devoted himself

entirely to music, Schumann still continued his literary pursuits, particularly in the field

of music criticism.

Schumanns childhood was tranquil and happy, and he was educated lovingly

and carefully.16 His life and music were involved in his childhood in which it was

rooted. In his many moments of melancholy and suffering, Schumann seemed always to

13 Ibid., 19. 14 Ibid.

15 Eric Frederick Jensen, Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 8.

16 Wasielewski, 126.

9

recall it lovingly. His music is permeated with the memories of his early years, a lasting

fragrance of childlike innocence.

Schumanns Relationship with His Children

Schumanns delight in the childs mind went back to the time when he was the

young Claras moonstruck concocter of charades.17 He frequently called her a child, as

he explained in a letter (May 11, 1838) to Clara:

Youre a very dear girl, and I often call you child in my thoughts, and thats the most beautiful word that I can have for anybody.18

During the time he and Clara spent together, they had eight children: Marie (born 1841),

Elise (born 1843), Julie (born 1845), Emil (born 1846, died 1847), Ludwig (born 1848),

Ferdinand (born 1849), Eugenie (born 1851), and Felix (born 1854). Family life was

important for Schumann. His diaries, letters, and correspondence are often deeply

personal. Surprising are the frequent references to his children, showing him to be a lover

of childhood and an admirer of innocence. Even in the asylum in Endenich he still asked

Clara on September 14, 1854:

I should be glad to know from you whether Marie and Elise continue to make progress, and whether they still sing. Tell me more details about the children. Do they still play Beethoven, Mozart, and pieces out of my Jugendalbum (Album for the Young)? Does Julie keep up her playing, and how are Ludwig, Ferdinand, and sweet Eugenie shaping?19

17 Robert Haven Schauffler, Florestan: The Life and Work of Robert Schumann (New York: Henry

Holt and Company, 1945), 48. 18 The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann, ed. Eva Weissweiler, trans.

Hildegard Fritscht and Ronald L. Crawford, vol. 1 (New York: P. Lang, 1994), 176.

19 Robert Schumann, The Letters of Robert Schumann, ed. Karl Storck, trans. Hannah Bryant (New York: Arno Press, 1979), 289.

10

Four days later, in response to news of the birth of his son Felix, whom Schumann never saw, he wrote again to Clara: What joyful tidings you have again sent me! The birth of a fine boyand in June,

too. If you wish to consult me in the matter of a name, you will easily guess my choicethe name of the unforgettable one.20

In the following months, he inquired about the children regularly and mentioned to Clara

that he would write to them. He even insisted in a letter to his young friend Brahms, on

December 15, 1854:

I am so glad to hear about the marked talent of my little girls, Marie, Elise and Julie. Do you often hear them play?21

An unfailing source of comfort to him throughout all difficult times was his wife and his

children. Robert says: Children are blessings, Clara noted in May 1847 in her diary,

and he is right, for there is no happiness without children.22 As a composer, Schumann

wrote in his diary on June 28, 1843:

I dont like to write and speak about my own works; my wish is that they may have good effects in the world and assure me a loving remembrance from my children.23

Schumann was a devoted father. When Marie, the eldest child, celebrated her first

birthday, Schumann gave her a really nice and thoughtful present, a diary in which he

had described her first year of life.24 It was addressed to her name:

20 Ibid., 290. Storck notes here that Felix was born on June 11 and Schumanns birthday was June

8. He also notes that the name is Mendelssohn. 21 Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 1853-1896, ed. Berthold Litzmann, vol. 1

(New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927), 19.

22 Joan Chissell, Schumann (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1967), 62.

23 The Marriage Diaries, 197. 24 Ibid., 171.

11

You were happy and lively almost the whole time, with your pretty blue eyes and dark lashes. You have learnt to crawl around the room very quickly and are very agile. You can even stand up by yourself, though of course you cannot yet walk properly or talk. But your singing is farther advanced, with definite intervals and phrases. At the back of this diary, where the staves have been ruled, you will find some of the little tunes that I used to sing to you at the piano. We shall make up a lot more together25

A couple of years later, Schumann decided to create a booklet in a similar manner for all

the children. He named it A Little Book of Memories for Our Children. Eugenie

Schumann, the seventh of eight children, published in her Erinnerungen (Memoirs) the A

Little Book of Memories for Our Children, which Schumann started on February 23, 1846

in Dresden.26 It contains a record of the childrens births, their characteristics at various

ages, happenings and proof of child-like thinking and experiences, and mottos and

maxims by Schumann and Clara. The booklet is a collection of descriptions of

Schumanns life with his children, and it records Schumanns approach to the psyche of

the child and his immersion into the world of his children. The interpretation of their

characters is subtle, full of intuition and the psychological understanding of their minds is

deep.

Schumann was pleased to be with his children and to observe their growth and

development, as evidenced in the A Little Book of Memories for Our Children:

Almost daily walks with Marie in Dresden, even in bad weather. Frequently occupy myself in teaching Marie to count, and to look for rhymes. The children like to be helpful and busy.

May 25 (1846), went with Marie and Elise into the country for a few weeks, The childrens chief amusement was a very simple swing in the arbour.27

25 Taylor, 214. 26 Eugenie Schumann, Memoirs of Eugenie Schumann, trans. Marie Busch (London: W.

Heinemann, 1927; reprint, Westport: Hyperion Press, Inc., 1986), 206-18.

27 Ibid., 207, 208, 214.

12

He also sketched the development of the childrens musical education:

Marie and Elise often sing with evident pleasure, and have clear, true voices, On March 26 (1846, Marie was four), I am beginning to teach her the keys on the piano.

Julie is developing more slowly than the others. On the other hand, music appeals to her very much, she at once begins to sing.

Marie (1847) had started piano lessons with her aunt, Marie Wieck. We were pleased to hear her play five or six little exercises very nicely, Since October 1 (1848), Marie and Elise have been going to a proper school.

They have also been attending Frulein Malinskas piano school for the last six months, and are now playing all the scales and some little pieces.28

The idea of such a booklet dedicated to children was remarkable. For Schumann, to love

his children meant to reach out to the ideal state, which was represented by the soul of a

child. Marie noted the childlike side of his father:

We met him [our father] once as we were coming out of school. We saw him walking with Herr v. Wasielewski on the other side of the street, and ran across and said good morning and offered him our hands. He pretended not to know us, looked at us for a moment through his glasses and then said: And who may you be, you dear little people? We were very much amused29

Great artists are often accused of being too egocentric to care for members of their

family, but, in the case of Schumann, it is a well-established fact that for his children he

experienced a very tender love. In recollection of her father, Marie wrote:

When I look back over my life, my childhood shines out as the brightest spot in it. The happiness of being with my parents, the knowledge that we children were the dearest thing on earth to them, gave me a sense of certainty, of security, of protection, which, when our great misfortune came, was lost, never to return to the same extent.30

And Eugenie expressed this in her Memoirs:

28 Ibid., 207, 208, 211, 215.

29 Berthold Litzmann, Clara Schumann: An Artists Life, trans. Grace E. Hadow, vol. 2 (New York: Vienna House, 1972), 143.

30 Ibid., 141.

13

Marie, Elise, Julie! Your first steps in life were guided by our father, and it was for you that he started to write the Little Book of Memories to which I have already referred, and which he continued for three years. What love, what understanding, while he watched the first efforts of your little feet, the first manifestations of your souls! How much did you, did we all, lose in this father!31

Childhood in German Romantic Literature

The theme of childhood in the romantic experience was symbolic of the return to

the natural, poetic, and innocent soul of man. By recapturing and keeping the essence of a

childhood, one could evoke his reminiscences and dreams or idealize the childhood he

had lost or never had. In painting, this side of human spirit was examined in works such

as Night (1803) and The Artists Parents and Children (1806) by Philipp Otto Runge,

who attempted to express nature in visual form by presenting his idealized landscapes

with children, as though only children were worthy to live in nature. The topic,

however, took on ideal connotations in German Romantic literature, which played an

important role in shaping Schumanns musical aesthetics and had great impact on the

form of his music for children.

Literature for children and about childhood emerged in the second half of the

eighteenth century. The emergence was linked to many historical forces, among them

notably the development of Enlightenment thought and Romanticism. The Enlightenment

thought helped toward the identification of the child as an independent being, while

Romanticism produced strands of genres making a special appeal to the young: folktales,

fairy tales, and ballads, for instance. In addition, according to Leon Botstein, the German

31 E. Schumann, 56.

14

Romantics were ambivalent about the time they lived; therefore, expressions of a desire

to escape the present moment became a general enthusiasm.32 He further writes:

Once again Jean Paul helped to set the tone. Memory and hope childhood and the beyond fill his spirit, wrote [Wilhelm] Dilthey, obliterating the knife point of the present, general enthusiasm for art and culture. The use of art to escape the present painthrough the evocations (no matter how fantastic) of both remembrances and dreamsfit precisely Schumanns careful description of his life in letters and diaries.33

This was true of Schumann, who carried with him a nostalgia for his childhood

throughout life as a wistful longing.

The first Romantic school in German literature originated in Jena about 1798. The

major literary theorists were the brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich von Schlegel,

who considered that Romantic literature was to encompass all forms of writing in

progress universal poetry.34 Goethes Wilhelm Meister was the main literary model of

the group. The chief creative writers of the Jena school were Wilhelm Heinrich

Wackenroder, Ludwig Tieck, and Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). Like Jean Paul,

whose books to some extent are redeemed by profuse imagination and dreamlike fantasy,

the theme of childhood was also presented in their works, such as Novalis Henry of

Ofterdingen (1802). These works combined abstract ideas with symbols of beauty and

innocence. By 1804 the circle at Jena had dispersed. A second phase of Romanticism was

initiated two years later in Heidelberg, around Achim and Bettina von Arnim, Clemens

Brentano, and Johann Joseph von Grres. Unlike the members of the earlier school, the

32 Leon Botstein, History, Rhetoric, and the Self: Robert Schumann and Music Making in

German-Speaking Europe, 1800-1860, in Schumann and His World, ed. R. Larry Todd (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 31.

33 Ibid., 31-32. 34 Ralph Tymms, German Romantic Literature (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1955), 123.

15

Heidelberg writers tended more to stress the beauties of unspoiled nature, and it was also

in Heidelberg romanticism that the romantic interest in German history and folklore first

really took hold.

The emotional and imaginative forces in German Romantic literature were

awakened mainly by the wide influence of two important works,35 not intended for

children but soon taken over by them. Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youths Magic

Horn, 1805-08), a collection of old German songs and folk verse, includes many

children's songs, or songs that were denominated by the editors, Achim von Arnim and

Clemens Brentano. The effect of the book was to retrieve for Germany much of its rich

folk heritage, to promote a new emotional sensibility, and to draw attention to the link, as

the Romantics thought, binding folk feeling to the childs vision of the world.36 Des

Knaben Wunderhorn became a part of German childhood, and it helped inspire several

excellent writers of verse for children: Hoffmann von Fallersleben, August Kopisch,

Count Franz Pocci, and F.W. Gll.

Just as in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the same impulse later led the brothers

Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm to compile their famous collection of fairy tales, Kinder- und

Hausmrchen (Childrens and Household Tales, 1812-15), popularly known as Grimms

Fairy Tales. The work helped to develop a school of prose fairy-tale writers. For the

German Romantics, it was often in the fairy-tale, the Mrchen, that childhood was most

easily recovered. Dominated by the poetic mood of fairy fiction, they could immerse

themselves in the childs simplicity and refresh themselves at the source of the childs

35 Gillian Rodger, The Lyric, in The Romantic Period in Germany, ed. Siegbert Prawer (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), 147.

36 Tymms, 214.

16

primitive innocence. Not all of these Romantics wrote with children in mind, but some of

the simplest of their tales have become part of the German childs inheritance. Among

the Mrchen masters are E.T.A. Hoffmann, Clemens Brentano, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis,

and Wilhelm Hauff, whose talents are most nearly adapted to the tastes of children.

The popularity of the fairy tale, childhood, and the dream in the early stages of

German Romantic literature suited precisely Schumanns love of the world of the child,

and provided him a source of memory and inspiration. The conception of childhood as an

intermediate state between a lost world and reality is found profoundly in Romantic

literary works, which are of great importance for the influence upon Schumann. His

dedication to the music for children or about childhood was part of this cultural trend.

Childrens Education: Social Influences on Schumann

An important social influence on Schumanns writing of childrens music was the

focusing on their childhood education in the first half of the nineteenth century in

Germany. The educational theories of Johann Bernhard Basedow, Johann Friedrich

Herbart, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, and Friedrich Froebel are associated with the

Enlightenment insight toward the identification of the child as an independent being.

Pestalozzi (1746-1827), a Swiss educational reformer whose methods had profound

impact not in his native land but in Germany, was strongly influenced by Rousseaus

romantic idealization of the nature of the child. His pedagogical doctrines stressed that

instructions should proceed from the familiar to the new, incorporate the performance of

concrete arts and the experience of actual emotional responses, and be paced to follow

17

the gradual unfolding of the childs development.37 His curriculum, which was modeled

on Rousseau's plan in mile (On Education, 1762), emphasized group rather than

individual recitation and focused on such participatory activities as drawing, reading,

writing, singing, physical exercise, model making, gardening, and field trips.38 Pestalozzi

was credited for the practical introduction of music into the primary school curriculum.

He believed firmly that music was taught as an aid to moral education,39 as he

expressed it in the following words:

It [music] is the marked and most beneficial influence which it has on the feelings, and which I have always thought to be very efficient in preparing and attuning us for the best impressions. The effect of music in education is not alone to keep alive a national feeling; it goes much deeper. If cultivated in the right spirit, it strikes at the root of every bad or narrow feeling, of every ungenerous or mean propensity, of every emotion unworthy of humanity.40

Many of Pestalozzis principles greatly influenced Froebel (1782-1852), the

founder of the kindergarten and one of the most influential educational reformers in the

nineteenth century. His most important contribution to educational theory was his belief

in self-activity and play as essential factors in child education. Froebel wrote numerous

articles and in 1826 published his most important treatise, Menschenerziehung (The

Education of Man), a philosophical presentation of principles and methods of education.

In 1837 he opened an infant school in Blankenburg, Prussia, which he originally called

the Child Nurture and Activity Institute, and which by happy inspiration he later

renamed the Kindergarten, or garden of children. He also started a publishing firm

37 Robert B. Downs, Heinrich Pestalozzi: Father of Modern Pedagogy (Boston: Twayne

Publishers, 1975), 35. 38 Gerald Lee Gutek, Pestalozzi & Education (New York: Random House, 1968), 46. 39 Ibid., 141.

40 Downs, 57.

18

for play and other educational materials. His experiments at the Kindergarten attracted

widespread interest, and other kindergartens were started. Schumann enrolled his two

eldest children, Marie and Elise, in Dr. Frankenbergs Kindergarten in Dresden in 1846.

They are very happy, Schumann wrote in his booklet.41 In 1849, Julie started to attend

the same kindergarten. A basic aspect of the kindergarten scheme planned by Froebel was

music. He described it in his writing Pedagogics of the Kindergarten:

Music is especially important, since the sounds which he produces in singing or by striking bells or glass or metal serve to give creative expression to feelings and ideas.42

One of his ideas was that songs and music should accompany well-directed play, which is

devised to stimulate learning. Long before the establishment of the Blankenburg

Kindergarten, Froebel had begun collecting material for his mother-songs. The result was

a little collection of nursery songs, issued in 1841. This work developed into the notable

Mother-Play and Nursery Songs, composed by Froebels disciple, Robert Kohl, and

published in 1843.

Seeing the child as a growing organism, both Pestalozzi and Froebel in their

works drew analogies between a childs development and that of the natural growth of a

plant. Pestalozzi wrote:

Sound education stands before me symbolized by a tree planted near fertilizing waters. A little seed, which contains the design of the tree, its form and properties, is placed in the soil. The whole tree is an uninterrupted chain of organic parts, the plant of which existed in the seed and root. Man is similar to the tree. In the new born child are hidden those faculties which are to unfold during life.43

41 E. Schumann, 209. 42 Irene M. Lilley, Friedrich Froebel: A Selection from His Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1967), 113.

43 Downs, 79.

19

And Froebel noted: The childs soul is more tender and vulnerable than the finest or tenderest plant.44 As in a garden, under Gods favor, and by the care of a skilled, intelligent gardener, growing plants are cultivated in accordance with Natures laws, so here, in our child-garden, our kindergarten, shall the noblest of all growing things, men (that is children, the germs and shoots of humanity) be cultivated in accordance with the laws of their own being, of God and of Nature.45

Not surprisingly, Schumann responded to the comparison with his own description of his

daughter Julie, who was thirteen months at the time, as an altogether delicate, sensitive

little plant.46 Schumanns support of kindergarten and his likening of the child to the

plant reveal his strong interest in childrens education. It was naturally in Schumann that

the influence of German educational methods was especially noticeable.

The theme of childhood binds together many facets of Schumanns lifehis

childhood, his children, his association with the literature, and his interest in education.

He ventured repeatedly into the world of childhood as a source of inspiration,

demonstrating his delight in fantasy and sympathy with childlike imagination.

Schumanns compositions for and about children, both musical and literary, are examples

of his inner reflections of his personal life, and they are Schumanns personality that

animates them. By depicting the childhood emotions musically Schumann must have

recognized himself after all still a child at heart.

44 Berthe von Marenholz-Blow, Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel, trans. Horace Mann (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1877), 155.

45 Robert B. Downs, Friedrich Froebel (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978), 42. 46 E. Schumann, 208.

CHAPTER TWO

SCHUMANN: MUSIC FOR CHILDREN, THE LATE WORKS AND HAUSMUSIK

The happy days of childhoodone relives them through children, Schumann

wrote in his diary on April 13, 1846.1 He was fascinated by the naivety, freshness, and

innocence of childhood, and eager to transmit these characteristics into his music.

Schumann continued throughout his life collecting musical materials and composing

poetic cycles of the theme.

Schumanns Music for Children

The piano was Schumanns own instrument. He began his music career as a

pianist, and found it easier to express himself through it. It is not surprising that his

creative output for piano has provided some of the most imaginative and touching music

for children. Schumanns first childhood collection is found in the Kinderszenen, Op. 15,

composed in spring 1838. Although the work is indeed composed for an adult performer,

portraying an adults reminiscences of childhood, conception and technique tend to be

extremely simple throughout the entire set. Liszt told Schumann in 1839, before meeting

1 Robert Schumann, Tagebcher, II: 1836-1854, ed. Gerd Nauhaus (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher

Verlag fr Musik, 1987), 400, quoted in Daverio, 561, endnote 46.

21

him in 1840, how his daughter Blandine clamored for these pieces, of which she never

tired. He wrote:

Two or three times a week I play your Kinderszenen to her [my daughter] in the evening; this enchants her, and me still more, as you can imagine.2

Piano music for children came later in Schumanns output when he had his own children,

including the Album for the Young, Op. 68 (1848), the Three Piano Sonatas for the

Young, Op. 118 (1853), and sets of piano duetsthe Twelve Four-Hand Piano Pieces for

Small and Big Children, Op. 85 (1850), the Ball Scenes, Op. 109 (1851), and the

Childrens Ball, Op. 130 (1853). For Schumann, nature and childhood were alike, and the

topic of forests was never missed. The result of this forest romanticism is the

Waldszenen, Op. 82, a musical Mrchen composed in 1849. Though these piano works

were written in different periods of Schumanns lifeyouth, maturity, and late years

the same childlike freshness and beauty are kept and carefully expressed. Complete and

detailed discussions of these works will be given in the following chapters.

In addition to the piano compositions, the childhood subject is also presented in

other genres in Schumanns musicsongs, chamber music, and works for voice and

orchestra. The collection of piano pieces, Album for the Young, was published in

December 1848. It was well received and became popular in a short time. Between April

and May, Schumann composed a vocal counterpart to it, the Song Album for the Young,

Op. 79. The songbook contains twenty-nine songs, most of them for solo voice and piano

plus a handful of ensemble lieder with piano, arranged in order of increasing technical

difficulty, length, and expressive range. Schumann took particular care in choosing

2 Eleanor Pernyi, Liszt: The Artist as Romantic Hero (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974), 135.

22

poems by various poets including Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Goethe, Schiller, Mrike,

and Rckert. As the composer told his publisher Emanuel Klitzsch:

I have selected poems appropriate to childhood, from the best poets and arranged them in order of difficulty. At the end comes Mignon, on the threshold of a more complex emotional life.3

The set is a series of lyrical and exquisite miniatures; both the vocal line and the

accompaniment are folk-like simple and beautifully written. The Song Album for the

Young contains many parallels to its counterpart, the Album for the Young. Orphan child,

May songs, hunting songs, winter scenes, and Christmas themes, for example, all appear

in both sets. Among the masterpieces in the Song Album for the Young are the delicate

Schmetterling, the peaceful Sonntag, the vivid Der Sandmann, the playful

Marienwrchen, and the charming Er ists, which all mirror the innocence of an

idealized childhood. Clara noted when Schumann finished the cycle:

All the songs breathe and spirit of perfect peace, they seem to me like spring, and laugh like blossoming flowers.4

Indeed, the laughter in springtime of Schumanns songs parallels the same theme in the

texts, especially those by Fallersleben.

During the late years of his life, Schumann became enthusiastic about the poetry

of Elisabeth Kulmann, who was a prodigy poet and died in 1825 of consumption at the

age of seventeen. Since Kulmann was not a well-known poet of the nineteenth century, it

has become a fashionable claim that Schumanns admiration for her poems was the

3 Eric Sams, The Songs of Robert Schumann, 3d ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 197.

4 Litzmann, Clara Schumann, vol. 1, 454.

23

result of failing powers of judgement.5 But his enthusiasm for Kulmann was not the

evidence of a deteriorated mind. By the time she died, she had produced nearly a

thousand poems and had created a sensation with her voluminous writings in Russian,

German, and Italian, and with her translations, which Goethe, Jean Paul, and other

contemporaries commented on favorably.6 Like Mignon, a character in Goethes novel

Wilhelm Meister, Kulmann died so young as a tragic figure. Schumann seemed to have

been touched by her personal fate. He kept a portrait of Kulmann by the desk in his home

in Dsseldorf, and even in Endenich he still asked Brahms to send him her poetry.7

Schumanns fascination with Kulmann, a child as poet, led him to set eleven of her

poems to music in 1851, four as the Mdchenlieder, Op. 103, for soprano, alto, and

piano, and seven as the solo song cycle Sieben Lieder, Op. 104. These songs were not

written for the young singers but rather as an adults sentimental imagination of children,

and almost all require accomplished and artistic performers.

The Sieben Lieder, Op. 104, dedicated to the memory of Kulmann, were designed

to introduce the poets brief life. Together with these songs, Schumann published a short

eulogy entitled dedication to which he added Kulmanns biographical information and

brief comments on each poem. The musical style of the cycle is transparent simplicity

and calmness. The voice, which usually begins without the introduction, produces simple

direct melodies, and the accompaniment is economical and bare in texture. The

characteristics are evident in the first song, Mond, meiner Seele Liebling (Moon, my

5 Martin Cooper, The Songs, in Schumann: A Symposium, ed. Gerald Abraham (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 118.

6 Ostwald, Schumann, 251.

7 Schumanns letter of 20 March 1855 to Brahms, in Litzmann, Letters, vol. 1, 36.

24

souls beloved), for instance, revealing Schumanns purpose of giving the music the

appearance of childlike naivet (Example 1).

Example 1. Mond, meiner Seele Liebling, Op. 104, No. 1, mm. 1-8

The most successful in the set is the fourth song, Der Zeisig (The finch). Two

competing canonic lines between the voice and the piano delightfully catch the idea of a

song contest between child and bird (Example 2).

25

Example 2. Der Zeisig, Op. 104, No. 4, mm. 1-11

Among the numerous titles Schumann composed in his late years, the expressive

Mrchen, or fairy-tale, appears over and over: Mrchenbilder for viola and piano, Op.

113, Mrchenerzahlungen for clarinet, viola, and piano, Op. 132, and the oratorio Der

Rose Pilgerfahrt (The Pilgrimage of the Rose), Op. 112. The Pilgrimage of the Rose is

Schumanns most extensive Mrchen work,8 the last of his works in oratorio style. He

composed it between April and September 1851, after a rhymed fairy-tale by a little-

known poet Moritz Horn. The work had been cast as a chamber oratorio for solo voices,

chorus, with piano accompaniment, which Schumann thought perfectly adequate to the

8 Jensen, 342.

26

fanciful subject.9 However, urged by friends and acquaintances and for the work to be

available to larger circles,10 Schumann wrote the orchestral accompaniment, which

Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski described as follows: fine spiritual instrumentation

increase the charm of coloring, no idea of which can be given by a piano.11 Liszt

summed up the work in the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik in 1855:

Der Rose Pilgerfahrt belongs to those images that one might call visions of poetic mysticismhere, clouds become fragrances, waves moving tones; here, everything is a transparent allegory of an inexpressible feeling, and the symbol charms us like those nave chains of ideas whose puzzles we often pursue with the meaningful questions of childhood.12

The song-like arioso character, rather than the recitative-like stylistic manner, and the

expressive mood make this oratorio a charming and agreeable musical idyll, which is

more German and rustic in nature,13 as Schumann referred to it. The rustic charm, an

element of German folk-like character, governs the work (Example 3).

9 Schumanns letter of 29 September 1851 to Moritz Horn, in Wasielewski, 250.

10 Ibid., 250.

11 Ibid., 176.

12 Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann (1855), trans. R. Larry Todd, in Schumann and His World, ed. R. Larry Todd (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 349-50.

13 Jensen, 343, quoting Hermann Erler, Robert Schumanns Leben: Aus seinen Briefen geschildert, vol. 2 (Berlin: Ries & Erler, 1887), 61.

27

Example 3. Der Rose Pilgerfahrt, No. 12, Op. 112, mm. 1-6

The Pilgrimage of the Rose is divided into two parts, comprising twenty-four

numbers, but without lacking formal unity. Schumanns cyclical idea of the work is

strengthened in three ways. First, there are many musical sections flowing gracefully into

the next without break, giving the impression of a consistent stream of music. Second,

Schumanns harmonic language is expressed by an elaborate use of keys: related thirds

and fifths, relative keys, and major and minor parallel keys, as well as sudden shifts to

remote keys for the introduction of a new color. Third, a brief motive representing the

main character, the Rose, recurs at times, although it is employed without complexity.

The entire work has a broad melodic spectrum, and is a charming and fresh inspiration.

The very opening has the lyrical openness of Schubert (Example 4), its freshness

enhanced by the later interplay of solo voices and womens chorus.

28

Example 4. Der Rose Pilgerfahrt, No. 1, Op. 112, mm. 1-24

The idiom suggests the folk-based writing, innocent and in fact subtle. A spirit of

freshness and youthfulness runs through The Pilgrimage of the Rose, Schumanns

musical world of the Mrchen, as in his Kinderszenen and other piano and song

collections for children.

The four Mrchenbilder, Op. 113, for viola and piano were written in March 1851

and dedicated to Wasielewski, concertmaster of Schumanns Dsseldorf orchestra at that

29

time, who first performed them with Clara. Schumanns household books records various

titles for the work as Violageschichten, Mrchengeschichten, Mrchen, and

Mrchenlieder.14 But he eventually decided to use a visual art form Bilder (pictures)

rather than concrete Geschichten (stories). Schumann had lifelong interest in painting and

sculpture. During his years in Dresden and Dsseldorf from 1844 to 1854, he had

considerably close contact with the two schools of German painters, among the most

significantly Alfred Rethel, Karl Friedrich Lessing, Eduard Bendemann, Ludwig Richter,

and Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. Rethels work Monatsbilder (Monthly Pictures) might

have inspired Schumann to compose the musical equivalent Mrchenbilder, Op. 113.15

The four movements obtain their coherence not from any shared thematic or motivic

element, but rather from a common D tonalitythe first and third in D minor, the second

in the relative major F, and the final in D major. The main emphasis falls on the opening

movement, which is a free form consisting of two themes. The remaining three

movements are in sectional forms. All pieces are full of romantic music evocative of the

atmosphere of fairy tales and contain deeply expressive passages.

Following from the earlier Mrchenbilder, the Mrchenerzahlungen, Op. 132,

composed for clarinet, viola, and piano in October 1853, a few months before his fatal

breakdown, makes up Schumanns final example of the whole series of works both for

and about children. The title Fairy Stories suggests that the four movements are lyrical

character pieces intended to tell favorite stories of childhood. It stresses a sort of narrative

in music, although there is no direct reference to an underlying program. The piano

14 Ibid., 342, quoting Robert Schumann, Haushaltbcher, II: 1837-1856, ed. Gerd Nauhaus (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag fr Musik, 1982), 554-56.

15 Botstein, 38.

30

almost always plays a dominating role in this unusual instrumentation (Mozart created

the instrumentation of clarinet, viola and piano in his Trio, K. 498). The work illustrates

the search for new tone colors. The choice of the clarinet and viola is suitable to the

introspective situations due to their rich and warm tones, and it produces a mood of

nostalgia towards the old happy times. Schumanns setting of the work is condensed; the

music is increasingly agitated and the form is rhapsodically free. The passionate

Florestan and the dreamy Eusebius, two important characters in the Davidsbndler that

correspond to aspects of Schumann himself, are still evident in the Mrchenerzahlungen,

one of the last works he was able to write, particularly in the third movement and the

final movement (Examples 5a and 5b).

Example 5a. Mrchenerzahlungen, Op. 132, 3rd movement, mm. 1-9

31

Example 5b. Mrchenerzahlungen, Op. 132, 4th movement, mm. 1-7

The music of Mrchenerzahlungen is a touching final glimpse of the magical and

fantastical world of Schumanns immense imagination. In 1990, almost one and half

centuries later, the Hungarian composer Gyrgy Kurtg completed his Hommage R.

Sch., Op. 15d, for clarinet, viola and piano, on the inspiration of Schumanns

Mrchenerzahlungen.

There is another clue in Schumanns compositions to what childhood meant to

him. Mignon, the mysterious and fascinating girl created by Goethe in his Wilhelm

Meister as the symbol of poetic childhood, was a character to which Schumann was

particularly attracted, and inspired him to compose several musical works. In Goethes

novel, the Italian little girl Mignon was abandoned and later abducted by vagrants who

32

brought her into Germany, where she became a child-waif and was forced to sing and

dance in a traveling theater troupe of entertainers. Mignons memorable lyrics in the

novel are filled with a sense of secrecy, grief and yearning for love and homeland.16

These lyrics inspired many dramatic settings from numerous composers both before and

after Schumann, including Beethoven, Schubert, Loewe, Liszt, Gounod, Wolf, and

Tchaikovsky. The character of Mignon was indeed the appropriate symbol of childhood

for Schumannan ideal childhood rich in memories of the past and hopes in the future.

Mignon first appears in Schumanns piano collection Album for the Young, Op.

68, No. 35. In the story, Mignon appears as a mesmerizing child beauty and acrobat,

entertaining people with her precarious tightrope dance. Schumann originally titled this

piece Seiltnzermdchen (Tightrope dancing girl) in his sketchbook, but he later

crossed it out and changed it to Mignon.17 Schumann perfectly conveys a delicate

tightrope walk in music with a right-hand halting melody as Mignons walking, set

against the seemingly unsteady fp markings on the fourth beat in mm. 1-4, thus evoking

the image of a swaying dancing girl (Example 6). The E flat major and the lovely

melodic material help the musical realization of Mignons sweet and delicate character.

16 Sams, 216.

17 Bernhard R. Appel, Actually, Taken Directly from Family Life: Robert Schumanns Album fr die Jugend, trans. John Michael Cooper, in Schumann and His World, 187.

33

Example 6. Mignon, Op. 68, No. 35, mm. 1-10

Following from the Album for the Young, Schumann set Mignons Kennst du das

Land in his Song Album for the Young, Op. 79, which serves as the conclusion of the

collection. The work was composed, in Schumanns words, amidst a veritable childrens

uproar,18 and it inspired Schumann to set other poems from the novel. He went on to

write three more Mignon songs: Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, Heiss mich nicht

reden, and So lasst mich scheinen. These songs appear as the Nos. 3, 5, and 9 in

Schumanns collection of Goethe songs Lieder und Gesnge aus Goethes Wilhelm

Meister, Op. 98a. He then decided also to publish the Kennst du das Land as the

opening for the group of Goethe songs, thus Op. 98a No. 1. Clara first heard the excerpts

of the Wilhelm Meister songs on the day when Schumann finished the draft, and she was

profoundly affected.19 The set of Op. 98a displays some of Schumanns most intense

18 Daverio, 425.

19 Litzmann, Clara Schumann, vol. 1, 456.

34

songwritingdramatic qualities in the vocal part and quasi-orchestral conception in the

accompaniment. The style is perfectly illustrated in Mignons Heiss mich nicht reden,

Op. 98a, No. 5, which blurs the distinction between opera and song cycle in the

composers mind (Example 7).

Example 7. Heiss mich nicht redden, Op. 98a, No. 5, mm. 1-9

Schumann employs a three-note motive (F-sharp, A-flat, G) in Mignons songs as a

unifying tragic expression. The notes often appear both as melody and as harmony.

Schumanns devotion to Mignon did not end there. Related to Lieder und

Gesnge aus Goethes Wilhelm Meister is the Requiem fr Mignon, for five solo voices,

chorus and orchestra. The text set to music by Schumann is taken from Wilhelm Meisters

Apprenticeship and describes the funeral rites of Mignon. Schumann first wrote the work

35

in short score at the beginning of July, 1849, and orchestrated it in July and September

1849. The Requiem can be viewed as a continuation of the Goethe songs, and therefore it

was published, together with Op. 98a, as Op. 98b in 1849, the year in which the

hundredth anniversary of Goethes birth was celebrated. Liszt commented on this work in

an issue of the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik in 1855:

The Requiem for Mignon performed the rare service of enriching the consummate creation of a master with a new idea, a fortunately successful stroke. This last lament, this thousandfold sigh repeated above a grave covering so much suffering and beauty, so much yearning and misfortune, is like the final chord of an earthly lot full of painful dissonances.20

The Requiem fr Mignon is divided into six short sections following on without a break,

and it maintains a tone of profound simplicity and a gripping mood throughout. The

lyrical and mystical quality of Goethes text is displayed by the imaginative handling of

the chorus and solo voices. The orchestra also includes many unforgettable touches, such

as the arpeggios in the harp starting in mm. 71 in the third section, where the incredibly

enchanting effect is achieved by a sudden dynamic change from forte to piano and a

harmonic switch from a C-major chord to a half-diminished 6/5 chord on note A.

Schumann avoids contrapuntal intricacies in the work and employs full harmonic

progression in favor of simple and expressive melody. Near the end of the work, he wrote

an unexpected chromatic turn, which interrupts the foremost diatonic flow, creating

extraordinary original and fresh sound (Example 8).

20 Liszt, Schumann (1855), 350.

36

Example 8. Requiem fr Mignon, No. 6, Op. 98b, mm. 355-371

The chorus concludes the work in an unusual 6/4 chord in F major, which strikingly

contrasts to the C minor funeral music at the beginning and accords perfectly with the

final words: Up! Children, hasten to life! Up! Schumann does not give the Requiem the

37

traditional funeral music treatment and significance. Rather, his setting is bittersweet and

poetic. The Requiem fr Mignon is one of the most appealing and moving productions in

Schumanns choral compositions, for in it he has recaptured the grace and beauty of the

original Mignon character.

The Late Works and Hausmusik

Upon close observation of Schumanns music for and about children, one finds

that all the works, except the Kinderszenen, were composed during the last six years of

his career (1848-1853). This raises a point of contention: the value and quality of the

music that Schumann composed during his final years. The frequently repeated claim is

that Schumanns mental disorder had affected his late works. They have been perceived

as undistinguished, academic, incoherent, and uninspired. Wasielewski, the first

biographer of Schumann, denies any merit to the works that were composed about a year

before the final mental collapse of the composer.21 Frederick Niecks in his book

considers that evidence of Schumanns approaching breakdown came during his years in

Dresden (1845-1850): His creative powers were already on the wanethe occasional

successes cannot blind us to the frequent dimnesses.22 The opinion expressed by Victor

Basch was quite typical: Not one of the works enumerated in it [the list of compositions

between 1851 and 1853] has survived, and they reveal an undoubted decline in the


22 Niecks, 4.

38

composers creative power.23 Ronald Taylor, in his 1982 biography of Schumann,

concludes that the music of the composers late years was created under the influence of

a deteriorated mind: These late works of Schumanns fail to live up to their promise and

leave an uncomfortable sense of dissatisfaction and confusion which the characteristic

works of his early imagination do not.24

But Schumann had been mentally unstable all his life. He had been tormented by

fears of insanity since the age of eighteen, and had contemplated suicide on at least three

occasions in the 1830s. A brief summary of Schumanns clinical history, provided by

Eliot Slater, shows that Schumann was generally in good spirits, despite some mild

depression, during the years between 1849 and 1853, and he showed no evidence of

schizophrenic symptoms in that period of time.25 Eric Frederick Jensen, in his new book

on Schumann, offers new evidence that Schumann had returned to sufficient health to

justify his removal from confinement a year before his death.26 Unfortunately,

Schumanns physicians completely misunderstood the nature of his illness and

overlooked his sanity; therefore, this led to the fact that his mental disorder was

exacerbated by the treatment he received at Endenich.27 More recent research has

reevaluated Schumanns late music, attempting to refute the unconvincing common

dismissal of his late works as the result of an unstable mind.

23 Victor Basch, Schumann: A Life of Suffering, trans. Catherine Alison Phillips (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), 199.

24 Taylor, 276.

25 Eliot Slater, Schumanns Illness, in Schumann and His World, 409-10.

26 Jensen, 318-26.

27 Ibid., 330.

39

During the last six years of his creative life, including his astonishingly

productive period in Dresden in 1848-1849 and his final career in Dsseldorf in 1850-

1853, Schumann wrote more than eighty compositions, which are in excess of half of his

entire works. Among them one can find all the major genresconcerto, symphony,

orchestral compositions, chamber music, piano pieces, dramatic works, as well as solo

songs and choral music. These late works demonstrate a change of musical style

noticeable in Schumanns late years, featured by the rich development of motivic

combinations, increasing angularity of themes, more complicated harmony, often-

continuous and asymmetrical melodies, cyclical interconnections of movements, and

compression in form. It seems that Schumann in his late career decided to make an

attempt to move with the times and to look for something new, not to repeat himself. Like

the prejudice against his mental illness, unfavorable criticisms directed to Schumanns

late works were created partly due to the development of this late style. It has been

generally thought that his late music bears little comparison to the works written in his

early years. The innovations seemed not to be comprehended and appreciated by

Schumanns contemporaries. But he is still Schumann, and his essential spirit is still

there. Of course it is true that not all of these late works are masterpieces or the most

attractive, but they are consistently high in quality28 and continue to show Schumann

still at the height of his powers. Genoveva (Op. 81, opera), Manfred (Op. 115, incidental

music), the Cello Concerto (Op. 129), the Third Symphony (Op. 97), the Violin Sonatas

(Op. 105, 121), the Violin Concerto (WoO 23), the Requiem (Op. 148), Scenes from

Goethes Faust (WoO 3), and the last songs of Des Sngers Fluch (Op. 139), to mention

28 Daverio, 459.

40

a few, are among some of the most significant music written by Schumann in his late

career.

Aside from his creation of large-scale forms, Schumann also in his late years

devoted himself extensively to compositions of various types of Hausmusik, including

piano music, songs, choral partsongs, and chamber music. Hausmusik, as the word

indicates, is a German term for modest music to be practiced and performed at home by

family and friends for their own entertainment, particularly among the middle class as

opposed to the aristocracy. Its German national traits represent seriousness, simplicity,

and Volksthmlichkeit in opposition to the frivolous, artificial French national

characteristics.29 It is in a sense of domestic music makingprivate and intimate,

distinct from that of the concert music in public style.

Schumanns works falling into the category of Hausmusik cover a broad range of

genres. In addition to piano music written for and about children (Op. 68, 82, 85, 109,

118, and 130), Schumann composed numerous playful sets mainly for adult amateurs: a

four-hand piano work Bilder aus dem Osten, Op. 66; vocal compositions Spanisches

Liederspiel, Op. 74 (for one, two, and four voices and piano), Vier Duette, Op. 78 (for

soprano and tenor), and the Song Album for the Young, Op. 79; choral compositions

Romanzen und Balladen, Op. 67 and 75; and chamber works for various solo instruments

and piano, including the Adagio und Allegro for horn, Op. 70, the Phantasiestcke for

clarinet, Op. 73, the Fnf Stcke im Volkston for cello, Op. 102, the Drei Romanzen for

oboe, Op. 94, along with the Mrchenbilder, Op. 113 and the Mrchenerzahlungen, Op.

132, which both have already been discussed earlier in this chapter.

29 Anthony Newcomb, Schumann and the Marketplace: From Butterflies to Hausmusik, in Nineteenth-Century Piano Music, ed. R. Larry Todd (New York: Schirmer Books, 1990), 272.

41

The earliest use of the term Hausmusik was in a series of articles entitled The

History of Hausmusik in Past Centuries in the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik between

1837 and 1839 by the Leipzig organist and musicologist Carl Ferdinand Becker.30 The

term soon gained common use and retained a sociological significance. With its

entertaining and pedagogical functions, Hausmusik became the focus of a musical and

cultural movement in Germany in the 1840s and beyonda movement concerned with a

way of life founded in peaceful domestic harmony, reflected also in the domestic

architecture and the decorative arts and painting of the period. In the visual arts the best

example of the movement is represented by Ludwig Richters engraving Hausmusik

(1856), made for the frontispiece of Wilhelm Heinrich Riehls song collection under the

same title. According to John Daverio, Hausmusik amounts to a quintessential

Biedermeier31 taste: withdrawal from the outer tumult into that most hallowed of spaces,

the domestic interior, its security ensured by generational and cultural ties.32

Schumanns Hausmusik in his late career reflected this taste. Anthony Newcomb in his

essay reports Schumanns change of aesthetic attitude in the 1840s:

In explaining this abrupt change of direction, we might reasonably reject the conclusion that Roberts spring of youthful romantic inspiration ran dry around 1840; also the conclusion that his mind was showing early signs of the disintegration that was to lead him to the mental institution some fourteen years later. He had recognized that the [early] style of music that he found most natural and by which he placed most store had not found public acceptance and would seemingly never gain

30 Daverio, 404.

31 A term applied to bourgeois life and art in German-speaking countries in Europe between 1815

(the Treaty of Vienna) and 1848 (the year of revolutions). Derived from the name of a fictitious schoolmaster, it is used in music as a description of the everyday musical culture of the period rather than as a designation of a school or a common creative mood.

32 Daverio, 405.

42

him the kind of public recognition that he needed to survive professionally. He had to try something else.33

After Schumanns marriage to Clara in 1840, there was a hiatus of writing solo

piano music. Not until 1845, did he devote himself to a series of contrapuntal studies (Op.

56, 58, 60, and 72) for the pedal piano. When Schumann returned to piano music in 1848

with the Bilder aus dem Osten, Op. 66, and the Album for the Young, Op. 68, his ideal

now was both the socially and musically important Hausmusik. As the central point of the

musical and cultural movement in the mid-century, the concept of Hausmusik had

profound effects on Schumann. After surveying Schumanns piano music from the 1830s,

Newcomb concludes:

The changed aesthetic goals represented in the late pieces both for piano and for small ensemble were part of an important cultural movement in Germanys musical world of the 1840sa movement embraced with deep conviction by at least part of Schumanns always divided personality. This movement and Schumanns response to it are primary factors in the changes in Schumanns aesthetic attitudes.34

While Schumanns Hausmusik resulted from social context, it was at the same

time closely related to his personal life. After their marriage, Schumann and Clara created

a household centered on music and their children. As a devoted and involved father, he

participated actively in his childrens livesplay, recreational activities, and education. It

is not strange that music was also an important part of their lives. The children studied

the piano with their mother and other teachers. In a letter of 5 May 1843 to Carl

Kossmaly, who was a composer and writer on musical subjects, Schumann expressed his

idea of future direction of composition:

33 Newcomb, 267-68.

34 Ibid., 270.

43

Times have changed with me too. I used to be indifferent to the amount of notice I received, but a wife and children put a different complexion upon everything. It becomes imperative to think of the future, desirable to see the fruits of ones labournot the artistic, but the prosaic fruits necessary to life; these fame helps to bring forth and multiply.35

Inspired by his family life, which always provided him with peace and stability,

Schumann composed some Hausmusik for private use. As he confessed in a letter of 6

October 1848 to Carl Reinecke: They [the pieces from the Album for the Young] are

peculiarly dear to my heart, and truly belong to family life.36

Financial motivation was often another major reason for Schumanns creation of

Hausmusik.37 Domestic music making flourished in the nineteenth century. Affordable

by many of the middle-class, the piano became the principal domestic instrument. For

this reason, easy piano works, piano duets, and piano-accompanied songs, all intended for

home consumption, became the mainstay of nineteenth-century music printing and

publishing. Not surprisingly, the Album for the Young, Schumanns most admired

Hausmusik work, met with great success after its appearance in December 1848.

Schumann told his friend Ferdinand Hiller in April that the work had found speedy

circulation.38 He also wrote to Franz Brendel on September18, 1849: The Album for

Youth has found a better market than almost any recent work: I have this from

the publisher himself; and the same is true of many of my songs.39 Schumann received a

35 Schumann, The Letters, 242.


37 Jensen, 231.

38 Schumanns letter of 10 April 1849 to Hiller, in Wasielewski, 245.

39 Ibid., 246.

44

generous payment of 226 talers for the work.40 Since his composition of Hausmusik paid

so well at the time, he therefore would instinctively think of writing something in a

similar vein to maintain the financial success. The result was a flood of Hausmusik

throughout much of 1849. Schumann succeeded admirably. Financially, what he earned

in 1849 for his compositions reached the highest level by far (1275 talers).41 Musically,

he found the quality of what was popular then, thus ensuring the musics appeal to the

public. In the hands of Schumann, Hausmusik, particularly his piano music for children,

reached notable artistic heights.

40 Appel, 182. He also reports that the publisher later offered Schumann an additional payment for the unexpected success of the work.

41 Jensen, 231.

CHAPTER THREE

THE KINDERSZENEN AND THE ALBUM FOR THE YOUNG

The Kinderszenen: Schumann as a Poet

In early 1838 Schumann composed three piano cycles in rapid succession: the

Novelletten, Op. 21, the Kinderszenen, Op. 15, and Kreisleriana, Op. 16. The first two

works are in fact connected. Schumann originally intended to publish them together as a

single collection of pieces, in which the Kinderszenen served as a beginning to the

Novelletten.1 But the final decision was to put them into separate publication.

Like many of Schumanns works, the Kinderszenen appear to have been inspired

by Clara, for as he wrote to her on March 17, 1838:

Ive discovered that nothing spurs the imagination more than anticipation and longing for something or other; that was the case in these last days when I was just waiting for your letter and filled books with compositionsstrange things, mad things, even friendly thingsyou will really be surprised when you play themI often feel that Im going to burst because of all the music in meand before I forget what I composedit was like a musical response to what you once wrote me, that I sometimes seemed like a child to youin short, it was just as if I were wearing a dress with flared sleeves, and I wrote about 30 droll little pieces, from which Ive selected twelve, and Ive called them Kinderszenen. You will enjoy them, but, of course, you will have to forget that you are a virtuosothere are titles like FrighteningAt the FiresideCatch me if you canSuppliant Child The Knight of the Hobby-HorseFrom Foreign CountriesFunny Story, etc., and what not. In short, youll find everything, and at the same time they are as

1 Daverio, 165; Jensen, 168.

46

light as air.2

In fact, the published set in September 1839 consists of thirteen pieces, each with a

separate title.3 Following his usual practice, Schumann added these titles after he had

composed them, as further guide to their interpretation. Although there was no dedicatee,

Schumann, in his heart, wrote these pieces for Clara. He described the nature of the work

to her as light and gentle and happy like our future.4 In a letter dated April 15, 1838,

Schumann told Clara that the Kinderszenen will probably be finished when you arrive; I

like them very much; I impress people a lot when I play them, especially myself.5 The

Kinderszenen were also among Claras favorites:

They belong only to the two of us, dont they? And they are always on my mind; they are so simple, warm, so quite like you; I cant wait till tomorrow when I can play them again.6

From the technical view, the Kinderszenen contain no great difficulties, simple

and accessible to children, yet Schumann did not by any means have interpretation by

children in mind. Unlike his later Album for the Young, which Schumann wrote for his

children to play, the Kinderszenen were retrospective glances by a parent and for grown

folks, as the composer emphasized in a letter to Carl Reinecke on October 6, 1848.7

2 The Complete Correspondence, vol. 1, 123-24.

3 Robert Polansky claims that the sketches of pieces rejected from the Kinderszenen are located in one of Schumanns manuscripts, dated from early in 1838, now in the possession of the Library of Congress. It contains a mixture of sketches and fair copies of piano pieces, some of which later become part of the Albumbltter, Op

schumann -piano music for children (analysis)

Documents

piano works

overview of schumanns

piano duets

piano sonatas

schumanns personal

piano solo works

domestic music

hand piano pieces