Composer: born June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Saxony; died July 29, 1854, Endenich (near Bonn)
Work composed: Schumann sketched the entire symphony in the four days between January 23 and 26, 1841; he took another month to orchestrate the work. The “Spring” Symphony is dedicated to Friedrich August II, King of Saxony.
World premiere: Felix Mendelssohn conducted the premiere with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on March 31, 1841.
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, triangle and strings
Estimated duration: 30 minutes

“I wrote the symphony in that rush of spring which carries a man away even in his old age, and comes over him anew every year. Description and painting were not a part of my intention, but I believe that the time in which it came into existence may have influenced its shape and made it what it is.” – Robert Schumann

Why would anyone compose a symphony with the subtitle “Spring” during the month of January? In the midst of the darkest, coldest time of year, thoughts of spring can ease the harshness of winter. As Robert Schumann sketched out his B-flat symphony during four hectic days in January 1841, he was inspired by his longing for spring, which seemed very far away in the midst of a bitter Leipzig winter. Spring and its associations of love, fertility, and new beginnings were foremost in Schumann’s thoughts; he was a newly married man, having wed Clara Wieck in the autumn of 1840, after a years-long battle with her father for her hand. “After many sleepless nights comes prostration,” Schumann wrote in his diary after completing the orchestration for the Spring Symphony, in February 1841. “I feel like a young woman who has just given birth – so relieved and happy, but also sick and sore.” The reference to childbirth was not accidental; Clara was pregnant with their first child, born seven months later.

Schumann tended to immerse himself in particular musical genres for specific periods of time. In 1841, he composed no less than four works for orchestra, and scholars have come to call 1841 his “symphonic year.” Before 1841, Schumann had been known as a composer of piano music, songs and chamber works; some considered him more of a critic than a composer, because of his writings in Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and the fact that he had not yet produced a symphony, considered at that time the pinnacle of compositional achievement. In 1839, Clara wrote in her diary, “it would be best if he [Schumann] composed for orchestra; his imagination cannot find sufficient scope on the piano … His compositions are all orchestral in feeling … My highest wish is that he should compose for orchestra – that is his field! May I succeed in bringing him to it!”

Schumann’s musical ideas for the symphony grew out of his response to a poem by Adolph Böttger, which begins with the lines “O wende, wende deinen Lauf/Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf!” (O turn, O turn and change your course/In the valley spring blooms forth!” The symphony opens with an instrumental setting of these two lines: the brasses, in Schumann’s description, “summon to life,” while the orchestra reveals a valley glowing with spring flowers. Schumann originally gave a descriptive title to each movement, rather than a simple tempo marking. The Larghetto was originally called “Evening,” and its graceful, somewhat elegiac main theme, played first by the violins and later by a solo horn and oboe, are a tranquil backdrop against which the energy of the Scherzo (“Merry Playmates”) creates a marked contrast. The last movement, “Farewell to Spring,” begins with a grand orchestral flourish, followed by a dainty theme for strings, which Schumann cautioned should not be “played too frivolously.”

© Elizabeth Schwartz