The Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra once polled its audience regarding what period of music it preferred. The winner was “Early Romantic.” Robert Schumann would certainly seem to be our cup of tea because he was the archetypical early Romantic composer. Born in Zwickau in 1810, the son of, if not a poet, a translator of poetry into German. His father was also a book collector.
Schumann was a fine pianist though not a prodigy; he made his debut at age 11. However, the book-saturated, young Robert, who wrote under the pseudonym of “Skülander,” was on a path more toward literature, favoring the fanciful offerings of Jean Paul and E. T. A. Hoffmann. When his father died of a “nervous disorder” when Schumann was only 16 (ominously, his 19-year-old sister committed suicide the same year), the father’s will required that Robert complete a course of study at the university to gain his inheritance. Law was chosen, but Schumann never attended a single lecture.
In 1829, his mother was convinced by the famous piano pedagogue, Friedrich Wieck, that Schumann had potential as a pianist, and so a course of musical study was undertaken.
Schumann’s studies with Wieck were complicated by his romantic feelings toward Clara Wieck, the instructor’s daughter, whom he had known since she was nine. Clara was a true prodigy pianist and composer (and about 10 years younger than the charismatic Schumann). While Schumann’s prospects as a concert pianist were dashed when his right ring finger became crippled, possibly a self-inflicted injury caused by his use of a hand strengthening apparatus, his composing and music critic career was blossoming.
Nevertheless, Schumann was relatively unknown as a composer while Clara was already an internationally renowned pianist. In 1839 when the five-year romance progressed to a marriage commitment, Father Wieck was vehemently opposed. What could be more Romantic than young love thwarted? But Clara and Robert were truly destined to be a couple for history. And despite numerous legal skirmishes, including the final one in 1840 where “the plaintiff's [i.e., Schumann’s] tendency to drink” was part of Wieck’s allegations, they were finally allowed to legally marry in September, 1840 after Clara’s 21st birthday while Wieck was sentenced to 18 days in jail for slander!
The marriage was gloriously happy except when it ultimately turned tragic. Robert composed and proselytized like a man possessed. Clara managed the household, giving birth to eight children, but also widely toured as a solo pianist promoting her husband’s music. She was his muse, advisor, and confidant. She was also too soon a widow. The frequently depressed Schumann attempted suicide in 1854 and was confined to an asylum without Clara ever having been allowed to visit until his last few days in 1856.
Schumann’s composing career allows a relatively easy overview because he tended to concentrate his works in one genre at a time. The general categories are piano pieces, when he was primarily a pianist (1833–9); songs, during his romance of Clara (1840); symphonic music (1841) his first year of marriage; chamber music (1842), oratorio (1843); fugal forms (1845); dramatic music (1847–8); and church music (1852). This cannot be considered a rigid “system” when one considers that Schumann composed his Symphony No. 3 “Rhenish” in 1850.
The Symphony No. 4 in D minor was composed in the “Symphonic Year” of 1841. In an astonishingly productive run of works, Schumann completed his Symphony No. 1 “Spring,” the Overture, Scherzo, and Finale, the first movement of what would subsequently become the Piano Concerto in A minor (for Clara), and the Symphony in D Minor which was subsequently revised in 1851 and thus was published as “No. 4” even though its conception would make it second in line of Schumann’s four symphonies.
Program annotators are supposed to be council for the defense when it comes to making the case for the works on the program. This is quite easy for the Symphony No.4 when one considers its passionate emotions, its melodic beauty, and the originality and effectiveness of its structure. Audiences consistently adore the piece. Professors of orchestration have their issues. When Schumann revised the work, he doubled many of the instrumental lines making things much fuller, but also thicker. Conductors have been conspiring to lighten the instrumental density ever since either through careful balancing in performance or “retouching” the orchestration (e.g., Gustav Mahler).
The revision Schumann undertook was prompted by the great 1850 reception of the “Rhenish” and the poor reception of the 1841 Leipzig premiere of the Symphony in D Minor which had been conducted by the substitute conductor, Ferdinand David, the violinist for whom Mendelssohn wrote his violin concerto. Unlike Mendelssohn, a great conductor who, earlier in 1841, successfully premiered the “Spring” symphony, Schumann was notoriously “cue-less” as a conductor. He had become the music director of the symphony orchestra in Düsseldorf in 1850. And there is some speculation that the instrumental doublings of the revised Fourth were a matter of strength in numbers--the idea being that if there are enough players on a melody, it wouldn’t be lost if a player missed an entrance.
The Symphony opens with a growl-like chord leading into a sinuous creeping theme which is the connecting fiber which Schumann uses to unify all the movements. The introduction accelerates into a vigorous, passionate outburst. The development of the theme generates a strong chordal motif which will return to dominate the third and the fourth movements. There is no recap of the first theme but a lyrical phrase and a powerful close lead directly into the second movement without a pause. This begins with a long, beautiful melody played by the oboe with the solo cello doubling in the octave below. (This doubling was also in the 1841 version). The intro theme reappears, there is more oboe, and then a flowing middle section which speeds up the sinuous introductory music.
The third movement bursts in with the vigorous chords of the first movement’s development section. The trio is formed from the flowing strands of melody from the middle section of the second movement. The two sections are repeated--as Beethoven often does in his scherzos — with a short coda connecting directly to the finale, that begins with a variant of the sinuous first movement introduction which heats to a red-hot glow in the brass. The vigorous chords return to open the finale proper followed by a contrasting bouncy theme. The development starts with another growl before elaborating the contrasting theme in fugal form. Unlike the first movement, this time there is a recap (of the second theme only) followed by a coda that drives faster and faster.
Program Note by IPO Board Member
Charles Amenta, M.D