Written in a four-day creative fervor in January 1841, Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1, Spring, refers not to the season itself, but an anticipatory yearning for the change of seasons. Robert Schumann was a poet at heart; the symphony originally had a poem inscribed in the score, but the composer ultimately removed it from publication. He wanted his symphony to be absolute music—music with no explicit narrative—but the last stanza of the poem certainly influenced much of Schumann’s composition:
O, turn, o turn and change your course
In the valley, Spring blooms forth!
—Adolf Böttger, Frühlingsgedicht
The sun sheepishly comes out from the winter doldrums and, in a blast of strings and horns, a regal fanfare bursts forth to celebrate the highly anticipated turn towards spring. One can hear snow melting in the first movement: Schumann paints a sonic portrait of the last snow-capped mountaintops, eager to melt. Excitement tumbles forth from trumpets and timpani just before the principal winds echo chirping birds, finally able to soar in warmer air.
The excitement at the onset of Schumann’s First Symphony might be due, in another part, to his recent marriage to sought-after concert pianist and fellow composer Clara Wieck. Clara’s father vehemently discouraged the nuptials. Although he blamed Robert’s drinking for the distrust, perhaps most troubling to Friedrich Wieck was that Clara was a major source of income in the Wieck household. If Clara was married, her income no longer flowed to her father. Although she became a touring pianist and garnered success as a composer in her own right, her father was highly controlling of Clara both as a daughter and as a pupil; Friedrich Wieck was her piano teacher and aimed to use her talent as a living advertisement for his own studio. Wieck’s advertisement backfired, though; Robert Schumann saw a young Clara in recital and, in turn, moved into the Wieck household to study with Fredrich. In his early letters, Robert commended Clara’s playing multiple times, even stating that crowds preferred her playing to that of her male counterparts. After moving in to study with Wieck, Robert became a large part of Clara’s childhood; the two began getting especially close in her early teens. While Fredrich never supported the burgeoning relationship (especially when Robert was briefly engaged to another Wieck student), Robert persisted. The two wed in 1840 after six years of formal courting and petty legal battles against Friedrich. Clara was just shy of twenty-one years old, Robert was thirty.
Until Clara’s encouragement, Robert Schumann had been most famous for his piano works. Carnaval (1835), Kinderszenen (1838), and Kreisleriana (1838) remain standard works in pianists’ repertoire. He had written an unfinished symphony as early as 1832 but abandoned the work entirely. Clara’s journals reveal that it is she who encouraged Robert to compose for a full orchestra, rather than remain at the keyboard. In 1839, two years before Schumann’s First Symphony, Clara journaled,
“I believe it were best if he composed for the orchestra: his imagination cannot expand sufficiently on the keyboard . . . . My highest wish is that he should compose for orchestra—that is his field! May I persuade him to enter it.”
The warm melody in the First Symphony’s second movement, Larghetto, is often described as Schumann’s loving portrait of his new bride. While unverifiable, it is entirely likely; Schumann includes literary ciphers in many of his piano works and it makes sense that he would do the same in the throes of newlywedded bliss. The third movement, Scherzo, is a joyous frolic through blooming fields. It rolls happily to the double bar, only stopped by the lumbering minor mode B-theme, always introduced by the strings. At last, spring has finally sprung in Schumann’s finale, Allegro animato e grazioso. The movement overflows with life as staccato winds trot around the strings. The final bars grow more excitable; boisterous trombone interjections lead frenzied strings to Schumann’s final exuberant cadence.