Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann worked at the "Szenen aus Goethes Faust" for almost a decade (1844 through 1853). In his attempt to reach a loftiness similar to that of Goethe's tragedy, the composer started setting the final part of Faust II, which ends with the philosophical Chorus Mysticus. Having renamed "Faust Transfiguration" this sublime Goethian achievement, Schumann added some other scenes from the tragedy, among them Gretchen's prayer before the image of the Mater Dolorosa in the first part of the tragedy. The paper aims at demonstrating that Schumann intended to show a profound link between "Faust I" and "Faust II", as he added to the mystical reunion of Faust and Gretchen in "Faust II" the moment in which Gretchen recalls with pain her carnal and illegitimate union with Faust in first part. In this way Schumann sets forth a transfiguration not only of Faust, but of the couple he forms with Gretchen.

This paper makes a historical review of the research on Robert Schumann, from the first biography of the composer, published two years after his death, until more recent days. The conflict between the approach of musicological works focused on the analysis, and those more inclined to take into account the extra-musical aspects of the compositions, with a special focus on the relationship between language and music, is especially deepened.

In May 2014, the Library of Congress purchased an autograph manuscript of Robert Schumann's Marchenbilder, Op. 113, for viola and piano. Although details in the manuscript indicate that it likely served as the exemplar used by the engraver to create the printed edition, it is nevertheless a working copy, recording many aspects of the creative process. An examination of the manuscript offers valuable insights not only into Schumann's creative process, but also into the unique status of the work as a hybrid of character piece and multi-movement sonata, with implications for analysis and performance.

The availability of "the materials provided by the whole history of music" represents a fundamental attribute of the musical poetics of Gerardo Gandini (1936)-one of the most significant Argentine composers. Gandini regards composition as a result of a 'conversation' between different musical works in an 'imaginary sound museum'-a distinctive cosmopolitan stance of many contemporary art manifestations developed in Buenos Aires. This discursive imaginary could be associated with what the composer himself calls 'rereading': a compositional reworking of material and/or formal configurations taken from his own works or from works by other composers. (The music by Mozart, Schumann, Debussy, Schoenberg and Berg occupy a relevant place in Gandini's music as a basis for reworking.) This procedure establishes the 'objets trouvés'-according to the denomination that Gandini gives to the borrowed material included in his works-as a compositional substrate and transforms them in various ways, and through different works. The study of this compositional technique embodies not a restoration of disguised identities, but a characterization of the strategies of reinterpretation, transparency and opacity merged in the works. The reinterpretation of materials coming from different historical contexts shapes Gandini's music as a complex intertextual framework, whose analysis involves the recognition of structural, semantic and historical aspects, as they relate and manifest in the music itself. The paper explores these assumptions through the analysis of the rereading procedure applied to the piano piece "Vogel als prophet" by Robert Schumann (Waldszenen op. 82) in works such as Gandini's Diaries I-III (1960-87) for piano, and his Estudios for violin and piano (1990). This reworking poses the question of whether a distant perspective from European culture results in an particular approach for the reinterpretation of its music.

Julia Novak deals with the life of another historical figure – Clara Wieck Schumann, one of the greatest pianists of her time and already world-famous by the time she married Robert Schumann in 1840. Still, Clara Schumann had been largely ignored in the world of music for almost a century and has only recently attracted scholarly and literary interest. Concentrating on Janice Galloway’s novel Clara (2002), Novak explores strategies of intertextuality, especially of integrating music in the text, and demonstrates how Galloway has drawn on historical sources, such as letters, diaries and biographies in order to put the story of Clara’s life together. This story is multiply indebted to the aesthetics of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh, and Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben.

A close study of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik reveals Schumann's innovative role as an editor and the journal’s capacity to create a public platform where musicians negotiated the legitimacy of their aesthetic and intellectual positions. (in French)

Composed in 1850, Robert Schumann's cello concerto in A minor Op. 129 is nowadays considered as one of the masterpieces of the instrument's repertoire, but the piece took a long time to achieve this prestige among critics and performers. It was composed in a span of two weeks, but only published after four years and first performed only in 1860, four years after the composer's death. It is the first cello concerto by a major composer since Joseph Haydn, but it is also very innovative for the genre, not only because of its continuous form (without breaks between movements) but also for the composers option to deviate from the typical bravura concert pieces, establishing the lyrical character of the instrument that would be explored by future composers. In order to contest the common sense that Schumann's late works are faulty because of the composer's mental illness, previous works by other composers and by Schumann himself will be pointed as possible sources of inspiration for the concerto as a proof that the composer's experimentations were intentional and not a result of a weak mind condition. This research is based on works that portrait the trajectory of Schumann as a composer (especially his last years in Düsseldorf), analysis of the relationship between the concerto and previous works, discussions about the impact that this cello concerto had in the history of the genre, as well as recordings and scores of the piece.

Robert Schumann's relationship with the Letters has been widely recognized, and his early interest in the connections between literature and music has lasted his entire life. For him, music and literature were not separate, but were different facets of the same transforming agent: art, whose function is to convert the prosaic of existence into poetry, understood in a broad sense, applicable to all vital aspects. Through his own writings, this paper reviews the profound relationship between the composer and literature, from childhood to his last years, remarking the early, and lasting, influence of his favorite writer, Jean Paul.

Che Robert Schumann ammirasse Paganini è un fatto macroscopico: le due trascrizioni pianistiche dei Capricci (op. 3 e op. 10) sono la manifestazione più appariscente di una devozione rimasta intatta dal 1834 al 1856. Del resto molti illustri pianisti del tempo, da Cramer a Liszt, reperirono proprio in Paganini le radici di un virtuosismo strumentale destinato a conquistare le vaste platee del concertismo internazionale. Ma Schumann era davvero allineato alla recezione di quei virtuosi della tastiera? Nei suoi scritti troviamo riflessioni estasiate circa le «catene magnetiche» che Paganini sapeva gettare sul pubblico. Tuttavia nella sua recensione agli Studi di bravura sui Capricci di Paganini di Liszt leggiamo un’affermazione illuminante:

Se la trascrizione di Schumann voleva mettere maggiormente in risalto il lato poetico della composizione, Liszt, invece, sottolinea (pur senza disconoscere quello) il lato virtuosistico; egli titola giustamente questi pezzi Studi di bravura, in quanto è ben chiaro che li suona anche per brillare di fronte al pubblico (R. Schumann, Gli scritti critici, a cira di A. Cerocchi Pozzi, Milano, Ricordi-LIM 1991, I, p. 885).

Schumann identificava due anime artistiche in Paganini: da una parte un virtuoso mirabolante che esercitava facili seduzioni sulle platee delle sale da concerto; dall’altra un compositore dal «lato poetico», che rischiava di rimanere sepolto sotto le appariscenti tentazioni del virtuosismo. L’aggettivo ‘poetico’ non era certo usato in maniera sprovveduta: negli scritti di Schumann si trova solo a contatto con i nomi più ammirati (Bach, Schubert, Hoffmann, Shakespeare). Le trascrizioni schumanniane, nelle intenzioni dell’autore, dovevano esaltare proprio il Paganini-compositore, l’autore in grado di esprimere contenuti poetici attraverso la sua scrittura musicale; qualcosa che accadeva sulla carta, ancor prima che si aprissero le porte del palcoscenico. L’atteggiamento era piuttosto anomalo rispetto alla comune recezione paganiniana della prima metà dell’Ottocento. Ma in che cosa consisteva quel misterioso «lato poetico» che Schumann leggeva nel tessuto compositivo dei Capricci? Le analisi degli Studi op. 3 e op. 10 ci aiutano a rispondere a questa domanda, testimoniando una recezione che prediligeva sistematicamente l’invenzione primigenia alla trascrizione del virtuosismo.

Dans quelle mesure et par quels moyens le timbre entre-t-il en jeu dans le traitement des formes musicales brèves ?  Cette  question  sert de  fil  conducteur  à  une  étude de  cas  centrée  sur  le Carnaval op.9  de Schumann, un ensemble de petites pièces dont les singularités timbriques transparaissent  sur  le  plan  de  l’écriture  musicale  au  travers  de  facteurs timbriques tels que la pédale, l’articulation, la dynamique, le nombre de parties,  les  registres,  les  doublures  et  l’ambitus.  Un  examen  détaillé  des pièces  « Eusebius »,  « Pantalon  et  Colombine »  et  « Paganini »  permet de  mettre  en  regard  des  analyses  formelles  centrées  sur  les  dimensions mélodique  et  harmonique  avec  des  analyses  formelles  au  prisme  du timbre.  Ces  analyses  timbriques  apportent  un  éclairage nouveau sur le traitement des formes brèves schumanniennes, mettant en évidence le rôle du timbre en tant que principe unificateur de la forme, le détachement de ces formes brèves par rapport aux modèles formels classiques – visible notamment dans l’accélération et l’imprévisibilité formelles induites par les unités timbriques finales –, mais également la densité et la complexité du  discours résultant du timbre et de ses  interactions avec les autres dimensions musicales.

Cette thèse suggère que l’avènement d’un discours proprement européen au milieu du XXe siècle a pour corollaire la genèse d’un espace dénationalisé : la communauté politique européenne. L’Union européenne est donc envisagée comme la performance et le produit de l’européanité. Définie comme « les Européens en train de parler Europe », l’européanité est l’acte de langage (Austin, 1970) qui associe le « nous » au territoire communautaire, suscitant ainsi les conditions de possibilité de son existence. Cas tout à fait particulier dans le monde interétatique contemporain, cet espace, fondé de manière intersubjective par les Européens en train de discuter collectivement des modalités du vivre ensemble, n’est pas délimité par la ligne de partage des souverainetés (Raffestin, 1986). À l’image d’une communauté européenne jamais stabilisée et existant toujours dans un devenir politique (Deleuze, 1975), le territoire européen est en constante expansion, systématiquement plus étendu dans le discours que dans ses frontières administratives temporaires.
Depuis la Déclaration Schuman (1950) proclamant la communauté « ouverte à la participation des autres pays d’Europe » jusqu’aux négociations d’adhésion en cours avec les États de l’ex-Yougoslavie, l’européanité déborde littéralement des frontières étatiques. Ce surplus (Derrida 1979) est périodiquement cristallisé, mais jamais endigué, par l’élargissement. L’analyse synchronique du discours (Saussure, 1972) montre que plus l’européanité est partagée, plus elle crée de sens et plus elle s’étend de manière à la fois verticale (approfondissement) et horizontale (élargissement). Cet excédent permet la récursivité de l’élargissement pacifique des frontières de l’européanité, causant une rupture dans le cycle de la nécessité de répondre à la violence par la violence, caractéristique du fondement de l’État (Benjamin, 2012). La construction européenne est fondée dans la performance politique de la communauté européenne. L’ordre européen qui en découle repose sur la construction du premier « nous » politique moderne débarrassé de sa contrainte étatique. Cette recherche se veut une contribution à la réflexion sur l’élaboration d’une théorie fondamentale de l’UE.
Grâce à l’étude approfondie des élargissements de l’espace politique européen entre 1972 et 2012, c’est un cadre pour l’étude de la nature de la construction européenne qui est développé à travers la démonstration que l’analyse du discours n’est pas un simple outil méthodologique, mais qu’elle constitue une véritable théorie de la construction du politique, et, partant, de l’intégration européenne.

The late works of Robert Schumann have been a persistent source of controversy among scholars of his music. Given his mental collapse in 1854 some have claimed to find its premonitions in degeneracy of compositional genius and, for those works with text, lyrical interpretation. Others have argued that instead of judging them by the same criteria as his earlier work one must appropriately contextualize them within Schumann’s growth as a composer and the very different cultural and political milieu in which he was working during the late 1840s and early 1850s. Particularly important in this regard are the revolutionary events that convulsed Europe in the late 1840s. In this paper I discuss Schumann's op. 98a, "the Lieder und Gesänge aus Wilhelm Meister," which he wrote in the weeks preceding and following the revolutionary events in Dresden, and their savage repression, in May 1849. Making use of Adorno's writings on Beethoven's "late style," Hegel's aesthetics, and a contextualization of Schumann's use of Goethe's texts, I argue that op. 98a reveals a conscious awareness of, and commentary on, the aborted revolutions in the late 1840s.

Despite the fact that the tools of narratology have been used to explore a wide range of musical genres, the nineteenth-century lied has never been the subject of sustained narratological inquiry. This article proposes an application of narrative theory to the analysis and interpretation of the Romantic lied, illustrated with analyses of works by Schubert, Robert and Clara Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms. Drawing upon recent scholarship on narrative in lyric poetry and the narratological theories of Mieke Bal, the article focuses on selected aspects of narratology: the events of lyric poetry and the ways music can create new ‘discourse events’, and how music affects issues of mediacy, in particular voice and focalization (perspective). Music provides much more than mere accompaniment; rather, it can become an integral component of the narrative discourse, bringing new potential meanings to the original poem and opening up for the music analyst new interpretative angles.

Some material for this article originated with my "Music as a Metaphor for Metaphysics: Tropes of Transcendence in Nineteenth-Century Music from Schumann to Mahler" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1994). An earlier version of section 5 was read at the Winter 1993 Meeting of ...

Anhand von Schumanns Lied "Ich grolle nicht" wird hier der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern Musikforschung und musikalische Praxis in einem Wechselverhältnis stehen. Insbesondere geht es anhand von Interpretationsanalysen um die Frage, inwiefern die musikalische Praxis die Musikforschung beeinflusst.

The reception during his life of Robert Schumann’s early piano music is a rare case of rejection, both by critics and public, as well as by friends and family. Regardless of his numerous professional contacts, and continuous efforts to spread his music, Schumann was systematically marginalized during his first years as a composer. This paper makes a review of such reception, relying on documents that testify to the difficulties he encountered trying to establish his piano music as part of the standard repertoire.

This thesis deals with the piano cycle Kinderszenen op. 15 composed by Robert Schumann and the possibilities of its interpretation. The thesis discusses the structure of the cycle, the context of its origins, inspirational sources and its contemporary perception. The part devoted to the interpretational possibilities aims to shed light on the interpretation posibilities while comparing three recordings of the renowned pianists, namely Vladimir Horowitz, Ivan Moravec and Lang Lang.

Despite most pianists' claims of historical deference and creative agency, their performances of Brahms's piano works are nothing like the early-recorded performances of the composer and his students: gaps that are mediated by understandings of Brahms's Classical canonic identity, the performance norms that protect that identity, and those norms' underlying aesthetic ideology of control. This predication of Brahmsian identity on restraint leaves the composer and his students in a precarious situation, as their recordings evidence an approach that is governed by the inhibitions typically associated with Romanticism. This volume seeks to problematize understandings of Brahms's identity: by investigating the origins and vestiges of the aesthetic ideology of control; by analysing and copying the recordings of pianists in the composer's inner circle; and by applying these pianists' styles in ways that are just as disruptive to modern notions of Brahmsian identity as their early-recorded models. In so doing, a thoroughly Romantic performance style emerges that catalyses a fundamental shift in understanding as related to Brahms's identity; thereby opening up a new palette of expressive and technical resources, and both elucidating and narrowing persistent gaps between modern and early-recorded Brahms style, as well as between what performers believe, know, and ultimately do.

This paper proposes a new approach to the performance of Schumann's music, in particular to his song cycle Dichterliebe op. 48. Starting from the many productive instabilities and inconsistencies that characterize the compositional approach in Dichterliebe, I ask under which conditions we could think a performance practice that embraces these inconsistencies instead of stabilizing them into a finished performance. To do so, I propose the appropriation from music performance of the philosophical notion of "the problem" as formulated by Gilles Deleuze, connecting it with the "pre-individual" in Gilbert Simondon and the notion of "outside," mostly in the acceptation of Maurice Blanchot and Michel Foucault. A critique is enacted of what I suggest calling the traditional "image of musical thought." From this critique can emerge a performance practice that moves away from the "problem of performance," regarded in its traditional form a...

La première partie de la thèse propose des typologies thématique, systématique et historique de la variation (1765-1880). Elle constitue les fondements théoriques de la seconde partie consacrée à l'étude de la forme variation schumannienne à proprement parler. L'histoire de cette dernière s'inscrit dans quatre périodes successives. Si la première (1828-1832) demeure proche de la "variation brillante", la deuxième (1832-1835) est marquée par la "fantaisie variation" qui semble apparaître pour la première fois chez Schumann. Parmi les compositions datant des années 1832-1835, il convient de distinguer les séries publiées ('Impromptus' op. 5 et 'Etudes symphoniques' op. 13) des oeuvres délaissées par la propre volonté de leur auteur ('Scènes musicales sur un thème de Schubert', 'Etudes en forme de variations sur un thème de Beethoven'). La conception progressive des premières, conçues partiellement dans l'esprit de la "variation en style lié" répond à la seule "fantaisie variation" des secondes, caractérisées par une distribution inhabituelle des fonctions formelles. Quant à la troisième période (1835-1853), elle s'inscrit globalement dans le sillage d'une nouvelle catégorie, la "fantaisie variation non-kaléidoscopique", alors que la quatrième (1853-1854) se place sous le signe de la proximité thématique et de la "variation en style lié".
Loin de s'inscrire seulement dans la tradition beethovénienne, la forme variation prend une nouvelle orientation chez Schumann qui semble être à l'origine de la "fantaisie variation" et de la "fantaisie variation non-kaléidoscopique".

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01148616v1

"The next morning, he […] was so profoundly melancholic that I can't possibly describe it. When I merely touched him, he said, 'Ah, Clara, I am not worthy of your love.' He said that, he to whom I had always looked up with the greatest, deepest reverence…"

When sending Hans Christian Andersen his set of five songs, Op. 40 (four of which set poems by Andersen translated by Adelbert von Chamisso), Robert Schumann remarked that the strangeness of the poetry led him to compose in a 'fremdartig' (exotic) manner. To the casual listener, however, these songs are not necessarily distinguishable from the other songs Schumann composed in 1840. By first examining Andersen's poetic aesthetic and then submitting three of the songs ('Muttertraum,' 'Der Soldat,' and 'Der Spielmann') to close textual and musical analyses, this article uncovers the unusual features of the songs while also illuminating important aspects of Schumann's approach to song composition, including his self-borrowings, his conception of the Romantic ballad, and his use of the voice-piano relationship in service of musical characterization.

Throughout this year of 2010, Classical music lovers  around the world are celebrating the 200th birthday of  the great German composer Robert Schumann. This article is a contribution to that celebration. As we look  back to find joy in Schumann’s musical ideas, so did  Schumann, himself, look back to the creative mind of Johann Sebastian Bach. This article is the second in a series exploring how  the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially his  groundbreaking series of preludes and fugues, in all  keys, a celebration and exploration of the revolutionary  new well-tempered musical tuning system, entitled the  Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC), became teaching manuals for composers who lived after him. The first article, “Mozart, Bach and the ‘Musical Midwife,’” discussed how Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was inspired by Bach. 
Now, the story of how both Robert and Clara Schumann learned to compose directly from Bach will be told.  Bach  was  literally  Schumann’s music  teacher, though he no longer lived. Schumann recognized that the best way to learn to write music that  would move his listeners, would be to go directly to the  source. It was Bach, which in German means “brook,”  Schumann  thirsted  after.  It  was  Bach  who  gave  Schumann his musical nourishment, and shared with  him the secrets of his creative soul. Schumann did what  Lyndon LaRouche has always said is the best way to  learn: He strived to relive Bach’s compositional method  by immersing himself in his works, especially Bach’s  contrapuntal  fugues.

La importancia del escritor Jean Paul Richter en la vida y obra del compositor Robert Schumann ha sido reconocida desde hace tiempo. La presente investigación, enfocada en la obra temprana para piano de Schumann, profundiza en dicha relación desde varias perspectivas: la relación de Jean Paul con la música; el impacto de la obra del escritor en la personalidad de Schumann; la relación de Schumann con la literatura; la recepción de la obra del compositor; así como las principales características de los estilos de ambos creadores. Por medio de un análisis comparativo entre partitura y texto, se ha mostrado cómo Schumann refleja en su música las principales estrategias narrativas de Jean Paul.

Abstract

The importance of the writer Jean Paul Richter on Robert Schumann’s life and work has been long ago acknowledged. This research, focused on Schumann’s early piano works, deepens on such relationship from several perspectives: the relationship between Jean Paul and music; the impact of the writer’s work on Schumann’s personality; the relationship between Schumann and literature; the reception of the composer’s work; as well as the main characteristics of the style of both creators. Using a comparative analysis between score and text, it has been shown how Schumann mirrors in his music Jean Paul’s main narrative strategies.

This study will examine the opening sonata-form movements of the piano trios by Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) and Robert Schumann (1810–1856) concentrating on the interaction between analysis and performance. The aim is to consider and explore musical motion from various analytical perspectives – such as formal, structural, metrical, and a more general dramatic aspect – and see how they interact with each other. In addition, these analytical insights are related to the issues of musical ‘shaping’ in performance, and the study examines both how the analytical findings might be reflected in performers’ shaping and, vice versa, how the analytical interpretation might be influenced by the experience gained while rehearsing the works for performance. The practicing process of the piano trio ensemble (with myself at the piano) is documented in an informal rehearsal diary. By capturing the ways in which performers themselves discuss the pieces fresh and new ideas are brought to the analysis and performance studies that traditionally have been dominated by the analysis-to-performance discussion, not the other way round. As a conclusion, the study includes both a more analytical, scholarly viewpoint and an introspective, performance-related viewpoint making the study a mixed method research.