Robert Schumann: The Life and Work of a Romantic Composer Read online

  MARTIN GECK is professor of musicology at the Technical University of Dortmund. He is the author of more than two dozen books, including Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work.

  STEWART SPENCER is an independent scholar and the translator of more than three dozen books.

  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

  The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

  © 2013 by The University of Chicago

  All rights reserved. Published 2013.

  Printed in the United States of America

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  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-28469-9 (cloth)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-28471-2 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-226-28469-7 (cloth)

  ISBN-10: 0-226-28471-9 (e-book)

  Originally published as Robert Schumann. Mensch und Musiker der Romantik. © 2010 by Siedler Verlag, a division of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, Munich, Germany.

  Geisteswissenschaften International — Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany. A joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT, and the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.

  FRONTISPIECE: Lithograph of Schumann by Gustav Heinrich Gottlob Feckert (1820–99) after a painting by Adolf von Menzel (1815–1905). Menzel worked not from life but from one of the daguerreotypes taken in Hamburg in March 1850 by Johann Anton Völlner. (Photograph courtesy of the Heinrich Heine Institute of the Regional Capital of Düsseldorf.)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Geck, Martin.

  [Robert Schumann. English]

  Robert Schumann: the life and work of a romantic composer / Martin Geck; translated by Stewart Spencer.

  pages cm

  Originally published as Robert Schumann: Mensch und Musiker der Romantik, 2010 by Siedler Verlag. Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-28469-9 (cloth: alkaline paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-226-28469-7 (cloth: alkaline paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-28471-2 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-226-28471-9 (e-book)

  1. Schumann, Robert, 1810–1856. 2. Composers—Germany—Biography. I. Title.

  ML410.S4G29613 2012

  780.92—dc23

  [B] 2012007981

  This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  ROBERT SCHUMANN

  The Life and Work of a Romantic Composer

  MARTIN GECK

  Translated by Stewart Spencer

  The University of Chicago Press

  Chicago and London

  Contents

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1. Early Years (1810–28)

  Intermezzo I. An Awkward Age

  CHAPTER 2. Student Years (1828–34)

  Intermezzo II. Figments of the Imagination

  CHAPTER 3. The Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

  CHAPTER 4. The Early Piano Pieces

  Intermezzo III. “No, What I Hear Are Blows”

  CHAPTER 5. Probationary Years in Leipzig (1835–40)

  CHAPTER 6. The “Year of Song” (1840)

  Intermezzo IV. Twilight

  CHAPTER 7. Married Life in Leipzig—Visit to Russia (1840–44)

  Intermezzo V. The Magic of Allusions

  CHAPTER 8. Schumann as a Public Figure in the Years before the March Revolution of 1848

  Intermezzo VI. In modo d’una marcia

  CHAPTER 9. The Dresden Years (1845–50)

  Intermezzo VII. Genoveva Is Not Lohengrin

  CHAPTER 10. Director of Music in Düsseldorf (1850–54)

  Intermezzo VIII. The Road to Freedom

  CHAPTER 11. The Late Works

  Intermezzo IX. A “Sugary Saxon”?

  CHAPTER 12. Endenich (1854–56)

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index of Names

  Index of Schumann’s Works

  Prologue

  The organs associated with precaution are admirably well developed,—anxiety that is even said to stand in the way of my happiness,—music,—the power of poetry—noble striving—great artistic but noble ambition—great love of the truth—great honesty—great benevolence—“emotional through and through”—sense of form—modesty—strength of purpose—(Noël’s phrenological studies on my head—Maxen, June 1)1

  These lines are taken from Schumann’s diary entry of June 1, 1846, when the composer and his wife were visiting Maxen Castle near Dresden. The castle and its estate were owned by a retired army major, Friedrich Serre, whose love of art was matched only by his wealth. The Schumanns had been invited to lunch, after which Schumann played whist and was introduced to a “Captain Noël,” who that same evening undertook a “remarkable phrenological examination” of him, an examination also recorded in an entry of the same date in Schumann’s housekeeping book.2

  The captain in question was the English phrenologist Robert R. Noel, who was visiting Dresden to discuss his ideas with the local physician, painter, and natural scientist Carl Gustav Carus and to prepare the second edition of his Phrenology, or A Guide to the Study of This Science, with Reference to More Recent Research in the Field of Physiology and Psychology, which was to be published soon afterward by Christoph Arnold in Dresden and Leipzig.

  Phrenology—the attempt to deduce a person’s characteristics from the shape of his or her skull—was currently enjoying a boom. And to the extent that the measurements that were taken on these occasions were of particular interest to criminologists, Schumann no doubt would have felt a certain squeamishness on presenting his head for the well-known phrenologist’s inspection, a squeamishness inevitably mixed with the strange and yet by no means unusual desire to learn something new from a third party. And he was rewarded for his pains: the anxiety that had caused him so many problems in his daily life could now be put down to a “fateful predisposition,” whereas all the other tendencies noted by Noel were admirable in their different ways: noble aspirations, noble artistic ambition, a love of the truth, a sense of form, and strength of purpose.

  Of course, the phrenologist knew who he was dealing with that evening in June 1846, and there is no doubt that he was sufficiently familiar with the ways of the world and the mores of his profession not only to inspect Schumann’s skull but also to draw on other evidence to ensure that his prominent client, if a little agitated, was able to return to his fellow guests with his head held high. A century and a half later, the present author is moved by Noel’s portrait of Schumann, for, however vague it may be, there is no doubt that if his description were used in a quiz, anyone tolerably familiar with the history of music would guess that the subject of the inquiry was Schumann rather than Beethoven, Wagner, or Meyerbeer, for we are dealing here with an ambivalence entirely characteristic of the composer. On the one hand, we have the diagnosis of cautionary foresight and anxiety, feelings that tormented Schumann and repeatedly made him seem to suffer from “weak nerves” and at times to become misanthropic. These are characteristics that, creatively speaking, encouraged him to work on his own personality rather than confront others with his envy, criticism, or condescension. Rarely in his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik did Schumann rake any of his colleagues over the coals. Nor did he insult his contemporaries in private conversation. The fact of the matter is that he did not like arguments or sneering criticism but had the greatness to hail the young Johannes Brahms as his successor and to acclaim Berlioz as a genius of French romantic realism even though he could not in fact abide the Sy
mphonie Fantastique.

  On the other hand, Schumann evinced an admirable courage in repeatedly facing up to the world and fighting for what he believed in, beginning with his protracted struggle to win the hand of Clara Wieck. It was a struggle that ended only when the courts decided in the lovers’ favor. Then there was Schumann’s concern for the welfare of his increasingly large family, which was held together for the most part by Clara, though Schumann too was responsible in no small way for helping to maintain it. More than anything, his anxieties did not prevent him from accompanying Clara on her concert tours or from attending parties and conducting choirs and orchestras. The fact that at the outward high point of his career he assumed the duties associated with the post of director of music in Düsseldorf and that this may have exceeded his powers and ultimately led to his final breakdown was perhaps only to have been expected.

  Prior to his collapse, however, Schumann was not lacking in professional competence. He revealed great skill in negotiating with publishers; and, as we shall see in chapter 3, his feat in setting up the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik without any outside help amounted to a stroke of genius both as a business enterprise and in terms of the cultural politics involved. Nor can we forget his courage in artistic matters. Largely self-taught as a composer, the young Schumann was sufficiently astute to stick in the first instance to piano music, initially regarding “composing at the piano” as his essential métier, quite apart from the fact that piano music was easy to publish. From the age of thirty, however, he sought to advance ever further into the field of music First, it was whole sets of songs for voice and piano that reflected his growing self-confidence, before these in turn gave way to instrumental works for more elaborate resources, chamber music, and finally, oratorios and an opera. Toward the end of his career, he managed with his Rhenish Symphony to write a piece whose zest for life and mood of relaxation would have redounded to the credit even of a composer more carefree than Schumann.

  In short, it was more than mere ambivalence that Schumann’s immediate circle of friends, as well as large sections of the public, had to deal with and which they largely tolerated; there were also extreme tensions. In this regard we should not underestimate cultured society in the nineteenth century. After all, who would nowadays offer someone like Schumann the post of music director in Düsseldorf with the knowledge that he was perhaps not the right person for the job in terms of the town’s public image? Half a century ago, the Hungarian writer Béla Hamvas summed up the nineteenth century in lines that bespeak his astute understanding of the situation: “This was a century of madmen—Hölderlin, Schumann, Gogol, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Van Gogh, and Nietzsche. Today we are no longer able to go mad.”3 And, we could go on, no more are we able to tolerate madmen who do not conform to our own brand of madness.

  This is not the place to pursue the thesis of a link between genius and madness, for all that that theory was popular in the nineteenth century. Instead, it is sufficient to draw attention to a world in which an artist could be left to go his own way relatively unscathed and without losing face in the process, even if that artist did not fit into the grand scheme of things. Non-conformity had not yet been subsumed within the subculture of society but tended rather to embody the bad conscience of the well-to-do burgher who still suspected that all would be lost if maximizing profits were to become the predominant maxim.

  From that point of view, the present study of Schumann was written not just out of a sense of admiration for a difficult man who prior to his breakdown never abandoned his struggle; it is also motivated by respect for a society that may not have glorified him as an artist and musical intellectual but which judged him by standards other than those of his marketability.

  We ourselves would not be able to enjoy Schumann’s music or be moved by it if his own contemporaries had not laid the foundations for the tradition which, like a calmly meandering river, continues to bear us along today. That Schoenberg’s music is less popular than Schumann’s is above all due to the fact that it is more difficult to understand, but part of the reason is also to be found in the barrier that the composer and his audience erected between themselves. Schoenberg’s own elitist calculations meant that the general public was left to eat at a table of its own, while audiences in turn regarded the composer as an oddity.

  It is fortunate that in Schumann’s case everything worked out for the best. His music contains enough popular elements to ensure that it reached a wide audience, and it has enough elitist qualities to turn its composer into the progenitor of a kind of music that, reflective and refracted in character, might be described as modern in the sense that, unlike the music of the “heroic” middle-period Beethoven, it cannot be reduced to a single structural and narrative common denominator but shimmers in many contexts. Schumann very much demanded that we as listeners should play a part in the re-creative process—in other words, we should create our own “meaning” from the notes that enter our consciousness within the framework of contexts that may either lie open for all to see—in a work’s headings, for example—or which may be written in invisible ink, as it were, leaving us listeners to make it visible.4

  Schumann’s Humoresque op. 20 for piano solo includes twenty-four bars marked Hastig (rapid), to which the composer has added a third stave between the other two. It is clear that what Schumann called this “inner voice” is not meant to be played—to attempt to do so would be neither technically possible nor musically meaningful, for the notes that make up this “inner voice” already appear an octave higher in the right hand. Why, then, did Schumann notate this “inner voice”? And what is it supposed to signify?

  At this point we need to examine Schumann’s own aesthetic views and, more especially, his admiration for the romantic writer Jean Paul.5 In doing so, we shall also draw a little closer to Schumann as a human being, for he is known, after all, to have heard inner voices at many points in his life. Is the biographer guilty of a fall from grace if he fails to draw a neat dividing line between life and works but presents them as if they are inextricably interwoven? If we take this view to its logical conclusion, we shall see that the question is one of style, rather than one of principle.

  Bars 251–56 (“Hastig”) of Schumann’s Humoresque, op. 20, for piano, with the “inner voice” that is not meant to be played.

  In writings on music there is what we might call a “lofty style” in which analysis pure and simple reigns supreme. Here all nonmusical and biographical questions are regarded as distasteful or, at best, as pointers to the true essence of the music. Whatever one thinks of so rigorous an approach, it strikes me as unduly limiting in the present case, because Schumann himself had no time for this “lofty” style. Of course, analysis was one of the tools of his trade just as it is for any writer on music, but whenever he used it, he also allowed his imagination to wander freely and indulge in images, metaphors, and general aesthetic and historical digressions. He was familiar with both sides of the coin: music was only itself and at the same time it could be experienced only in the many contexts within which our lives unfold. That is why he could write to his colleague Carl Koßmaly on May 5, 1843: “With me, the man and the musician have always sought to express themselves simultaneously.”6

  The present study follows Schumann in adopting a “middle style” that no more shies away from examining the composer’s music than it avoids the wider context. (As an example of the “lower” style—and the term is not meant in a pejorative sense—we might cite Peter Härtling’s novel Schumanns Schatten [Schumann’s shadow].) Although the phrase “middle style” might seem to imply a compromise, it in fact amounts to no more than any other discourse about art: whether we attempt a more subtle structural analysis or examine the wider context, none of these approaches can replace the actual experience of art.

  The more we know about a composer, the less we can discount his life, even if it is above all on the strength of his works that we love and admire him. Even though the “life” does not explai
n the “works,” there is—as Roland Barthes has put it—a “Surplus-Value” to examining the one against the background of the other. Barthes explains this approach with reference to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, arguing that although it would be foolish to think that by investigating a writer’s background, we might find ourselves in possession of the key to understanding his or her works, “the projection of the reader in the work” becomes clearer, as also do both the “desire for the keys” and our “imaginary link with the Work.”7

  It is no accident that Barthes used a modern novel, rather than Cervantes’s Don Quixote, for example, to develop his ideas: the closer the relationship between an artist’s life and works and the present day, the more we may be able to empathize with that artist—or at least we imagine that this is the case. And the converse is also true: the more an artist is part of the modern world, the more firmly that artist is as a rule convinced that it is neither possible nor permissible to keep his or her private life out of his or her art. In my own view, Schumann is the first composer whose life and works were fused together in a symbiotic relationship. It was not least because of this that I decided to write the present biography not only in a “middle” style but also in a “mixed style.” In my biographies of Bach and Mozart, I discussed their lives and works in separate chapters, whereas in the present case there is a much greater degree of dovetailing.

  With Schumann in particular, it seemed to me sensible to adopt the line of reasoning proposed by Barthes. Of course, the phrenological study of Schumann’s character mentioned at the start of this prologue says nothing uniquely compelling about him as a human being, however much it may have fascinated the composer himself. Still less does it say anything about his works. But it elicits interest and, together with many other remarks, it encourages the “desire for the keys,” as discussed by Barthes. As Barthes indicates in his typically subtle way, this desire is the erotic longing of the author who repeatedly tries to approach the object of his love—the music—through the person of the composer, without ever quite achieving that objective. If the empirical facts, of which there is no shortage in Schumann’s case, are not twisted or obscured but are used as a spur to further reflections, then the “mixed style” is every bit as serious as a tool of purely formal analysis, which for its part is based on many preconceptions that generally remain unchallenged.