Robert Schumann’s Piano Works: Romanticism and Musical Innovation
In the nineteenth century, with the advent of Romanticism, piano music became a personal art form. Music was one of the leading preoccupations of the Romantic literary movement in Germany, which attributed to music the power to express the most subtle and powerful emotions better than any other artistic medium. Romanticism in music was a movement of both theatrical technical skill and subjective intimacy. Masters of keyboard composition, like Schumann, struck at virtuosity with its own weapons, virtuosity in the service of poetical expression. The pianistic artistry of Schumann speaks for that conception of Romanticism as a period of intimate musical impulses. To the Romantic, instrumental music appeared as a manifestation of the mystical. The piano was the ideal instrument for expressing Romanticism because of its capacity not only of producing dynamic shading but also yielding vivid, forceful accents and striking contrasts.
Schumann’s Musical Enigmas and the Character Piece
The attraction of the Romanticist to musical enigma is found everywhere in Schumann’s piano works. His use of the mottoes ABEGG, ASCH, GADE, and BACH, which spelled out proper runes, is reminiscent of the Renaissance soggetto cavato. The musical form most closely connected with the Romantic ideal of artwork as the subjective emotional expression of the composer was the character piece. This favorite genre of Romantic piano music served as a vehicle for expressing every conceivable thought or feeling. Typical of the Romantic composers of the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as the most allusive, was probably Robert Schumann, in whose hands the character piece became a large form replete with literary and other references. In these types of ensembles, each piece portrays a different mood or character. Unlike sonatas, whose movements are very long with multiple sections, Schumann’s character pieces are much shorter.
Literary and Extramusical Influences in Schumann’s Music
The literary themes and, in general, the extramusical elements have great relevance for the understanding of the aesthetic image of the Schumannian repertoire. Papillons and the Gran Humoresca are inspired by texts by Jean Paul Richter, while the Fantasiestücke Op. 12 and Kreisleriana have E.T.A. Hoffmann as narrative inspiration; nature will also serve as a thematic motif for the Scenes of the Forest or childhood for the well-known Scenes of Children. On some occasions, he includes the inspiring literary text, as it happens in the piece Lugar Maldito of Escenas del Bosque. Schumann’s duality, represented in his characters Florestan and Eusebius, is very common from the first pieces. While in Papillons he turns to Walt and Vult (two literary personalities of Richter), from the Davidsbündlertänze onwards, the psychological portraits of Eusebius and Florestan appear in fullness, and they will already be permanent in the successive pianistic works. If Florestan offers a euphoric, extroverted, and exalted profile, Eusebius represents the melancholic, lyrical, and dreamy personality of the composer. The pieces of these cycles alternate both profiles in a rapturous way and without continuity, as can be seen in the aforementioned Davidsbündlertänze, Carnaval, Kreisleriana, Children’s Scenes, etc. Perhaps the Symphonic Etudes constitute the only case in which only Florestan’s personality emerges without offering the alternation of his other self.
Key Works and Their Characteristics
- Papillons (Op. 2): The first of his two major sets of miniatures, these are really dances, most of which, in triple time, are related to the waltz.
- Davidsbündlertänze (Op. 6): Schumann’s literary idea of the Davidsbund became a musical reality in this, the other major set of miniatures, which consists of eighteen pieces. The pieces are a series of dialogues between passionate, stormy, and impetuous Florestan and dreamy, gentle, and reflective Eusebius. A variety of moods is portrayed in the music.
- Kinderszenen (Op. 15) and Waldszenen (Op. 82): In these works, the simple three-part form is the one usually employed, and a descriptive title explains the character of every piece.
- Phantasiestücke (Op. 12): Unlike Op. 111, this work has descriptive titles for its highly varied individual pieces.
- Kreisleriana: Comparable to Phantasiestücke, these eight introspective and expressive pieces are generally longer than those in Phantasiestücke, but the overall plan of alternating slow lyric numbers with brilliant ones full of figuration and dramatic effects is similar.
Schumann’s Musical Forms, Melodies, and Textures
In the musical form, Schumann works with A-B-A ternary models (Lied form), rondos, sometimes A-B binary forms, although he also makes incursions into a sonata form of great freedom. The Fantasia Op. 17 is an attempt to deal with this structure. However, the most relevant contribution to the form is the invention of the polyptych or cycle of pieces gathered around the same theme. Sets such as Papillons, Davidsbündlertänze, Carnaval, Kreisleriana, Children’s Scenes, Forest Scenes, etc., can be understood as polyptychs in which the organized set of the different numbers present a thematic unity and, in many occasions, a unitary tonal and even motivic treatment. The melodies are usually simple and not very extended. A brief design of few sounds is often enough for the melodic construction. The development of the sequence is usually done through a progressive transition to the desired tonal degrees. On the other hand, the texture is complex thanks to the use of an abundant polyphony in which the lines are permanently intertwined. This simultaneity of two and three voices is common in his repertoire, including in seemingly simple pieces (e.g., in the Children’s Scenes Nos. 1, 9, 10, 11, Scenes from the Forest Nos. 3, 9, etc.). The more explicit fugato style was adopted from 1845 onwards in different works. The rhythms are also complex due to the superposition of diverse metrical formulas (polyrhythms), continuous use of syncopations, accents, and sforzandi in which he tries to break the expected measure. Schumann’s musical result often has great sonorous density in the planes, a trait masterfully summarized in this quotation from Tranchefort: “His piano is an admirable orchestra that cannot be orchestrated.”