Schumann's The Kreisleriana

[micrologus]

The Kreisleriana is Shumann’s self-portrait in tone. And what a self-portrait! It is at least three persons in one: Johannes Kreisler, Clara Wieck and Schumann himself. Schumann’s rich mind and emotions were nourished by many loves. The greatest of these was she whose
music he incorporated into his own, his adored Clara Wieck. In 1838, only two years boefore their marriage, Clara was the first to learn of the completion of a new work, the Kreisleriana, which Schumann had composed in a sudden burst of inspiration. Officially, of course, Kreisleriana was a portrait - or, rather, eight sketches - of a fictional character, Kapellmeister Kreisler, a half-mad conductor- composer and the most famous literary creation of E. T. A. Hoffmann. Kreisleriana was Hoffmann’s title for a group of short stories, anecdotes and musical eriticism loosely linked by the fictitious Kreisler. First published in 1913, these were so successful that a second collection followed quickly. Some years later, there appeared a series of fragments from Kreisler’s “biography” embedded within the framework of a wildly grotesque Hoffmann novel called Growler the Cat’s Philosophy of Life Together with Fragments of the biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler from Random Sheets of Printer’s Waste. The fictional author of this volume, Kater Murr (Growler the Cat), is a caricature of the German petit bourgeois. “Ah, Clara!” exclaimed Robert Schumann in an ecstasic letter of April 1838, “how full of music I am now, and such lovely melodies all the time! Just think, since my last letter I have finished a whole booklet, a whole booklet of new things! I’m going to call it Kreisleriana; in it, you and a theme of yours (ein Gedanke von Dir) play the principal role. I want to dedicate it to you, yes, to you, and no one else! You will smile such a gentle smile when you recognize yourself in it.” It’s odd that Clara’s thematic contribution to Kreisleriana does not seem to have been pointed out before, bur Schumann’s phrase “ein Gedanke von dir” admits of no other interpretation. We do not know which of Clara’s themes Schumann used. Presumably he transformed and interwove it with themes of his own (as he had done with Clara’s ‘motto theme’ in his Davidsbündlertänze). The Kreisleriana came to Schumann with bewildering speed. In his diary, under May 3, we read: “Three wonderful spring days spent waiting for a letter (presumably from Clara), and then did the Kreisleriana in four days. Whole new worlds are opening up to me.” How did Clare react to the turbulent masterpiece in which she played “the principle role”? “Do play my Kreisleriana now and then”, Schumann begged her the following year. “A really wild love, as wild as can be, is in some of the movements, your life and mine, and many a flash of your eyes. My scenes of Childhood are the opposite; gentle and tender and happy, like our future.” And the Kreisleriana must have seemed to Clara a touch too wild. Schumann’s disappointment may explain why he did not dedicate the Kreisleriana to her, as he had originally planned, but “To his friend, Frederic Chopin”. The wildness so crucial in Kreisleriana seems to have been beyond the Dlara’s scope. The Clara who played the “principal role” in Kreisleriana was a figment of Schumann’s imagination, a facet of his own personality.



[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5GADVc8LOs"]YouTube - Robert Schumann: Kraisleriana Op. 61 n° 1[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7TZkEB0SE8"]YouTube - Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana Op. 16 n° 3[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCH0nUqiKlA"]YouTube - Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana Op. 16 n° 3[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrHFdS0WSzg"]YouTube - Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana Op. 16 n° 4[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqyDC4_WchQ"]YouTube - Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana Op. 16 n° 5[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njqIfKSC5m8"]YouTube - Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana Op. 16 n° 6[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKORhZUzxy4"]YouTube - Robert Schumann : Kreisleriana Op. 16 n° 7[/ame]


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D_GdblvD44"]YouTube - Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana Op. 13 n° 8[/ame]

[haydnguy]

Thanks for pointing this piece out to me micrologus. It is indeed a wonderful piece.

[Despina41]

You start a thread on an early Schumann piece when ALL I have been hearing for the past two weeks is early Schumann?


You guys can hear all the early Schumann you want archived in the Van Cliburn Competition prelimary and semifinal recitals.

I would recommend Di Wu's Davidsbündlertänze, op. 6 from the semis. That was good, but we also had to suffer through op. 9 Carnaval, op. 16 Kreisleriana, op. 12 Fantasiestücke, op. 17 Fantasie, op.1 Abegg Variations, op.13 Symphonic Etudes, op. 20 Humoreske...and sometimes multiple performances.

http://www.cliburn.tv/#

[micrologus]

Originally Posted by Despina41

You start a thread on an early Schumann piece when ALL I have been hearing for the past two weeks is early Schumann?


You guys can hear all the early Schumann you want archived in the Van Cliburn Competition prelimary and semifinal recitals.

I followed the Queen Elisabeth Competition for Violin

No time for the Van Cliburn

[haydnguy]

Originally Posted by Despina41

You start a thread on an early Schumann piece when ALL I have been hearing for the past two weeks is early Schumann?


You guys can hear all the early Schumann you want archived in the Van Cliburn Competition prelimary and semifinal recitals.

I would recommend Di Wu's Davidsbündlertänze, op. 6 from the semis. That was good, but we also had to suffer through op. 9 Carnaval, op. 16 Kreisleriana, op. 12 Fantasiestücke, op. 17 Fantasie, op.1 Abegg Variations, op.13 Symphonic Etudes, op. 20 Humoreske...and sometimes multiple performances.

http://www.cliburn.tv/#

I will indeed watch the Di Wu performance tonight. I'm behind on my listening/watching because my wife has been off work for 8 days straight so I've been tied up with other things.

[Felix]

I meant to start this letter after a very small supper I was preparing, but when I went to the upstairs neighbours to ask for a spoonful of mayonaise, I found mysrlf involved in a dinner party with much wine and liqueuers and I'm not sure of expressing myself coherently.

I regret having to disagree to some extent with the text above about the Kreisleriana - but disagreement is a part of dialogue and you can always argue with me. I will not worry about being pedantic or not but simply try to convey some of my thoughts on this subject.

I don't think Micrologus intended his Kreisler/Schumann/ Clara protraits to be taken too literally. I would not be able to identify these three protraits. One might think of Clara in the exquisite lyrical interventions, but she is described by her father as a wild, unatameable creature, and when Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn heard her play later, they wrote, "Clara Schumann swept us off our feet again with her fiery playing." I'd say Schumann and Kreisler had one and the same identity, but Schumann wrote similar pieces before and after in the Impromptus op.4 and many later piano works. He was already a Kresilerish personality in himself. Of course Schumann projected a lot of himself into his music. But once the notes appear on the page, they take on a life of their own as absolute music which freely follows its impulses.

Schumann himself was very annoyed when people assumed that he was drawing pictures from life in his music. He said he wrote the Kinderscenen as pure music and added the titles later. It's difficult to believe him 100% in pieces like the Rocking Horse. But every such piece produces an autonomous musical language of its own also in Carnaval.

I do believe that Schumann was saying the truth about the beginning of the Phantasie op. 17 being a passionate cry for Clara. Schumann himself wrote that he was not a descriptive composer nor one of mere lyrical effusions. He said he took in all the impressions of the world around him, including the newspaper and that these were absorbed in his inner self and metamorphosized into music.

Schumann was already a fully-fledged composer before he fell in love with Clara. That sublime last Variation to the Etudes Symphonic was written when he was in love with Ernestine von Fricken. I have no doubt that the years of expectation of a requited love with Clara gave an impetus to his compositions.

The Finale to Carnaval is called the March of the Davidsbündler against the Philistines, written in a humorous 3/4 time.. I think it is here that we find the key to the eccentricity of Kreisleriana, a type of eccentricty that was something completely new in music. In a sense he was already of the avantgarde who took a step away from prevailing norms as the Romantic poets of this period did (See Novalis' Hymns to the Night). In this sense Schumann starts a line of composition that goes through Schönberg to Ferneyhough.

My thoughts are a bit cramped up here as it is late and I must sleep off my overdose of alcohol. Tomorrow our electricity wil be switched off for half the day.

Yours,
Felix

[Tarantella]

Bring on the alcohol, I say, Felix - if you get such insight and clarity from it! I adore Schumann and the Davidsbundlertanz is just superb. Most of all I love the Fantasie and Symphonic Etudes. I got close to Zwickau last year and the birth house of Robert Schumann but not close enough, sadly. When I return to Europe this is one of the first things on the agenda - that and Leipzig and St. Thomas' Church.

[Felix]

I feel some regret about my somewhat too negative reply to Micrologus's piece on the Kreisleriana. I have read it again and it gives a good background to the conception of that composition and he vividly evokes the atmosphere around it - and our interpretations are not that far apart.

If anything I think the two moods, turbulent and lyrically reflective, reflect Schumann's phantasy division of himself into Florestan and Eusebius, but this contrast exists in all great composers, just that it is more concentrated in Schumann's short pieces. He gave all his friends other Carnavalesque names as a part of his dissociation from the prevailing middle-class. But as time passed he began to remove the phantasy names and comments in the second edition of the Davidsbündlertänze. He removed the original titles from the Phantasie op.17 and the Spring Symphony, evidently wanting his music to be appreciated as music rather than illustration.

He did compose what the Germans call Charakterstücke, character pieces, but musical ones rather than copies of external realities. Chopin rejected the Kreisleriana and all Schumann's music because he saw it as descriptive rather than 'absolute' music, misunderstanding the fact that Schumann was using the descriptive style in order to discover new musical forms.

Micrologus picked on a weak point in Clara's appreciation of her husband's music.One has to remember that she was a girl of about 19 when she received such compositions. It was after she had looked at pieces like Kreisleriana that she wrote to her fiancé asking him if he couldn't write some pieces that were more easily comprehnsible to the public. He was angry. I could hardly believe my eyes when she reacted to the Phantasie op.17 mentioning only the middle movement as her favourite. Fancy not even remarking on the extraordinary first movement!

But these were initial reactions and she did appreciate such pieces later as evinced by the enthusiastic way she taught the first Kreisleriana to her daughter. I have been killing myself to find the place where Eugenie discusses this, but I remember her saying about the lyrical section, "Can't you hear the violas, cellos!? i.e. the middle voices.

When Clara was in Vienna her friends begged her on bended knees to incude Kreisleriana in her programme, . She refused flatly. After more begging she played one or two of them. But in this she was more or less in accord with her husband. They thought the music was too difficult for the public, and it was promulgated in private circles in the hopes that it would eventually spread to wider ones. While being a champion of her husband's music she never played such cycles. She added the Fsharp minor Sonata to her repertoire when she was about 60.

(Why do pianists mostly go for that Sonata, when the other two are so magnificent?)

Yes, Tarantella you must have noticed that I'm a passionate Schumann fan and while each great cycle is special, there is something extra-special about the Davidsbündlertänze. I heard a very great pianist, Radu Lupu, playing them in Verona, and it was as though I was hearing them for the first time. I felt thay had more of an affinity with Paul Klee and Kafka than with the Schumann epigones.

I have been looking at the score of Kreisleriana and hope to be back with something more specific about the music itself. I must find out how to copy bits of score on Brightcecilia.

Best wishes

[Tarantella]

Yes, please do! I love Schumann and am intrigued by what you said about Chopin's rejection of Kriesleriana because it wasn't "absolute" music. I've been having a discussion on another forum about so-called 'absolute' music versus 'program' (ideal) music and it was inconclusive. That's a topic I'd very much like to explore on this forum if anyone is interested and I'd like more thoughts from you on your reference from Chopin - somebody I would regard as a "program" (ideal) music composer!!

[Felix]

I don't know quite what you mean by associating programme music with 'ideal' music unless you mean music with ideas behind it and you'd have to explain to me what you mean by Chopin as a composer of programme music. It's practically impossible to eliminate external factors - e,g, Chopin's dances, Mazurkas, Waltzes and Polonaises. Even the Ballades - think of the first one - it sounds at the beginning like a minstrel trying out his guitar before setting off on his story, but the Ballades, for me, are metamorphosized first movement sonata forms.

I have my head brimming with ideas on absolute and programme music, but I am holding them back. Why don't you start a thread on the subject preferably in the Romantic discussion groups to limit the scope somewhat; this would not stop anyone from going back to Beethoven and the Baroque. Beethoven is classified by the French as a romantic composer. Something like "Programme music in the romantic era." I don't as yet feel sure enough of my presence on Brightcecilia.

I'll tell you what I can remember about Chopin's disapproval of Schumann's 'descriptive' music, since you asked me to do so. For starters Chopin appreciated the fact that Schumann's article on his Mozart Variations made him more known, but didn't at all like the content of the article. In one of his letters he refers to this crazy man in Germany who sees Leporello and other figures jumping about in his Variations. I can understand Chopin's reaction, but it's a pity it made him blind to the miracles in Schumann's music, apart from anything else, the wonderful lyrical episodes and the deep immesion into musical thought in Kreisleriana. But with his review of Chopin's Variations, Schumann was done for. All his music was associated with that article, too eccentric and not following purely musical patterns. Chopin in his turn was too eccentric for Mendelssohn.

Schumann adored Chopin and his article about Chopin playing his own Etudes is a jewel of perfect understanding. Chopin visited Schumann and the young Clara in Leipzig and Clara played Schumann to him, making, to my mind, the wrong choices, Scherzo movements from the Sonatas. Chopin was much more enthusiastic about Clara's compositions and was given the autograph score of her Soirées Musicales. (To a friend who asked him about her, he wrote succinctly, "Clara Wieck. Nothing better exists." Her Soirées were much influenced by Chopin).

But to reject Kreisleriana, dedicated to him! What an historical disaster! They may have a descriptive character - not lacking in Chopin - but are one of his most purely abstract works, brimful of detailed musical meanings, of course.

For the rest, Chopin maintained a complete silence about Schumann's music.

Chopin did return Schumann's love in one way. He insisted repeatedly to the publisher of his Ballade in F major: "Don't forget the dedication to Robert Schumann."

Schumann wrote to Clara - she was in Paris - that he would tell her the story that goes through Papillons one day. Whether he did or not, we can't know, but Clara never uttered a syllable of the story to pupils who studied the work with her. The tolling bell sounding at the end and the fading out of the ball were a perfect pretext for a semi-recapitulation and for ending a work without a blustering Finale. Schumann was most faithful to classical form when he was most unfaithful to it. (I'll be killed for this, but can exemplify it in various early works).

Happy listening and best wishes,
Felix