UP CLOSE AND CLASSICAL’S next concerts on September 14th and 15th will feature Oboe, Cello and Piano trios and duets by 19th century composers Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 20th century composer Francis Poulenc, as well as our contemporaries Alyssa Morris and João Guilherme Ripper. We propose first to get acquainted with Robert Schumann through a few anecdotes¹…

Robert SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
German Romantic, he composed piano works while courting Clara Wieck, daughter of his piano teacher who violently opposed their union. From 1854 he was confined to an asylum.

Schumann once attended a masquerade during the carnival of 1830, in company with his friend Rosen, for the purpose of paying some attention to a pretty but otherwise insignificant girl. He knew that she would be present at the ball, and, as a pretext for approaching her, put a poem in his pocket. Fortune favoured him: he met and recognized her; but, as he was about to take a carnival liberty, and hand her the poem, the girl’s mother stepped threateningly between, ‘Keep your poems to yourself, Mask: my daughter does not understand poetry.

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It was a habit of Schumann to collect Wieck’s children in his room at twilight, and to frighten them by the recital of the most horrible ghost stories of his own invention. Then he would sometimes shut the door, and appear suddenly by the light of a spirit-lamp as a spectre in a fur coat turned inside out, exciting universal terror. Another thing which afforded him great pleasure was to make one of Wieck’s two sons stand on one foot for a long time, while he walked up and down the room with twinkling eyes.

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Schumann’s genius was so little appreciated that when he entered the store of Breitkopf and Härtel with a new manuscript under his arm, the clerks would nudge one another and laugh. One of them told me* that they regarded him as a crank and a failure because his pieces remained on the shelf and were in the way.
*William Mason (1829-1908); American pianist.

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When Schumann had just finished [the piano quintet] Liszt unexpectedly came to Leipzig and insisted on hearing it performed the same night. ‘It was difficult,’ Clara Schumann told us, ‘to get four other artists to come at such short notice, but I took a cab and drove about Leipzig until I was fortunate enough to succeed in my mission.’ It was arranged that the performance should take place at 7 o’clock that evening at the Schumanns’ house. At that hour all were assembled with the exception of Liszt, who did not make his appearance until 9 o’clock. The quintet was duly played, but at the end Liszt moved towards Schumann and, patronizingly touching his shoulder, exclaimed: ‘No, no, my dear Schumann, this is not the real thing; it is only Kapellmeister music.’ At supper afterwards Liszt indulged in some deprecatory remarks about Mendelssohn. Schumann immediately rose, seized Liszt by the shoulder, and cried, ‘How dare you talk like that of our great Mendelssohn!’ He then left the room. Liszt, the polished man of the world, also rose, and, bowing low to Clara Schumann, said: ‘I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of such an unpleasant incident. I feel I am in the wrong place here; pray accept my humble excuses and allow me to depart.’

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Once, when expecting a visit from Joachim, Schumann jokingly proposed our composing a violin sonata all together, and then letting Joachim guess who was the author of each movement. The first movement fell to me,† the intermezzo and finale were composed by Schumann, whilst Brahms wrote the scherzo on a theme from my first movement. After having played the sonata with Clara Schumann, Joachim immediately recognized the author of each part.
The manuscript of this joint production was presented to Joachim, Schumann writing the following dedication: F. A. E.*
‘In Erwartung der Ankunft des verehrten und geliebten Freundes JOSEF JOACHIM; schrieben diese Sonate ROBERT SCHUMANN, JOHANNES BRAHMS, ALBERT DIETRICH.”
In expectation of the arrival of their revered and beloved friend, Joseph Joachim, this sonata was written by R.S., J.B., A.D.

*F.A.E: ‘Frei aber einsam’ [free but lonely] – Joachim’s motto.
† Albert Hermann Dietrich (1829-1908) German composer and conductor.

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Madame Schumann had played at one of the [Düsseldorf] subscription concerts some unaccompanied solo pieces. Her husband sat not far from her, behind the piano. When she had finished there was a general rivalry among the audience and the musicians on the platform to give expression to their delight, which she, however, little heeded, for she saw her husband motionless and cold. ‘Have I not played well, Robert?’ But there came no response, and she wept whilst the hall was ringing with ecstastic applause.

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On Shrove Monday, 27 Feb. 1854, he received a noonday visit from his physician, Dr Hasenclever (a member of the board of health), and his musical friend, Albert Dietrich. They sat and chatted together sociably. During the conversation, Schumann, without a word, left the room. They supposed he would return; but when some time passed, and he did not come, his wife went in search of him. He was nowhere to be found. His friends hastened out to look for him – in vain. He had left the house in [his] dressing-gown and, bare headed, gone to the bridge that spans the Rhine, and sought to end his misery by plunging into the stream. Some sailors jumped into a boat, rowed after him, and pulled him out.

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Before his final collapse, Schumann had some intervals of peace during which he wrote some Variations on a theme brought to him during the first stages of his illness by ‘angels as a greeting from Mendelssohn and Schubert.’ As though Schumann had had some sort of presentiment he had put all his domestic affairs in order, down to the minutest details; latterly, he had even written the most precise instructions on all his manuscripts. In one of his earlier notebooks, which he filled with all kinds of remarks, there is the sentence: ‘The artist should beware of losing touch with society, otherwise he will be wrecked, as I am.”

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Extracts from Clara Schumann’s diary

[10 February 1854] Throughout the night Robert had such terrible sounds in his ears that he couldn’t sleep for a single minute. First there was a continuous drone on one note, then an occasional second note as well. During the day it eased off. The next night was just as bad, and the following day as well – he had a mere two hours respite in the early morning, and at ten it all came back afresh. He is in terrible agony. Every sound he hears turns to music – music played on glorious-sounding instruments, he says, more beautiful than any music ever heard on earth. It utterly exhausts him. The doctor says there is nothing he can do.

[17 February] In the night, not long after we had gone to bed, Robert got up and wrote down a melody which, he said, the angels had sung to him. Then he lay down again and talked deliriously the whole night, staring at the ceiling all the time. When morning came, the angels transformed themselves into devils and sang horrible music, telling him he was a sinner and that they were going to cast him into hell. He became hysterical, screaming in agony that they were pouncing on him like tigers and hyænas, and seizing him in their claws.

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1. From The Book of Musical Anecdotes by Norman Lebrecht, 1985, Free Press NY
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