Schumann: The Songs
The 1849 Songs
All these remarks sound in their contexts like obituary notices and funeral orations. He felt that his own works had been forced from an intense inner ferment which could never recur. But in 1849 he wrote more music than eves before in his life in a single year, including nearly as much vocal music as in 1840. This abnormal productiveness may have been a symptom of his condition.. The choice of poem as well as the music expresses the older Schumann. The young lover is now the middle-aged paterfamilias; the pianist is a practised composer in every instrumental and vocal form; the style is more distanced, les personal; the harmony is more complex. All these points are well illustrated by the choral works with which the 1849 outburst began. Opp. 67, 69, 75, 91, 145 and 146 for mixed or women’s voices a cappella were mostly written in March of chat year. The poets are those already known to Schumann from 1840—Burns, Eichendorff, Goethe, Kerner, Rückert, Reinick—but the themes are predictably ballads and character-sketches rather than lovesongs. The outgoing phase is again approaching the full. With renewed brightness and power it strives to illuminate not only characters but whole societies, classes, nations. As ever, Schumann's music was a reaction to his own reading and experience. In those years the attention of all Europe was still focused to burning-point on social questions. Schumann wrote sociably for chorus or vocal group; his choice of text favoured popular folk poetry of all nations. The famous anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn used once in 1840, now becomes a favourite source; so does translation. The newcomers among the poets are those most strongly influenced by folksong, e.g. Mörike and Uhland. Even such old favourites as Eichendorff and Geibel now appear as translators from the Spanish. All these were consciously exploited as sources for new musical thoughts and forms as revolutionary as the as the epoch itself; Schumann wished to be popular in every sense. His letters at this period often mention his involvement with the times, the originality of his work, its arramgemente for dramatic effect, and its relation to the drama of the outside world. [45]