Schumann: The Songs

Frauenliebe: the Ballads

 In this respect as in many others, the next song-cycle Frauenliebe und -leben (A woman’s life and love) is quite different. We can hear that Schumann's creative mind has taken a new turn. Personal passion has changed to concern for the loved one, for others, for the world at large. His music had always been responsive to external circumstance. As he wrote to Clara in 1838: “Everything that happens affects me; politics, literature, people — I think it all over in my own way, and then it has to find an outlet in music”. [32] Such a reaction was possibly the source of his songwriting, which began with a ballad and a character-sketch. This was not the right road at the time. But it remained open; and Schumann's thoughts often turned in that direction. It was then the modern trend; and it also led directly to his own development towards much larger forms as symphony and opera. At first, even his ballads and stories and characters in music were subjective or self-expressive. For example Die Grenadiere is so vivid because Schumann's own hero-worship for Napoleon marches in step with his own dread of defeat and oblivion, making fine dramatic end as the triumphant strains of the Marseillaise turn into a dying fall.

 EX. 25

We can compare Wagner's postlude in his contemporary setting, which while embodying the meaning and drama of the poem lacks the contrasting lyric elements which are the essence of the Lied, even in its ballad form.

 EX. 26

      Another Heine ballad, Die feindlichen Brüder, is about two brothers who fight to the death for love of the lady Laura, which will surely not be unrelated to the fight by Florestan and Euscbius for the hand of Clara. And certainly the ideas of rivalry and jealousy are deeply ingrained in the songs, with Heine as the prime source of texts, as in the trilogy Der arme Peter and in Es leuchtet meine Liebe, omitted from Dichterliebe. In other separate songs the driving force is nature in all its moods; examples range from the pallid watery arpeggios of Lorelei to the finely graphic Abends am Strand which contrasts places and people and brings them all under the sway of the sea, in undulating quaver lines and deep bass *cotes (as also in Frühlingsfahrt). As in many another song where the sea of the Rhine is mentioned, much of this music reflects the darker depths of Schumann'’ own nature, and foreshadows his own despairing leap from the bridge at Düssel­dorf in the first onset of his madness in 1854.

     But of course there was also the lighter side. The clown's ditty which began the 1840 songwriting was the forerunner of many in gayer mood; dancing or drinking in propria persona, as in Niemand or the two Divan songs, or adventuring in mask and cloak as in the two Venetian songs, all in op. 25. As in the Ballads, all this music is full of images of action and gesture. Schumann's lyric impulse was preparing to absorb these ideas into a new dramatic music. Nothing had come of the proposed opera; perhaps fortunately, since the time was not yet ripe. But the urge to more objective forms found some outlet, in the male voice quartets, op. 33 and the duets, op. 34. In the latter we hear for almost the first time in Schumann’s work the idea of colloquy or dialogue (Liebhabers Ständchen, Unterm Fenster) or even of shared family life (Familiengemälde).

     At the same time he was thinking of character-studies of women, a further step towards objectivity, as in Hauptmanns Weib (which he thought “very novel and Romantic" [33] meaning no doubt precisely the elements of realism and characteriza­tion) and the two Lieder der Braut, op. 25, which serve as sketches for Frauenliebe. This, the next and last of the great song-cycles (July 1840), is both continuation and contrast. It focuses on the interior world through the verse of Chamisso, the indoor poet of nature and dream. There is only the one scene—a room in a house. But there is a strong and clear story, and a supporting cast. For the first time in a Schumann song-cycle we learn (as in both of Schubert's) something about the protagonist. She is young, with even younger sisters. Her lover, whose lot is ceaselessly and unaffectedly contrasted with her own, is presumably old, rich and famous (if only in comparison with her own more modest station). The girl herself grows from a hero-worshipping child in the first three songs to a woman, a mother, and finally a widow (and in the last poem, omitted by Schumann, a grandmother). At each stage the past is seen through older and wiser eyes. The verse has been sharply criticized for its sentimentality and con­vention. The latter at least has been misunderstood. Chamisso's aim (whatever its success) is to describe an actual relationship for better or worse in a real world. Schumann's music embodies his and Clara's mutual love, which commands respect. Thus considered, op. 42 is as much a masterpiece in its kind as its pre­decessors; but its kind is significantly different. It is not only an expression of emotion but an attempt to see life through another's eyes. So the music changes its attitude. The untranslatable direction “innig” appears on four songs out of eight (as compared with five out of sixty-three in the other cycles) which sug­gests that inwardness is a sign of objectivity in Schumann. This inward mood matches the interior quality of the scenes and emotions described. Sharp keys yield to flats; voice and piano have a modest compass, a rhythmic sameness. But the cycle is also notable for its frequent changes of tempo within the same song; now hesitant, now impetuous. The idea of musical movement, previously ex­perienced, is now observed. Thus the first song Seit ich ihn gesehen has reluctant but inevitable progress, as if being drawn along despite itself. A stepwise walking movement sidles ingratiatingly into the second song, Er der Herrlichste, at the words “go your ways” with a canonic hint of following on behind.

EX 27


     The same motif marks the transition from childhood to maturity in Du Ring an meinem Finger; and by the fifth song, Helft mir, ihr Schwestern, it has become caught up into a wedding march. The musical sequences are more marked and expressive than ever. There is an ascending flight expressive of outright adoration at “let me but hold you close and closer”

EX 28


while a more modest upward glance accompanies the idea of admiration from a distance, e.g. as in Ex. 27 above, or at the words “I will live for him, serve him” in the fourth song.

EX 29


A more gentle questioning — “do you not know why I weep?” — is even more restrained musically, rising no more than a third in five bars:

EX 30


But when the words speak of humility, the sequences incline downwards, as at “nur in Demut” etc., following Ex. 27; while for the later moments of entire selfabnegation in that second song – “I will bless the exalted woman of your choice” — the figures bow more deeply than ever in obeisances soon made even lower still as the self-denial deepens into self-sacrifice at the words “what matter though my heart should break, so long as he is happy?”

     The music is more aware of duality than ever before, even in the duets. The piano has separately expressive motifs, e.g.

EX 31


 which was first heard in Ex. 27 and recurs three more times, the last of which coincides with the key word “weinen” (weep). All these devices are heard throughout the cycle. For example in Ex. 30 above and the few preceding bars we find accompanied recitative, separate piano motifs, the expressive appog­giature, sequence, canon, and true modulation (a great rarity in these 1840 songs). The whole motivic vocabulary is being deployed to create story, scene and character as well as mood.

     All of these components reappear in the varied settings with which Schumann followed Frauenliebe, for which we are again indebted to Chamisso. First, there are three more poems of women and their emotional life. Die Löwenbraut is a Grand Guignol ballad of jealousy and revenge; Die rote Hanne a solemn study of poverty and fidelity; and Die Kartenlegerin a deft and gay picture of childish petulance. In all three, Schumann’s art becomes plastic; his Galateas come to life. The world is seen realistically through sombre eyes in Der Soldat and Der Spiel­mann (again about betrayal and jealousy) and is depicted in dark hues in Muttertraum and the other Andersen songs of op. 40 (in Chamisso's translation). But other songs don full costume and produce stage effects in the colourful Geibel settings of July 1840; Der Page, Der Knabe mit dem Wunderhorn and especially Der Hidalgo, where the piano and voice sing love duets. In the same month the duets as such resume, also to words by Geibel, and also with scenes of the outside world; Ländliches Lied, In meinem Garten, and the lively vocal quartet Zigeuner­leben with triangle and tambourine. This last is a vivid if naïve presentation of scene, character and costume, all in the open air; it might well have been the opening chorus of an opera, and is worth a revival. More pressing however was the denouement of Schumann's own drama. After much frustration and mis­fortune he finally married Clara Wieck on 12 September 1840, the day before her twenty-first birthday. Of course the first music thereafter was a set of duets, op. 43 (one of which, Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär, later appeared in the opera Genoveva). In the months after his marriage, Schumann's ballad-writing cul­minates in three songs which (consciously or not) express his own hopes and fears, as in the earlier lyrics. They even foretell his own fate. In Frühlingsfahrt two brothers set out to seek their fortune; one finds home and family, the other disaster and despair. That theme is itself divided into two other songs. Blondels Lied tells of the successful quest for a loved one, while in Der Schatzgräber the treasure-seeker is buried alive and smothered to death. Again the musical images are physical in origin; the leading figures in the music sing as they wander, intone as they delve. Finally the single songs end with two more character-studies of single women, Die Nonne and Mädchen-Schwermut, both very unhappy.

     Thus through all that long flowering of song from spring to autumn the two faces of Schumann's music had slowly unfolded to the external world. There too the last song-cycles belong.