Schumann: The Songs
The Reinick Songs
Indeed the successor to Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe might well have been called Malerliebe, since the words are taken from Reinick’s Lieder eines Malers (Songs of a Painter). Again Schumann strives to depict the world. Certainly music and verse are alike illustrative, full of line and colour. But the result lacks depth and perspective. The key-structure is less taut and controlled. The musical impulse slackens too. Schumann's original fears are now being realized; the settings faithfully reflect the essential dullness of the verses. Of course there are fine moments. The idea of a serenader's guitar-music helps to make Ständchen enchanting; the idea of billowing clouds buoys the long-flighted melodic line and gently-moving accompaniment of Liebesbotschaft. But Sonntags am Rhein with nearly five-hundred continuous quavers, and Nichts Schöneres, nearly as repetitive, convey only too well the plodding metre and pedestrian thought.
This outcome must have disturbed the composer himself. If he was to go on writing songs he needed at this stage texts full of character and incident to stimulate him to fresh invention. One solution was deliberately to seek particular kinds of verse; and this he had tried. “Bring me the Kerner poems” he wrote to Clara, [34] “Lend me the Geibel volume” to a friend. [35] Another possibility was to abandon songwriting in favour of larger instrumental forms, in which the musical construction itself provides dramatic contrast and interplay of themes. This impulse was already active; in mid-October 1840 we hear of symphonic sketches, [36] no doubt the beginnings of the First, in B flat major. This may be why the letters in August and September suggest a subconscious resentment against songwriting; “I can't stop writing songs”… “can't free myself from vocal music”, together with further talk of an opera and larger forms in general. [37] The impulse that had seemed so unexpected and marvellous in February was now outstaying its welcome. But once Schumann's mind had clenched there was no prising it loose; it could only relax of its own accord, slowly. And it still had two more song-cycles within its grasp.