Schumann: The Songs

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The Heritage

Then he was the rightful heir of Schubert, adding his own powerful expressive device, the independent keyboard, to the Lied. In the hands of Brahms and Wolf, this crowned the whole art-form. Schumann's choice of poetry was similarly influential; his translations from the Spanish were continued by Wolf, and his use of folksong by Brahms (who was able to borrow from Schumann's actual library of verse) and by Mahler. Schumann’s instrumental music also had its effect on all their song-styles. His fluctuating melodic lines (e.g. in the slow movement of the Trio, op. 63) foreshadow Wolf’s subtle declamation; while the idea of two-piano works with vocal quartet led straight to Brahms’s masterly Liebeslieder; the ironic scherzo of Das ist ein Flöten is very Mahlerian.

     Brahms and Wolf, opposites though they were, were united in this indebted­ness — each to the extent of actually setting to music not a poet's authentic text but the altered version of it that Schumann had used: Wolf in Das verlassene Mägdlein, and Brahms in Mondnacht and In der Fremde. Each of those influences extends, by widely diverse routes, to Richard Strauss.

     Among indebted contemporaries was Robert Franz, in whose neglected songs we have a treasury of work which, if not as fine as Schumann’s best, is nevertheless often comparable with the songs of 1849 or later. It also seems entirely possible, as Christopher Headington has perceptively suggested [52] that it was Schumann who inspired Liszt to begin songwriting; and certainly the latter’s Heine settings date from the year, and almost from the day, on which he first met Schumann, then engaged on his first Heine settings.

     Further, Schumann’s friend Gade had spread his name and works through Scandinavia; Grieg was conscious of that debt and readily acknowledged it. The songs were known and admired in Russia by 1859, [53] that is before any of Mussorg­sky's mature songs were written; and their influence on the French mélodie has seen brilliantly documented by Olivier Alain. [54] 

     When the definitive history of the Lied comes to be written, Schumann as creator and innovator will surely be accorded the status he modestly claimed — “a special place of my own”. Indeed; at the heart of the Lied.