A Day with Robert Schumann

A DAY WITH SCHUMANN

It is an April morning in 1844, in the town of Leipzig, – calm, cool, and fraught with exquisite promise of a prolific spring, – when the Herr Professor Doctor Robert Schumann, rising before six o'clock as is his wont, very quietly and noiselessly in his soft felt slippers, dresses and goes downstairs. For he does not wish to disturb or incommode his sleeping wife, whose dark eyes are still closed, or to awaken any of his three little children.

The tall, dignified, well-built man, with his pleasant, kindly expression, and his air of mingled intellect and reverie, bears his whole character written large upon him, – his transparent honesty, unflagging industry, and generous, enthusiastic altruism. No touch of self-seeking about him, no hint of ostentation or conceit: he is still that same reticent and silent person, of whom it was said some years ago by his friends,

That, indeed, is the sum total of his outward appearance: as for the inward man, it is not to be known save through his writings. Literature and music are the only means of expression, of communication with others, which are possessed by this modest, pensive, reserved maestro, upon whom the sounding titles of Doctor and Professor sit so strangely.

In the unparalleled fervour and romance of his compositions, – in the passionate heart-opening of his letters, – in the sane, wholesome, racy colloquialism of his critiques, – the real Robert Schumann is unfolded. Otherwise he might remain a perennial enigma to his nearest and dearest: for even in his own family circle, tenderly and dearly as he adores his wife and children, his lips remain sealed of all that they might say: and the fixed, unvarying quietude of his face but rarely reveals the least suggestion of his deeper feelings.

Yet, at the present time, were you to search the world around, you should hardly find a happier man than this, in his own serene and thoughtful way. For, in his own words, "I have an incomparable wife. There is no happiness equal to that. If you could only take a peep at us in our snug little artist home!" Clara Wieck, whom he has known from her childhood, whom he struggled, and agonised, and fought for against fate, for five long years of frustration and disappointment, is not only his beloved wife and the mother of his little ones, – she is his fellow-worker and co-artist, and literal helpmate in every department of life. She has "filled his life with sunshine of love," – and, "as a woman," he declares, "she is a gift from heaven… Think of perfection, and I will agree to it!" But, beyond that, she has poured her beautiful soul into every hungry cranny of his artistic sense. "For Clara's untiring zeal and energy in her art, she really deserves love and encouragement… I will say no more of my happiness in possessing a girl with whom I have grown to be one through art, intellectual affinities, the regular intercourse of years, and the deepest and holiest affection. My whole life is one joyous activity."

The annals of art, indeed, hold no more lovely record of a union between natural affinities. That of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning perhaps approximates most closely to that of Robert and Clara Schumann. But whereas in the former case both husband and wife were alike engaged upon the same branch of literature, – poetry, – and a certain sense of sadness was apt to embitter the success of the wife, because of the unpopularity (in those days) of the husband, – Schumann is solely and pre-eminently a composer, and Clara solely and absorbingly a pianist. No shadow of artistic rivalry can fall upon their delight, nor darken their pleasure in each other's achievements. Schumann's most impassioned and characteristic productions have been definitely inspired by Clara, ever since the days when, as a child of nine, she listened to his fantastic fairy-tales, and her exquisite playing thrilled him with a desire to think in music. And Clara, who has never made a mere show of her marvellous executive skill, but has "consecrated it to the service of true art alone," – is never happier than when interpreting her husband's works.

It is, in short, necessary to deal with Schumann as a whole, – as a man who has fulfilled the triple destiny for which Nature intended him, – as individual, husband, and father, – before one can even approximately understand this silent, studious dreamer, whose one ideal of happiness is to sit at home and compose.

Schumann considers this early morning hour the most precious of his day, from a working standpoint. He seats himself at his desk, and places his two treasures where they shall catch his eye conspicuously; for he regards them more or less as charms and talismans to bring out the best that is in him. They are, a steel pen which he found lying on Beethoven's grave at Vienna, and the MS. score of Schubert's C-major Symphony, which he obtained by a lucky chance. He regards these with a mixture of sentiment and humorous toleration of his own mysticism: but he cherishes them none the less, and often casts a reassuring glance in their direction, as he covers sheet after sheet of paper with his shockingly illegible handwriting. "Poets and pianists," says he with resignation, "almost always write with a dog's paw. The printers will make it out somehow." He is engaged upon his work in connection with the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Musical Times), which he originally founded, and of which he has been some nine years Editor. During all these years he has contributed to its pages those admirable reviews and appreciations which are so utterly unlike anything heretofore attempted in the realm of musical criticism. "There is no quality to be desired in a musical critic that Schumann does not possess: " and in addition to technical equipments of every kind, keen insight and an almost prophetic quality in his predictions, he has the priceless gift too often denied to the critic, – that of superabundant sympathy. His hands are ever thrown out to welcome the young and timid genius, even as they are clenched, so to speak, with threatening fists towards Philistinism, charlatanism and mediocrity. He loves to praise rather than to blame, and to detect the germs of coming greatness in some obscure, unsuspected artist. He takes into his regard the personal equation wherever possible, and does not separate the musician from the man: for, he says, "the man and the musician in myself have always struggled to manifest themselves simultaneously… I speak with a certain diffidence of works, of the precursors of which I know nothing. I like to know something of the composer's school, his youthful aspirations, his exemplars and even of the actions and circumstances of his life, and what he has done hitherto."

As his pen travels rapidly over the pages, the reason of his cramped and crabbed handwriting is only too evident. Schumann's right hand is crippled. In an evil hour of his youth, while yet he was consumed with the ambition of a would-be virtuoso, he experimented, with artificial restrictions, upon one of his right-hand fingers, intending thus to strengthen the rest by assiduous practice … with the result that he lamed his hand for ever. This disastrous attempt deprived the world of a good pianist, but conferred upon it a great composer: for it is possible that the executive would have superseded the creative ability within him. Nevertheless, he confesses that, "My lame hand makes me wretched sometimes … it would mean so much if I were able to play. What a relief to give utterance to all the music surging within me! As it is, I can barely play at all, but stumble along with my fingers all mixed up together in a terrible way. It causes me great distress."

Thus, you perceive, he is considerably debarred from expressing himself in sounds, no less than in words: he must perforce retire more and more within himself. The ease with which he writes is balanced by the difficulty with which he speaks: and bitterly he has complained, "People are often at a loss to understand me, and no wonder! I meet affectionate advances with icy reserve, and often wound and repel those who wish to help me… It is not that I fail to appreciate the very smallest attention, or to distinguish every subtle change in expression and attitude: it is a fatal something in my words and manner which belies me."

He is, indeed, only paralleled by the Lotus Flower of his own delicious song, – shrinking from the daylight of publicity, and softly unfolding to the gentle rays of love.

And here she enters the room, this woman who is literally his alter ego, and the small prattle of children is audible in the awakening house. Madame Schumann is, in her husband's words, a "pale, not pretty, but attractive" young woman of twenty-six, "with black eyes that speak volumes," – slender, vivacious, affectionate: the exact complement of Robert in all respects. It is easy to perceive in them, at the first glance, "two noble souls distinguished by fastidious purity of character – two buoyant minds concentrated to the service of the same art." The heavily-thoughtful face of the composer lights up with sudden sunshine.

"Come and sit beside me, my dear, sweet girl!" says he. "Hold your head a little to the right, in the charming way you have, and let me talk to you a little. Upon my word, Clärchen, you look younger than ever this morning. You cannot be the mother of three. You cannot be the celebrated pianist. You are just the queer, quaint little girl you were ten years ago, with strong views of your own, beautiful eyes, and a weakness for cherries!" This is a very long speech for Schumann, and his wife looks at him with a shade of anxiety – such anxiety as she is never wholly free from. For the words which she wrote in her diary on her wedding day were more prophetic than even she may yet recognise: "My responsibilities are heavy – very heavy; give me strength to fulfil them as a good wife should. God has always been and will continue to be my helper. I have always had perfect trust in Him, which I will ever preserve." She, and she alone, is aware of all those mysterious clouds of melancholia, those strange sounds of inexplicable music, which brood at times above her darling husband – friend, comrade and lover in one. She, and she only, can banish, as David did from Saul, the terrible phases of irrational depression, and exorcise the evil power which is always lurking ambushed in Schumann's outwardly happy life.

"See," says he, with modest pride, "what a vast amount of work I have completed this morning!"

"You are a most diligent creature, Robert!" she tells him, "and yet I cannot but wish sometimes, that this literary work were off your mind – that you had more time to devote towards composing, which is your true métier. I want all the world to understand how great a master you are – I am jealous of every minute spent upon the Neue Zeitschrift!"

"Don't be too ambitious for me, Clärchen: I desire no better place than a seat at the piano with you close by."

"That does not satisfy me," says the impetuous little lady, "I want you to be recognised and applauded by all men. When I am rendering your divine compositions, I feel as though all the while I were declaring: 'Just hear this! – Just listen to that! – This is by Robert Schumann, the greatest genius in Germany: it is an honour to me to be allowed to perform such works.'"

"My dear, those compositions are my poor, weak way of expressing my thoughts about you! The battles which you have cost me, the joy you have given me, are all reflected by my music. You are almost the sole inspiration of my best – the Concerto, the Sonata, the Davidsbündler dances, the Kreisleriana, the Novelletten. Why, dearest, in the Novelletten are my thoughts of you in every possible position and circumstance and all your irresistibleness!.. No one could have written the Novelletten, unless he had gazed into such eyes and touched such lips as yours. In short, another may do better work, but nothing just like these."

"That, indeed, I feel," replies Clara with a little sigh, "and the very significance of their meaning, I believe, forbids my doing full justice to their amazing difficulties. You need a pianist like Liszt, my Robert, to interpret you to the best advantage."

"I have every admiration for Liszt's wonderful playing, with its diapason of all the moods between the extremes of fiery frenzy, and utmost delicacy. But his world is not mine – not ours, Clärchen. Art, as we know it – you when you play, I when I compose – has an intimate charm that is worth far more to us than all Liszt's splendour and tinsel."

They embrace with the warmth and sweetness of perfect mutual comprehension: and she prevails upon him to descend from cloudy Olympian editorial heights, so far as to refresh himself with a modest Frühstück or breakfast, and a brief gambol with the little ones – for he has that devotion to tiny children characteristic of all great men. Never, perhaps, has any composer so thoroughly entered into childish griefs and fears and pleasures – the April shower and shine of babyhood – than Schumann in his Kinderscenen. The consummate musician who has surmounted every difficulty, acquainted himself with every method of his art – the man who has mastered the forms of symphony, chamber-music, pianoforte and vocal music to their farthest present limits – here stands forth as the exponent of little innocent every-day emotions. By the Fireside, Bogeys, A Child's Petition, From Foreign Lands, Blindman's Buff, and so on, the simple titles run. "They are descriptive enough, you see, and as easy as winking!" he has told his wife. And they are the very breath of childhood, – they "dally with the innocence of love, like the old age." Nobody could have imagined them but a man who had eternal youth in his heart. "The dissonances are as softly blended as if a child had actually poured forth its pure soul."

It may readily be imagined with what looks askance the composer of the Kinderscenen is favoured by his academic and hide-bound contemporaries. "Romanticism run mad" – "modernism gone crazy;" – "discordant innovations;" – "new-fangled nonsense" – there are few terms too harsh for Herr Schumann; and sometimes he is contemptuously ignored as beyond all possibility of classification. Already sufficiently outré, in the opinion of all conventional musicians, by his adoption of the cyclical form, rather than the orthodox classical, for his abstract pianoforte music – "the whole becoming organic by means of the intimate connection between the various parts;" – already sufficiently outlandish, in the estimation of the average conservative critic, by what is condemned as his grotesquerie and bizarrerie of treatment: Schumann is not careful to answer his opponents, or to defend himself from any charges of lèse-majesté against the imperial art which he serves. That wide and genial tolerance which he extends towards all new composers, he does not demand or even expect for himself. Nevertheless, as he allows, "I used to be quite indifferent to the amount of notice I received, but a wife and children put a different complexion upon everything. It becomes imperative to think of the future." And he is aware that his own personal idiosyncrasies are the strongest obstacle in his way; for he is unable to push or praise himself in the least, and the lordly egotism by dint of which other composers win, or command, a hearing, has been entirely omitted from the making of this dumb genius. He knows no professional jealousy, he never speaks ill of a soul; – but then, one might say that he hardly ever spoke at all. He is almost unknown in society, – partly because he really has no interest whatever apart from music, partly owing to his silent manner and retiring disposition. It is on record that one day after Madame Schumann had been playing with tremendous success at one of the smaller German courts, the Serene Highness who was ruler there enquired of her with great affability, "whether her husband were also musical?" And with his fellow-musicians he is so invincibly taciturn that conversation is almost a farce. Even Wagner, whose powers of loquacity are almost illimitable, resents being reduced to the utterance of an absolute monologue. "When I came to see Schumann," he grumbles, "I related to him my Parisian experiences, spoke of the state of music in France, then of that in Germany, spoke of literature and politics, – but he remained as good as dumb for nearly an hour. Now, one cannot go on talking quite alone. An impossible man!"

The fact is, that the "impossible man" dwells apart in a world of his own, a world peopled by the best folk he has ever encountered either in the flesh or the spirit, and a world where the austerest canons and noblest aspirations of his great art are upheld on a very different plane from that of Leipzig. He has the highest possible view of his vocation and what it should entail. "To send light into the depths of the human heart, that is the artistic calling," he has declared… "The artist is to choose for his companions those who can do something beyond playing passably on one or two instruments – those who are whole men and can understand Shakespeare and Jean Paul… People say, 'It pleased,' or 'It did not please,' – as if there were nothing higher than pleasing the public!"… A man with such notions as these, in the first half of the nineteenth century, must of necessity live and move to a great extent in an ideal atmosphere of his own: and Schumann, to do so the more literally, has created his own company in that "spiritual and romantic league," the Davidsbund, which exists only in his imagination, but exercises considerable vigour none the less.

The Davidsbund is a mystical community of kindred souls, each enlisted, with or without his knowledge, under the banner of "a resolve to do battle in the cause of musical progress, against Philistinism in every form." One can only vaguely compare it to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England. "Mozart was as much a member of it as Berlioz now is," so declares its founder. Chopin, Julius Knorr, Schuncke, Carl Banck and others, without any form of enrolment, are members of the Davidite fraternity. New names and old are added from time to time, in the friendly columns of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which is the organ of the league: and especially Schumann himself appears under a number of noms de guerre, representing the manifold facets of his identity. As Florestan, he speaks for "the turbulent and impulsive side of his nature, full of imaginative activity;" as Eusebius, he expresses those gentle, thoughtful, sensitive qualities which sit so lovably upon him. As Meister Raro, calmly logical, he stands between both the above, and, "acting as arbitrator, sums up their opposing criticisms," much as his father-in-law Friedrich Wieck the great professor might do. To light-hearted, humorous, almost frivolous critiques he signs himself Jeanquirit: and last, not least of the "Davidites," he introduces Mendelssohn as Meritis, and embodies varying traits of his beloved Clara as Zilia, Chiarina, and Cecilia… Call it feather-brained, fantastic, ridiculous, if you will, the Davidsbund has a very definite meaning, and fulfils a very noble purpose. For, to use its inventor's own phrase, "In every age there is a secret band of kindred spirits. Ye who are of this fellowship, see that ye weld the circle firmly, that so the truth of Art may shine ever more and more clearly, shedding joy and blessing far and near."

That remarkable power of expressing the personalities of his friends in music, which has been Schumann's from youth, stands him in good stead for the depicting of various "Davidites": he could show the peculiar characteristics of any one of them in a few moments, on the pianoforte, whereas years would not suffice him to give a verbal explanation. This power of portrayal is noticeable in the very construction of his songs, – such as, for instance, The Two Grenadiers, or Freedom, or The Hidalgo, with its essentially Spanish arrogance.

In the course of the morning Schumann, reluctantly leaving a mass of unfinished MSS. upon his desk and pianoforte, betakes himself to his duties at the Conservatorium, where he has been professor for about a year. Conscientious and painstaking in tuition as in all else, he is not naturally a good teacher. He seems to be devoid of the priceless power of imparting verbal instruction, or of imparting the secret of the system whereby a desired effect shall be attained. His habitual and increasing melancholy reserve rises up like a barrier between himself and his pupils: his reticence chills and bewilders them. His own musical education has been an entirely personal matter, and not wrought out upon the accepted scholastic lines. Moreover, intercourse with musical people has always "appealed to Schumann far more, and with greater success, than dry lessons in thorough bass and counterpoint." Hence, whilst he appears almost unable to assist the novice in the beginning, or tadpole stage, he is able to afford invaluable help and stimulating criticism to those young artists with whom he may come in contact, and who adore him for his sympathetic kindness. The violinist Joachim never forgot how, as a boy of thirteen, he played the Kreutzer sonata with his host at the house of Mendelssohn. Lonely and silent all the while, Schumann remained in a corner of the room; but subsequently, while Joachim was sitting near him, he leaned forward and pointed to the stars, shining down into the room through the open window. He patted the lad's knee with gentle, friendly encouragement. "Do you think they know up there" he queried, "that a little boy has been playing down here with Mendelssohn?" – This question was the very essence of Schumann, – romantic, mystical, full of tender dreams.

His composition-lessons over, he conducts a part-singing class. Orchestral conducting is abhorrent to him; it is "too defiant and conspicuous a task." He cannot make his meaning clear by word of mouth: and in gesture he is singularly deficient. But in part-singing he is an excellent instructor, because he is seated at the piano and can indicate there the suggestion which he fails to convey viva-voce. Even now, in the wreck of his abilities as a pianist, it is possible to imagine what he might have been: he can produce an extraordinary depth and richness of tone, seeming to obtain some of his effects by unusual and almost illegitimate means. His accentuation is very slight, and he uses both pedals too frequently and too freely. Notwithstanding these peculiarities, however, the same indefinable magic pervades his piano-playing as his compositions.

Nervous, excitable, uneasy, the master draws a breath of relief when the class is dismissed. The pleasant Hebraic face of Mendelssohn nods in at his door in passing. The two musicians are so busily engaged, that often they hardly exchange a word for weeks together. Mendelssohn, the recipient of many a generous and whole-hearted encomium from his devotee Schumann, does not return this fraternal enthusiasm. To his well-balanced mind, the silent moody man and his productions are too wild, too eccentric, too uncanny. He regards them, at times, with a species of grudging admiration: at others, he sides in heart, if not in speech, with the current opinion of the town. "Opposition to all artistic progress has always been a distinctive characteristic of Leipzig musical society," and therefore horror-stricken hands are uplifted at the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, his heretical doctrines, and still more heretical deeds. The good people of the Thomas-School Choral Society, the audience at the Gewandhaus concerts, the subscribers to opposition musical papers, regard Herr Schumann very much as the knight regarded the lady at the close of his own magnificent Waldesgesprach.