-
Poetic Virtuosity:
Robert Schumann as a Critic and Composer
of Virtuoso Instrumental Music
(Volume One)
by
Alexander Stefaniak
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the
Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Supervised by
Professor Ralph P. Locke
Department of Musicology Eastman School of Music
University of Rochester Rochester, New York
2012
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Curriculum Vitae
Alexander Stefaniak was born in Parma, Ohio on August 13, 1983.
He attended Baldwin-
Wallace College from 2002 to 2006 and graduated summa cum laude
with Bachelor of
Music degrees in Music History and Literature and Piano
Performance. He came to the
University of Rochester in August 2007 and began studies in
musicology at the Eastman
School of Music with the support of a Sproull Fellowship. Work
as a teaching assistant
and graduate instructor at Eastman and at the College of Arts
and Sciences led in 2010 to
an Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a
Graduate Student.
Additional fellowships from Eastman include the Ann Clark Fehn
Award (2007) and two
Graue Fellowships (2008 and 2009). Prof. Ralph P. Locke
supervised his dissertation
work, and a Glenn Watkins Traveling Fellowship supported
research in Germany during
Fall 2011. In August 2012, Alexander will begin an appointment
as Assistant Professor
of Musicology at Washington University in St. Louis,
Missouri.
Publications to date:
Review of Lettres de Franz Liszt la Princesse Marie de
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfrst ne de Sayn-Wittgenstein. Edited by Pauline
Pocknell, Malou Haine, and Nicolas Dufetel. Journal of the American
Liszt Society (forthcoming).
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Acknowledgements
Perhaps the most delightful aspect of writing a dissertation has
been the opportunity to
meet and work with many generous people who are passionate about
the scholarly study
of music. I owe especial thanks to my readers: Prof. Ralph P.
Locke (who served as my
primary advisor), Prof. Holly Watkins, and Prof. William Marvin.
All three gave freely of
their own considerable and varied expertise, shared their
infectious curiosity and
fascination with nineteenth-century music, and constantly
challenged me to think more
deeply about my subject and craft. Other faculty at the Eastman
School of Music and the
University of Rochester who have contributed to my dissertation
work include Prof.
Melina Esse (who led our dissertation writers group), Prof.
Reinhild Steingrver (who
helped with several of the trickier German translations), Prof.
Celia Applegate (who
offered her insights on German musical culture at various stages
of this project), and
Prof. Seth Monahan (who provided some life-saving technological
pointers).
Two fellowships from the University of Rochestera Sproull
Fellowship and a
Glenn Watkins Traveling Fellowshipallowed me to complete this
dissertation on time
and to pursue research in Germany during Fall 2011. In Germany,
I benefitted greatly
from the advice and hospitality of several scholars, librarians,
and archivists, notably Dr.
Matthias Wendt and his staff at the
Robert-Schumann-Forschungsstelle in Dsseldorf,
Dr. Thomas Synofzik and Dr. Hrosvith Dahmen of the Robert
Schumann Haus in
Zwickau, and the staff of the Musiklesesaal at the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek in Munich.
Prof. Rufus Hallmark provided some indispensable advice prior to
my research trip, and
Dr. Katelijne Schiltz and Dr. Wolfgang Rathert were congenial,
helpful contacts and
guides during my stay in Munich.
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In the United States, I enjoyed the assistance of Prof. Ruskin
King Cooper,
American representative of the Schuncke Archive (who kindly sent
me copies of several
very-hard-to-find scores), Prof. Claudia Macdonald (who shared
the unpublished English
version of one of John Daverios articles), and David Peter
Coppen of Sibley Music
Library Special Collections. In January 2012, Prof. Robert
Mayerovitch of Baldwin-
Wallace College collaborated with me on a lecture-recital and
gave back-to-back
performances of Schumanns tudes symphoniques and unpublished
Fantaisies et finale,
an experience that led to me to refine some of the points I make
about these works.
Finally, some of my discussions depend on material received from
the Bibliothque du
Muse Royale de Mariemont in Belgium, the British Library, the
Newberry Library, and
the University of California, Berkeley.
Last but not least, a cohort of friends and family members
provided indispensable
moral support during my work on this dissertation. My fellow
Eastman graduate students
Andrew Aziz, Regina Compton, Naomi Gregory, Katherine Hutchings,
Samantha Inman,
Amy Kintner, and Kira Thurman listened to conference-paper
rehearsals, exchanged
drafts, and formed a supportive community. My parents, Martha
and Carl, and my
brother, Andy, have long nurtured my interest in music
scholarship and were ever ready
to learn more about Robert Schumann and the process of writing a
dissertation. And,
finally, Eliana Haig was there from the beginning of this
project to the end: she helped in
ways big and small, supplying a musicians ear, good humor, and
unwavering
encouragement.
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Abstract
In this dissertation, I explore Robert Schumanns activities as a
critic and composer of
virtuoso instrumental music. I argue that the view of Schumann
as the consummate anti-
virtuoso polemicistcurrent in Romantic critical discourse as
well as present-day
scholarly literatureis an oversimplified one. Instead, Schumann
played a significant
role in the nineteenth-century German interaction between
virtuosity, Romantic
aesthetics, and the ideology of serious music. German Romantic
composers and critics
regarded virtuosity, on one hand, more as a source of
crowd-pleasing entertainment than
as high art but, on the other, as a source of astonishment,
originality, and audience appeal.
Schumann himself worked to promote (as critic) and realize (as
composer) a self-
consciously serious, transcendent approach to virtuosity.
Chapter 1 argues that Schumann
directed his critique of virtuosity at a specific repertory that
recent scholars have termed
postclassical. This styleexemplified by the works of Henri Herz
and Carl Czerny
prized accessibility and elegance, and Schumanns writings on
postclassical showpieces
comment on their style and conventions as well as on the
cultural significance of this
repertory. Chapters 2 and 3 explore ways in which Schumann
sought to poeticize and
elevate virtuosity by combining postclassical conventions with
Romantic musical
metaphors for inwardness and transcendence. The second discusses
how Schumanns
concept of the poetic informed his approach to virtuosity. The
third argues that
Schumann viewed virtuosity as a potential source of sublime
experience and, moreover,
that contemporary critics received several of his own showpieces
as sublime. Chapter 4
considers writings in which Schumann argues for a symbiotic
relationship between
virtuosos and musical institutions he regarded as serious. This
ideal, I argue, shaped the
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style and structure of Schumanns own concertos, which stage
virtuosic display as part of
the symphony-centered concert and incorporate the virtuoso into
the idealized community
of the professional symphony orchestra. Schumann thus
participated influentially in a
discourse that did not establish a binaristic opposition between
virtuosity and serious
music or attempt to suppress public interest in virtuosity but
rather created various ways
of customizing contemporary virtuosity according to the ideology
of serious music and
the aesthetic imperatives of German Romanticism.
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Table of Contents
Volume 1
Curriculum Vitae ii
Acknowledgements iii
Abstract v
Note to the Reader 1
Introduction 2
Chapter 1 Schumanns Critique of Postclassical Virtuosity 32
Virtuosity as Entertainment: The Postclassical Style 36
Schumann and the Neue Zeitschrifts Critique of Postclassical
Virtuosity 57 Virtuoso Entertainment and Aristocratic Frivolity 66
Epilogue: Henriette Voigt and the Poetic Salon 75 Chapter 2
Virtuosity and the Schumannian Poetic 80 Ein Opus II 86 A Poetic
Virtuoso Makes his Debut:
Schumanns Abegg Variations, Opus 1 102 A Pianistic Sampler and a
Poetic Network: Schumanns Unpublished Fantaisies et finale 112 From
Chiaroscuro Depth to Poetic Distance: Poetic Texture and
Figuration, According to Schumann 129 Chapter 3 Schumanns 1830s
Showpieces and the Rhetoric of the Sublime 145 Sublime Virtuosity
in Schumanns Critical Writings 155 Poeticizing and Appropriating
Paganini: The Roots of Schumanns Sublime Virtuosity 162 A Concerto
with an Ocean for a Finale 171
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A Toccata Emblazoned with the Name of Beethoven 183 From the
Poetic to the (Beethovenian?) Sublime: The 1837 tudes symphoniques
196 Chapter 4 The Virtuoso on Mount Parnassus: Schumann and the
206
Concertante Principle
The Virtuoso Concerto and Schumanns Critique of Postclassicism
217 Vehicles for Serious Virtuosity 230 Twin Strategies: Schumanns
Piano Concerto, Op. 54 234 Trajectories of Sublimation and
Convergence: The Later, Single-Movement Concertos 248
Epilogue 277 Bibliography 284
Volume 2 Appendices: Figures and Examples
Chapter 1 Figures and Examples 298
Chapter 2 Figures and Examples 323
Chapter 3 Figures and Examples 358
Chapter 4 Figures and Examples 396
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List of Figures and Examples
Volume 2
Chapter 1 Figures and Examples Example 1.1: Carl Czerny, The
School of Practical Composition. Sample variations. 299 Example
1.2: Henri Herz, Grandes variations sur le Choeur des Grecs du Sige
du Corinthe, Op. 36. Theme and Variation 1. 301 Example 1.3: Herz,
Grandes variations. Finale. 303 Figure 1.1: Herz, Grandes
variations. Formal outline. 305 Example 1.4: Herz, Grandes
Variations. Variations 3 and 4. 306 Example 1.5: Theodore Dhler,
Fantaisie et Variations sur la Cavatine Favorite de Anna Bolena,
Op. 17. Variation 1. 307 Example 1.6: Dhler, Fantaisie et
Variations sur Anna Bolena. Two clichs identified by Schumann. 308
Example 1.7: Julius Benedict, Introduction et Variations sur un
thme favori de lOpra La Straniera, Op. 16. Variation 5. 309 Example
1.8: Benedict, Variations sur La Straniera. Introduction. 310
Example 1.9: Sigismund Thalberg, Grande Fantaisie et Variations
Brillantes sur un motif favori de lOpra I Capuletti e Montecchi,
Op. 10. Variations 1 and 2. 312 Example 1.10: Thalberg, I Capuletti
Variations. Finale. 313 Example 1.11: Frrric Kalkbrenner, Fantaisie
et Variations sur un Thme de La Straniera, Op. 123. Theme,
Variation 1. 316 Example 1.12: Thalberg, Grand Fantaisie sur des
motifs de lOpra Norma, Op. 12. Introduction. 318 Example 1.13:
Thalberg, Norma Fantaisie. Variation 2. 320 Example 1.14: Thalberg,
Norma Fantaisie. Finale. 321
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Chapter 2 Figures and Examples Example 2.1: Frdric Chopin, L ci
darem la mano Variations, Op. 2. Close of introduction. 324 Example
2.2: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations. Variation 1. 325
Example 2.3: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations. Variation 5.
326 Example 2.4: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations.
Continuation of second episode in rondo finale. 328 Figure 2.1:
Schumann, Abegg Variations, Op. 1. Sequence of movements and theme.
330 Example 2.5: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Variation 1. 331
Example 2.6: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Variations 2 and 3. 332
Figure 2.2: Rondo form of Abegg finale. 334 Example 2.7: Schumann,
Abegg Variations. Finale, transition to second episode (C). 335
Figure 2.3: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Sequence of variations.
337 Example 2.8: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Theme. 339 Example
2.9: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasies 2 and 3. 340 Example
2.10: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 7 and Trio. 341
Example 2.11: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 4. 342
Example 2.12: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 10. 344
Example 2.13: Heinrich Marschner, Wer ist der Ritter hochgeehrt,
from Der Templer und die Jdin. 345 Example 2.14: Schumann,
Fantaisies et finale. Finale refrain. 347 Figure 2.4: Marschner,
Wer ist der Ritter. Text (by Wilhelm August Wohlbrck) and
translation. 348 Example 2.15: Ferdinand Hiller, Etude, Op. 15, no.
2. 349
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Example 2.16: Cramer, Studio per il pianoforte, No. 36 and
Hiller, Etude Op. 15, no. 22. 350 Example 2.17: Hiller, Etude Op.
15, no. 4. 351 Example 2.18: Hiller and Chopin etudes. 352 Example
2.19: Chopin, Etude Op. 25, no. 1. Excerpts. 353 Example 2.20:
Schumann, Papillons, Op. 2 and Abegg Variations, Op. 1. Distant
sound effects. 354 Example 2.21: Schumann, Exercise. Coda. 355
Example 2.22: Schumann, Toccata, Op. 7. Coda. 356 Chapter 3 Figures
and Examples Example 3.1: Schumann, Kreisleriana, Op. 16. Movements
1 and 7. 359 Example 3.2: Chopin, Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op.
35. Finale. 359 Example 3.3: Paganini, Caprice No. 16. Schumann,
Etude, Op. 3, no. 6. 360 Example 3.4: Paganini, Caprice No. 16.
Schumann, Etude Op. 3, no. 6. Coda. 362 Example 3.5: Paganini,
Caprice No. 12. Schumann, Etude Op. 10, no. 1. 363 Example 3.6:
Paganini, Caprice No. 10. Schumann, Etude Op. 10, no. 3. 365
Example 3.7: Paganini, Caprice No. 4. 366 Example 3.8: Schumann,
Etude Op. 10, no. 4. 368 Example 3.9: Schumann, Concert sans
orchestre, Op. 14, movement 4. Opening. 370 Figure 3.1: Schumann,
Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. 371 Example 3.10: Schumann,
Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Theme B. 372 Example 3.11:
Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Theme C. 373 Example
3.12: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Retransition
(first and second parallels). 374
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Example 3.13: Some early nineteenth-century double-stop piano
showpieces. 376 Example 3.14: Ludwig Schuncke, Allegro Passionato,
Op. 6. Excerpts. 377 Example 3.15: Ludwig Schuncke, Caprice No. 2,
Op. 10. Excerpts. 378 Example 3.16: Schumann, Exercise and Toccata,
Op. 7. Openings. 380 Example 3.17: Schumann, Toccata. Three
versions of second theme. 382 Example 3.18: Schumann, Toccata.
Transition to closing theme. 383 Example 3.19: Schumann, Exercise
and Toccata. Retransitions. 384 Example 3.20: Beethoven, Symphony
No. 3, Eroica, movement 1. Fugato in development. 385 Example 3.21:
Schumann, Toccata. Coda. 387 Figure 3.2: Schumann, Fantaisies et
finale (1835) and tudes symphoniques, Op. 13 (1837).Sequence of
movements. 389 Figure 3.3: Schumann, tudes symphoniques, Op. 13.
Secondary keys, continuity, and formal expansion. 391 Example 3.22:
Schumann, tudes symphoniques. Etude VII. 392 Example 3.23:
Schumann, tudes symphoniques, Etude IX. 393 Example 3.24:
Beethoven, Eroica Symphony, movement 4, G-minor variation.
Excerpts. 394 Chapter 4 Figures and Examples Figure 4.1: Henri
Herz, Concerto No. 1 in A major, Op. 34, movement 1. 397 Exposition
form and excerpts. Example 4.1: Herz, Concerto No. 1, movement 1.
Closing display of exposition (excerpts). 398 Example 4.2: Frdric
Kalkbrenner, Concerto No. 4 in A-flat, Op. 127, movement 1. Second
theme group, closing display. 400 Figure 4.2: Charles Mayer,
Concerto, Op. 70. First movement form (complete). 402
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Example 4.3: Clara Wieck, Concerto No. 7 in A minor, Op. 7,
movement 1. Expositional closing display, segue to development. 403
Example 4.4: Schumann, Piano Concerto, Op. 54, movement 1.
Transition between first and second theme groups (piano and strings
only). 405 Example 4.5: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 1.
Development. 407 Example 4.6: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 1.
Closing display of recapitulation. 408 Example 4.7: Adolph Henselt,
lyrical showpieces in Clara Wiecks repertoire. 411 Example 4.8:
Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 1. Cadenza. 412 Example 4.9:
Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 3. Closing display of exposition
(excerpts). 413 Example 4.10: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 3.
Beginning of coda (piano only). 417 Figure 4.3: Schumann,
Introduction and Allegro Appassionato, Op. 92. Large-scale
symphonic and concertante hybrid. 418 Example 4.11: Schumann,
Introduction and Allegro Appassionato, Op. 92. Opening of
Introduction. 419 Example 4.12: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro
Appassionato. Transition to Allegro. 421 Example 4.13: Schumann,
Introduction and Allegro Appassionato. Second theme group and false
closing display. (Piano and winds only.) 422 Example 4.14:
Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato. Opening of coda.
424 Example 4.15: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato.
Coda (piano only after m. 472). 426 Example 4.16: Schumann,
Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134. First theme group (piano
only after m. 26). 428 Example 4.17: Schumann, Introduction and
Concert Allegro. Transition and second theme. 430
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Example 4.18. Schumann: Introduction and Concert Allegro.
Closing display of exposition. 431 Example 4.19: Schumann,
Introduction and Concert Allegro. Cadenza (excerpts). 432 Example
4.20: Schumann, Introduction and Concert Allegro. Coda. 433 Example
4.21: Schumann, Phantasie, Op. 131. Violin entrance. 435 Example
4.22: Schumann, Phantasie. Introduction. 436 Example 4.23:
Schumann, Phantasie. Opening of first theme group. 437 Example
4.24: Schumann, Phantasie. Closing display of exposition. 438
Example 4.25: Schumann, Phantasie. Development (excerpts). 439
Example 4.26: Schumann, Phantasie. Coda. 441
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Note to the Reader 1
Note to the Reader
The text that follows includes many quotations from Schumanns
1854 anthology of his
own writings as well as from nineteenth-century music
periodicals. I have abbreviated the
following titles in the text and footnotes:
Schumanns Gesammelte Schriften ber Musik und Musiker GS
Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik NZfM
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung AmZ
Signale fr die musikalische Welt Signale.
For this study, I have used Martin Kreisigs widely available
1914 edition of Schumanns
Gesammelte Schriften, published by Breitkopf und Hrtel, Leipzig.
Occasionally, I have
found differences between the anthologized version of a given
essay by Schumann and
earlier versions (e.g., the ones published in the NZfM or AmZ or
found in a surviving
manuscript). In those cases, I give the details in a
footnote.
Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
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Introduction 2
INTRODUCTION
In 1843, Robert Schumann published a striking, seemingly
self-contradictory article on
virtuosity in his Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik, a review of Italian
violinist-composer
Antonio Bazzinis May 14 concert in Leipzig. At first, Schumann
plays the role he often
assumes in the musicological literature, that of a staunch
anti-virtuoso polemicist. The
public has lately begun to notice a surplus of virtuosos, he
writes. So has this journal,
as it has often made known. He goes on to deride the
nineteenth-century rage for
virtuosity in general:
The virtuosos themselves seem to feel this, as their recent
desire to travel to America attests, and many of their enemies
nurture the silent wish that, God willing, they will all stay over
there. For, all things considered, the newer virtuosity has
contributed but little to the benefit of art.1
But then the review takes a surprising turn, one that
complicates Schumanns sweeping
condemnation: However, when virtuosity confronts us in as
delightful a form as the
above-mentioned young Italian, then we gladly listen to it for
hours.2 Schumann
suggests that Bazzini, unlike the unnamed virtuosos from the
beginning of the review, did
contribute to the benefit of art. Schumann praises two of
Bazzinis compositions for
violin and orchestra: his Concertino in E, Op. 14 and his
Scherzo Variato ber Motive
aus Webers Aufforderung zum Tanze, Op. 13.3 Of the Concertino,
Schumann writes,
1 Das Publikum fngt seit kurzem an, einigen berdru an Virtuosen
merken zu lassen, und (wie es schon fters gestanden hat) diese
Zeitschrift auch. Da dies die Virtuosen selbst fhlen, scheint ihre
neuerdings entstandene Auswanderungslust nach Amerika zu beweisen,
und es gibt manche ihrer Feinde, die dabei den stillen Wunsch
hegen, sie mchten in Gottes Namen ganz drben bleiben; denn, alles
in allem erwogen, zum Besten der Kunst hat die neuere Virtuositt
nur wenig beigetragen. Robert Schumann, Antonio Bazzini, in
Gesammelte Schriften ber Musik und Musiker, 5th ed., edited by
Martin Kreisig (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1914), 2:134.
Hereafter GS. 2 Wo sie uns aber in so reizender Gestalt
entgegentritt wie bei dem obengenannten jungen Italiener, da
lauschen wir gern noch stundenlang. Ibid., 2:134. 3 Schumanns
review does not name the specific works that appeared on Bazzinis
concert. For the full contents of the program, I am indebted to the
Gewandhaus Programmsammlung, Robert Schumann Haus, Zwickau.
Document 847.
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Introduction 3
The natural flow of the whole, the mostly discreet
instrumentation, the really charming
luster and melodiousness of some individual passagesmost
virtuosos have barely any
idea of these things.4
Schumanns appraisal of Bazzinis virtuosity extends beyond the
style of his
compositions. He nods to the violinists nationality when he
calls him an Italian through
and through, but in the best sense, an expression that invokes
positive stereotypes about
the melodic charm of Italian music even as it attempts to
distance Bazzini from less
complimentary ones about Italian frivolity or shallowness.5
Schumann registers his
impression of Bazzinis onstage persona, idealizing him for his
strong youthful face,
from whose eyes flash jocularity and love of life, traits that,
Schumann suggests, provide
a welcome contrast with world-weary, pale virtuoso figures.6
Schumann also implicitly
takes into account the scope of Bazzinis professional
activities. The review treats a
concert Bazzini gave with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under
the direction of Felix
Mendelssohn. The laudatory tone and substantial length of
Schumanns essay testifies to
his interest in promoting virtuosos who, rather than sweeping
through town and
performing concerts for their own benefit, established
relationships with institutions that
Schumann and the Neue Zeitschrift regarded as bastions of
serious musical culture.
Indeed, Bazzinis showpieces, on this occasion, shared the stage
with Mendelssohns
Hebrides and Beethovens Egmont overtures.7
4 Sein Konzert bewies es am deutlichsten; der natrlich Gu des
Ganzen, die meist diskrete Instrumentierung, der wirklich
bezaubernde Schmelz und Wohlklang in einzelnen Stellenvon alle
diesem haben ja die meisten Virtuosen kaum eine Ahnung. GS 2:134. 5
Italiener ist er durch und durch, aber im besten Sinne. Ibid.,
2:134. 6 Weltmder, blasser Virtuosengestalten haben wir nun schon
genug gehabt; erfreut euch nun auch einmal an einem krftigen
Jnglingsgesicht, dem Heiterkeit und Lebensluft aus den Augen
blickt. Ibid., 2:135. 7 Bazzini went on to cultivate this
relationship. In 1844, he appeared with the orchestra again,
playing a Concertante for four violins and orchestra by Maurerthe
other soloists were Heinrich Ernst, Joseph
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Introduction 4
Despite his overall approval, Schumann also criticizes the
violinist for at times
lapsing into the role of crowd-pleasing entertainer and
implicitly exhorts Bazzini to
conform even more closely to an image of an ideal virtuoso.
(Schumann thereby reminds
readers that, while impressed, he is not so star-struck by
Bazzinis charisma and bravura
as to forget the requirements of serious music.) He chides
Bazzini for programming two
of his other compositions, his Fantaisie dramatique on the
closing scene from Donizettis
Lucia di Lammermoor and his Capriccio on themes from Bellinis I
Puritani. In contrast
to the Concertino and the Weber-based scherzo, Schumann writes,
these pieces show that
Bazzini was not ashamed of flattering the public. He describes
them not as music but
as an accumulation of violin effects, in which no one can
surpass Paganini.8 In general,
though, Schumanns review ringingly endorses the violinist. At
one point, he briefly
launches into his trademark style of imagistic, poetic criticism
and invokes Romantic
ideals about musics potentially universal, transcendent
qualities: Schumann calls Bazzini
an artist from a land of songnot a land that lies here or
therefrom that unknown,
eternally bright land.9
In one of the final reviews he wrote for the Neue Zeitschrift,
then, Schumann
articulated a complex attitude toward virtuosity, one that
regarded the nineteenth-century
fascination with virtuosity as a potentially problematic
phenomenon but also
distinguished between virtuosos who contributed little to the
benefit of art and those
who exemplified Schumanns ideals of serious, transcendental
music. In this study, I
Joachim, and Ferdinand David. (Gewandhaus Programmsammlung,
Document 880.) That year, he also gave the first private
performance of Mendelssohns Violin Concerto, Op. 64. 8 An den
beiden folgenden Stcken sah ich nur ungern, da er auch dem Publikum
zu schmeicheln nicht verschmht; hier war weniger Musik, aber eine
Anhufung von Violinknsten, in denen es nun einmal Paganini niemand
nachtun wird. Ibid., 2:135. 9 Als kme er aus dem Lande des
Gesanges, nicht einem Lande, das da oder dort liegt, aus jenem
unbekannten ewig heitern, so war mirs manchmal bei seiner Musik.
Ibid., 2:134.
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Introduction 5
explore Schumanns engagement with virtuosity through his
critical writings and
virtuosic compositions. In doing so, I hope to illuminate the
significant but little-
understood role that Schumann played in the larger interaction
between instrumental
virtuosity, Romantic aesthetics, and the ideology of serious
music in early nineteenth-
century Germany.
Virtuosity and (or, For Some, Versus) Serious Music
During Schumanns career as critic and composer, which extended
roughly from 1831
until 1854, virtuosity became an object of public fascination
and critical preoccupation.
The first half of the century witnessed a significant shift in
thinking about musics role in
society and position among the arts. This projectwhich was at
its most elaborate and
urgent in Germanysought to elevate music as a serious art form
worthy of the respect,
even veneration, of a highly literate, mostly middle-class
public. It intertwined
developments in musical life and institutions with the
imperatives of Romantic aesthetics.
In many regards, German Romantic attitudes have informed the
culture of Western art
music well into the twenty-first century. Perhaps for this
reason, scholarsincluding
David Gramit, William Weber, Celia Applegate, Lydia Goehr, and
Sanna Pederson
have only recently begun to treat the ideology of serious music
as a historical event in
need of contextualization and explication.10 The German Romantic
projects
10 See, for example, David Gramit, Cultivating Music: The
Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture,
1770-1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); William
Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008); Celia Applegate, How German Is
It? Nationalism and the Idea of Serious Music in the Early
Nineteenth Century, 19th-Century Music 21, no 3 (1998): 274-96;
Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, rev. ed
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Sanna Pederson,
Enlightened and Romantic German Music Criticism, 1800-1850 PhD.
diss, University of Pennsylvania, 1995. Carl Dahlhauss somewhat
earlier study takes note of the literization and sacralization of
music as part of nineteenth-century audiences tastes and
-
Introduction 6
manifestations ranged from the concretely institutional to the
abstractly ideological. They
included the establishment of the public concert as a space for
displaying, organizing, and
cementing a community of serious musicians, the formation of a
canon of classics,
attempts to endow music with quasi-literary content or
significance, the stigmatization of
music designed specifically for casual diversion, such concepts
as absolute and
poetic music, andpervading nineteenth-century writing on the
aforementioned
topicsa view of music as a vehicle for quasi-spiritual
experience. John Daverios
characterization of Schumann as one of the first musicians to
espouse the belief that
music should aspire to the same intellectual substance [and by
implication, I would add,
the same recognized cultural significance] as the lettered arts:
poetry and philosophy
places the composer-critic squarely at the center of this
process.11 So do Schumanns own
essays, which in various instances perpetuated the cult of
Beethoven as a sublime genius
and symbol of German national pride, lionized such values as
originality and inner
expression, derided Philistines who viewed music as a vehicle
for everyday recreation,
and depicted poetic transcendence in colorful, quasi-narrative
reviews.12
The construction of music as a serious art form ran parallel to
the nineteenth-
century burgeoning of public fascination with virtuosity.
Schumann was equally
entangled with this other aspect of contemporary musical life:
his early aspiration to be a
touring piano virtuoso is well known, and his diary recorded
rapturous impressions of
Paganinis 1831 concert in Frankfurt. Some of the same factors
that stimulated and gave composers strategies. Nineteenth-Century
Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), see, for example, 164-68. 11 John Daverio,
Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 89. 12 In several ways, Schumanns early
life primed him to enter this discourse. As is well known,
Schumannthe son of a bookseller and translatorgrew up in a highly
literate household, enjoyed a university education, and agonized
over the tension between poetry and music in his own intellectual
life and career plans.
-
Introduction 7
urgency to the German Romantic projectnotably the rise of a
large, middle-class
audience and the growth of the public concertnourished what many
critics celebrated
or lamented as The Age of Bravura.13 While most visible on the
concert stage, the
virtuosity boom also filled drawing rooms and salons. Just as
music-lovers flocked to see
star instrumentalists in public or semi-public performances,
they purchased variation sets,
opera fantasies, etudes, and concertos to perform or practice at
home. The rage for
virtuosity involved not only iconic stars like Liszt and
Paganini but several generations of
musicians, including composer-performers who specialized in
virtuoso music as well as
musicians better known for their work in other areas.
It was in this context that virtuosity became a problematic
issue for musicians
invested in the construction of music as a serious art form. In
Gramits summary, critics
regarded the virtuoso as a threat from within: the virtuoso was
so firmly established as
a corrupting force that, by the 1840s, writers who were quite
serious in their rejection of
what virtuosos represented could play with the topic with easy
familiarity.14 Nineteenth-
century writers cited aesthetic issues. Whereas the Romantic
ideology valorized inner
experience in music, flashy showpieces foregrounded displays of
physical skill. Gramits
study argues that, throughout the nineteenth-century, German
musicians strove to
distance their art from any association with Handwerkthat is,
from crafts requiring
physical skill as opposed to fine art requiring genius and
intellect. For self-consciously
serious musicians, he notes, The all-too-obvious physicality of
the virtuoso distracted
13 Eduard Hanslicks history of concert life in Vienna, for
example, terms the years between 1830 and 1848 as the Virtuosenzeit
and the Epoch of Liszt and Thalberg. Hanslicks very choice of names
for separate epochs suggests his suspicion toward virtuosity: the
years between 1848 and 1868 bear the heading Associations of
Artists and are described as a Musical Renaissance. Geschichte des
Concertwesens in Wien (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumller, 1869), vi, 289.
14 Gramit, Cultivating Music, 139.
-
Introduction 8
from the real significance of music.15 Critics also cited more
practical, institutional
concerns. Virtuoso instrumentalists often led itinerant careers,
moving from locale to
locale and performing concerts for their own benefit. They thus
worked outside ofand,
some critics alleged, drew audiences away frominstitutions
symbolic of the serious
aspirations of German musical culture, particularly the symphony
orchestra and the
choral society. It was the nineteenth century that popularized
the clichd image of the
virtuoso as a cynical egotist who manipulated audiences for his
or her own benefit rather
than high-mindedly serving the dissemination of masterworks, the
authenticity of his or
her own inner inspiration, or a larger community of serious
musicians.16 All of their
specific concerns drew upon a desire to separate high art from
crowd-pleasing
entertainment, a boundary virtuosos and their music threatened
to blur.
Small wonder, then, that scholars have uncovered an extensive
critical debate
about the merits, attractions, and evils of virtuosity which
peaked in the German musical
press during Schumanns career, one Dana Gooley characterizes as
a Battle Against
Instrumental Virtuosity.17 Shrill rhetoric and sweeping
pronouncements abounded. An
unsigned 1843 article entitled Virtuosen-Unfug [Virtuoso
Nonsense] that appeared in
the Leipzig Signale fr die musikalische Welt, for example,
roundly accuses
contemporary virtuosos of single-mindedly seeking commercial
success. It rails against 15 Ibid., 141. 16 Richard Lepperts study
of Liszts public image, for example, includes several contemporary
caricatures that depict the superstar virtuoso as a prize-hungry
figure whose extravagant performing gestures represented a
calculated show put on for the audience. Leppert, The Concert and
the Virtuoso, in Piano Roles, ed. James Parakilas (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1999), 268-70. Granted, pre-nineteenth-century
writers had occasionally ridiculed or complained about virtuosos or
ascribed such foibles as egotism or amateurishness to them.
Benedetto Marcellos 1720 satirical treatise Il teatro alla moda,
for example, is full of vapid, applause-seeking prima donnas.
(Marcello skewers many aspects of operatic life besides vocal
virtuosos, from insufficiently trained composers to overly long
arias.) The nineteenth-century discourse was new in the intensity
and vehemence with which it debated virtuosity and its anxiety
about the relationship between the cult of the virtuoso and that of
serious music. 17 Dana Gooley, The Battle against Instrumental
Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth Century, In Liszt and his World,
ed. Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2006), 75-112.
-
Introduction 9
virtuosos who supposedly prospered while Schubert and Beethoven
starved and
concludes by gleefully predicting that the virtuoso craze will
be replaced by large music
festivalscommunal rather than individual displays of musical
achievement.18 An 1841
article by organist and critic Eduard Krger entitled
Virtuosenconcert: Gesprch that
appeared in the Neue Zeitschrift stages a fictional dialogue
between a Kapellmeister
(symbol of tradition, seriousness, learning, and middle-class
stability), a Dilettante
(whom Krger portrays as easily seduced by virtuoso
performances), and a Virtuoso.
Krgers article chides the Virtuoso for drawing audiences away
from sublime art and
elevating his own ego at the expense of canonized masterworks.19
More often, writers
expressed their unease in more ambivalent terms that acknowledge
a potentially positive
side of virtuosity. Just as often as music periodicals
advertised showpieces designed for
domestic amateurs with the descriptor brilliant but not
difficult, critics evaluated
virtuoso performers and music by claiming that virtuoso display
should not represent an
end in itself but rather a means to an [unspecified but somehow
worthier] end.20
18 Virtuosen-Unfug, Signale fr die Musikalische Welt 1, no. 29
(July 1843): 217-20. 19 Eduard Krger, Das Virtuosenconcert:
Gesprch, NZfM 14, nos. 40-43 (May 17-28, 1841): 159-61, 163-65,
167-69, 171-73. 20 To briefly cite two examples of this rhetoric
from the Neue Zeitschrift: Oswald Lorenz, in a study of brilliant
violin music, proposed that there are two kinds of bravura pieces:
Either the presentation of every characteristic [of the instrument]
and the difficulty of handling them are the main point, but the
material and form of the piece are only the unifying means, the
cloth on which all of the colorful splendors are embroidered, or,
on the other hand, content, form, and the character of the piece
are the main point and everything else is subordinated,
subservient. Entweder die Darlegung jener Eigenthmlichkeiten ...
und die Schwierigkeit ihrer Handhabung ist die Hauptsache, Stoff
und Form des Tonstcks aber sind nur das verbindende Mittel, das
Tuch, worauf alle die bunten Herrlichkeiten gestickt sind; oder
aber, Stoff, Form, Charakter des Musikstcks sind die Hauptsache,
das Herrschende, jenes Alles nur das Untergeordnete, Dienende.
Brillante Musik fr die Violine mit Begleitung, NZfM 7, no. 22
(September 15, 1837): 88.
Joseph Mainzer (the Zeitschrifts Parisian correspondent for part
of Schumanns tenure as editor) also invoked the issue of means and
ends in a report on concerts by Liszt and Thalberg. Thalberg,
Mainzer writes, is a master of piano technique but treats technique
as an end in itself. Liszt, he claims, knows the technical aspect
of his instrument as well as Thalberg does, but nevertheless seeks
to use it purely as a means, to develop his thoughts and ideas.
Liszt kennt den technischen Theil seines Instrumentes wie Thalberg,
sucht jedoch denselben blos als Mittel zu gebrauchen, um seine
Gedanken und Ideen daraus zu entwickeln. Aus Paris, NZfM 6, no. 46
(June 9, 1837): 185.
-
Introduction 10
This discourse about virtuositys proper role in musical life
spanned the
nineteenth century and has continued to evolve in the twentieth
and twenty first. Our
present-day culture continues to regard virtuosity with a
mixture of admiration and
ambivalence. Guitar virtuosos reign as iconic figures in rock
music history. Symphony
orchestras often rely on celebrated guest soloists playing
popular warhorses to draw
audiences. Conservatory instructors and students routinely scoff
at shallow virtuosity
and compliment a performer for being more than a mere virtuoso.
And, two of the
more controversial figures in recent classical-music history
have been the pianists
Vladimir Horowitz and Lang Lang (whose dazzling technical
capabilities are universally
acknowledged but whose seriousness and integrity as artists have
been hotly debated).21
Two late twentieth-century sources encapsulate this ambivalence
and its prevalence in
both the academy and the wider community of classical-music
listeners. Owen Janders
article on Virtuosos for the second edition of the New Grove
Dictionary of Music and
Musicians concludes by noting that though there has been a
tendency to regard dazzling
feats of technical skill with suspicionthe true virtuoso has
always been prized without
explaining what constitutes a true virtuoso.22 Written for a
less scholarly audience, the
second edition of Ted Libbeys 1999 NPR Guide to Building a
Classical CD Collection
promises on its cover that a reader will become a better
listener by learning to
distinguish between emotional truth and technical
brilliance.23
21 For one discussion of the Horowitz reception, see, for
example, Richard Taruskin, Why Do They All Hate Horowitz? in The
Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2009), 30-36. Taruskins essay originally
appeared in the New York Times on November 28, 1993. 22 Owen
Jander, "Virtuoso," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanly Sadie (London:
Macmillan and New York: Grove, 2001) 26:790. 23 Ted Libbey, The NPR
Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection, 2nd rev. ed (New York:
Workman Publishing, 1999).
-
Introduction 11
Schumann on Virtuosity
Schumann participated in a formative stage of the discourse on
virtuosity and played a
role that combined written criticism with musical production.
His engagement with this
musical craze and critical dilemma produced numerous reviews
published between 1831
and 1844; such solo piano works as the Abegg Variations, Op. 1,
Paganini etudes Op.
3 and 10, Toccata, Op. 7, tudes symphoniques, Op. 13, and
Concert sans orchestre, Op.
14; three concerted works for piano and orchestra; and two for
violin and orchestra.
These compositions and writings offer a rich, revealing window
into the story of
virtuosity as it unfolded in nineteenth-century Germany. The
works span Schumanns
careerfrom his Opus 1 to his posthumous Violin Concerto, WoO
23and inhabit a
variety of genres. Schumanns critical writings, more than the
sweeping pronouncements
of Virtuosen Unfug and the abstractions and caricatures of Das
Virtuosenkonzert,
offer nuanced, musically concrete statements about aesthetics,
published compositions,
and the professional activities of contemporary performers.
However, scholars have yet to explore the complexity and extent
of the composer-
critics contribution. An oversimplified view of Schumann that
has remained routine in
the musicological literature selectively emphasizes his critique
of virtuosity and distances
his compositions from the contemporary rage for bravura. This
attitude finds precedent in
the Romantic critical discourse itself. Carl Kossmalys 1844
review of Schumanns piano
works for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitungthe first major
article on the composer
to appear in the German presslionizes Schumann as a Romantic
hero. Schumann,
Kossmaly writes, inherited a lamentable musical situation
characterized by the
dominance of a mind-and-thought-destroying virtuosity that sees
itself as the sole,
-
Introduction 12
ultimate aim of art. Nonetheless, he continues, Schumann
displayed forceful
originality and imposing intellectual strength by resisting the
lure of popular virtuosity
and instead retaining his own artistic bearings.24
The few scholarly works to directly address the topic of
Schumann and virtuosity
have echoed in various ways Kossmalys binary opposition. Studies
of Schumanns
critical writings often reiterate nineteenth-century value
judgments about showy salon
pieces and reduce Schumanns project to a crusade against shallow
virtuosity. Leon
Plantingas still-standard book on Schumanns criticism describes
him resisting what
Plantinga describes as the mediocrity and crass commercialism of
Parisian pianist-
composers and working to promote higher standards in piano
music. Schumann
displayed an interest in the works of Liszt and Thalberg,
Plantinga writes, but it was a
guilty fascination.25 Anthony Newcombs essay on Schumann and the
marketplace
carefully separates the early piano music from contemporary
virtuosity. Newcomb
stresses (mostly but not entirely accurately) that Schumanns
output does not include the
fantasies or potpourris on popular opera tunes that provided the
backbone of the mid-
century virtuoso repertory. His brief discussion of the Abegg
Variations and tudes
symphoniques maintains that these works are simply too complex
or substantial to bear
comparison with contemporary popular showpieces. The Variations
is not a set of
figurational variationsbut a set of highly characteristic (in
the sense, full of character)
variations and the tudes symphoniques is more the tude
charactristique than the
virtuoso etude of dazzling figurational display. His statements
only beg the questions of
precisely how and to what purpose these showpieces depart from
convention, what being
24Carl Kossmaly, On Robert Schumanns Piano Compositions (1844),
trans. Susan Gillespie, in Schumann and his World, ed. R. Larry
Todd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 306-307. 25
Leon Plantinga, Schumann as Critic (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1967), 16-23, 203.
-
Introduction 13
full of character means in this context (and why it might stand
in opposition to
figurational display), and how Schumanns contemporaries
understood the virtuosity
these showpieces do present.26 More recent scholarship often
adopts a different
perspective and critiques the values of high art by casting
Schumann the critic as an elitist
who attempted to suppress public interest in virtuosity. Dana
Gooleys 2006 essay on the
virtuosity debate, for example, argues that Schumann founded the
Neue Zeitschrift as a
pulpit for anti-virtuosity views in opposition to what Gooley
calls the tolerant and
sensible perspective of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.
Even though Gooley
acknowledges that virtuosity, for Schumann, needed to contribute
to the animation of
the intellect that will render music a poetic art, he does not
elaborate on how or in what
works virtuosity might have served this purpose.27
More often, studies of Schumanns music avoid the topic of
virtuosity altogether.
One of the most active areas of recent Schumann scholarship
(exemplified by John
Daverios and Erika Reimans work) reveals the influence of
contemporary literary
theory on the composers character-piece cycles and lieder but
omits his showpieces.28
Although some scholars have insightfully approached Schumanns
compositions in
virtuoso genressuch as in Claudia Macdonalds study of the piano
concertos, Damien
Ehrhardts analyses of the variations, and Linda Roesners work on
the source material
for Schumanns sonatastheir work focuses on issues of formal
structure and
26 Anthony Newcomb, Schumann and the Marketplace: From
Butterflies to Hausmusik, in Nineteenth-Century Piano Music, 2ne
ed., edited by R. Larry Todd (New York: Routledge, 2004), 264-65.
27 Dana Gooley, The Battle Against Instrumental Virtuosity, 86-87.
28 John Daverio, Schumanns Systems of Musical Fragments and Witz,
in Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology (New
York: Schirmer, 1993), 49-88; Erika Reiman, Schumanns Piano Cycles
and the Novels of Jean Paul (Rochester: University of Rochester
Press, 2004). For two other examples of this literary approach to
Schumanns music, see Laura Tunbridge, Schumanns Late Style
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Berthold Hoeckner,
Schumann and Romantic Distance, Journal of the American
Musicological Society 50, no. 1 (1997): 55-132.
-
Introduction 14
compositional genesis and does not consider what kind of
virtuosity (indeed, what kind of
virtuoso) these works stage for a concert audience and how they
fit into the broader
virtuosity discourse.29 The commonly held view of Schumann
remains that of a
philosophically inclined composera musician of solitary
intimacy, to use Roland
Barthess wordswho wrote for a rarefied audience and whose most
famous work
exemplifies Romantic ideals of Innigkeit.30 All features would
seem to fit ill with the
extroversion of virtuoso instrumental music.
My project seeks a richer understanding of Schumanns engagement
with
virtuosity. In the chapters that follow, I explore the worldly
and aesthetic issues that
virtuosity raised for Schumann, how they informed the analytical
points and rhetoric of
his reviews, and how they shaped the compositional strategies he
employed in his
virtuosic works. Rather than passing judgment on Schumanns
approach and casting him
as either crusader or spoilsport, I am more interested in
illuminating how Schumann
contributed to one of the most exciting musical developments of
his time in ways that
responded to the ideology, aspirations, and perceived needs of a
particular musical
culture.
I argue that Schumann attempted to write (as a composer) and
promote (as a
critic) virtuoso music that answered the imperatives of Romantic
aesthetics and that
staged virtuoso performance as serious music. In this sense,
Schumann regarded
virtuosity as simultaneously problematic and indispensable, as
potentially a threat from
29 See, for example, Claudia Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the
Piano Concerto (New York: Routledge, 2005); Linda Correll Roesner,
The Autograph of Schumanns Piano Sonata in F Minor, Opus 14, The
Musical Quarterly 61, no. 1 (1975): 98-130; Damien Ehrhardt, La
variation chez Robert Schumann: Forme et evolution (PhD diss.,
Universit Paris-Sorbonne, 1997). 30 Roland Barthes, Loving
Schumann, in The Responsibility of Forms, trans. Richard Howard
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1985), 293.
-
Introduction 15
within but also as a potentially productive, valuable, and
attractive component of the
culture of serious music. His well-known anti-virtuosity
invective actually targets a
specific style of bravura music that Jim Samson has termed
postclassical.31 Such
musicexemplified by the works of Carl Czerny and Henri
Herzenjoyed
overwhelming popularity in nineteenth-century Europe and
generally featured a
deliberately simple harmonic and phraseological idiom,
transparent textures, a melodic
style derived from Italianate opera, and structures (including a
potpourri-like approach to
formal design) designed to present a pleasing variety of
contrasting material. The critical
defenders of postclassical virtuosity embraced an aesthetic that
regarded virtuoso
showpieces primarily as vehicles for accessible entertainment, a
view of musics social
role at odds with Schumanns.
But virtuosity also represented a vital part of Schumanns
project to shape musical
taste in Germany. It was in this sense a pressing and
significant rather than a guilty
fascination. The striving for individual distinction that drove
the virtuoso scene,
Schumanns writings suggested, could be harnessed to serve his
own interest in
convention-defying originality. His review of Ferdinand Hillers
etudes, for example,
directly attributes their original style to Hillers immersion in
the Paris virtuoso scene and
exposure to cutting-edge trends in pianism.32 The drive to
astonish audiences that
motivated virtuoso performer-composers also resonated with
Schumanns transcendence-
seeking aesthetic. To cite but one of many examples we will
encounter, Schumanns
1834 review of violinist Henri Vieuxtemps uses mystical imagery
when it reminisces
about hearing Paganini perform his own compositions. Even though
the Vieuxtemps
31 For one summary of the postclassical style, see Jim Samson,
Virtuosity and the Musical Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 19. 32 I will discuss Hiller and Schumanns review of
his etudes at length in Chapter 2.
-
Introduction 16
review appeared three years after Schumann attended Paganinis
concert, it reveals that
the Italian virtuosos ability to entrance audiences and whip
them into states of ecstasy
continued to impress the young composer-critic:
How he cast his magnetic chains into the listeners lightly and
invisibly, so that the latter swayed from one side to the other!
Now the rings became more wondrous, more convoluted; the people
thronged together more tightly, now he interlaced them more
strongly until they gradually melted together.33
And, not least, virtuoso performers and music offered a link to
a vast public of
concertgoers and amateur performers, the very public that
Schumann was attempting to
reach and influence. His writings thus argue for a symbiotic, if
still idealized, relationship
between virtuoso performers and the institutions and repertoire
he regarded as serious.
His review of star Parisian pianist Marie Pleyels 1839 Leipzig
concert, for example,
acknowledges the role of the virtuoso in forming public taste
when he writes, This most
interesting woman willthrough her preference for the noblest in
her art, further its
dissemination.34
Schumanns own showpieces musically work out these strategies for
turning the
means of virtuosity to what he considered serious,
transcendental ends. His etudes,
concertos, and variation sets attempt to poeticize and elevate
virtuosity through a
variety of strategies, including musical realizations of
literature- and philosophy-derived
metaphors for transcendence such as Witz and the sublime, the
transformation of
postclassical conventions, and allusions to works by canonized
composers. Schumanns
33 Wie er nun locker, kaum sichtbar seine Magnetketten in die
Massen warf, so schwankten diese herber und hinber. Nun wurden die
Ringe wunderbarer, verschlungener; die Menschen drngten sich enger,
nun schnrte er immer fester an, bis sie nach und nach wie zu einem
einzigen zusammenschmolzen, dem Meister sich gleichwiegend gegenber
zu stellen. GS 1:15. 34 Die hchst interessante Frau wird berall
durch ihr viel erfreuen und, mehr als das, durch ihre Vorliebe fr
das Edelste ihrer Kunst zu dessen Verbreitung mitwirken. Ibid.,
1:444.
-
Introduction 17
concern for the virtuosos role in musical life not only informed
his writings on
contemporary pianists but also shaped his compositional approach
to the concerto, a
genre that, by its very nature, stages the virtuoso as part of a
community of musicians and
can frame and present virtuosity in a variety of ways.
Considering this aspect of Schumanns activities reveals the
complexity and
breadth of the virtuosity discourse itself. Present-day
musicians, when they speak of
good or true virtuosity, usually mean a performers ability to
play expressively or
insightfully in the midst of extraordinary technical
difficulties or a performers
commitment to the more serious corners of the standard
repertoire. For Schumann and
other nineteenth-century critics and musicians, virtuosity meant
more specific things than
sheer difficulty and flashiness, and poetic virtuosity more than
the ability to play
sensitively: both were multifaceted phenomena and categories
that possessed cultural,
philosophical, institutional, and musically concrete dimensions.
Virtuosity entailed
musical conventions and generic contractsconcertgoers and
amateur players expected
the spectacle of virtuosic display to unfold in certain ways and
according to certain
aesthetic orientations. It also involved normative career
trajectories and performance
practices that many composer-performers followed and the public
images that virtuosos
cultivated (features that, in turn, affected what kind of music
these virtuosos wrote).
Different virtuosos and styles of virtuosity also invoked
broader issues of nationality,
class, and gender. Schumanns writings and compositions
incorporate all of these facets
into his critique of postclassical virtuosity as well as his
ideal of serious, poetic virtuosity.
-
Introduction 18
Beyond SchumannThe Nineteenth-Century German Project to Elevate
Virtuosity
Ultimately, Schumanns engagement with virtuosity offers us
insight into a story that
extends beyond one composer and his lifetime. Musicological and
more broadly
humanistic interest in virtuosity has flourished in recent
years. The resulting studies,
however, have focused on virtuosity primarily as a French
phenomenon, not as a German
one. Scholars of virtuosity have written extensively on Parisian
figures and have rarely
engaged with musicians active in Germany and committed to the
ideology of serious
music. Nicol Paganini and, to an even greater extent, Franz
Liszt alone often stand in for
the phenomenon of nineteenth-century virtuosity altogether. For
example, Richard
Lepperts article on virtuosity for the 1999 collection of essays
Piano Roles focuses on
Liszt and briefly mentions Thalberg.35 Richard Taruskins
Virtuosos chapter for the
nineteenth-century volume of his Oxford History of Western Music
mentions piano
concertos by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Mozart but gives pride
of place to Paganinis
caprices and variation sets and Liszts Piano Concerto No. 1 and
Remiscences of Don
Juan. Robert and Clara Schumann appear in the chapter entitled
Critics. Taruskin
acknowledges that the Schumanns may not have always lived up to
their own strictures
against virtuosity and popularity but assumes that both held
basically anti-virtuosity
and anti-popularity views.36 Studies dedicated to virtuosity
have at times sought to offer
35 Richard Leppert, The Concert and the Virtuoso, 184-224. For
two other studies of virtuosity that stress the French scene, see
Susan Bernstein, Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century: Performing
Music and Language in Heine, Liszt, and Baudelaire (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1998), and Paul Metzner, Crescendo of
the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during
the Age of Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998). Gillen DArcy Wood has considered what he calls
virtuosophobia in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries: his chapters on nineteenth-century instrumental music
feature Jane Austens musical experience and Franz Liszts English
tour. Romanticism and Music Culture in Britain, 1770-1840: Virtue
and Virtuosity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 36
Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3,
Music in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), 251-92.
-
Introduction 19
alternatives to historiographical narratives founded on the
study of canonic, most often
German musical works and to reveal the significance of
now-marginalized composers
and repertoire as well as the roles of iconic performers and
their public images. In the
process, though, they have generally not considered how their
insights might transform
our thinking on composers and works that a Romantic-influenced
tradition has placed on
the serious, non-virtuosic side of a binary.37 When the topic of
virtuosity and Germany
does emerge, studiessuch as Gramits aforementioned bookgenerally
stress the anti-
virtuoso polemic. As a result, an overdrawn distinction between
serious Germany and
Paris, the capital of virtuosity, which many nineteenth-century
writers were indeed
eager to make, has continued to structure present-day
scholarship, albeit for reasons that
now stem from widespread interest in the Parisian musical scene
and a desire to
complicate historiographical tradition rather than from German
cultural nationalism.
Unacknowledged is the insightand unexplored are the sources that
revealthat
the broadest pattern in the German Romantic project did not
involve the suppression or
stigmatization of virtuosity as much as it did a range of
attempts to channel it in ways that
Schumann and his contemporaries regarded as elevating. Two
recent studies of Liszt
have begun to explore this more complex side of the virtuosity
discourse as it applies to
one (sometime) Parisian pianist-composer. Gooleys The Virtuoso
Liszt has discussed
Liszts effort to establish himself as both virtuoso and serious
artist during his touring
years (particularly with German audiences), and Samsons
Virtuosity and the Musical 37 Alexander Rehding credits the
increase of scholarly interest in virtuosity in part to the
deconstruction of the idealist work-oriented concept of music.
Review: The Virtuoso Liszt, by Dana Gooley, in Journal of the
American Liszt Society 58 (2007): 69. Jim Samson speculates about
the possibility to writing an alternate history of music based not
on works by on practices (such as the salon and the subscription
concert) and instruments (the operatic voice or the violin).
Virtuosity and the Music Work, 22-23. In general, the burgeoning of
interest in virtuosity has produced a boom in Liszt studies and
even, one could argue, contributed to the rehabilitation of Liszts
virtuosic performances and showpieces as worthy of scholarly
study.
-
Introduction 20
Work has considered how different versions of the Transcendental
Etudes interact with
Romantic notions of the work-concept, originality, and poetic
content. My exploration of
Schumann draws upon some of these two scholars insights and
extends them to new
areas. Strategies that Schumann employed in his own music (and
that he identified in
music by other composers) differ substantially from the Lisztian
and reveal the diverse
means by which musicians attempted to elevate virtuosity.
Schumann also reviewed
figures ranging from international superstars to virtuosos
famous only in Northern
Germany. His work thus shows that this project involved not only
the highly ambitious
and cosmopolitan Liszt but also a generation of musicians who
inherited the Romantic
attraction to and ambivalence toward virtuosity.
Beyond the more extreme voices of the anti-virtuoso polemic
(though certainly
under their influence), I would propose, a complex process
unfolded in which composers,
performers, and critics carved out their artistic identities and
professional trajectories by
creatively navigating a perceived tension between seriousness
and showiness. Because of
the public fascination and substantial market that virtuosic
music commanded, this
process represents a particularly significant but
less-understood aspect of the history of
self-consciously serious music. Two events that transformed the
nineteenth-century
musical landscape represented important stages in this story,
even if they have rarely
been described as such: the German reception of Paganini in the
1830s as a
transcendental, borderline-supernatural artist and the
mid-century rise of the repertory
recital and its concomitant view of the virtuoso as a reverent
interpreter.38 During
Schumanns career, which fell roughly between these points, the
interaction of virtuosity
and the culture of serious music shaped compositions, writings,
and performing activities 38 On the latter, see William Weber, The
Great Transformation of Musical Taste, 245-54.
-
Introduction 21
in a wide variety of ways. The actors involved included critics
such as A. B. Marx and
Ignaz Castelli, composer-performers such as Felix Mendelssohn,
Clara Wieck, Franz
Liszt, Adolph von Henselt, and Wilhelm Taubert, and salon
patrons and amateur
musicians such as Henriette Voigt and Baron Ignaz von Fricken.
Briefly citing a few
episodes from this side of the virtuosity discourse reveals how
it intertwines divergent
opinions about whether certain virtuosos qualify as serious and
about the larger role of
virtuosity in musical life.
In 1841, several popular pianist-composers contributed to a
volume of Dix
morceaux brillants, profits of which went to fund a Beethoven
monument in
Bonnone instance of the appeal of virtuosity literally
supporting the veneration
of canonized masterworks. Whereas most of the contributors
offered light or
lyrical showpieces (such as Kalkbrenners Lecho! Scherzo brillant
and
Thalbergs Romance sans paroles, Op. 41, no. 1), two of them
composed
virtuosic compositions that aim for a level of seriousness,
learnedness, and sheer
difficulty commensurate with Beethovens monumental stature.
Felix
Mendelssohn offered his Variations srieuses, Op. 54. As R. Larry
Todd and
Christa Jost have pointed out, Mendelssohns title pointedly
contrasts his piece
with the variations brillantes common in the mid-century salon
repertoire, as
does his pieces severe, contrapuntal theme and occasional
references to Baroque
style.39 Franz Liszt sent in a virtuosic transcription of the
second-movement
39 R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 414; Christa Jost, In Mutual Reflection:
Historical, Biographical, and Structural Aspects of Mendelssohns
Variations srieuses, in Mendelssohn Studies, ed. R. Larry Todd
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 38-39.
-
Introduction 22
funeral march from Beethovens Eroica Symphony that, as Jonathan
Kregor has
shown, simultaneously aims for fidelity to Beethovens text and a
degree of
pianistic difficulty unprecedented in piano transcriptions of
symphonies.40
Even the most vociferous anti-virtuoso critics evinced a complex
attitude toward
virtuosity when pressed. In 1840 and 1841, Eduard Krger, the
author of Das
Virtuosenkonzert, engaged in a debate about virtuosity in the
Neue Zeitschrift
with composer-critic Herrmann Hirschbach. In August and
September 1840, the
Zeitschrift printed an article by Krger titled (somewhat like
the aforementioned
Signale article) ber Virtuosenunfug.41 Hirschbach responded in
October with
a short article that called Krger a tradition-bound,
anti-virtuoso Philistine. The
threat to serious, German music, Hirschbach argues, is not the
public fascination
for virtuosity itself, but rather the fact that composers have
not used these
technical developments for truly original works of art. The
violin repertory,
Hirschbach complains, has no equivalent of the Beethoven piano
works. He cites
the prevalence of bravura variation sets as evidence of this
trend and calls the
genre a poison shrub corrupting the promised land of music.42
Krger waited
until April 1841 to respond. When he did, he maintained that he
was of course not
opposed to virtuosity per se but believed that virtuosos should
renounce vanity,
40 Jonathan Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 143-48. 41 Eduard Krger, ber
Virtuosenunfug, NZfM 13, no. 17 (August 26, 1840): 65-66; no. 18
(August 29, 1840): 69-70; 13, no. 19 (September 2, 1840): 73-75;
no. 20 (September 5, 1840): 77-79; no. 21 (September 9, 1840):
81-83; no. 22 (September 12, 1840): 85-86. 42 Heinrich Hirschbach,
Antiphilistrses, NZfM 13, no. 30 (October 10, 1840): 119-20. Unsere
Kunst ist ein Wunderland, unergrndlich wie die Ewigkeit; da gibt es
nur einen Giftstrauch: Tanz- und Variationenmusik.
-
Introduction 23
promote poetic artworks, and learn to compose away from their
instruments.43
In contrast to Hirschbach, Krger cites already-canonized
masterworks as
exemplars of good virtuosity: Beethovens symphonies, Bachs cello
sonatas,
and (ridiculing Hirschbachs dismissal of the variation genre)
variation sets by the
Viennese classicists. Not content to let the debate end there,
Krger issued yet
another multi-part article on virtuosity in May of that year,
the aforementioned
Das Virtuosenkonzert. In 1843, Hirschbach weighed in again on
the issue of
virtuosity with his article Componist und Virtuos.44 Schumann
probably printed
these substantial articles on virtuosity in the Zeitschrift less
to chastise a virtuoso-
loving public than because of the variety of perspectives they
offered on the topic
of serious virtuosity, the importance of virtuosity in musical
life, and (not least,
surely) the tendency of virtuosity to spark intellectually
sophisticated and
passionate debate.
Adolph von Henselt, who enjoyed a short but stellar career as a
salon pianist in
Germany before moving to St. Petersburg and working as an
administrator in the
Russian conservatory system, often appears in the German musical
press as an
antidote to Thalberg, Liszt, and Chopin, one who embodied what
the writers
considered wholesome, introverted, German qualities. In his
footnote to another
writers Neue Zeitschrift essay that compared Liszt, Thalberg,
Henselt, and Clara
Wieck, Schumann himself singled out Henselt as the best
composer.45 As late as
1872, Wilhelm von Lenzs memoir about his personal encounters
with four major 43 Eduard Krger, Odioses, NZfM 14, no. 33 (April
23, 1841): 133-34. 44 Heinrich Hirschbach, Componist und Virtuos,
NZfM 18, no. 30 (April 13, 1843): 119-20. 45 Schumanns footnote to
Liszt in Wien, NZfM 8, no. 34 (April 27, 1838): 136.
-
Introduction 24
piano virtuosi (Liszt, Chopin, Tausig, and Henselt) ascribes
such virtues as
German youthfulness, truth, and depth to Henselt.46
Eduard Hanslick incorporated the topic of serious virtuosity
into his promotion of
Brahms and critique of the New German School. Hanslicks rave
review of
Brahmss Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor credits the composer
with turning the
concertoconventionally associated with light, appealing
virtuosityinto a
display of pathos. Hanslick writes that the storms of
[Beethovens] Ninth
Symphony run through the first movement of the concerto and
imagines Brahms
finding an exalted union with Beethoven in this virtuosic
work.47 In a different
article, Hanslick claimed that Liszts early production of opera
fantasies and
transcriptions revealed his insufficient powers of invention and
foreshadowed
what Hanslick described as the vapid quality of Liszts later
orchestral works.48
It was this turn from a virtuoso scene dominated by
postclassical showpieces into one
where a self-consciously serious, German virtuosity achieved
prominence in concert life
that Schumann promoted in his writings and for which he composed
his showpieces.
46 Wilhelm von Lenz, Die grossen Pianoforte-Virtuosen unserer
Zeit aus persnlicher Bekanntschaft (Berlin: B. Behr, 1872), 85-111.
47 In dem erste Satze des Brahmsschen Concertes grollen die
Gewitter der Neunten Symphonie. Eduard Hanslick, Concerte,
Componisten, und Virtuosen der letzten fnfzehn Jahre: 1870-1885
(Berlin: Allgemeine Verein fr Deutsche Literatur, 1886), 109-111.
48Eduard Hanslick, Liszts Symphonic Poems (1857), in Music
Criticisms 1846-99, trans. Henry Pleasants, rev. ed. (Baltimore:
Penguin, 1963), 53.
-
Introduction 25
Chapter Overview
Chapter One: Schumanns Critique of Postclassical Virtuosity
The first chapter of this study considers Schumanns writings on
postclassical bravura
music. I argue that Schumanns critique represented one side in a
confrontation between
two opposing views of virtuositys role in musical lifeindeed,
two opposing views of
how music should secure a vast middle-class audience.
Postclassical pianist-composers
including Czerny and Herz as well as Frdric Kalkbrenner,
Theodore Dhler, and Franz
Hntenhave not fared well since the 1830s and 40s, and the
formation of the musical
canon has largely excluded them from concert life. In the
nineteenth century, though,
they enjoyed not only commercial success (even hegemony) but
also the support of
several powerful critical voices, notably Gottfried Wilhelm
Fink, editor of the Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung, and bestselling composer and pedagogue
Carl Czerny himself.
Writings by these figures reveal a complex aesthetic that
regarded accessibility and
elegance as markers of musical excellence.
Reviews of postclassical showpieces by Schumann and other Neue
Zeitschrift
writers reflect a Romantic unease with music designed
specifically for light diversion.
Schumann himself discusses the conventions of postclassical
music while also employing
rhetoric that invokes national, class, and gender stereotypes.
Most importantly, in an age
when many virtuoso pianists based their activities in Paris and
cultivated auras of high-
society glamor, Schumann appeals to nationalistic and
anti-aristocratic sentiments
common among middle-class, liberal Germans. I conclude with a
discussion of a real
salon hosted by Henriette Voigt that Schumann attended during
the 1830s. Schumanns
-
Introduction 26
essay on this salon portrayed the kind of concert-going,
piano-playing amateurs he
envisioned as an audience for serious, poetic showpieces.
Chapter Two: Virtuosity and the Schumannian Poetic
As an alternative to the postclassical aesthetic and its
emphasis on recreational use-value,
Schumann advocated one that he described as poetic. Schumanns
concept of the poetic
presents a constellation of interrelated musical concepts, all
of which share a goal of
using music as a path to inner, transcendent experience that
lifts one beyond the
everyday. These concepts range from an overall emphasis on
originality to compositional
procedures derived from literary techniques. The existing
scholarship on the
Schumannian poetic excludes works in virtuoso genres. In this
chapter, though, I argue
that Schumann attempted to write and promote virtuoso showpieces
that could serve as
vehicles for poetic experience. My discussion centers on essays
and compositions that
date from the formative years of Schumanns career: his 1831
review of Chopins L ci
darem la mano Variations, Op. 2; the Abegg Variations, Op. 1;
the Fantaisies et
finale (an 1835 salon showpiece that Schumann, at the last
minute, withheld from
publication and, in 1837, reworked as the tudes symphoniques,
Op. 13); his 1835 review
of Ferdinand Hillers Etudes, Op. 15; and the coda of his
Toccata, Op. 7. The
compositions transform the generic features of postclassical
showpieces in ways that
evoke nineteenth-century metaphors for musical transcendence,
while the reviews read
such combinations into works by other composers. In doing so,
they reveal that the poetic
did not offer Schumann a refuge from flashy, appealing, or
saleable music, but rather a
way to realize an ideal that echoes throughout early Romantic
literature and philosophy:
-
Introduction 27
the giving of transcendental, inward-looking touches to the
accoutrements of ordinary
life, in this case musical genres that figured prominently in
everyday listening and music-
making.
A Word about Schumanns Borrowings
Some of my points in Chapters 2 and 3 involve quotations,
allusions, and a potential case
of structural modeling in four of Schumanns 1830s piano works.
Schumanns undeniable
penchant for intertextuality has served scholars as a valuable
interpretive window even as
it has inspired divergent approaches and, in some cases,
outright perplexity. The diversity
of readings often arises from nineteenth-century sources curious
documentary silence
about many of these quotationsincluding some quotations now
acknowledged as
present or even obvious. The field of musical-borrowing studies
in general thrives on the
question of just how much evidence is needed before we can
accept a quotation as
intentional and meaningful. In the case of Schumann, for
example, R. Larry Todd takes a
conservative, skeptical approach and warns against becoming
ensnared in specious
intertextual webs.49 Christopher Reynolds identifies networks of
allusions more freely
and argues persuasively for a tradition of concealment that
spanned the nineteenth-
century. Part of the game of music, in Reynoldss view, was the
scattering of not-
altogether-obvious references and hints: missing them did not
necessarily detract from
the experience of listening, but awareness became one of the
pleasures of
connoisseurship.50 In fact, I shall argue in various contexts
(sometimes but usually not
49 R. Larry Todd, On Quotation in Schumanns Music, in Schumann
and his World, ed. R. Larry Todd (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1994), see especially 86-92. 50 Christopher Reynolds,
Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century
Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), see
especially 142-3, 164-68. For an early study of
-
Introduction 28
related to borrowing) that Schumann adapted virtuoso figuration
and generic codes to
create concealment where postclassical works stressed clarity
and accessibility.
The four heretofore unrecognized or at least unexplored
quotations and allusions I
will discuss enjoy a wide range of evidential support. Schumann
actually pointed out one
in a published article (a nod to the funeral march from
Beethovens Eroica in
Schumanns Paganini Etude Op. 10, no. 4), and one of his Neue
Zeitschrift reviewers
suggested another (a possible connection between the Eroica
finale and the tudes
symphoniques, Op. 13).51 Contemporary reviews hinted at a third
case (allusions to the
Eroica first movement in the Toccata, Op. 7) but remained silent
about a fourth (a
quotation from Marschners Der Templer und die Jdin in the
Fantaisies et finale). All
four cases, though, also find support in strong contextual
evidence, including Schumanns
contact with published scores of the relevant models, his own
borrowing practices (as
shown through well-established instances of citation and
allusion), nineteenth-century
generic conventions, and internal musical evidence. Just as
importantly, these
borrowings reveal themselves to be meaningful aspects of the
pieces that complement
other evidence surrounding Schumanns approach to virtuosity.52
Indeed, although
Schumann scholars have long pointed to intertextuality as one
way in which this music borrowing, modeling, and allusion in
nineteenth-century music (though one that uses Harold Blooms work
on the anxiety of influence as a framework rather than
nineteenth-century allusive practices and that concerns itself more
with the issue of influence than with that of allusion), see Kevin
Korsyn, Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence, Music Analysis
10, nos. 1-2 (1991): 3-72. 51 Ironically, the Eroica nod that
Schumann himself acknowledged is the borrowing I will discuss that,
without the documentation, would be most easily overlooked as
coincidental. The latter case, because it involves a case of
structural modeling rather than direct citation, demands to be
understood as necessarily speculative, despite the suggestion of
the NZfM critic. 52 My approach is indebted to J. Peter Burkholders
articles on borrowing and the methodology they propose for
substantiating the intended-ness and meaningful-ness of a
borrowing. See, for example, J. Peter Burkholder, Borrowing, The
New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited
by Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan and New York: Grove, 2001)
4:5-8. On Schumanns quotations as part of his systems of fragments,
see John Daverio, Schumanns Systems of Musical Fragments and Witz,
in Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology (New
York: Schirmer, 1993), 59-61.
-
Introduction 29
reaches for the poetic or at least the designedly mystifying,
the allusions I identify all
contribute specifically to the composers project of elevating
instrumental virtuosity.
Chapter Three: Schumann, Virtuosity, and the Rhetoric of the
Sublime
Scholarship on musical manifestations of the sublime has focused
on symphonies and
large choral pieces (particularly Beethovens). Robert Schumanns
work, though, reveals
that nineteenth-century musicians also engaged with contemporary
thinking on the
sublime through virtuosity. During the 1830s, I argue, Schumann
used his writings to
bestow the distinction of sublimity on certain virtuoso works
and composed showpieces
of his own that contemporary critics described as sublime.
According to Schumannand
reviewers of some of his 1830s showpiecesthe extraordinarily
complex figuration and
daunting physical feats of virtuosic music could evoke the
overwhelming force, heroic
struggle, and sensory overload that represented hallmarks of the
sublime. For the
nineteenth-century imagination, the sublime combined
astonishment with uplift. Courting
the distinction of sublimity thus offered Schumann and other
composers and performers
of showpieces a strategy for elevating virtuosity as
serious.
Schumanns approach to sublime virtuosity differed significantly
from Liszts.
As critic, Schumann lauded works and performances by Liszt,
Chopin, and Leipzig
composer-pianist Ludwig Schuncke as sublime, each for unique
reasons. Moreover,
several previously unexamined reviews locate sublimity in three
of Schumanns 1830s
showpieces and offer new insight into their styles and
structures. Writings on the finale of
the Concert sans orchestre read like textbook descriptions of
what Kant called the
dynamic sublime: they evoke cataclysmic natural phenomena to
illustrate the finales
-
Introduction 30
metrically and harmonically dissonant virtuosic writing, as well
the way its idiosyncratic,
rondo-like form undercuts the periodic tonal and lyrical repose
typical of bravura rondos.
Reviews of Schumanns Toccata and tudes symphoniques stress the
sublimes heroic
connotations and frequently draw comparisons between these works
and Beethovens.
They point to waysheretofore unacknowledged by scholarsin which
these two pieces
infuse conventional virtuosic genres and figurational styles
with compositional
procedures and musical gestures derived from Beethovens Eroica
Symphony.
Schumann thus invokes Beethovens inherent association with
sublimity as well as the
Eroicas heroic plot. In all cases, Schumann and his reviewers
suggested that
supposedly sublime characteristics rendered showpieces more
transcendental or noble
than conventional virtuosic works.
Chapter Four: Schumanns Concertos: Staging the Virtuoso in the
Arena of Serious
Music
Discussion of the larger virtuosity discourse has remained
curiously absent from studies
of Schumanns concertos. In my concluding chapter, I consider
ways in which four
Schumann concertosthe Piano Concerto, Op. 54, the Introduction
and Allegro
Appassionato, Op. 92, the Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op.
134, and the violin
Phantasie, Op. 131stage the soloist and present him or her as
both poetically virtuosic
and member of a com