By Lucy Caplan
Lucy Caplan is Assistant Professor of Music at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her first book, Dreaming in Ensemble: How Black Artists Transformed American Opera, will be published by Harvard University Press in February 2025.
In February 1840, Robert Schumann reflected on the pleasures of songwriting in a letter to his fiancée, Clara Wieck. “It is music of an entirely different kind which doesn’t have to pass through the fingers,” he mused, “far more melodious and direct.” Having shown a childhood talent for both singing and playing the piano, Schumann focused his early compositional efforts on both lieder and solo piano pieces. In his twenties, he turned largely to piano music, exploring more virtuosic forms like sonatas and concertos, and tried his hand at orchestral music. But around 1840, there bloomed what he called “a rich harvest of songs”: settings of individual texts and poems by a wide range of authors, from Shakespeare to Hans Christian Andersen.
Schumann’s turn toward vocal composition enabled him to cultivate his myriad artistic interests. He embraced his long-established love of literature, electing to set poetry that he admired deeply. (He was an experienced amateur poet, who had at one point debated whether to pursue a career in literature or in music.) His fondness for beautiful lyrics led him to write many song cycles, since the form allowed for the development of larger-scale narratives created through the accumulation of several related texts. And as his comments to Clara suggest, he also celebrated the genre’s tendency toward lovely, linear melody and emotional candor. The many songs on this evening’s program—all composed between 1840 and 1850—showcase these qualities, offering a panoramic sense of Schumann’s expertise and love for the beauty of the piano and the human voice.
Robert Schumann, Fünf Liede, Op. 40 (1840)
Hans Christian Andersen was still a young, up-and-coming author in 1840; his first book of fairy tales had been published just a few years prior, and he was better known for his short stories and novels. Schumann, recognizing the quality of his poetry, decided to set several of his poems to music in 1840. Working with a translation by Adelbert von Chamisso, Schumann selected a group of five poems. When he later sent a copy of the work to Andersen, he acknowledged that the settings “may seem strange to you”—but “so at first did your poems to me.”
That strangeness manifests as emotional topsy-turviness, with each song offering a very different affect. The appealing whimsy of the first song, “Märzveilchen,” gives way to “Muttertraum,” which opens with stark arpeggios and a descending bass line in the piano. It becomes increasingly eerie, with both singer and pianist sinking to the bottom of their respective ranges. “Der Soldat” offers appropriately tormented music for a text which tells of a soldier who is part of a firing squad forced to execute a dear friend. “Der Spielmann” describes an unhappy wedding—an odd choice of subject matter, given Schumann’s own imminent nuptials. The set closes with “Verratene Liebe,” a charming piece which sets Chamisso’s translation of a text by the French writer Claude Charles Fariel.
Liederkreis, Op. 39 (1840)
Clara Wieck Schumann chose most of the poems that comprise Liederkreis, a selection of texts by Joseph von Eichendorff focused on themes and images from the natural world. In a letter to Clara, Schumann described the music as his “most profoundly Romantic” composition thus far, also assuring her that “much of you is embedded” in the songs. Like the best Romantic music, the twelve songs of the cycle manage to convey both sublime grandeur and intimacy. “Im der Fremde,” for instance, juxtaposes an expansive, rippling accompaniment with a starkly simple vocal line. In “Waldesgespräch,” which portrays a conversation between a hunter and a seductive forest sprite, a heroic opening figure voiced in parallel thirds is soon disturbed by a modulation in key and a highly ornamented, chromatic melody. A sense of peace emanates from the piano’s gently pulsing sixteenth notes in “Mondnacht,” perfectly conveying the serenity of a romantic, moonlit night. The bright major tonality of “Wehmut” betrays the occasional flash of pathos when the singer lingers on a non-diatonic note, but quickly returns to its mood of overall serenity. The final song, “Frühlingsnacht,” is also the most virtuosic. Bustling triplets in the piano evoke springtime’s buzzing energy, while the singer bounds from low to high registers. After such an outburst of energy, the cycle comes to a close with two reserved chords.
Drei Gesänge, Op. 83 (1850)
While scholars have documented many details of Schumann’s personal and musical life extensively, the origins of this set of songs remain somewhat opaque. Whereas many of his earlier works set several texts by the same poet or were organized around a clear theme, this set has a more scattered genesis. Schumann composed them rapidly, in the span of just a few days, yet they share few musical similarities. The first song, “Resignation,” may have been written by an art gallerist named Julius Buddeus, though its provenance is uncertain. It is both formally and harmonically adventurous: the piano interludes between verses are of irregular length, and there are frequent shifts of key. “Die Blume der Ergebung,” by contrast, is more traditional, with a pattern of consistent sixteenth notes in the piano. Throughout, there is a lovely sense of question-and-answer dialogue between voice and piano, with melodic lines that overlap in an intimate, almost playful style. The third song, “Der Ensiedler,” sounds completely unlike either of its predecessors. Its chordal accompaniment and rhythmically square vocal line instill it with a stern, even archaic sensibility; in both text and music, we move here from the realm of unrequited love to something more transcendent, even divine.
Romanzen und Balladen, Op. 53 (1840)
By the end of 1840, Schumann had composed close to 125 songs—an extraordinary outpouring of music which would lead him to deem this period his Liederjahr, or year of song. The final published collection of the year was Op. 53, a group of three songs united by shared themes of love and connection. The first, “Blondels Lied,” tells the tale of a medieval minstrel singing to a beloved king. A warmly melodic vocal line, often doubled by the piano, declaims the story by way of a simple, elegant setting. “Loreley” is among Schumann’s very shortest songs, lasting for barely a minute. Its brevity fits its content—a voice calling out to an unknown listener to “remember me,” a fleeting sentiment that threatens to be overtaken by the ocean’s waves. Subtle variations in tempo, especially the frequent ritardandos, evoke the narrator’s uncertainty.
The final song, “Der arme Peter,” is a tripartite work organized in distinct sections. It begins with a rustic, triple-meter tune in which the “speechless and still” Peter observes a seemingly happy wedding, wracked with despair over having lost the love of his life to another man. Next, he details his extreme pain with quasi-operatic expressivity, an initial burst of rapid-fire anger devolving into low, elongated cries. Finally, the perspective switches to that of an onlooker who sees Peter staggering past to the sound of a solemn, funereal procession.
Sechs Gedichte und Requiem, Op. 90 (1850)
Schumann was an admirer of the Austrian poet Nickolaus Lenau, perhaps considering him a kindred spirit due to their shared Romantic aesthetics, penchant for melancholy artwork, and personal struggles with depression. In 1850, he composed five settings of texts by Lenau; then, under the impression that Lenau had died, he added a final “Requiem” to the set. Truth proved stranger than fiction: while Lenau was in fact still alive while Schumann wrote the piece, he died later that year—which Schumann learned on the day of the piece’s first performance.
The set begins with the vibrantly energetic “Lied eines Schmiedes,” which features heavy, accented rhythms that contrast sharply with the lilting elegance of “Meine Rose.” “Kommen und Scheiden” evokes Lenau’s classic melancholy, with many phrases in both piano and voice ending with a downward fall. The final lines are sung pianissimo, and the piano offers a hushed conclusion in response. “Die Sennin” begins with renewed energy, evoking a pastoral scene through its combination of a bass line low in the piano’s range and a cheery song above. “Einsamkeit,” which begins in the far-flung key of E-flat minor and returns again and again to moments of striking but momentary dissonance, has a distant, even abstract affect. In “Der schwere Abend,” Schumann conveys the poem’s feeling of oppressive darkness through rhythmic uncertainty, setting slow duple and triple meters against one another and pausing often for moments of total silence. The concluding “Requiem” is an unabashed expression of grief. It begins modestly, but soon intensifies in volume and register. The contrast between the deliberate pacing of the vocal line and the tumultuous writing for the piano becomes more and more striking—until both musicians unite for a peaceful, pious conclusion.
