Notes for: July 17, 2007
Schumann had the idiosyncratic habit of concentrating, in any given year, on one particular kind of music. Thus, 1840 was “the year of song” during which he composed 140 of his 260 lieder, including his four greatest song cycles. In 1841 he tried orchestral writing, completing two symphonies and part of the piano concerto. Then came 1842, the year of chamber music, during which he composed his three string quartets, piano quartet and piano quintet, and the Fantasy Pieces for violin, cello and piano.
Schumann took up chamber music as a sort of self-administered psychological therapy. During the winter of 1841-42, his wife Clara and he undertook a joint concert tour of northern Germany, she as a piano virtuoso and he to oversee performances of his music. Unfortunately, her playing attracted more favorable attention than his music, and when she was invited to spend a month in Copenhagen in the spring, Robert, tired of playing second fiddle, returned home to Leipzig.
Clara’s visit to Copenhagen was a triumphant success, but for Robert the month of separation was a period of depression, an early phase of the mental illness that was eventually to drive him to an asylum. He was unable to compose and he over-indulged in beer and champagne; to make matters worse, his hostile father-in-law spread the rumor that the couple had broken up. To occupy his mind and lift his spirits, he launched into an intensive study of the chamber works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Clara returned home in April, but Robert continued his now compulsive digging into the chamber-music repertory and tried his hand at chamber-music composition.
Schumann started the Piano Quartet, Opus 47, on October 24 immediately after finishing the Piano Quintet, Opus 44, and completed it a month later. It was not published until 1845, however, explaining the gap between the opus numbers. It has never been as popular as the quintet, possibly because the elimination of the second violin reduced the tonal brilliance of the ensemble and added to the dominance of the piano. However, it is a work of considerable charm and romantic melody.
The quartet opens with a slow and solemn introduction in which the piano six times raises an upward questioning phrase and the strings give a four-note response. With the start of the main allegro section, the strings’ response is converted into four arpeggio chords, and the piano expands them into the main theme. A few moments later, the cello offers a flowing variant of the theme, supported by the piano. Thus, we hear the theme in three different forms.
The piano introduces the second theme – a sharply rhythmed strain with a strong accent on the second beat, and this is immediately imitated by the strings. A return of the slow introduction ushers in a long and complex development section based mainly on the four notes of the main theme. Toward the movement’s end, another brief reference to the introduction leads to the coda, with the cello playing a completely new strain piu agitato (more agitated).
The second movement is the scherzo. Here we have an example of one of Schumann’s innovations – a second trio, enabling him to contrast two trios as well as each trio with the scherzo’s main section. In this case, the main section is marked by a murmuring staccato pattern; the first trio, by a melody of folk-like simplicity; and the second trio, by a series of syncopated chords with snatches of the main section.
In the slow movement, the cello offers one of Schumann’s most haunting melodies, which is then taken by the violin and varied by the piano. A middle section is in a contrasting contemplative mood. The opening section returns with the viola and violin sharing the melody before it is resumed by the cello. While the viola and violin are having their turn, the cellist is tuning his lowest string down from C to B flat to enable him to provide a deep B-flat sustained bass in the coda.
The exuberant finale opens with four chords, which will dominate much of the movement. The viola then announces the main theme, which is developed in a fugal manner. The movement is then characterized by alternating fugal and lyrical sections, and the quartet ends in a burst of contrapuntal energy.
Notes for: August 3, 2010
Schumann had the idiosyncratic habit of concentrating, in any given year, on one particular kind of music. Thus, 1840 was “the year of song”, during which he composed 140 of his 260 lieder, including his four greatest song cycles. In 1841 he tried orchestral writing, completing two symphonies and part of the piano concerto. Then came 1842, the year of chamber music, during which he composed his three string quartets, Piano Quartet, Piano Quintet, and the Fantasy Pieces for violin, cello and piano.
Schumann took up chamber music as a sort of self-administered psychological therapy. During the winter of 1841-42, his wife Clara and he undertook a joint concert tour of northern Germany, she as a piano virtuoso and he to oversee performances of his music. Unfortunately, her playing attracted more favorable attention than his music, and when she was invited to spend a month in Copenhagen in the spring, Robert, tired of playing second fiddle, returned home to Leipzig.
Clara’s visit to Copenhagen was a triumphant success, but for Robert the month of separation was a period of depression, an early phase of the mental illness that was eventually to drive him to an asylum. He was unable to compose, and he over-indulged in beer and champagne; to make matters worse, his hostile father-in-law spread the rumor that the couple had broken up. To occupy his mind and lift his spirits, he launched into an intensive study of the chamber works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Clara returned home in April, but Robert continued his now compulsive digging into the chamber-music repertory and tried his hand at composing chamber music himself.
Schumann started the Piano Quartet, Opus 47, on October 24 immediately after finishing the Piano Quintet, Opus 44, and completed it a month later. It was not published until 1845, however, explaining the gap between the opus numbers. It has never been as popular as the quintet, possibly because the elimination of the second violin reduced the tonal brilliance of the ensemble and added to the dominance of the piano. However, it is a work of considerable charm and romantic melody.
The quartet opens with a slow and solemn introduction in which the piano six times raises an upward questioning phrase and the strings give a four-note response. With the start of the main allegro section, the strings’ response is converted into four arpeggio chords, and the piano expands them into the main theme. A few moments later, the cello offers a flowing variant of the theme, supported by the piano. Thus, we hear the theme in three different forms.
The piano introduces the second theme – a sharply rhythmed strain with a strong accent on the second beat, and this is immediately imitated by the strings. A return of the slow introduction ushers in a long and complex development section based mainly on the four notes of the main theme. Toward the movement’s end, another brief reference to the introduction leads to the coda, with the cello playing a completely new strain piu agitato (more agitated).
The second movement is the scherzo. Here we have an example of one of Schumann’s innovations – a second trio, enabling him to contrast two trios as well as each trio with the scherzo’s main section. In this case, the main section is marked by a murmuring staccato pattern; the first trio by a melody of folk-like simplicity; and the second trio by a series of syncopated chords with snatches of the main section.
In the slow movement, the cello offers one of Schumann’s most haunting melodies, which is then taken by the violin and varied by the piano. A middle section is in a contrasting contemplative mood. The opening section returns with the viola and violin sharing the melody before it is resumed by the cello. While the viola and violin are having their turn, the cellist is tuning his lowest string down from C to B flat to enable him to provide a deep B-flat sustained bass in the coda.
The exuberant finale opens with four chords, which will dominate much of the movement. The viola then announces the main theme, which is developed in a fugal manner. The movement is then characterized by alternating fugal and lyrical sections, and the quartet ends in a burst of contrapuntal energy.
Notes for: July 24, 2018
After Beethoven, the question for 19th-century Romantic composers was what to do next. For Robert Schumann – whom Charles Rosen called “the most representative musical figure of central European Romanticism” – one answer was to pay homage, which he did in this Piano Quartet.
Schumann composed obsessively, one genre at a time. His pattern was to work in huge bursts of energy until, exhausted, he collapsed. In his twenties he focused almost exclusively on solo works for the piano. In 1840 – the year he married his great love Clara Wieck – he turned to song, within months composing one masterful song cycle after another. The year 1841 was devoted to large-scale orchestral works. In 1842 it was the turn of chamber music. While Clara was away on a concert tour, Robert, alone and depressed, passed the time at home studying the string quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and especially Beethoven, whose work particularly inspired him. Then, in a great creative burst, over the next six months he wrote three string quartets, his famous Piano Quintet, and this jewel of a Piano Quartet.
Beethoven’s influence is palpable from the very beginning of the impassioned, rhythmically driven E-flat Major Quartet. Not only is it in the same key as Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 127, but it begins the same way, with a slow, solemn Sostenuto that is followed by a lively Allegro whose first theme is derived from the introduction. The slower Sostenuto reappears twice in the movement, before the development, and again before the coda. Although the movement is in sonata form, Schumann twice bends the rules, focusing on just the first theme in the development section, and having the cello introduce a new theme in the coda.
While the first part of the nimble Scherzo shows the influence of Schumann’s friend Mendelssohn, the movement’s second trio, with its series of syncopated chords, is pure Schumann. His gift for song is on full display in the ardent Andante cantabile, during which each instrument gets its turn to sing. The movement ends with a strikingly original coda: the cellist tunes the low string down to B-flat, then sustains that tone as a low drone while the other instruments anticipate the opening theme of the last movement. This ebullient Finale demonstrates Schumann’s skill at contrapuntal writing as he spins out theme after wonderful theme – one fugal, another lyrical, a third recalling the Scherzo. It’s an exhilarating end to a quintessentially Romantic work, rich in grand themes, emotional expressiveness, and surprising developments. Clara Schumann, who played the piano part for the Quartet’s premiere, loved it, referring to it as “this beautiful work, which is so youthful and fresh; as if it were his first.”