Brahms and Schumann

John Lill - Piano

Programme

FANTASY AND VARIETY

Touchstones of nineteenth-century piano repertoire, Schumann’s Fantasie, Op.17 and Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op.24 are ready reminders of the wide scope of Romantic piano music. Both pieces are the work of composers in their mid-late twenties and well reflect their differing approaches when in the first flush of genius. While the Fantasie has Schumann giving full reign to caprice and fancy with the odd nod to older forms of keyboard music, Brahms’ Variations embrace the past wholeheartedly while developing into something quite novel.

Schumann’s Fantasie began life in the summer of 1836 in the form of a single movement composed as a lament at being forcibly parted from his beloved Clara Wieck. At sixteen, nine years Schumann’s junior, Clara was already a celebrated prodigy and well on her way to becoming one of the great pianists of the age. Her ambitious father, discovering a secret tryst between the pair, had her return Schumann’s letters, banned the composer from entering the Wieck household, vilified and slandered him and may even have threatened to shoot him. The remaining two movements of the Fantasie were the direct result of Schumann’s desire to help Liszt in his efforts to fund a monument to Beethoven in Bonn. His fervent enthusiasm for the Beethoven appeal appears to have temporarily overridden his melancholy as he collected the three movements, now known as ‘Ruins’, ‘Trophies’ and ‘Palms’, under the title, ‘Sonata for Beethoven’. His plans included instructions to the publisher Kistner on how monies might be raised for the monument through sales of the work, and even concerned details such as the colour of the binding and design of the title page. Kistner was not the only publisher who did not return Schumann’s enthusiasm and it was only after numerous other titles for the ‘Sonata’ and its movements came and went that Breitkopf & Härtel eventually published the work as Fantasie, Op.17 in 1839, over two years after its completion.

The opening movement is a whirling, passionate dream of despair. Schumann subsequently wrote to Clara that it was the product of “excessive melancholy” and “the most passionate thing I have ever composed – a deep lament for you”. Its early title, ‘Ruins’, tells its own story, but was later replaced by a preface by Friedrich Schlegel:

Durch alle Töne tönet Im bunten Erdentraum Ein leiser Ton gezogen Für den, der Heimlich lauschet.

(Through all the notes / In earth’s multi-coloured dreams / There sounds one soft note / For the one who listens secretly).

The “soft note” has been interpreted as Schumann’s undying love for Clara or indeed as representing Clara herself. Schumann was a great lover of musical puzzles, ciphers and number symbolism and thus his output abounds in quotations, acknowledged and unacknowledged, and any number of coded references to Clara, friends and fellow composers. Who knows how many of these are now lost to time? A quotation that revels in the dual nature of the 

Fantasie’s inspiration - Clara and Beethoven - appears in numerous guises in the first movement. Taken from the final song of Beethoven’s cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved), the text of the original encourages the distant beloved to reduce the distance by singing the same songs as her lover.

Despite the depth of emotion directed at her in the opening movement, it was the second movement that Clara held dearest. The ghost of Beethoven is evident in the trills and dotted rhythms of its bold, triumphal march. Clara wrote of hearing an “entire orchestra” in it and encouraged Schumann more than once to orchestrate the march as an independent piece. The coda, a bête noire to concert pianists even today, hurtles the movement to a thrilling end. The finale is the work’s slow movement; a serene, rapturous meditation which builds to a radiant climax and calmly resigned close - one of Schumann’s most sublime moments.

Although now a venerable warhorse of the concert platform, neither the composer nor the grateful dedicatee, Liszt, considered the Fantasie suitable for public consumption, considering its home to be in rarefied private circles where it might receive suitable appreciation. Liszt, though a keen advocate, never performed it in public though he thought enough of it to dedicate his own masterpiece, the Piano Sonata in B minor, to Schumann in return, and never removed the Fantasie from his teaching repertoire. Even Clara Schumann didn’t perform the work in public until 1866, ten years after her husband’s death.

By 29 November 1862, the Viennese public, at least, was certainly ready and willing to hear the Fantasie in the concert hall. The 29 year-old Brahms had arrived in Vienna from his native Hamburg less than three months previously and the city took its hat off to him as he performed Schumann’s masterpiece and one of his own making - the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op.24. Although Schumann had welcomed Brahms with open arms in 1853, instigated the publication of his earliest work and broadcast his name and genius to the musical world, theirs was to be a friendship occupying only the last three years of Schumann’s life. Thereafter, it was Clara who became companion, confidante and artistic ideal to the younger composer. She helped forge his career in both critical and practical ways; with her knowledge of the industry and through her influence in having his works programmed and performing the piano works herself.

Just as Schumann was a man forging ahead, surrounded by colleagues alive to the latest developments of the day, whether ephemeral or lasting, so Brahms positioned himself as part of a long and certain lineage back to Bach and beyond. For his time, he was remarkable for developing a deep interest in music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, amassing a fine library of manuscripts and early print publications from all over Europe, including the original 1733 edition of the Handel suite which contains the theme for the Variations. His friends numbered the pre-eminent musicologists of the era, including Chrysander, the great Handel expert and Spitta, the distinguished Bach biographer. Brahms’ array of editing projects included the Renaissance masters, Handel, Bach and, naturally, Schumann.

It comes as little surprise then that Brahms was eexperimenting with Baroque forms prior to writing his Handel Variations, composing canons, gavottes, sarabandes, gigues, preludes and fugues. Rather than for publication, these were generally didactic exercises - opportunities to get beneath the skin of practices long neglected. The variation is one of the most ancient forms of all, present in music of all periods and type. In common with many other themes for sets of variations, the air Brahms chose is a simple, pleasant affair leaving plenty of room for multifarious mutations. Handel himself composed five variants of the theme, but Brahms takes the humble tune into another dimension entirely with his 25 variations and crowning fugue.

Broadly speaking, the work falls into four blocks: variations 1 – 8, 9 – 12, 14 – 17 and 18 – 25 with variation 13 acting as a central pivot, itself counterbalanced by the closing fugue. The variations constitute a remarkable exploration of pianistic textures, styles and gestures from the Baroque to the mid-Nineteenth Century. Aside from honouring Handel, Couperin and his French contemporaries are recalled in the Baroque stylings of the Siciliano dance (variation 19) and the so-called ‘Music Box’ variation (22) and Bach is to the fore most obviously in the fugal writing. Beethoven, too, is often present influencing through his own masterful Eroica and Diabelli variation sets, both of which end with climactic fugues. But this is not to imply that the piece is either simply pastiche or a musical reliquary. Everything is filtered through Brahms’ imagination and even the most Baroque sounding bars remain experimenting with Baroque forms prior to writing his Handel Variations, composing canons, gavottes, sarabandes, gigues, preludes and fugues. Rather than for publication, these were generally didactic exercises - opportunities to get beneath the skin of practices long neglected. The variation is one of the most ancient forms of all, present in music of all periods and type. In common with many other themes for sets of variations, the air Brahms chose is a simple, pleasant affair leaving plenty of room for multifarious mutations. Handel himself composed five variants of the theme, but Brahms takes the humble tune into another dimension entirely with his 25 variations and crowning fugue.