IN

CHAPTER III.

OPPOSITIONAL COMPOSITIONS (OP. I.-XXIII.).

N these first works Schumann closely approaches the manner of Franz Schubert, although we can already perceive that profound difference which afterwards became more and more marked, demanding its distinct position in art as well as in regard to other romanticists. Schubert was the first to discover adequate form for the lyric isolation of a detached emotion. The great masters of the past, Bach, Haendel, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, worked under the compelling power of the predominating ideas of mind and imagination, and embodied the poetic side of life in broad and grand instrumental forms. Schubert made the individual sentiment of a distinct subject the object of his representation, and thus brought the song to its highest perfection of form; but at the same time he suggested those minor instrumental forms in which modern masters have accomplished such imperishable work, and which were carried to such especial perfection by Schumann.

Bach, the real founder of this whole school, for it was by him that the just claims of subjectivity in the development of music were first proved, like Haendel surrendered his own subjectivity to Christian views of life; Gluck, the creator of grand opera, bartered his for the inflexibility of the antique mould; Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven allowed the wonders of Nature and great historical events to affect

their individuality, which grew in and with these, so that even the two masters endowed with the richest and deepest subjectiveness, Mozart and Beethoven, failed to find tone and form for its distinct, individual expression. They accustomed themselves to consider everything on the vastest scale of dimensions, in the broadest relations, so that in their hands even the song became a scena, and the lesser instrumental forms the mere frame for manifold pictures not elaborated in detail, but most dramatically grouped.

Franz Schubert was the first to recover the adequate form for the song. While he simplified all the wearisome apparatus of the afore-mentioned masters, without in any way detracting from the wealth of their materials, he attained that concise song-form in which the lyric mood is completely, exhaustively, and adequately expressed. He adhered closely to the strophic verse-structure which he imitated in the rich materials of his predecessors, giving it new musical shape in accordance with the text.

In the domain of instrumental music he only won similar success in those compositions where the conventional form is already distinctly transmitted as a finished type, such as the march, waltz, polonaise, or variation. In all other instrumental works this master affords a most striking proof that only the directness and simplicity of a Haydn are capable of writing great and broadly significant instrumental works, symphonies and sonatas, without an especial object for representation; that, when this simplicity disappears, the entire subjectivity must be concentrated upon determinate images, which it marshals before the imagination, if really important instrumental works are to be produced. In these songs and terse instrumental forms, the construction predetermined for him, checked Schubert's fancy and guided it to stable ground. In the larger, broader forms, which are only traced in their

most external outlines, his fancy was frequently lost in riotous revelry overwhelming all form, in sporting with splendid, but generally mentally incoherent images. The significance of that really essential element of great instrumental forms, contrast, was never fully apparent to Schubert, nor did he often attempt a dialectic development of ideas. With him picture usually succeeds picture, connected only by his own strong and gifted subjectivity.

But in this regard, Schumann from the first took a most opposite, and, as we have already said, the only correct position. He never regarded music otherwise than as the art of representing those things which stirred his soul. We have seen how early the creative impulse awoke within him, and also that he instantly employed it to represent determinate objects. He tried to fix in tones names, persons, and individual experiences, and this tendency soon so completely mastered him that things gradually ceased to have much significance for him, save in as far as they were capable of musical transformation; thus he became ever more and more alienated from the external world.

This peculiar tendency, which was conditional upon his high position as artist and man of culture, naturally led him to work chiefly in the field of instrumental composition. This not only afforded infinitely more extensive and more refined material for the secret woof and warp of the spirit, and allowed it to reach more energetic, direct expression than vocal composition, but moreover it, and it only, rendered possible such honest, palpable representation and reproduction as Schumann attempted in certain of his earliest works.

The tendency to place all his work under the direct influence of determinate objects is most conspicuous in those compositions written upon names represented by musical notes (Op. 1. and 9), and in those where he tries to repre

sent the various emotions of his own soul and his spiritual surroundings objectively considered in various ways (Op. 6, 9, 11).

The idea of using a name represented in musical notes as the motive of a composition is not new. Since Bach used his own name as the theme for a fugue, many have imitated his example, as for instance the deceased organist

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But to none of them did the theme thus acquired have the same significance as to Schumann. To Bach and his successors it merely formed a basis for farther fugue work, usually but little influenced by it. Schumann, on the contrary, made the compositions developed from such borrowed names demonstrations of homage to the loved and honoured bearers of them. They were thus woven into the work as they lived in the poet's fancy, and therefore exercised a marked influence upon the entire structure of the composition, in due correspondence with which Schumann chose the form of the variations which such a direct influence rendered feasible.

Opus 1.' on the name:

A be g g

written in the first half of the year 1830 and published in July, 1832, was inspired by a beautiful young woman, Meta Abegg, whose acquaintance he made at a ball in

1 Theme on the name Abegg arranged with variations for piano, Dedicated to Pauline, Countess d'Abegg.

Mannheim.

His relations with the young lady were undoubtedly of a purely conventional nature; indeed, he felt obliged to dedicate the variations, not to her, but to an imaginary "Pauline, Countess d'Abegg."

The work interests us from the point of form only, as showing how much technical skill in handling his material Schumann had gained from the peculiar nature of his development up to this time, and here we may note the interesting fact that he has used the correct musical form and observed the laws of music instinctively, however unskilfully he may have done it. The motive is worked up, probably in memory of the ball which inspired it, in waltz form, and an imprint is given it as strongly rhythmical as it is harmonious, no new melodic motive being taken up; the second part reverses the original motive. The lack of technical knowledge is more apparent in the three variations following next in order. The original concise form is retained, but it is so heavily loaded with rich harmonic apparatus, particularly in the first two variations, that it becomes fairly monstrous. A few years later he would have made a very different thing of this wealth of harmonies. The finale is far freer and more intelligible in form, and here we can already recognize the hand which was afterwards to work out such enchanting music from harmonies and to construct therefrom such wonderful melodies. Passages like: