Stefaniak Rochester

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
ii
Curriculum Vitae
Alexander Stefaniak was born in Parma, Ohio on August 13, 1983. He attended BaldwinWallace 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).
iii
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.
iv
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 BaldwinWallace 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.
v
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 antivirtuoso 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 selfconsciously 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
vi
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.
vii
Table of Contents
Volume 1
Curriculum Vitae
ii
Acknowledgements
iii
Abstract
Note to the Reader
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Schumanns Critique of Postclassical Virtuosity

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
Virtuosity and the Schumannian Poetic

Ein Opus II
Chapter 3
32
80
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
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
viii
Chapter 4
A Toccata Emblazoned with the Name of Beethoven
183
From the Poetic to the (Beethovenian?) Sublime:

The 1837 tudes symphoniques
196
The Virtuoso on Mount Parnassus: Schumann and the

Concertante Principle
206
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
323
358
396
ix
List of Figures and Examples
Volume 2
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
x
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
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
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
xi
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

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
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
xii
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

Figure 4.1: Henri Herz, Concerto No. 1 in A major, Op. 34, movement 1.
Exposition form and excerpts.
397
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
xiii
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
xiv
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
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.
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,
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.
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
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
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.
Introduction 5
explore Schumanns engagement with virtuosity through his critical writings and
virtuosic compositions. In doing so, I hope to illuminate the significant but littleunderstood role that Schumann played in the larger interaction between instrumental
virtuosity, Romantic aesthetics, and the ideology of serious music in early nineteenthcentury 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 nineteenthcentury 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 Nineteenthcentury 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.
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-nineteenthcentury 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.
16
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.

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.
19
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 composercritics 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 pianistcomposers 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 midcentury 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
24
Carl 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 NineteenthCentury 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 transcendenceseeking 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 nineteenthcentury 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 antivirtuoso 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), 3839.
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.
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.
41
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 virtuosoloving 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.
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.
44
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.
48
Eduard 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 highsociety 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 musicmaking.
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 nineteenthcentury. Part of the game of music, in Reynoldss view, was the scattering of notaltogether-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 community of serious musicians. These works display a variety of
strategies for combining virtuosity with two of the centerpieces of the German culture of
serious music, the symphonic tradition and the symphony orchestra itself, strategies that
range from sui generis hybrids of concerto and symphony to one of Schumanns few
Introduction 31
essays in the exotic style hongrois. The concerted works, too, derive some of their
elevated connotations and musical features from the artistic personae of their intended
exponents, specifically Clara Schumann and, in the case of the violin Phantasie, Joseph
Joachim. The late works, particularly, suggest an attempt at wide popular appeal, one that
at least initially succeeded. In the virtuosic works he produced during the last decade and
a half of his life, Schumanns efforts to cultivate a mode of virtuosity that answered the
imperatives of the Romantic ideology of serious music turned outward, to the virtuosos
relationshipindeed, his or her possible synthesiswith the community of the serious
concert.
Chapter One 32
CHAPTER 1:
SCHUMANNS CRITIQUE OF POSTCLASSICAL VIRTUOISTY
Schumann made a critique of contemporary virtuosity one of the central parts of the Neue
Zeitschrifts critical platform. Far from summarily anathematizing virtuosity, though,
Schumanns writings took aim at a specific style of virtuoso music that enjoyed
overwhelming popularity in the European sheet-music market. This style, which Jim
Samson and Otto Biba have termed postclassical, regarded bravura instrumental works
ideally as vehicles for accessible, entertaining music-making and listening. 1 Its champion
composers adhered to and its defenders celebrated such values as elegance, tastefulness,
and clarity. In one sense, the postclassical style responded to the changes in musical life
that defined the early nineteenth century and offered a solution that diverged from the
ideology and program that Schumann, the Neue Zeitschrift, and other German advocates
of serious music proposed. Schumann and likeminded critics hoped to ensure the status of
music and musicians among the literate middle-class by constructing music as a serious
art form aspiring to the intellectual substance of the lettered arts, as John Daverio puts
it. 2 Postclassical pianist-composers such as Carl Czerny and Henri Herz reached for this
vast audience in a different way: they designed their music to be maximally accessible,
taking into account that their audience for the most part lacked a tradition of learned
connoisseurship, sought pianistic accomplishment for a wide range of amateurs, and
consumed music through a quasi-industrial mass-market. Gottfried Wilhelm Fink (editor
of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung from 1827 to 1841) articulated what amounts to a
See, for example, Otto Biba, Carl Czerny and Postclassicism, in Beyond The Art of Finger Dexterity:
Reassessing Carl Czerny, ed. David Gramit (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 11-22;
Jim Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 19.
2
John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997), 89.
Chapter One 33
postclassical credo in his reviews. His 1828 review of keyboard works by Czerny, for
example, describes Viennese audiences appetite for diverting, entertaining music. In
contrast to more serious-minded critics, Fink presents such qualities as agreeable and
even numbing as positive traits understandably demanded by an audience coping with
the stresses of middle-class life and recovering from the Napoleonic Wars:
The oppression of days not long gone by felt by most, the burden still felt
by some, has brought most people to seek light recreation that diverts the
spirit from the serious side of life after their occupation full of cares; they
prefer to be numbed, as it were, by an agreeable sensual stimulus so that
they forget unpleasant reality for a short while without reflection of any
kind. 3
In another essay on virtuoso music (which I will discuss in detail later in this chapter),
Fink specifically identifies virtuositypresented in a properly accessible styleas
primarily a source of pleasure and diversion, though one more delightful than numbing.
Schumanns writings on virtuosity thus expressed a quintessentially German
Romantic anxiety that pervades the nineteenth-century critical discourse on a variety of
musical subjects: namely, a concern that the realities of the music market would reduce
music to the status of mere entertainment and the musician him- or herself to a
craftsman rather than a figure credited with cultural significance comparable to that of the
other arts. Indeed, as E. T. A. Hoffmann and Novalis defined it, a Philistine, the partly
imaginary enemy of the (itself partly imaginary) Davidsbund, was someone who
integrated music neatly into his or her everyday activities and treated it as a trivial
pursuit, disregarding its potential as a gateway to transcendental experience and serious
3
Das fr die Meisten Drckende nicht lange entflohener Tage, ja fr Manche noch fortdauernd Lastende
hat die Mehrzahl dahin gebracht, dass sie nach ihren sorgenvollen Beschftigungen eine leichte, das
Gemth vom Ernst des Lebens abziehende Erholung suchen; sie ziehen es vor, sich durch einen geflligen
Sinnenreiz gewissermassen zu betuben, damit sie auf kurze Zeit ohne alles Nachdenken die unangenehme
Wirklichkeit vergessen. Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 30 (April 9, 1828): 233-34. Quoted and
translated in Otto Biba, Czerny and Post-Classicism, 15.
Chapter One 34
thought. 4 Because of the contemporary fascination with virtuosity and the market success
of postclassical bravura music, Schumanns critique of the virtuosic products of what he
considered Philistinism acquired a particularly urgent tone.
Despite articles in the Neue Zeitschrift and in the Allgemiene musikalische
Zeitung (hereafter NZfM and AmZ) that implied the drawing of aesthetic battle lines, both
journals concocted an oversimplified binary that present-day scholars should avoid taking
at face value. Both the serious, poetic music Schumann promoted and the postclassical
showpieces of Czerny and Herz inhabited the same environments, including the benefit
concert and the salon. Clara Wiecks mid-1830s concerts featuring works by Schumann
and Mendelssohn, for example, often gave equal time to hits by Herz and Pixis. As we
will see in this and subsequent chapters, too, Schumann appropriated for his Davidsbund
works by composers more concerned with accessibility and popularity than with the
imperatives of Romantic aesthetics. Many of Schumanns own works also feature
surprising links to postclassical norms and conventions, using genres associated with
quotidian musical entertainment as springboards for poetic experience. Nevertheless,
the postclassical style and Schumanns attempts to create alternatives to it offer useful
windows into the music he composed and reviewed and form one of the main backdrops
to his career-long involvement with virtuosity.
Recognizing that Schumann represented one side of a dialogue between
competing views on the cultural significance of bravura music offers us a richer, more
nuanced understanding of the composer-critics relationship with virtuosity than scholars
have previously advanced. Postclassical virtuoso-composers such as Frdric
See, for example, Sanna Pederson, Enlightened and Romantic German Music Criticism, 1800-1850
(PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1995), 24-26.
Chapter One 35
Kalkbrenner, Henri Herz, Theodore Dhler, and Franz Hnten have not fared well in the
formation of the canon and have played little role in concert life since the mid-nineteenth
century. Writers on Schumann have generally not explored the underlying aesthetic that
informed the works of these now-marginalized composer-pianists so reviled by the NZfM.
Too often, they have reduced Schumanns critique of virtuosity to an issue of sheer
aesthetic quality. According to this point of view, Schumann stood against mediocrity
and meretricious commercialism and promoted music of high quality, which the process
of canonization has since sanctioned. In 1880, Fanny Raymond Ritters introduction to
her largely complete English translation of Schumanns Gesammelte Schriften
proclaimed that Schumann the critic had been vindicated by history: His art criticism
has already fulfilled its mission.5 As noted in the Introduction, Leon Plantingas
Schumann as Critic describes higher standards in piano music as one of the NZfMs
core objectives. Perhaps in order to demonstrate that Schumanns whimsical, often
imagistic reviews deserve to be taken seriously, Plantinga argues for Schumanns critical
integrity and aptness more than he considers the objectives and ideology that underlay his
writings. 6 This image of Schumann the anti-(shallow)-virtuosity crusader has become
enshrined in music-history textbooks. For example, J. Peter Burkholders latest edition of
the standard textbook A History of Western Musicin its sole sentence on Schumann and
virtuositynotes that Schumann opposed empty virtuosity in his critical writings. 7
However, viewing Schumanns critical work as one part of a discourse in which radically
5
Fanny Raymond Ritter, foreword to Robert Schumann, Music and Musicians: Essays and Critcisms,
trans. and ed. by Fanny Raymond Ritter, fourth edition (London: Reeves, 1880), xxix.
6
Leon Plantinga, Schumann as Critic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 16-23.
7
Burkholders wordingin the midst of a textbook that aims at presenting a balanced, inclusive view of
music historyattests to the ongoing ambivalence about virtuosity in the present-day music academy and
the endurance of Romantic views about true and shallow virtuosity. J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay
Grout, and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music, 8th ed. (New York: Norton, 2010), 612-13.
Chapter One 36
different approaches to virtuosity aimed to capture the public and enjoyed the support of
vociferous critical defenders, as I propose to in this chapter, reveals its more complex,
heretofore unrecognized nuances.
Virtuosity as Entertainment: The Postclassical Style

The first sentence of Dana Gooleys The Virtuoso Liszt proclaims, Virtuosity is all about
boundaries, a statement that aptly introduces his discussion of Liszts highly innovative
style, talent for reinventing his persona, and ability to capture his audiences imaginations
by playing and composing at what seemed the limits of human possibility. 8 For a far
larger number of nineteenth-century performers, composers, critics, and listeners, though,
virtuosity was more about crafting vehicles for musical recreation and entertainment than
about attempting the impossible and more a matter of employing familiar conventions
than acting as a superhuman creator. Such music often employed a postclassical style.
Samson offers a concise summary of this aesthetic and its musical implications, one I will
expand upon throughout this chapter:
Post-Classical concert music [was] centered firmly on the piano and
designed principally for performance in benefit concerts and salonsThis
was music designed to be popular, and happy to accept its commodity
status. Its basic ingredients were a bravura right-hand figuration that took
its impetus from the light-actioned Viennese and German pianos of the
late eighteenth century and a melodic idiom that was rooted either in
Italian opera, in folk music, or in popular genres such as marches
(including funeral marches), dance pieces, pastorals, or barcarolles. 9
The term postclassical presents some problems and requires qualification.
Postclassical bravura music does use a more conservative harmonic, rhythmic, and
phraseological style than music prized by Romantic critics. However, as Samson himself
8
9
Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1.
Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work, 19.
Chapter One 37
acknowledges, it has more in common with early nineteenth-century Italian opera and
popular dance music than with works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. In contrast to
Romantic ideals of artistic inimitability, postclassical virtuoso music allowed for a high
degree of stylistic conformity, one greater, Samson notes, than what one finds in
Viennese Classical music. 10 In addition, the postclassical repertory thrived in response to
such nineteenth-century phenomena as the boom in the publishing industry and the
expansion of both the public concert and domestic music making.
Despite these limitations, Samson and Bibas term captures features of this style
that nineteenth-century writers acknowledged and in some cases celebrated.11
Practitioners and advocates of postclassicism remained true to a basically pre-Romantic
aesthetic. They inherited eighteenth-century attitudes regarding the pleasures of music,
such as those which Mozart famously articulated in two letters to his father during the
1780s. In one, Mozart wrote that his piano concertos K. 413, 414, and 415 were
sufficiently novel and ingenious for the connoisseur but also included passages that the
uninitiated could enjoy. Later, discussing Osmins aria from Die Entfhrung aus dem
Serail, Mozart wrote that music, even when aiming at expressive intensity, should never
cease to be beautiful and pleasing. 12 For postclassical pianist-composerssomewhat like
10
Ibid., 35-52, 64-65.

Alternative terminology is often equally if not more problematic. Style brillant, for example, obscures
the many components of postclassical music that do not present virtuosic displaysuch as orchestral tuttis,
borrowed themes, and cantabile passagesbut that were important to its conventions and appeal. It also
does not acknowledge that concerns other than a sheer interest in brilliance (such as a desire for
accessibility and the practicalities of the mass sheet-music market) shaped this repertory. Indeed, the term
style brillant risks playing into nineteenth-century stereotypes about such music being designed purely
for virtuosic display.
12
The concertos, Mozart wrote, are a happy medium between whats too difficult and too easythey are
Brilliantpleasing to the earNatural without becoming vacuous;there are passages here and there that
only connoisseurs can fully appreciateyet the common listener will find them satisfying as well, although
without knowing why. See Mozarts letter from December 28, 1782. On Osmins aria, see the letter from
September 26, 1781. Robert Spaethling, trans. and ed., Mozarts Letters, Mozarts Life: Selected Letters
(New York: Norton, 2000), 285-6, 336-37.
11
Chapter One 38
their eighteenth-century precursorsaccessibility, elegance, pleasing-ness, structural and
textural clarity, and use-value for musical recreation were criteria for musical excellence.
However, even as postclassicism retained some aesthetic values from the eighteenth
century, it deemphasized the displays of learnedness that Haydn and Mozart often
included alongside the more accessible features of their works. Although Samson and
Biba apply the term postclassical to a generation of pianist-composers that included
Czerny, Hummel, Kalkbrenner, and early Moscheles, younger figures also mastered and
based their careers on the style: Henri Herz, Franz Hnten, and Theodore Dhler, for
example. Defenders of the postclassical style (such as Czerny) were quick to notice the
commonalities, as were its detractors (such as Schumann).
Postclassical bravura music provided diversion for both the listening public (in
concert halls and salons) and the playing public (who played music at home). Virtuoso
concerts themselves depended on their ability to become popular phenomena and to
capture broad audiences composed of individuals with varying degrees of musical
connoisseurship. In Eduard Krgers Das Virtuosenconcert article, cited in the
Introduction, the fictional Virtuoso defends himself before the Music Director by
reminding him that his time as a young performer able to withstand the hardships of
touring is limited and that he must make every effort to pack his audiences in. 13 Europes
legions of amateur pianists (most of them middle-class women) also purchased sheet
music by virtuoso performer-composers for use in their daily practice and recreation.
Many such pieces demanded a high degree of pianistic accomplishment. While some
Richard Taruskin has described the endurance of a pre-Romantic view of the composers role in
society in Rossinian opera and argues that it was Rossini, not Beethoven, who inherited the spirit of
Mozart. The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, Music in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010), 7-14.
13
Eduard Krger, Das Virtuosenconcert, NZfM 14, no. 41 (May 21, 1841): 164.
Chapter One 39
music lovers surely purchased virtuosic music as souvenirs of a concert and picked
their way through the less demanding sections, others could offer competent or even
impressive renditions of professional-level virtuoso fare. 14 As James Parakilas has
observed, nineteenth-century piano method books often assigned the student hours of
practice with the aim of eventually mastering such formidable works as the Chopin
etudes and Hummel concertos. In a particularly useful phrase, he describes some middleand upper-class pianists as domestic virtuosos who reached a high level of pianistic
accomplishment but were not permitted pursue careers outside the parlor or salon (or
would have balked at such a precarious, potentially disreputable profession). 15 One item
from the Neue Zeitschrift exudes condescension for young female amateurs even as it
hints that major centers of pianism such as Paris might have boasted large numbers of
young women who could offer performances of works by Thalberg and Liszt. In an 1843
report on musical life in Paris, Stephen Heller refers, perhaps hyperbolically, to the
concerts of the eleven thousand piano-playing young women, two or three thousand
of whom offered good performances of Thalbergs A-minor etude and Liszts Lucia
Fantasy. 16
The aesthetic of accessible entertainment thrived particularly in two cities that
became the cradle and the capital of piano virtuosity in the early nineteenth century:
14
Virtuosos frequently used their own performances to promote the sale of their more technically
forbidding works (as Liszt did with his opera fantasies, for example). James Deaville has shown that
publishers at times coordinated their printings of virtuoso compositions with their composers touring
schedules. Publishing Paraphrases and Creating Collectors: Friedrich Hoffmeister, Franz Liszt, and the
Technology of Popularity, in Franz Liszt and his World, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs and Dana Gooley
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 255-91.
15
Parakilass term surely included male amateurs who did not seek professional music careers. James
Parakilas, A History of Lessons and Practicing, in Piano Roles, 114-15.
16
Von den Concerten der elftausend clavierspielenden Jungfrauen will ich Ihnen nichts schreiben. Zwei
oder drei Tausend unter ihnen haben die A-Moll-Etude von Thalberg und die Lucia von Liszt recht gut
gespielt. Die brigen achttausend reussierten weniger; doch ist zu hoffen, da sie nchstes Jahr Beweise
ihrer Fortschritte geben werden. Gott gebe nur, da sie nicht entmuthigt werden! Stephen Heller, Briefe
aus Paris NZfM 18, no. 36 (May 4, 1843): 146.
Chapter One 40
Vienna and Paris. Almost every major virtuoso pianist from the 1830s boasted a rsum
that revolved around one or both of these centers. Hummel (1778-1837) and Moscheles
(1794-1870), for example, engaged in a wide variety of musical activities in numerous
locales but were among the most famous members of an older generation of postclassical
virtuosi active in Vienna. Carl Czerny, perhaps the most prolific composer and significant
codifier of this style, spent his entire career in Vienna. During its heyday as an artistic
center, Paris attracted droves of virtuoso pianists, many of whom, including Herz,
Hnten, and Kalkbrenner, honed their technique at the Paris Conservatory. Two iconic
piano virtuosos of the early nineteenth century, Sigismund Thalberg and Franz Liszt,
spent their early years mastering postclassical pianism with Czerny in Vienna before
moving to Paris and, in the process, developing more individualistic styles of virtuosity.
Although the cultural, economic, and political environments in these cities
differed substantially, both attracted virtuoso pianists and shaped their styles through a
shared ability to support musical entertainment. Biba describes the Viennese atmosphere
following the Napoleonic Wars as formative for the postclassical aesthetic. The city
experienced an economic downturn during which the nobility that had sponsored Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven saw their ability to finance the arts shrink. The middle class that
replaced them regarded the avant-garde Beethoven more as a source of local pride than as
a composer to propagate through frequent performance, and their interests gravitated
instead toward Italian opera, the waltzes of Lanner and Strauss, and the glittering
performances of postclassical pianists. 17 Audiences and critics showed little sympathy for
music written in a complex, avant-garde style, as Czerny himself discovered when he
17
Sigrid Wiessman, Vienna: Bastion of Conservativism, in The Early Romantic Era, ed. Alexander
Ringer (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991), 84-86; 99-101.
Chapter One 41
attempted to premiere symphonic works written in a Beethovenian vein. 18 Finks
aforementioned essay on Czerny and Rossini speaks directly to the proclivities of
Viennese listeners. The city thus played the interrelated roles of bastion of
conservativism (in Sigrid Wiessmans words) and home base and training ground for a
generation of virtuoso pianists. 19
Even more than Vienna, Paris became a major center for instrumental virtuosity
and the destination for countless pianists seeking to secure their reputations. Paris boasted
a vibrant community of aristocrats who displayed their wealth, refinement, and prestige
by organizing soirees and benefit concerts at which virtuoso instrumentalists assumed a
prominent role.20 Aristocratic music lovers were not the sole or even the main patrons of
virtuoso instrumentalists: the bulk of the audience for virtuoso concerts and purchasers of
sheet music consisted of upper middle-class Parisians. However, as Gooley has shown,
the Paris-based pianists who came to dominate Western European sheet-music publishing
thrived upon their association with the glittering, fashionable world of high-society
salons. Liszt himself (or his agents) frequently charged exorbitant ticket prices and
literally surrounded himself onstage with aristocratic women. Music critics repeated the
talk about virtuosi that occurred in the most exclusive salons for readers outside high
society. In Gooleys analysis, virtuoso concerts and published bravura pieces offered a
glimpse of bon-ton glamour that middle class audiences found appealing. 21
Combined with this aura of luxury and the taste of the public for accessible
bravura music were the realities of the publishing industry in Paris and elsewhere, which
18
Biba, Carl Czerny and Postclassicism, 14.

Wiessman, Bastion of Conservativism, 84.
20
See, for example, Ralph P. Locke, Paris: Center of Intellectual Ferment, in The Early Romantic Era,
40.
21
Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 7-8; 59-61
19
Chapter One 42
cultivated the postclassical style. As Laure Schnapper has noted, Paris attracted foreign
pianists in part because music enjoyed no international copyright protection. Reaching
the lucrative Parisian market required one to publish in Paris itself. Composers also did
not receive royalties for published compositions and needed to write prolifically to turn a
profit. To do so, Schnapper generalizes, they learned to compose for widely available
instruments, use a simple [musical] language, compose short pieces, allow the
performer to produce the greatest effect with the least difficult execution in order to
encourage purchases, and connect the pieces with current lyrical hits. 22 For musicians
who saw engagement with the commercial market as a solution to the crises of the early
nineteenth century, the postclassical style offered a musical template for broad appeal and
profitability.
Of course, the rage for postclassical virtuosity extended beyond Vienna and Paris
to large parts of Europe and North America. These markets, though, were dominated by
Parisian and Viennese pianist composers. In German-speaking lands, pianist-composers
based in these two cities achieved a strong hegemony in sales of virtuoso sheet music.
The association between postclassical bravura music and high-society luxury contributed
significantly to its popularity. Tobias Widmair and Andreas Ballstaedt have described an
Imitationssucht among the German middle class, which looked to Paris as the center of
fashion and often sought to achieve a higher level of refinement by emulating what it
perceived as the tastes of the cosmopolitan, Francophone aristocracy. Widmair and
Ballstaedt cite not only the popularity of works by Parisian virtuosi, but also the inclusion
22
Laure Schnapper, Piano Variations in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: An Industry? in
Instrumental Music and the Industrial Revolution, ed. Roberto Illiano and Luca Sala (Lucca: Centro Studi
Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini-Onlus), 282-86.
Chapter One 43
of such works in supplements to womens journals and fashion magazines that purported
to bring the wide world of Parisian salons into the home. 23
G. W. Finks Philosophical Defense of Diversion

Studies of the discourse surrounding instrumental virtuosity usually imply by omission
that virtuosity in general and the postclassical style specifically had no real critical
defenders. Scholars have uncovered an extensive anti-virtuoso polemic in which critics
committed to the ideology of serious music placed virtuosos and their music on the lower
rung in an aesthetic hierarchy and, at times, dismissed them altogether.24 Uncovering a
pro-virtuoso polemic that might articulate the aesthetic basis for accessible,
commercial bravura music is indeed more difficult: a phenomenon that had the
overwhelming support of the market probably needed little overt defending. However,
two infrequently studied sources from the 1830sone critical and philosophical, one
practical in orientationoffer insight into the aesthetic and stylistic basis for the
postclassical virtuosity to which Schumann responded in his writings and virtuosic music.
Both sources come from influential figures in early nineteenth-century music who
commanded wide audiences. The first was Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, longtime editor of the
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. His journal provided an ideal venue for a defense of
accessible bravura music. Although it had served the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries as a forum for musical articles ranging from the philosophical to the practical,
23
Andreas Ballstaedt and Tobias Widmair, Salonmusik: zur Geschichte und Funktion einer Brgerlichen
Musikpraxis, Beihefte zum Archiv fr Musikwissenschaft 28 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1989), 55-58.
24
See, for example, Dana Gooley, The Battle Against Instrumental Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth
Century, in Franz Liszt and his World, 75-95.
Chapter One 44
the AmZ of the 1830s spoke mostly to the interests of less-learned amateur musicians. 25
The second, Carl Czerny, was a bestselling composer, author of numerous methods and
treatises, and teacher of several successful virtuosi. 26 These two sources ask us to
consider in a more sympathetic light a style and repertoire that Romantic critics derided
as mere entertainment and to explore a vision for musics role in society that differed
from Schumanns.
Finks 1833 article, Bravourstcke fr verschiedene Instrumente mit
Orchesterbegleitung [Bravura Pieces for Various Instruments with Orchestral
Accompaniment] mounted a philosophical defense of the postclassical style. 27 It begins
with a substantial essay that extols the virtues and pleasures of virtuosity and concludes
with a series of short reviews treating virtuoso pieces for solo wind instruments.
Bravourstcke represents one of the most elaborate, extensive defenses of postclassical
virtuosity in early Romantic German music criticism. As Gooley has noted, it stands out
particularly when set against the far more numerous essay-length attacks on virtuosity
that appeared in the German press during the first half of the century . 28 Throughout his
essay, Fink deploys a varied arsenal of philosophical defenses for postclassical bravura.
In his discussion of this essay, Gooley focuses on the more abstract ones. Fink, for
example, argues that virtuoso music aids the cause of artistic progress: his first paragraph
likens virtuosity to a pear tree from which all forms of art stem. Later, he writes that it is
25
Plantinga, Schumann as Critic, 32-33. See also Pederson, Enlightened and Romantic Music Criticism,
63.
26
Alice M. Hanson has noted Czernys prestige and power as a pedagogue, writer, and composer. She
quotes an English musician, Edward Holmes, who wrote, Mr. Czerny is a supreme pianoforte teacher and
composer, and all his opinions on the subject of his instrument are received as canon. Chopin himself
referred to Czerny as Viennas oracle in the manufacture of musical taste. Hanson, Czernys Vienna, in
Beyond the Art of Finger Dexterity, 29-30.
27
G. W. Fink, Bravourstcke fr verschiendene Instrumente mit Orchesterbegleitung, AmZ 35, no. 33
(August 14, 1833): 533-39.
28
Gooley, Battle Against Instrumental Virtuosity, 85.
Chapter One 45
paralyzing to regard art as something finished and never something that is [always in
the process of] becoming. 29 Fink also makes a plea for artistic tolerance, writing, There
is room enough in our round world for all kinds of wood and fruit, and the tongue of
every person tastes for himself what he prefers, if not always what is best for them and
their bodies. 30
All of Finks points, however, revolve around the basic contention that virtuoso
music best serves the public by providing wholesome, pleasing recreation. The paragraph
that champions artistic pluralism, for example, does so through metaphors for food and
taste. Virtuosity may have the strength of a tree, but it attracts mainly through its
delicious fruit. (Its branches rustle in the wind of time [as it passes] and its fruits, when
they are ripe, appeal to children.) 31 Virtuosity, Fink writes, aims above all to inspire
popular and commercial success: Bravura wishes to overpower, to set the hands and
purse in motion, and above all to astonish everyone! 32 He gladly accepts showpieces
that aspire to immediate, potentially short-lived success when he writes, Bravura has
entirely the characteristics of its close friend, fashion; it gladly changes; a brand-new
dress is always the best, even if it doesnt last long. This is why bravura must come in
many varieties. 33 Fink links virtuositys historical role with its savory role, so that
artistic progress results from audiences ever-changing tastes in musical diversion.
29
[S]o ist es doch gewiss auch nur ein gichtbrchiger Gedanke, die Kunst immerfort als eine gewordene,
nie als eine werdende zu betrachten. Fink, Bravourstke, 535.
30
Es ist Raum genug auf unserer runden Erde fr allerley Holz und Frucht, und jedes Menschen Zunge
schmeckt von selbst heraus, was ihr beliebt, wenn auch nicht immer, was ihr und ihrem Leibe frommt.
Ibid., 533. My translations of the above two passages are adapted from Gooley, Battle Against
Instrumental Virtuosity, 86.
31
[S]eine Bltter und Zweige rauschen lieblich im Winde der Zeit, und seine Frchte, sind sie teig
geworden, schmecken den Kindern. Fink, Bravourstcke, 533. This and all subsequent translations are
mine unless otherwise noted.
32
Die Bravour will berrumpeln, die Hnde und die Beutel in Bewegung, und berhapt Alles in Erstaunen
setzen! Ibid., 534.
33
Die Bravour hat ganz die Eigenschaft ihrer Freundin, der Mode; sie wechselt gern; das frische Kleid ist
immer das beste, wenn es auch nicht hlt. Darum muss viel Bravour seyn. Ibid., 534-535.
Chapter One 46
Curiosity and love of pleasure, he writes, are like air and water: they decompose solid
objects and then shape anew and raise up, ennobled, that which would have otherwise
remained under the ground. 34 Fink endorses the commercialism and calculation of
audience tastes that represented a vital but controversial part of a virtuosos career.
Perhaps to avoid appearing cynical, he couches his defense in religious imagery: Be as
prudent as the children of this world; have clear eyes and watch where you are and even
which people you should be serving, in order best to serve yourselves! For we must
request our daily bread, which is not an ill thing. 35
Finks philosophy of accessible entertainment leads him to a laissez-faire critical
perspective that he describes as an eternal Yes. 36 Because virtuosity seeks primarily to
entertain, he writes, it demands no serious critical scrutiny: It would be absolutely
foolish to be longwinded and fussy about virtuosity. 37 Perhaps in response to
Schumanns imagistic essay, Ein Opus II (which had appeared in the AmZ in 1831 and
which I will explore in Chapter 2), Fink takes a dismissive approach to descriptions of
poetic content. Such descriptions will be offered when real character should be found.
Where, however, none is to be found, we will not comment on it, nor will we demand it
in the least.38 Schumann and his Neue Zeitschrift writers found this approach unworthy
34
Neugier und Vergngungsreiz sind wie Luft und Wasser, sie zersetzen das Feste, schaffen neu und
heben veredelnd heran, was sonst unten geblieben wre. Ibid., 535.
35
Seyd klug wie die Kinder dieser Welt; habt helle Augen und seht zu, wo ihr seyd und vor welchem
Leute ihr eben aufwarten sollt, um Euch am schnsten aufzuwarten! Denn unser tglich Brot ist auch eine
Bitte, die nicht bel ist. Ibid., 534.
36
ein ewiger Ja. Ibid., 535-34
37
Da wre es denn freylich thricht, ber die Bravouren weitlufig und scrupuls zu seyn. Ibid., 535.
38
Wo hingegen in einem Bravourstck ordentlicher Charakter gefunden werden sollte, da werden wir es
bemerken: wo aber keiner ist, da werden wir es nicht bemerken und auch nicht im Geringsten verlangen.
Ibid., 535.
Chapter One 47
of a serious music journal.39 Yet, it seems a natural conclusion for an editor who
championed an aesthetic of entertainment.
Finks view of virtuoso music as entertainment informs his short reviews. With
the AmZs readership in mind, they discuss pieces suitable for private recreation, concert
performance, or both. In general, the reviews trope the oft-cited descriptor of
postclassical bravura music (found in advertisements and on published scores) brilliant
but not difficult. 40 They predict that each piece will satisfy the amateur musician or
listener through sheer attractiveness, most of which Fink attributes to charming melodic
content and brilliant virtuosic writing. None of the pieces, he writes, will tax the
musicians powers of performance and comprehension, since they present no
ungrateful technical difficulties, are usually quite brief, and resemble conventional
models. A review of Sylv[ain] Frankes Variations et Rondeau sur un thme de lOpra
la Muette de Portici, for example, mentions nearly all of these elements:
These variations, which do not depart from the familiar form, demand
somewhat more bravura [than the piece featured in the previous review]
without really belonging among the most difficult pieces. Neither the
variations nor the rondo is too drawn out. The accompaniment is easy. 41
The review of Gaspard Kummers Introduction et Allegro brillant pour la flte, Op. 61
reads similarly:
The style of his composer is well-known. He knows how to write
winsomely and [idiomatically] for the instrument. The main melodies are
catchy, the execution brillant without being too difficult, the invention
39
See, for example, Plantinga, Schumann as Critic, 25.

Arthur Loessers study of piano culture includes a chapter entitled Brilliant but Not Difficult that
concerns the mass-market for bravura piano music in the early nineteenth century. Men, Women, and
Pianos (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 291-92.
41
Diese, nicht von der bekannten Form abweichenden Variationen verlangen schon etwas mehr Bravour,
ohne gerade zu den schwierigsten zu gehren. Zu weit ausgesponnen sind weder die Varnderungen noch
das Rondo. Die Begleitung ist leicht. Ibid., 538.
40
Chapter One 48
[i.e., melodic and other primary material] here not distinguished. The
whole piece has the benefit of being short. 42
Fink often stresses the pieces use value as vehicles for recreational playing. In his review
of several pieces by Henri Lubeck, he writes None of these pieces is too long: each is
well-suited for practice and recreation. 43 A Divertissement by J. J. F. Dotzauer, he
writes, can be performed in a variety of settings with whatever ensemble the amateur or
virtuoso can muster. Most of the reviews advise the reader when a piano accompaniment
part is particularly simple, perhaps meaning to recommend it for use by a less
accomplished member of a musical family.
Czerny and the Craft of Virtuoso Entertainment

If G. W. Finks Bravourstcke essay suggests a critics and domestic users view of
postclassical virtuosity, Carl Czernys three-volume treatise Die Schule der praktischen
Tonsetzkunst [The School of Practical Composition], Op. 600, published around 1848,
discusses virtuoso music from the perspective of a professional composer. 44 The first
volume, which covers pianistic genres such as the concerto, sonata, rondo, variation set,
fantasy, and etude, reads at times like a how-to guide for achieving success with the
concert-going, piano-playing public.
Although Czernys treatise appeared at a time when some critics were announcing
the end of the Age of Bravura, he makes it clear that his codification of virtuoso styles
and genres has drawn upon his lifelong immersion in the world of postclassical virtuosity.
42
Des Componisten Art ist bekannt. Er weiss geflling und fr das Instrument zu schreiben. Die
Hauptmelodieen sind eingnglich, die Ausfuhrung brillant, ohne zu schwer zu seyn; die Erfindung ist hier
nicht ausgezeichnet. Das Ganze hat den Vortheil der Krze. Ibid., 536.
43
Zu lang ist keiner dieser Stze; jeder zur Uebung und zum Vergngen geschickt. Ibid., 537.
44
All translations from School of Practical Composition; or Complete Treatise on the composition of all
kinds of music together with a treatise on instrumentation, translated by John Bishop (London: R.
Cocks, 1848).
Chapter One 49
He upholds as models both pianist-composers of his own generation and younger stars
who were active during Schumanns decade at the Neue Zeitschrift. For example, the
chapter on the concerto names Beethoven and Mozart (and later mentions Weber and
Mendelssohn) but also refers the reader to Hummel, Moscheles, and Kalkbrenner. The
sections on variation sets and fantasias hardly mention the Viennese classics but
emphasize Herz, Thalberg, Liszt, and Dhler. Amidst his numerous examples,
definitions, and lists of principles, Czerny discourses on the broader aesthetic principles
of postclassical pianism. Like Fink, he writes under the assumption that virtuoso music
and performance function to satisfy and delight the public. Whereas Fink takes a live
and let live approach to virtuoso music, Czerny cautions that success as a composer of
fashionable bravura music demands that one study the latest developments in music,
deftly imitate successful models, and become expert at reading the attention span and
taste of ones audience. The conclusion to the first volume admonishes the reader that
the taste of the public in general is continually varying and making, if not greater, then
at least fresh claims on the composer. 45 It urges the student to take these demands
seriously:
It is not the place here to enquire how far the public is always just in
making this demand: but one thing is certain, that at present it is far more
difficult and requires considerably more genius, talent, taste, knowledge,
and experience on the part of the composer in order to give satisfaction
than formerly, when the art was still in its infancy and the public had first
to form itself thereon. 46
Czerny stresses that satisfying this refined audience involves not the pursuit of
originality or complexity (which the Romantic ideology prized) but rather a conscious
effort to keep style and structure accessible, clear, and pleasing. He thus advances a
45
46
Czerny, School of Practical Composition 1:168.

Ibid., 1:168.
Chapter One 50
somewhat different interpretation of the brilliant but not difficult motto of virtuoso
music than Fink does. For Czerny, the difficulty to be avoided is not excessive
problems for the amateur performer but structural or stylistic difficulty for the casual
listener, difficulty Czerny repeatedly describes as inelegant, ungrateful, or willfully
difficult. The Concluding Remarks of Volume One for example, states:
The unswerving, though rarely expressed demands of the refined world
from the composer are: the avoidance of all superfluous protraction and
useless length, whether these arise from an excessive passion for learned
developments, or from a too anxious observance of well known forms
The public is ever asking the composer: Do you then really require half
and hour in order to unfold your ideas to us? Could you not do this as
well in a quarter of an hour, or still less? We will willingly listen to you,
so long as you create in us no feeling of weariness! 47
His language is even stronger in his subsection on concertos, which blames composers
who fail to score popular successes for their inability or unwillingness to satisfy the
publics demands:
The principal object of the concerto is indisputably to give the soloist an
opportunity of fully displaying his talent before a large assembly and of
creating a favorable impressionBut if this principal object be neglected,
or if too great a minuteness of detail, ungrateful difficulties, ineffective
and tedious harmonies come in the way of the same; the composer must
then attribute it entirely to himself, if his work is rarely performed and
meets with no success. 48
In a discussion of opera overtures that occurs in the second volume, Czerny adds an
attack on critics who disparaged music written in an accessible, entertainment-oriented
style:
To look down contemptuously on those works which have acquired a
universal popularity form their light, pleasing, and harmonious character
either betrays concealed envy, a narrow mind, or a want of genuine talent.
47
48
Ibid., 168-9.
Ibid., 1:164.
Chapter One 51
The best school is that of good taste, which is found in the truly great, and
therefore celebrated, masters of all refined nations. 49
Czernys School offers a particularly revealing window into the postclassical style
because it comments extensively on style and structure in virtuoso composition and
discusses how composers can ensure refinement and accessibility. Some of the chapters
most bristling with compositional principles and strategies concern variation sets,
fantasias, capriccios, and potpourris, the vehicles of choice for virtuoso pianists. These
genres differ in several ways: whereas a variation set usually treats one theme, for
example, fantasias and capriccios generally use several such themes and may or may not
include variations. In Czernys view, though, both offer reliable routes to success because
they can capitalize on the popularity of a familiar tune:
[T]he variation form is one of the few which, in all probability, will never
grow old. For so often as a melody, an opera air, or a national song
acquires a general popularity, so often will pleasing and tasteful variations
upon the same be welcomed by the public. 50
And, later:
The public in general experiences great delight on finding in a
composition some pleasing melody with which it is already familiar and
which it has previously heard with rapture at the operaNow, when such
melodies are introduced in a spirited and brilliant manner in a fantasia, and
there developed or varied, both the composer and the practiced player can
ensure great success. 51
Variations and fantasias represented perhaps the backbone of the 1830s virtuoso
repertory. As we shall see, Schumanns critique of postclassical virtuosity was at its most
vehement in his writings on these genres. Chapter 2 will show, too, that Schumanns
49
Ibid., 2:46.
Ibid., 1:21.
51
Ibid., 1:86.
50
Chapter One 52
early attempts to merge postclassical genres with Romantic metaphors for transcendence
often played out in variation showpieces.
Czernys approach to variation-based compositions differs markedly from those
presented in several other nineteenth-century textbooks, which often seem to justify
Elaine Sismans observation that variations have suffered from a longstanding image
problem.52 Castil-Blazes 1821 Dictionnaire de musique moderne wittily complains,
Nothing is less varied than variations.53 A. B. Marxs Die Lehre von der musikalischen
Komposition, praktisch-theoretisch (written for Berlin university students) avoids the
subject of fashionable variations altogether and discusses examples by Haydn, Mozart,
and Beethoven. Czerny, by contrast, celebrates the charm and accessibility of variation
sets written in a popular, accessible style. 54
Czernys chapter on variation sets suggests ways to achieve such a style through
the construction of the individual variations themselves. Nineteenth- and twentiethcentury theorists have proposed various ways to classify variations according to whether
they derive from the melodic or harmonic framework of a theme. 55 Although Czerny
enumerates specific musical parameters one might vary, his main concern was to require
that the theme remained clearly audible in each variation. In one sense, Czernys
prescription was hardly unique. Marxs textbook from the same decade, for example, also
52
Elaine Sisman, "Variations," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition,
edited by Stanly Sadie (London: Macmillan and New York: Grove, 2001) 26:284.
53
Pour lordinaire, rien nest moins vari que les variations. Castil-Blaze, Dictionnaire de Musique
Moderne (Paris: A. Egron, 1821) 2: 362.
54
Craig Campney Cummings, Large-Scale Coherence in Selected Nineteenth-Century Piano Variations,
(PhD diss., Indiana University, 1991), 12-13.
55
See, for example, Robert U. Nelson, The Technique of Variation (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1948), which differentiates between ornamental melodic variations and those based on bass lines
or harmonic progressions. Sismans Variations article, cited above, similarly describes a variety of
parameters and techniques for variation.
Chapter One 53
requires that the theme be recognizable in each variation. 56 However, Marx and Czerny
call for different kinds of fidelity to the theme for different reasons. As Craig Cummings
has observed, Marx instructs the composer to adhere to the theme in order to distill and
develop its melodic and harmonic motives. Marx also gives composers the option to
depart from the themes harmonic and phrase structure.57 Czerny takes a more restrictive
view of thematic recognizability. According to his treatise, individual variations should
preserve the actual melodic contours of the theme or at least closely follow its harmonic
scheme.
Czerny thus adopts what I call a Transparency Principle that influences various
aspects of postclassical bravura music. When he lists different classes of variation, for
example, certain of his phrases (which I have set in italics) caution the composer against
swerving too far from the melody:
1. In which the theme is strictly preserved in one hand, whilst a new,
augmented, or even florid accompaniment is performed by the other.
2. In which the theme itself is varied by adjunctive notes, without
however changing the melody.
3. Where, either in on or in both hands, passages, skips, or other figures
are constructed upon the harmony of the theme, so that the leading
idea of the melody is retained, yet without again giving the theme in a
complete state.
4. Where, upon the foundation-harmony of the theme, another new
simple or embellished melody is invented, of such a kind that it can
either be played together with the theme, or by itself, instead of it.
5. Where the theme receives other harmony or artificial modulations,
which may be combined either with the strict, canonic, or fugued style,
or with imitative figures.
6. In which the time, the degree of movement, or even the key of the
theme is changed, but in which the original melody must always be
clearly distinguishable. 58
56
Cummings, Large Scale Coherence,16-17.

Ibid., 14-18.
58
Czerny, School of Practical Composition 1:21-22. Emphasis mine.
57
Chapter One 54
Czernys emphasis on thematic clarity serves what he considered the raison dtre of
bravura variation sets: the enjoyment of an appealing, well-loved melody. A selection
from Czernys sample variations (all on the same, four-measure fragment of an original
theme), shown in Example 1.1, all retain the themes melodic contour. Even the third
class, in which the theme need not be retained in full, catches the listeners ear with the
easily recognized leading motive. Similarly, his examples from the fifth class mitigate
harmonic complexity by retaining the themes melodic outline or basic harmonic
scheme.59 Czerny cautions that even these deviations from the harmonic structure of the
theme should be used sparingly. 60
Czernys examples suggest another strategy for giving variations a clear,
transparent style. Each possible variation introduces only one familiar pianistic technique
(such as rapid arpeggios or leaping chords) or musical topic (such as minuet). Czernys
textures are clear of complex inner voices or metric dissonances. In his later discussion of
concertos, he instructs composers to use light and unobtrusive orchestration in order to
keep virtuosic display in the spotlight. The concerto, Czerny writes, serves mainly to
showcase all the fine and brilliant effects of pianoforte playing. 61 Particularly in very
brilliant passages (as in a Bravura Variation), one should limited the accompaniment to
light, regular chords, a suggestion that equally applies to the relationship between bravura
figuration and accompaniment in solo piano works. 62
59
Czerny instructs students to write this kind of variation by first reducing the theme to its most simple
foundation harmony, that is, eliminating passing and suspended chords, and varying it upon this form.
Ibid., 1:28.
60
[W]e must only allow ourselves this freedom occasionally in each set of variations, as the majority of
them must remain more faithful to the theme. Ibid., 1:28
61
Ibid., 1:159, 161, 77.
62
Ibid., 1:77.
Chapter One 55
Manyindeed, mostof the bravura variation sets Schumann knew, played, and
reviewed exemplify Czernys prescriptions. An early work by Henri Herz, his 1827
Grandes Variations sur le choeur des Grecs du Sige de Corinthe, Op. 36 offers one
such example. 63 Herzs style was ubiquitous and influential during Schumanns early
career. Variation sets by only three composersHerz, Hnten, and Czerny himself
made up one quarter of the variation sets printed by Parisian publishers. Herz himself
played an important role in shaping the conventions of the genre, including the use of
separate slow introductions and rondo finales. 64 Clara Wieck frequently closed her
concerts during the 1830s with variation sets by Herz, including his Sige du Corinthe
Variations. The first variation of Opus 36, shown in Example 1.2, outlines every contour
of Rossinis theme so that one can always hear it atop the glittering triplet-sixteenths. In
addition, Herz maintains a transparent texture in which no polyphonic voices or changes
of topic draw attention away from the pianists display.
Czernys Transparency Principle also informs the finales of variation sets. As his
treatise notes, many of these closing sections take the form of a rondo and use a faster
meteroften a dance style. Again, Czerny prescribes a formal procedure that maximizes
thematic recurrence and recognizability:
After the theme has been completely produced in this state [i.e., in a
different meter], we unite some rhythmical passages to it, which modulate
into the key of the dominant. In this key a new rhythmical idea may then
follow, after which we return to the original key. Here, the finale theme is
once more taken up, either without repetition, or else newly varied, which
is succeeded either by brilliant concluding passages, or by a soft melody
on the tonic-pedal, and thus the whole ends energetically or piano. 65
63
The source opera is by Rossini.

Schnapper, Piano Variations in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, 281, 287.
65
Czerny, The School of Practical Composition 1: 31.
64
Chapter One 56
The finale of Herzs Variations follows this format. (Example 1.3) It opens with and
periodically returns to a complete statement of the theme in 6/8. The intervening episodes
introduce rapid, consistent figuration over simple harmonic progressions and
rhythmically straightforward accompaniments.
Finally, Czerny ties his aesthetic of accessibility and entertainment to the overall
layout of the variation set or fantasy. He advises students to observe what I call a
Principle of Tasteful Variety in order to retain the interest of the audience and avoid
excessive complexity or length. Variations should contrast with one another so that each
variation surpasses its predecessor in interest in order to enhance the effect to the end. 66
The subchapter on Fantasias on Known Themes, for example, notes:
In the succession of themes, regard must be had to variety; and, as
connecting links, brilliant figures, elegant embellishments, together with
melodic, harmonic, and even fugued passages must be introduced. But the
chief aim of the composer must be always to remain tasteful and
interesting, to stretch out no passage too much, and to preserve the most
beautiful and animated ideas for the end. 67
Alongside this overall push toward tasteful variety, Czerny prescribes the number of
variations currently in fashion (five or six) and the placement of slow and/or minor
variations (one must precede a minor variation with at least three major variations and
should deploy a slow variation immediately before the finale). Herzs Variations, charted
in Figure 1.1, uses the overall formal layout Czerny recommends. Herz crafts the
succession of pianistic techniques and musical topics to achieve the transparency and
variety Czerny prizes. As shown in Example 1.4, Variation 3 introduces scales in one
hand while outlining or literally stating the theme in the other. Variation 4 offsets the
thin, glittering figuration by giving the pianist octaves in both hands that briefly feint at a
66
67
Ibid., 1:29.
Ibid., 1:87.
Chapter One 57
canonic style. Having displayed the contrapuntal potential of Rossinis leading motive,
Herz avoids excessive complexity by dropping the learned topic and outlining the march
melody in octaves.
For Czerny and Fink, virtuosity ideally served as light, elegant entertainment, an
ideal both writers described not as a compromise but as a laudable artistic goal that
required skill and practice on the composers part. An instrumentalist playing a variationbased showpiece written according to Czernys rubric displays his or her talents by
offering a sampler of familiar musical topics and pianistic gestures. Throughout, the wellloved contours of a popular tune return again and again to infuse the display with lyric
charm. Such compositions, as both writers imply, succeeded or failed not based on their
entering a canon or satisfying Romantic imperatives of originality, complexity, and
transcendence, but on the composers ability to clarify a musical structure, to understand
the latest norms and trends in bravura music, to generate sufficient variety and employ it
tastefully enough to retain a listeners attention, and to package virtuosity and quasioperatic lyricism in a way that was accessible for a casual performer or listener
Schumann and the Neue Zeitschrifts Critique of Postclassical Virtuosity

When Schumann and other Neue Zeitschrift writers wrote against virtuosity, they usually
meant the style that Czerny and Fink upheld and that composers such as Herz,
Kalkbrenner, and Dhler exemplified. They criticized its aesthetic of entertainment
which Fink and Czerny regarded as wholesome and praiseworthyas frivolous,
meretricious, and insubstantial, descriptors meant to cast casual musical recreation in a
negative light and by implication promote a self-consciously serious alternative.
Chapter One 58
Schumanns own writings used a variety of rhetorical strategies, ranging from discussions
of musical style to statements that invoke some of the broader cultural associations of
postclassical bravura music and attempt to use German middle-class attitudes to influence
his readers musical tastes. Recognized for their complex musical and cultural points,
they emerge not as a simple response to shallow music but as a perceptive, if highpitched, critique of the postclassical aesthetic and ideology.
A series of reviews Schumann published in 1836 on virtuoso variation sets and
fantasies opens with an extravagant denunciation of postclassically styled variation sets:
No genre of our art has produced more insipidity than thisand yet will
[continue to] produce it. One has little idea how much shameless
vulgarity, what poverty, blossoms in these depths. Once we at least had
good, boring German airs; now we have to swallow hackneyed Italian
ones in five or six watery decompositions. And the best of these let it go at
that. And then the Mllers, the Mayers, and whatever they are called,
come from their provinces! Ten variations, double repetitions. And still it
keeps going. But then the minore and the finale in 3/8 timeugh! Let us
not lose a word more, and into the fire with it all! 68
For all its shrillness, Schumanns paragraph packs in several concrete features of popular
bravura variation sets, many of which surface in his and his writers other reviews. He
stresses the conventionalization of postclassical bravura music in his scornful reference to
the obligatory minore variation and dance-meter finale. His review of Julius Benedicts
Introduction et Variations sur un thme de La Straniera, Op. 16 similarly complains of
structural clichs:
68
Denn gewi ist in keinem Genre unserer Kunst mehr Stmpferhaftes zu Tage gefrdert wordenund
wird es auch noch. Von der Armseligkeit, wie sie hier aus dem Grunde blht, von dieser Gemeinheit, die
sich gar nicht mehr schmt hat man kaum einen Begriff. Sonst gabs doch wenigstens gute langweilige
deutsche Themas, jetz mu man aber die abgedroschensten italienischen in fnf bis sechs wsserigen
Zersetzungen nach einander hinterschlucken. Und die Besten sind noch die, dies dabei bewenden lassen.
Kommen sie nun aber erst aus der Provinz, die Mller, die Mayer, und wie sie heien! Zehn Variationen,
doppelte Reprisen. Und auch das ginge noch. Aber dann das Minore und das Finale im 3/8 Tacthu! Kein
Wort sollte man verlieren und dann Ritz Ratz in den Ofen! Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften ber Musik
und Musiker, 5th ed., edited by Martin Kreisig (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1914), 1:219. Hereafter GS.
Chapter One 59
Only an unjust person would want to deny the many beautiful pages in
these variationsBut then he closes dully, with a rondo, as if he were
trying to surpass the great [Henri] Herz. 69
For Schumann, these essays imply, postclassical adherence to conventional formal
schemes evoked the demands of the mass market, fashion, and casual listening rather
than Romantic ideals of transcendence and originality.
The paragraph also exudes German nationalistic anxiety and chauvinism.
Schumann dismisses the very selling-point of many postclassical bravura variation sets
their borrowed operatic melodiesby invoking a clich about the supposed shallowness
and frivolity of Italian opera. His mention of provincial German composers imitating
Parisian models adds his resentment of the hegemony of Parisian pianist-composers and
their style in the German sheet-music market. Indeed, many of the most popular
postclassical composers of the 1830sand the most frequently reviewed in the NZfM
were not born in France but originally hailed from Germany and Central Europe and later
established home bases in the capital of virtuosity, including Herz, Hnten, and Dhler.
Schumanns vivid metaphor that describes postclassical variations as watery
decompositions begins another thread in his critique. Schumann frequently invoked
images of transparent substances such as water and glass when describing the music of
popular virtuoso composers. Of Theodore Dhlers Fantaisie et Variations de Bravoure
sur la Cavatine favorite de Anna Bolena, Op. 17, for example, he writes:
These are brilliant variations on a theme by Donizetti, and one knows it all
beforehandIt is entirely useless for music journals to try to open the
eyes of the world to what they call the pleasant talents such as
Kalkbrenner, Bertini, etc. One can already see through glass; there we
need no tiresome explainerDown to the smallest and we know them
69
Indessen wrde nur ein Unbilliger die vielen schnen Seiten dieser Variationen verkennen
wollen...Dann schliet er aber matt, mit einem Rondo, als wolt er dem groen Herz den Vorrang
ablaufen. GS 1:224.
Chapter One 60
and their fingers. Who could be angry with Herr Dhler that he wishes to
play himself into popularity? 70 [Emphasis mine.]
No arbitrary choice of wording, the description of glassy and watery virtuosity refers
to the ease with which one is meant to comprehend the works of Dhler, Kalkbrenner,
and Bertini. It also evokes the Transparency Principle that informs the glittering textures
and easily recognized themes typical of postclassical virtuoso worksindeed one aspect
that made them accessible and appealing. Variation 1 of the Fantaisie sur Anna
Bolena, shown in Example 1.5, enlivens the shape of Donizettis theme with a
procession of alternating octaves, arpeggios, and octave scales, all spotlighted by a spare
accompaniment.
Schumann also located postclassical conventionalization at more specific levels
than a works formal outlines and overall variation technique, at times training his
attention on the smallest and and taking aim at clichd virtuosic gestures. In his
Dhler review, he identifies two such passages and writes, But there are two flourishes
with which we would like the composer to never more enrage usthey stand below in
the notes and have gradually become such commonplaces that one can no longer bear to
hear them.71 (Example 1.6.)
In other reviews, Schumann takes aim at the postclassical principle of Tasteful
Variety. His treatment of Benedicts La Straniera, Variations, Op. 16 laments the
composers allegedly calculated stylistic eclecticism:
70
[I]ndessen sind es eben brillante Variationen ber ein Thema von Donizetti, und man wei alles im
Voraus...Nichtsntzig ist es nun gar, wenn selbst musikalische Zeitungen ber solche wie sie sie nennen,
frreundliche Talents als Kalkbrenner, Bertini, und so weiter, der Welt die Augen ffnen wollen. Durch
Glas lt sich schon sehen: da brauchen wir keinen langweiligen Erklrer. Puff! Paff! Bis aufs kleinste
und kennen wir sie und ihre Finger. Wer wrde Herrn Dhler verrgern, da er sich grten Beifall
erspielen will GS 1:228-29.
71
Aber mit zwei Verzierungen mchten uns die Componisten nicht mehr wthend machen: sie stehen
unten in der Anmerkung und sind nach und nach so zu Gemeinheiten geworden, da mans wirklich nicht
mehr hren lassen. GS 1:224. Plantinga has also pointed these passages out. Schumann as Critic, 199-200.
Chapter One 61
Though he begins very cleverly, he will succeed in making himself
entirely acceptable neither to artists nor to the public simply because he
tries to please both. This unfortunate wavering, this desire to please all,
will never lead to anything right. 72
One can find wavering between accessibility and learnedness in Benedicts Variation 5,
which moves through a contrapuntal treatment with the theme as an inner voice, a fullytextured presentation in octaves, and brilliant right-hand figuration. (Example 1.7) At
some points, Schumanns criticism of Tasteful Variety merges with his identification of
virtuosic clichs, such as later in his Benedict review:
The days are past when a sugary figure, a yearning appoggiatura, an E-flat
major run over the keyboard, raised astonishment: now, one wants
thoughts, inward connection, poetic unity, the whole bathed in fresh
fantasy. 73
All three figures occur in the first two pages of Benedicts variations, shown in Example
1.8. (The sugary figure apparently refers to the chromatic thirds.) Schumanns writing
casts these instances of variety as means of satisfying the tastes of one or several
listenersnot gateways to transcendence or touches that ensure a works originality, but
samplers of pleasing, conventional, virtuosic gestures.
The writers Schumann edited and published during his Neue Zeitschrift years
echo and elaborate his critique of postclassicism. A review that appeared in the second
issue of the Neue Zeitschrift offers a particularly complex statement on virtuosity. The
unsigned 1834 essay treats a showpiece by Sigismund Thalberg, his Grande Fantaisie et
Variations Brillantes sur un motif favori de lOpra I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Op.
72
Aber fang ers noch so scharfsinning an, er wird sich dennoch weder beim Publicum noch beim
Knstler geltend machen knnen, eben weil er beiden gengen mchte. Dieses leidige Schwanken, dieses
Allen gefallen wollen kann nie zu etwas Rechtem fhren. GS 1:224.
73
Die Zeiten, wo man ber eine zuckerige Figur, einen schmachtenden Vorhalt, einen Es dur-Lufer ber
die Claviatur weg in Staunen gerieth, sind vorbei; jetzt will man Gedanken, inneren Zusammenhang,
poetische Ganzheit, alles in frischer Phantasie gebadet. GS 1:224.
Chapter One 62
10. 74 The essay is particularly revealing because it concerns Thalberg rather than Herz,
Hnten, or Czerny. After his training in Vienna, Thalberg developed a style of virtuosity
whose inventive use of piano figuration departed from the glittering postclassical norm,
most famously in his Mose Fantasy, Op. 33, with its three-hand technique. Thalberg
frequently appeared in the NZfM and other nineteenth-century periodicals as one of the
outstanding virtuosi of his time, and, regardless of their orientation toward virtuoso
pianism, critics could not deny the originality of his virtuosic works. Nor could they deny
his skill as a composer: in Vienna, Thalberg studied counterpoint with Simon Sechter
(who also taught Schubert and went on to teach Bruckner) and often displayed his
contrapuntal technique in his compositions. 75
Although he recognizes the original aspects of Thalbergs Opus 10, the 1834
reviewer claims that they have been deployed according to postclassical priorities.
Thalbergs Capuleti Variations alternates transparent, brilliant variations with
contrapuntal treatments of the theme. The NZfM review identifies this feature as a
manifestation of a something-for-everyone aesthetic, an instance of variety employed
to charm a variety of tastes and to mitigate musical complexity:
[O]ne sees clearly how the composer wanted to make them [the variations]
pleasing for the connoisseur as well as the layperson, how he thinks to
satisfy the former with pretty fugued or four-voice passages and, for the
latter, to compensate for their boredom with brilliant and elegant
passages. 76
74
NZfM 1, no. 2 (April 7, 1834): 6-7.

Charles Suttoni, Piano and Opera, (PhD diss., New York University, 1973), 153-59.
76
[M]an sieht recht deutlich, wie sie der Componist fr den Kenner wie Nichtkenner geniebar machen
wollte, wie er dachte, jenen mit hbschen fugirten oder vierstimmigen Stzen zufrieden zu stellen, und
diesen fr die Langeweile, welche er gerade bei diesen Stzen empfand, durch brillante und elegante
Passagen zu entschdigen. NZfM 1, no. 2 (April 7, 1834): 6.
75
Chapter One 63
Thalbergs first two variations juxtapose these two styles. (Example 1.9) Variation 1,
while not truly fugal, adds an element of contrapuntal complexity to Bellinis theme with
four-part writing and cross-rhythms enriched with chromatic passing and neighbor tones.
At the same time, he retains Bellinis melody in the soprano voice so that the relationship
between variation and theme remains clear and the counterpoint subordinated to an
ingratiating melody. Variation 2 dispels the contrapuntal topic with glistening arpeggios
over a rhythmically square accompaniment. The finale presents a more striking instance
of Thalbergs mixture of learned and brilliant. (Example 1.10) In the midst of a thin
texture comprised of rapid triplet and repeated-note figuration, Thalberg suddenly turns
to a fugato with a subject based on the theme. After only twenty-seven measures of
contrapuntal display, he snaps back into a brilliant idiom.
Schumanns writer calls Thalbergs amalgamation of differently pleasing styles
an assembly of vivid colors that shapes a grotesque being. 77 He compares Opus 10s
applause-seeking structure to articles of fashionable clothing meant to impress and
charm. Instead of using the Phantasie marked by originality and inner expression, he
suggests, Thalbergs work uses Phantasie in the sense of French gilets de fantasie
[imaginatively decorated jackets], foulards de fantasie [wildly patterned scarves]. 78 The
reviewer asks rhetorically, Is it noble to found everything in ravishing Phantasie and,
like a paramour [specifically, a woman looking for a man], decorate oneself with
different colors for each person? 79 He opposes this emphasis on charm and wide appeal
with an alternative in which the composer-pianist would become an agent of mystical
77
[Ein] Zusammenstellen bunter Farben zu einem grotesken Dessein. Ibid., 6.

Oder brauchte er das Wort fantaisie in dem Sinne, wie die Franzosen gilets de fantaisie, foulards de
fantaisie? Ibid., 6.
79
Aber ich frageist es im Wesen der erhabenen, Alles mit sich hinreienden Phantasie begrndet, da
sie sich wie eine Buhlerin fr Jeden mit anderen Farben schmcken soll? Ibid., 6.
78
Chapter One 64
artistic transcendence by breaking the bonds of convention and following an inner
impulse:
Mustnt [music] compellingly issue forth from the interior of the poet and
composer, making him, in his struggles with the world, a servant of God?
And transcend all things conventional and fashionable and bear no
restraint other than that of true art which, when laid upon the master,
becomes a magic ring in which others are held fast?80
The review concludes by arguing that, although Thalbergs composition possesses
original and learned features, it ultimately pursues an aesthetic comparable to that of
more typical postclassical pianist-composers:
A piece like this, whose highest and only tendency is its pursuit of
success, we candespite the individual beauties, the very pianistic style,
and the visible effort not to be ordinaryhardly call goodIf he denies
this principlehe reveres fashion as his god and subordinates his talent to
the applause of the multitude, and all that he might do to prove a deeper
individuality is vain effort. So with Herr Thalberg. His composition is
nothing more than a new, elegant, tinged-with-learnedness version of a
work by Herz or Czerny. 81
Other NZfM reviews adopted the short, thumbnail format frequently seen in the
AmZ as well as language that recalls Finks writings on virtuoso pieces. Such similarities
make the NZfMs competing perspective all the more apparent and suggest that these
short reviews might have been written partly as satires of AmZ items. For example, an
1835 review, like Finks Bravourstcke essay, discusses virtuoso compositions for
80
Mu sie nicht aus dem Innern des Dichters wie des Componisten unwiderstehlich hervordringen, und
ihn der Welt entreiend zum Sclaven des Gottes machen? ber alles Conventionelle und Modische
erhaben, ertrgt sie keine andere Fessel, als die wahrer Kunst, welche aber, wenn sie der Meister anlegt, der
Zauberring wird, in den sie Andere festbannt. Ibid., 6-7.
81
Ein Stck wie dieses, dessen hchste und einzige Tendenz Gefallsucht ist, knnen wir trotz der
einzelnen Schnheiten, trotz des sehr claviermigen Stils und des sichtbaren Strebens nicht gewhnlich zu
sein, unmglich gut heien...Verkennt er jedoch dieses Princip, ahnt er es vielleicht nicht einmal, verehrt er
die Mode des Tags als seinen Gott, und ordnet er sein Talent dem beifall der Menge unter, so ist auch
Alles, was er thun mag, eine tiefere Eigenthmlichkeit zu bewahren, eitel Mhe. So bei H. Thalberg. Seine
Composition ist weiter nichts als eine neue, elegantere, einen Anstrich von Gelehrsamkeit habende
Ausgabe der Werke von Herz und Czerny. Ibid., 7.
Chapter One 65
wind instrument (in this case the flute). 82 In contrast to the AmZs emphasis on
accessibility, the NZfM reviewer, who signs himself only Gr, praises Furstenaus Le
Bijou, Op. 96 by hinting at its appeal only to worthy listeners. Furstenau, he or she
writes, generally seeks his audience more among the artists than among the dilettantes
but, in his Bijou, makes a gift to the latter, insofar as they belong to the worthy. 83 Gr
is more dismissive of a Potpourri by C. Behrens: Easy, playable keysa few individual
passagesattractive melodies from the aforementioned opera [Le Serment]and Op. 35
is played. 84 Earlier that year, another pseudonymous writer, Rl, published a
similarly toned review of A. Potts Souvenirs de Paris, Variations brillantes pour violon
et orchestre, Op. 12. 85 At first, the reviewer seems to approve of Potts piece somewhat
in AmZ style, praising the introduction, the lovely theme, and the handling of ritornelli.
The essay even commends the novelty and craftsmanship of Potts piece and credits the
composer with setting himself free from the usual, soggy apathy of similar works. 86
Having built the piece up, however, Rl ultimately compares it to fine articles of
furniture: Elegant furnishing errorless stitching. 87
Oswald Lorenz, a frequent NZfM wrter on violin music, offered in 1834 a
Schumann-influenced short review. 88 Lorenz treats two variation sets by the Parisian
composers Pixis and Ebers. He pretends to place the works in front of the Psychometer,
an imaginary machine Schumann had invented in an earlier review that could divine the
82
Musik fr Flte, NZfM 2, no. 37 (May 8, 1835): 151.

Der bekannte Virtuose, der meistens sehr schwierig fr sein Instrument componirt, und sein Publicum
mehr unter den Knstlern als unter den Dilettanten sucht, macht mit obigem Bijou auch lezteren, in sofern
sie zu den schon achtbaren gehren, ein angenehmes Geschenk. Ibid., 151.
84
Leicht spielbare Tonarteneinige eigene bergngeansprechende Melodien aus besagter Operund
Opus 35 ist gespielt. Ibid., 151.
85
NZfM 2, no. 17 (February 27, 1835): 70.
86
Der Componist hat sich vom gewhnlichen faden Einerlei derlei Compositionen freigehalten. Ibid., 70.
87
Elegante Ausstattung, fehlerfreier Stich. Ibid., 70.
88
NZfM 1, no. 31 (July 17, 1834): 124.
83
Chapter One 66
inner merits and faults of musical scores. Unfortunately for Lorenz, the Psychometer does
not find enough artistic substance in the Pixis and Ebers pieces to even register a reading.
At a loss, Lorenz states his own opinions, highlighting the diverting role these pieces aim
to fulfill and implying that it was this orientation that resulted in the artistic vacancy that
stymied the Psychometer. Both pieces, he writes, are suitable fare for the weaker of the
dilettantes and will please the many friends of new opera music. 89
Virtuoso Entertainment and Aristocratic Frivolity

These stylistically specific writings offer a key to understanding one of Schumanns
quasi-narrative essays on virtuoso music, one that makes a more broadly cultural
statement about the postclassical style. Like many of the reviews cited above,
Schumanns 1835 essay appeared during the early days of the Zeitschrift. 90 It treats two
fantasias on themes by Bellini: Kalkbrenners Fantaisie et Variations sur un Thme de
La Straniera, Op. 123 and Thalbergs Grande Fantaisie and Variations sur des motifs
de lOpra Norma, Op. 12. Although Schumann himself included the review in his
1854 Gesammelte Schriften, it has never appeared fully translated in any of the Englishlanguage Schumann anthologies. 91 For that reason, I include the full text here:
S. Thalberg, Op. 12. Fantaisie sur Norma pour Piano.
F. Kalkbrenner, Op. 123. Fantaisie sur La Straniera p[our]. P[iano].
(Soire at the Countesss)
89
Das Rondino von Pixis ist wegen seines einfach tndelnden Charakters, seines hbschen Flusses den
(schwcheren) Dillettanten sicher wilkommen. An den beiden arrangirten Nummern aus Norma werden
sich gleichfalls die (vielen) Fruenden neuer Opernmusik gern erholen. Ibid., 124.
90
GS 2:313-14.
91
Plantinga has translated the passage beginning at We group these compositions together with good
reason, and ending at Giver and receiver drink the same draught of this sweet poison. My translation
incorporates some of his wording. Schumann as Critic, 107.
Chapter One 67
Attach: What happy keys do these fingers of yours play, Countess!
Truthfully, if I were a piano, with every note would I call out to the player a
different name of beauty and virtue: Corinna for C, Desdemona for D,
Eleonore for E, Fiormona for Fdo you know what Im talking about?
With good reason do we group the above compositions together. The sole
difference between them lies in the 3 in the opus number. There are charming
characters whom the wide world has polished up until they are smooth and glossy,
like ice. One learns flattery from being flattered: giver and receiver drink the same
draught of this sweet poison. Truly
Countess: The Last Days of Pompeii? Oh, I love that book. The blind woman
is divine.
Artist: Doesnt she remind you of Mignon?
Countess: Certainly. But does Bulwer speak German?
Mother: Hasnt he translated Gtz von Berlichingen?
truly, I envy these compositions, the way they can speak with the most
stimulating ambassadresses without offending anyone through brilliant opinions,
with what grace they understand the cast-off glove. Actually, the younger of the
above composers still has some ways to go before anyone grants him significance
in the salons, which the older has for a long time secured for himself: there, the
former still cites Beethoven or Goethe sometimes and speaks as intellectually as is
allowed in higher circles, while the latter quickly makes conquests with his old,
pleasant piano-finery. In the meantime, we do not wish that
Attach: You cannot solve the charade, Your Grace? Ill repeat myself to
you. I give you three syllables. The first is a well-known mineral that often
finds itself in the last two, which repeat perfectly the name of a well-known
mountain.92 All in all you love a great virtuoso
Countess: I have solved your charade through another name, one with two
syllables. Without the first, the second does not exist, and vice versa. 93 The
whole possesses rich talent; one must only be careful not to go where both
syllables stop
It is already 11 oclock. Where could Eusebius be?
Florestan
Rogue, I saw you through the window sitting with a glass of wine while you
rubbed your forehead and finally went after the beaker of Fidibus to prompt
92
93
[Kalk-brenner]
[Thal-berg]
Chapter One 68
critical thoughts. That is a curious way to write a review
Euseb.
Schumann places Kalkbrenners and Thalbergs pieces in the midst of frivolous

games at the Countesss salon that drown out Florestans critical voice. Guests attempt to
ingratiate themselves with the Countess by showering her with extravagant compliments
and display their own sophistication by dropping names and participating in a riddling
party game. 94 Schumann implies that Kalkbrenner and Thalberg, too, excel in this
environment. His first paragraph, during which the Attach praises the Countesss
playing, suggests that her repertoire is meant only to charm her entourage by presenting
her amateur abilities in the best light possible and allowing her to produce nothing but
pleasing, agreeable sounds. In contrast to Finks and Czernys positive images of
accessible, gratefully written bravura works, Schumann uses images of venom and
deception to describe such flattering of the taste. He also refers to the postclassical of
ease and accessibility when he describes Thalbergs and Kalkbrenners smoothness,
polish, and ability to speak with high-society figures without offending anyone through
brilliant opinions. The flattery of the sycophant, in Schumanns review, merges with the
taste satisfaction of postclassical bravura music.
Schumann also makes veiled references to the postclassical characteristics of
Thalbergs and Kalkbrenners compositions. His crack about the sole difference between
the works being the 3 in Kalkbrenners opus number derides the conventionalized
formats of popular fantasies and variations. The conversation to which Thalberg and
94
William G. Atwood notes that hostesses of Parisian salons often entertained guests by organizing party
games, including games of charades. The most complex and earnestly played game, he writes, was that of
social self-advancement. The Parisian Worlds of Frdric Chopin (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1999), 134-35.
Chapter One 69
Kalkbrenner provide a backdrop skips from one current literary subject to another. Such
dialogue seems to dramatize the musical topic-hopping in the name of tasteful variety
that Schumann and his reviewers found meretricious in works by virtuoso pianistcomposers. Like the guests conversation, Schumann implies, a showpiece designed to
show off the composers or performers competence with a sampler of pianistic gestures
and musical styles (none invested with excessive complexity or sustained for a protracted
span of time, and all imbued with operatic lyric appeal) amounts to a superficial attempt
to display sophistication while at the same time flattering hostess or player.
Kalkbrenners and Thalbergs works realize these postclassical principles in
different ways and represent, respectively, a conventional example of the Czerny-esque
style from a pianist-composer at the height of his career and a more idiosyncratic
approach to the opera fantasy from an up-and-coming younger composer. 95
Kalkbrenners La Straniera Fantasy treats a single theme from Bellinis opera and
consists of an introduction, five variations, and a rondo-like finale. The style of the
showpiece stresses harmonic and textural simplicity. The introduction unambiguously
trumpets its tonic D major and, aside from some brief touches of chromaticism, consists
almost entirely of primary triads. His variations occasionally introduce chromatic
sequences or remote harmonies at climactic points, as shown in Example 1.11, but
Kalkbrenner gives each display of harmonic complexity only the lightest of touches,
limiting these moments to one measure each. Most of these variations feature rapid,
single-line figuration over rhythmically square, sparse accompaniments and trace the
95
Thalbergs Opus 12, in fact, was one of the earliest of his works to gain widespread critical attention.
Suttoni, Piano and Opera, 164.
Chapter One 70
outline of Bellinis theme. Schumann associates such conventional figuration with his
fictional aristocrats by dismissing it as old piano finery.
Schumann acknowledges the more complex, daring features of Thalbergs
Norma Fantaisie by writing that the pianist-composer still cites Beethoven and
Goethe and speaks as intellectually as is permitted in higher circles. Thalbergs
introduction, in contrast to Kalkbrenners, artfully maintains a sense of tonal suspense. It
avoids its B minor tonic by feinting at D major, prolonging the dominant with a string of
halting gestures and chromatic harmonies, and ending with twelve measures of fourvoice, chromatic counterpoint. (Example 1.12) As he did in his I Capuleti Variations,
Op. 10, Thalberg displays his trademark contrapuntal writing. Variation 2, shown in
Example 1.13, treats the aria Dellaura tua profetica with fugal writing and then
chromatic harmonies. The finale also includes a fugato (replete with stretto entrances) on
the fantasys second theme (the aria Padre, tu piangi), shown in Example 1.14. In a
final touch of learnedness, the coda contrapuntally combines both themes. But, as in his
earlier showpiece, Thalberg mitigates contrapuntal complexity as quickly as he invokes
it. Variation 2 drops its contrapuntal and harmonic complexity four measures into its
second half , and the finale returns to fast, transparent passagework after twenty measures
of fugato. Like the anonymous 1834 reviewer, Schumann groups Thalberg with a more
conventional work because of what he interprets as Thalbergs effort to enter the salon by
tempering the brilliance of his ideas.
It was not only the beaker of wine and the grip of writers block that led Florestan
to place two exemplars of elegant, accessible bravura in a scene of cavorting aristocrats
and flatterers. As David Gramit has observed, nineteenth-century German music critics
Chapter One 71
committed to the construction of music as a serious, transcendent art form often
unfavorably compared the musical life of a cosmopolitan aristocracy (whom they
portrayed as frivolous and effeminate) with that of a German middle class (portrayed as
serious and wholesome). The critics Gramit cites do not generally refer to virtuoso music.
Rather, they extol choral singing and oratorios at the expense of operaa genre they
linked to court entertainmentand supported music education designed to shape an
individuals inner life and character in favor of music education designed to develop
connoisseurshipa goal that, for some critics, smacked of aristocratic leisure and
luxury. 96 However, like Schumann, these other essayists implicitly or explicitly attack a
culture that, they alleged, valued decoration, entertainment, and pleasure seeking.
By employing this rhetoric, Schumanns criticism of virtuoso instrumental music
became entangled with the anti-aristocratic sentiments current among early nineteenthcentury German liberals. Indeed, it used this sentiment as a critical weapon. Progressive
Germans from various class backgrounds regarded the aristocracy as a barrier to
economic and social progress, and German liberals were at odds with the aristocracy
regarding the repressive policies of the Restoration. 97 As Celia Applegate has shown,
anti-aristocratic views formed part of the philosophical basis of nascent German cultural
nationalism, a belief system whose standard-bearers were educated, literate liberals
similar in background to Schumann. Cultural nationalists envisioned a Germany defined
by bonds of culture and language. For them, the cosmopolitan aristocracy did not share
96
David Gramit, Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture,
1770-1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), see especially 8, 16-18, 129-131.
97
See, for example, Hagen Schulze, The Course of German Nationalism, trans. Sarah Hanbury-Tenison
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 61-63; James J. Sheehan, German History: 1770-1866
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 483-84, 590-604.
Chapter One 72
genuine cultural ties but only the bonds of wealth and privilege. 98 Schumann, like other
self-consciously serious critics, also surely recognized that a mode of musical enjoyment
centered on the enjoyment of luxury and fashion (one that aimed at a mostly middle-class
market but that both detractors and proponents of postclassical virtuoso music coded as
aristocratic) might have made an effective selling point but did not offer the same route to
elevating the status of music as did the high regard of the educated bourgeoisie.99
Anti-aristocratic rhetoric surfaces frequently in Schumanns critical writings on
postclassical virtuoso music. The third installment in his series of variation-set reviews
opens by referring to four lines by Heinrich Heine, the motto used for that NZfM issue:
Black dress coats and silken stockings,
White, courtly collars,
Polite conversation, embraces
Ah, if only they had hearts!
Schumann writes that the lines provide an apt review for the variation sets at hand, which
are far removed from any poetic sphere. 100 His 1837 review of the first six of
Thalbergs Twelve Etudes, Op. 26 also links fashionable virtuosic music with vapid
aristocracy. 101 (Schumann was perhaps aware not only of Thalbergs success in Parisian
salons that catered to legitimist high-society but also his aristocratic background:
Thalberg was rumored to be the illegitimate son of Count Moritz Dietrichstein and the
Baronness von Wetzlar.) 102 They are all grateful, ingratiating, well-suited to ears and
fingers, Schumann writes. Thalberg, who increasingly has the public more in view than
98
Celia Applegate, Robert Schumann and the Culture of German Nationhood, in Rethinking Schumann,
ed. Roe-Min Kok and Laura Tunbridge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 8.
99
See, for example, Applegate, How German Is it? 286.
100
Schwarze Rcke, feidne Strmpfe, / Weie, hfliche Manschetten, / Sanfte Reden, Embrassiren /
Ach, wenn sie nur Herzen htten! Sie halten sichvon aller poetischen Sphre weit entfernt. GS 1:227.
Ballstaedt and Widmair have also noted this passage. Salonmusik, 52.
101
GS 1:287-89.
102
On Thalbergs connections to legitimist aristocrats in Paris, see Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 62-65.
Chapter One 73
artists, cannot write otherwise. 103 At the end of his review, Schumann manages in three
sentences to invoke one of the cradles of postclassical virtuosity, associate Thalbergs
work with female aristocrats, accuse his admirers of insufficient masculinity, and claim
that Opus 26 cannot offer transport into poetic, transcendental states:
Except for the first, which sounds too much like what a student would
practice, I should call all of these pieces salon etudes, Viennese etudes,
etudes for countess-pianists, on account of whose eyes one overlooks a
wrong note. Masculine players and characters will not be able to tolerate
these etudes for long. Naturally such an aim closes off poetic states, such
as those the so much more profound Chopin has unveiled for us[.] 104
Schumann makes a similar point about a set of etudes by Henri Bertini, his
Twenty-Five Caprice-Etudes, Op. 94. Bertinis etudes often take the form of waltzes with
challenging accompaniments and ornamentation, transposing the work of acquiring piano
technique to the floor of the elegant ballroom. Schumanns 1836 review stresses that they
inculcate the skills and tastes necessary to perform fashionable music: [F]or certain
reasons we even recommend these studies as excellent to persons who do not know how
to behave in the great world, yet who wish to and must live in it. As in his review of
Thalbergs Opus 26, Schumann excludes Bertinis etudes from the poetic sphere. No
one understands better than Bertini, he writes, how to pronounce the commonest
phrases with elegance and apparent depth. 105
103
Denn dankbar, enschmeichelnd, gut in die Finger und Ohren fallend sind sie alle; Thalberg, der immer
mehr das Publicum als den Knstler von den Augen hat, kann berhaupt nichts anders mehr schreiben. GS
1:288.
104
Die erste Etde ausgenommen, die zu sehr nach Schlerbung klingt, mchte ich sie daher alle
Salonetden heien, Wiener Etden, Etden fr grfliche Spielerinnen, ber deren Augen man wohl einen
falschen Ton berhrt; dagegen sich mnnliche Spieler und Charaktere weniger lange bei ihnen aufhalten
werden. So ein Zweck schliet natrlich poetische Zustnde, wie sie uns der tiefsinnige Chopin enthllt[.]
Ibid., 1:288.
105
[A]us gewissen Grnden empfehlen wir sogar denen, die sich in der groen welt nicht zu benehmen
wissen und doch in ihr leben wollen and leben mssen, diese Etden als vorzglich...[D]a allgemeine
Redensarten kaum mit mehr Eleganz und scheinbarer Tiefe ausgesprochen werden knnen, als es Bertini
versteht[.] GS 1:207.
Chapter One 74
Schumanns writings on virtuoso music do recognize a key feature of the
postclassical repertoire, namely the aura of luxury and glamour that represented part of its
appeal and the degree to which aristocratic women participated in and led salons.
However, it would be too simplistic to interpret his essays as a liberal Germans kneejerk reaction against an aristocratic culture he held in contempt. Schumanns descriptions
of frivolous gatherings of intellectual lightweights do not qualify as an informed response
to the diverse salon culture of his time. Schumann ignores the substantial intellectual and
literary ferment that occurred in the salons of Paris and other localities during the 1830s
and 40s as well as their patronage of pianist-composers he championed, including Liszt,
Henselt, and Chopin. More importantly, Schumann surely knew that the largest market
for Thalbergs and Kalkbrenners music not to mention the readership for the Neue
Zeitschriftconsisted less of francophone aristocrats than of middle-class Germans. His
essay does not criticize the musical practices and tastes of a real elite as much as it chides
a middle-class public for purchasing postclassical bravura music that it perceived as
fashionable and refined. Schumanns main concern was not the real practices of an
aristocratic Other but the tastes of his own potential audiences. In the end, Schumanns
Thalberg-Kalkbrenner essay and its echoes in his later reviews make a half-perceptive,
half-oversimplified, and wholly strategic attempt to tie together a widely held negative
image of aristocrats, a repertoire whose high-society connotations and German
Imitationssucht contributed to its popularity, and a thriving postclassical aesthetic that
emphasized accessibility and recreational value.
Chapter One 75
Epilogue: Henriette Voigt and the Poetic Salon
The reviews quoted above would seem to number Schumann as one of the many critics
whose often gendered invective came to give the term salon music a pejorative
meaning. 106 However, Schumann also wrote aboutand participated ina salon that
provided an ideal environment for the kind of virtuosity he promoted and attempted to
realize in his own works. The salon met in the home of Henriette Voigt, the wife of
prosperous Leipzig merchant Carl Voigt. (The Voigts, significantly, were not aristocrats
but members of the educated upper-middle class.) After Henriettes untimely death in
February 1839, Schumannin the guise of Eusebiuswrote a lengthy tribute to her in
the Neue Zeitschrift. 107 This eulogy, Erinnerungen an eine Freundin, along with Voigts
own accounts of artistic gatherings at her home, documents the convivial atmosphere,
talk of literature (including Schumanns beloved E. T. A. Hoffmann and Jean Paul), and
combination of amateur and professional music-making that characterized the most
vibrant artistic salons. Schumann occasionally brought new compositions for trial
performances, and Voigts diary mentions his improvisations for other guests. 108 The
tone of Schumanns essay undoubtedly reflects his warm personal relationship with
Voigt. He called her his A-flat-major soul, she served as a confidante in his ill-fated
relationship with Ernestine von Fricken, and the Voigts provided a home for Schumanns
friend, the pianist-composer Ludwig Schuncke, during his fatal illness. The tribute also
reflects Voigts stature in the Leipzig musical community. She was a supporter of the
106
Jeffrey Kallberg discusses the gendering and critical devaluing of salon music in his Chopin at the
Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 30-62.
107
GS 1:446-52.
108
Wolfgang Boetticher, Weitere Forschungen an Dokumenten zum Leben und Schaffen Robert
Schumanns, in Robert SchumannEin romantisches Erbe in neuer Forschung: Acht Studien
herausgegeben von der Robert-Schumann-Gesellschaft Dsseldorf (Mainz: Schott, 1984), 54-55. See also
John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997),
149-50.
Chapter One 76
Gewandhaus orchestra and personally knew and corresponded with many of the citys
prominent musicians, notably the Mendelssohns. 109 However, when published in a forum
that extended well beyond Leipzig, the essay also made an impassioned, public statement
about an ideal salon and the place of virtuosity within it by portraying Henriette Voigt as
a model music lover and patron.
Eusebius describes Voigts home as a veritable utopia for serious musicians. An
artist needed only take one step into that house, he writes, before feeling himself at
home. Over the piano hung the portraits of the great masters; a choice musical library
stood conveniently for perusal; and it seemed as though the musician was the master of
the house, and music its highest goddess. 110 Voigt had studied the piano with Ludwig
Berger and, like a true serious amateur, her tastes initially gravitated toward Beethoven.
While she was taking lessons with Schuncke, Schumann relates, she also developed a
passion for the Romantic avant-garde, notably Mendelssohn and Chopin. Schumann
reports that one of her more distinguished guests, Johann Friedrich Rochlitz (the first
editor the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung), frequented the house specifically to hear
Voigt play and discuss the most recent works of the Romantics.
Voigt appears in Eusebiuss essay as a discerning listener who regarded music
most often canonized classicsas a pathway towards inner, poetic experience. As
evidence, Eusebius prints several passages from Voigts diary, drawn from three years of
entries. Voigt writes ecstatically about a Haydn symphony and employs her own version
109
Ruskin King Cooper, Robert Schumanns Closest Jugendfreund: Ludwig Schuncke (1810-1834) and
his Piano Music (Hamburg: Fischer, 1997), 71, 103-5.
110
Nur einen Schritt in Ihr Haus gethan, und der Knstler fhlte sich heimisch darin. Aufgehngt waren
ber dem Flgel die Bildnisse der besten Meister, eine ausgewhlte musikalische Bibliothek stand zur
Verfgung; der Musiker, schein es, war Herr im Haus, die Musik die oberste Gttin. GS 1:446.
Chapter One 77
of Schumannesque poetic criticism. In this entry, she also shares Schumanns view of
the present day as a prosaic artistic vacuum in need of transcendence:
Heavenly, melodious sound lies in these tones, which reveals no weariness
with life but instead produces nothing but happiness, desire for existence,
childlike happiness for everythingwhat a contribution he has made even
to the present day, this sickly musical epoch, in which one so seldom feels
any inward contentment!111
Other diary entries, which Schumann did not publish, describe Mendelssohn participating
in performances of Mozarts, Beethovens, and his own quartets at Voigts home. At
another soire, Voigt accompanied violinist Karol Lipiski in sonatas by Bach and
Beethoven. 112 Eusebius praises Voigts artistic judgment: We never heard her play a
single bad composition, and she never encouraged anything inferior. Though sometimes
obliged as hostess to endure it, she preferred to remain silent, despite her overall regard
for the artist as a person. 113
Also like a self-consciously serious, inward-directed music lover, Voigt also
expressed suspicion toward virtuosity because of its association with crowd-pleasing
displays of physical skill. In a diary entry from October 10, 1836, she claims to be
repelled by circus stunt-artistry in music, clearly having the feats of virtuoso performers
in mind:
I always felt an aversion to rope-dancers and equestrians feats, and the
same feeling seems to have glided into my artistic views. For, if I allow
myself to be enraptured and astonished for a moment, my inborn revulsion
111
Himmlischer Wohllaut liegt in diesen Klngen, die nichts von Lebensberdru merken lassen, die
nichts erzeugen als Frohsinn, Lust am Dasein, kindliche Freude ber Alles undwelche ein Verdienst hat
er dadurch noch um die jetzige Zeit, diese krankhafte Epoche in der Musik, wo man so selten innerlich
befriedigt wird. Ibid., 1:450.
112
Boetticher, Weitere Forschungen, 54-55.
113
Nie aber hrten wir jemals eine schlechte Composition von ihr spielen, nie auch munterte sie
Schlechtes auf; als Wirthin vielleicht genthigt, es hinnehmen zu mssen, zog sie dann lieber vor zu
schweigen, trotz aller Aufmerksamkeit fr die Person des Knstlers im brigen. GS 1:448.
Chapter One 78
soon returns. Please, no rope dancing in music: through it this sanctuary is
profaned. 114
Voigt, however, did not exclude virtuosity from her salon but welcomed and praised
select bravura compositions as sources of an introverted kind of astonishment. Her salon
became a haven for musicians Schumann came to praise as poetic virtuosos. Schuncke,
Voigts last piano teacher, spent his short career writing most of his works in the current
virtuoso genres; as we shall see in Chapter 3, he often appeared in Schumanns writings
as an idealized virtuoso. Voigts previous teacher, Ludwig Berger, penned several sets of
etudes that Schumann later praised as models worthy of emulation and taught virtuosos
whom Schumann promoted, notably Mendelssohn and Wilhelm Taubert. When Chopin
paid a visit to the Voigt home on September 13, 1836, it was with performances of his
second set of etudes that he enchanted his hostess. In contrast to her disdainful remarks
about circus-like bravura, Voigts recollection of Chopins virtuosity stresses the
sensitivity of his imaginative style and character and describes his performance as an
inner experience: I held my breath while I listened. Wonderful is the grace with which
his velvet fingers glide, I want to say fly, over the keys. 115 Schumann himself gave a
trial performance of his ferociously pyrotechnical Concert sans orchestre, Op. 14 at the
Voigt salon prior to its publication. 116
114
Comparisons between virtuoso performance and circus performers appear occasionally in nineteenthcentury anti-virtuoso criticism but do not surface in Schumanns writings. Gramit, Cultivating Music, 141.
Von jeher fhlte ich Abneigung gegen alle Seiltnzergeschichten, Bereiterknste, und dgl.so hat sich
diese Ansicht ganz unbewut in die Kunst hinbergeschlichten, und wenn ich auch fr den Augenblick
mich zum Staunen hinreien lasse, so kehrt bald mein angeborner Widerwille zurck.Nur keine
Seiltnzereien in der Musikwie ward dies Heiligthum dadurch profanirt. GS 1:449.
115
Die berreizung seiner phantastischen Art und Weise teilt sich dem Scharfhrenden mit: ich hielt
ordentlich den Athem an mich. Bewundernswrdig ist die Leichtigkeit, mit der diese sammtenen Finger
ber die Tasten gleiten, fliehen mcht ich sagen. GS 1:449.
116
Daverio, Robert Schumann, 150.
Chapter One 79
Henriette Voigts salon disbanded after her death. During Schumanns first
decade in Leizpig, though, it offered him a model for a kind of salon that differed from
the vapid, fictional gatherings he skewered in his 1835 review or from the real, numerous
amateur musicians who scanned the AmZ for the latest brilliant but not difficult bravura
pieces. Voigt hosted a poetic salon, one in which the feats of certain virtuosos merged
with German Romantic ideals of Innigkeit and seriousness. 117 It was also one populated
by aficionados of the literary works after which that Schumann modeled his style of
critical writing and from which he derived some of his compositional strategies. As we
shall see in Chapters 2 and 3, Schumann wrote many of his 1830s showpieces (and
reviewed those by other composers) with this kind of salon and audience in mind.
117
Voigts was not the only such salon, and Germany not the only place to find them. Liszts musical
supporters in Paris, for example, tended to include the citys musical and literary lights, its aristocracy of
talent. See, for example, Chapter Four (Society and Salons: A Whos Tout of le tout Paris) of
Atwood, The Parisian Worlds of Frdric Chopin, especially 125-34.
Chapter Two 80
CHAPTER 2:
VIRTUOSITY AND THE SCHUMANNIAN POETIC
As an alternative to the postclassical virtuoso repertoire he critiqued, Schumann
attempted to realize (as composer) and promote (as critic) a kind of virtuosity informed
by his concept of the poetic. Schumanns ideas on poetic music have long provided
scholars with a versatile framework for understanding his works. The scholarly literature
on this aspect of Schumanns art, though, has consistently (and often tacitly) assumed
that the category of the poetic excludes an overt emphasis on virtuosic display or music
written in genres typically cultivated by virtuoso performer-composers. Such studies
unanimously omit, for example, the Abegg Variations, Op. 1, tudes symphoniques,
Op. 13, and Toccata, Op. 7all for solo pianoas well as the concerted works. Instead,
they emphasize the character-piece cycles (especially Papillons, Op. 2,
Davidsbndlertnze, Op. 6, and Carnaval, Op. 9), the C-Major Fantasie, Op. 17, and the
lieder. This omission stems in some ways from the poetics common associations with
inner experience, recondite intertextual and extramusical allusions, and a rarefied
audience composed of serious connoisseurs, features that would seem to fit ill with music
that emphasizes extroverted, flashy virtuosic display. In addition, scholars of the
Schumannian poetic have chosen works to emphasize partly in response to a need for
unconventional analytical tools. Whereas Schumanns showpieces tend to use classical
forms (albeit, as I shall argue, in idiosyncratic ways), the cycles and the Fantasie defy
easy generic classification and depart from traditional structural paradigms. In fact, it was
the charges of incoherence that these works attracted during the composers lifetime that
Chapter Two 81
inspired some scholars to turn to literary and aesthetic theory to divine the logic behind
Schumanns more puzzling works. 1
Schumann himself also made sweeping declarations about virtuosity that, read out
of context, risk placing virtuoso music on the non-poetic side of a binary opposition. As
Chapter 1 showed, he made the critique of postclassical virtuosity a central part of his
Neue Zeitschrift fr Musiks critical platform. In his 1835 New Years column for the
Zeitschrift, Schumann derided the current musical epoch as an artistic vacuum for which
only the great intensification of the mechanical offers any compensation. 2 When he
anthologized the address in his 1854 Gesammelte Schriften, he reworded the passage to
lament the intensification of external [i.e., superficial] virtuosity. 3 But Schumanns
writings and compositions show that he also believed virtuosity could serve one of the
objectives he shared with other proponents of serious music. Virtuoso music, written in a
certain style, could allow listeners and performers to access states of musical
transcendence. Schumanns New Years column actually adumbrates this complex
attitude. The original version of the address not only acknowledges that the
intensification of the mechanical represents some progress but also leaves room for
virtuosity that could transcend its mechanical aspects and become a route to quasi-
See, for example, Carl Kossmalys 1844 Allgemeine musikalishe Zeitung and Franz Brendels 1845 Neue
Zeitschrift articles on Schumanns compositions. Kossmaly, On Robert Schumanns Piano Compositions,
trans. Susan Gillespie, in Schumann and his World, ed. R. Larry Todd (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1994), 308. John Daverios use of literary models as an analytical basis for Schumann explicitly
responds to these critiques. See Schumanns Systems of Musical Fragments and Witz, in Nineteenth
Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology (New York: Schirmer, 1993), 50-53.
2
Unsere Gesinnung wardie letzte Vergangenheit als eine unknstlerische zu bekmpfen, fr die nur das
Hochgesteigerte des Mechanischen einigen Ersatz gewhrt habe. Zur Erffnung des Jahrganges 1835,
Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik (Jan. 2, 1835): 2-4.
3
Unsere Gesinnung wardie letzte Vergangenheit, die nur auf Steigerung uerlicher Virtuositt
ausging, als eine unknstlerische zu bekmpfen. Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften ber Musik und
Musiker, ed. Martin Kreisig, 5th ed. (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1914) 1:38.
Chapter Two 82
spiritual experience. Similarly, the complaint against external virtuosity implies what
one might call an innerliche Virtuositt. Virtuosity, in short, could become poetic.
The Schumannian poetic is best described not as a rigorously coherent artistic
credo but as a constellation of interrelated stylistic and aesthetic conceptsa system of
metaphors for inward transcendence that lifts one beyond the everyday. Sanna Pederson
has described poetic listening as a means of dissolution, a gateway to transcendental
experience.4 Although Pederson tends to view the poetic as an attitude on the listeners or
critics part rather than a strategy on the composers, numerous nineteenth-century
writers were eager to discuss the implications of this ideal for composers and their works,
insights upon which subsequent scholarship has expanded. In a particularly
straightforward statement on the poetic, the early Romantic poet and aesthetician Novalis
emphasized the sheer originality and unfamiliarity needed to set the otherworldly poetic
apart from the everyday prosaic: Everything new has the effect of being other, foreign
[or strange], poetic. 5 Hubert Moburger, writing over a century later, echoes Novalis by
describing the poetic and non-poetic with clusters of antithetical adjectives: poetic art
comprises the original, fantastic, new, uncommon, special, hidden,
unknown, and dreamlike, setting itself in opposition to the mechanical, stiff, and
trivial.6 Other scholarsnotably John Daverio and Erika Reimanhave extended this
Sanna Pederson, Enlightened and Romantic German Music Criticism, 1800-1850 (PhD diss., University
of Pennsylvania, 1995), 26-27.
5
Alles Neue wirkt als ures, Fremdes, poetisch. From Das allgemeine Brouillon, in Novalis, Schriften,
ed. Paul Kluckhohn, vol. 3, Fragmente und Studien VIII-XII (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1929),
112. Pederson cites Novaliss imperative in her discussion of poetic music in Enlightened and Romantic
German Music Criticism, 1800-1850 (PhD. diss, University of Pennsylvania, 1995), 22.
6
Drittens stellt das Poetische den Gegensatz zum Prosaischen, d. h. zu allem Mechanischen, Erstarrten,
Trivialen.Positiv ausgedrckt umfat das Reich des Poetisichen alles Originelle, FantastischFantasievolle, Romantische, Neue, Seltene, Speziale, Geheime, Unbekannte, und Traumhafte. Hubert
Mossburger, Poetische Harmonik, in Schumann Handbuch, ed. Ulrich Tadday (Stuttgart: Metzler and
Kassel: Brenreiter, 2006), 194.
Chapter Two 83
emphasis on originality to argue that the more radical features of Schumanns music
often create musical processes analogous to the digressive literary techniques of Jean
Pauls and E. T. A. Hoffmanns fiction, particularly those that served as means of
conveying or representing transcendental or de-familiarizing experience. 7 Finally, Holly
Watkinss recent study, Metaphors of Depth in German Musical Thought, advances one
of the more metaphysically oriented discussions of the Schumannian poetic. At the heart
of Schumanns concept of poetic depth, Watkins concludes, lay Jean Pauls imperative
that metaphorthe deepest and most poetic characteristic of language, he thoughtmust
synthesize matter (or body) and imagination (or spirit), using one to animate the other. In
musical terms, the poetic uses the sounding surface of music to inspire a search for inner
meaning: musics bodyits physical reality as (external) sound, Watkins writes,
demands to be read as a sign of (internal) spirit. 8
Although my discussion will engage with each of these understandings of the
poetic, Watkinss in particular opens wide the poetic sphere to virtuosity. Granted, as
Schumann complained, postclassical virtuoso music during the 1830s and 40s often
functioned in a non-poetic, mechanical way by using dazzling but predictable means to
elicit applause. Watkins herself concentrates on locating poetic syntheses in affectively
introverted, not particularly showy pieces such as the Nachtstcke, Op. 23. However,
music designed for virtuosic display likewise begged for critical or compositional efforts
to connect its brilliant surface with the wellspring of poetic depth. Music that possessed a
7
See, for example, Daverios aforementioned Schumanns Systems of Musical Fragments and Witz and
Erika Reiman, Schumanns Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul (Rochester: University of Rochester
Press, 2004). For two other literature-inspired approaches to Schumanns work, see Berthold Hoeckner,
Schumann and Romantic Distance, Journal of the American Musicological Society 50, no. 1 (1997): 55132 and Laura Tunbridge, Schumanns Late Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
8
Holly Watkins, Metaphors of Depth in German Musical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011), 98-102. I would like to thank Prof. Watkins for sharing drafts of her Schumann chapter with
me prior to its publication.
Chapter Two 84
resplendent sonorous body and engaged the physical capabilities of the performer to an
extraordinary degree offered its own opportunities for a spectacular fusion with a poetic
spirit.
In fact, Schumann articulated a version of this Jean-Paul-inspired poetic ideal
early in his career as a result of his experience with one virtuoso showpiece, Chopins
L ci darem la mano Variations, Opus 2, which he studied with Friedrich Wieck
during the summer of 1831. Amidst his struggles, short-lived victories, and frustrations
documented in philosophical musings and piano exercises jotted down in his diary and
practice notebooksSchumann wrote of a pianistic journey that would culminate with a
spirit-body synthesis:
I think there are three periods for artists who already stand at a certain
level: in the first period of study the spirit and the recent fascination of the
object keep one fresh and vigorous and lift the fingers beyond themselves;
in the second the imaginations flowering gradually falls off, the notes are
written there, they must be reckoned with, the keys are depressed, sounds
fail to come out.
What should I say of about the third, where spirit and form, mechanics and
imagination flow into each other, that a person is corporeal music? Let me
see these paradises of yours! 9
Schumanns diary entry describes not a musical aesthetic but the aspirations of a student
pianist. As Claudia Macdonald has noted, spirit and body here refer to the imagination
Mir ducht es giebt drey Perioden bey Knstlern, die schon auf einer Stufe stehen: in der ersten des
Studiums halt einen der Geist u. der neue Reiz des Objects Frisch u. mun[ter] u. hebt die Finger ber sich
selber, in der zweiten fallen nach u. nach die Fantasieblumen web, es stehen Noten da, es mu gegriffen
warden, die Tasten fallen, es bleiben Tne aus.Was soll ich aber von der dritten sagen, wo Geist u. Form,
Mechanik u. Fantasie ineinander flieen, da man leibhafte Musick [sic] ist? La mich deine Paradiese
sehen! Robert Schumann, Tagebcher, Band I: 1827-1838, ed. Georg Eismann (Leipzig: Deutscher
Verlag fr Musik, 1971), 353-54. Translation adapted from Claudia Macdonald, Schumanns Piano
Practice: Technical Mastery and Artistic Ideal, Journal of Musicology 19, no. 4 (2002): 546.
Chapter Two 85
of the performer and to the physical realities of a pieces technical demands. 10
Nevertheless, by the time Schumann had begun to abandon his virtuoso career and was
making his debuts as a composer and critic later that year, this vision of poetic
performance had developed into a compositional ideal, a guide and standard for
composing and evaluating virtuoso works.
The present chapter explores ways in which Schumanns concept of the poetic
informed his writings on virtuoso music as well as his own showpieces, particularly four
interrelated essays and compositions from the early 1830s that figured prominently in
Schumanns early development as a composer-critic: his first published review, which
treats Chopins L ci darem la mano Variations, Op. 2; his first published
composition, the Abegg Variations, Op. 1; his unpublished 1835 salon showpiece, the
Fantaisies et finale (later revised as the tudes symphoniques); and his 1835 review of
Ferdinand Hillers Etudes, Op. 15. Schumanns compositions engage in surprising ways
with the conventions of postclassical bravura music yet transform them in ways that
connect them with Romantic metaphors for musical transcendence. His reviews read such
transformations into works by other composers. They reveal that, for Schumann, the
poetic did not offer a refuge from showy, even crowd-pleasing music and its conventions,
but rather a way of using the display and difficulty of showpieceswhether designed as
concert warhorses or for domestic music-makingas vehicles for transcendental
experience.
10
Claudia Macdonald, Schumanns Piano Practice, 556. Schumanns entry implies that he had earlier
achieved such a synthesis with his performances of two other virtuoso works, Moscheless Alexander
Variations, Op. 32 and Hummels Concerto in A minor, Op. 85.
Chapter Two 86
Ein Opus II
Schumann described such a poetic approach to virtuosity in his first published review,
which appeared in 1831. Ein Opus II [An Opus II], like the aforementioned diary
entry, treats Chopins L ci darem la mano Variations. 11 As often as it has been
anthologized as an exemplar of Schumanns idiosyncratic style of criticism, Ein Opus
II and the work it discusses have proven problematic for scholars. Schumanns review
takes the form of a short story about the imaginary characters he later dubbed the
Davidsbndler: Florestan, Eusebius, and Raro, as well as a narrator named Julius. It uses
more storytelling and imagistic criticism than any of Schumanns later reviews and
contains virtually no overt technical discussion of Chopins music. For this reason, Ein
Opus II has proven frustrating for scholars seeking to understand the connection
between Schumanns response and Chopins score. As Leon Plantinga remarks of
Schumanns early criticism in general, It is unfortunate that the more Schumann likes a
composition, sometimes, the less he really has to say about it.12 Pederson similarly
writes that poetic criticism offered more a demonstration of subjective response than an
occasion for concrete discussion of musical style. 13 Nevertheless, I would propose that,
when considered in the contexts of the scores they discuss and other reviews to which
they respond, this and other ultra-imagistic articles by Schumann often present complex,
concrete insights on why, in his view, certain works of music invited a poetic mode of
criticism.
11
Robert Schumann, Ein Opus II, Allegemeine musikalische Zeitung 33, no. 49 (December 7, 1831): 805808.
12
Leon Plantinga, Schumann as Critic (New York: Da Capo, 1976), 159.
13
Sanna Pederson, Enlightened and Romantic German Music Criticism, 34-35; 81-3.
Chapter Two 87
The L ci darem Variations itself also presents a quandary. The harmonic and
formal features of the work are less obviously innovative than those of Chopins later
mazurkas, preludes, and ballades. A warhorse for Chopins early concert tours, the piece
follows the conventional outlines of the popular postclassical variation-set, down to the
quasi-improvisatory introduction, familiar borrowed theme (a duet between Don
Giovanni and Zerlina from Mozarts Don Giovanni), five variations (including a slow
minore variation), and rondo finale whose refrain consists of a straightforward statement
of Mozarts tune. 14 Scholars have had difficulty understanding what Schumann saw in
this piece. Plantinga, for example, expresses astonishment that Schumann could have
perceived Chopins extraordinariness in this work. 15 John Rink and Jim Samson both
stress its conventionalized features even as they praise Chopins early command of
harmonic structure. 16
However, it was the conventional aspects of Chopins piece as well as the novel
ones that made it an ideal subject for Schumanns essay. Both as a composer and as a
critic, Schumann did not shield himself from commercialism and fashion by exclusively
promoting the nascent canon of classics. 17 Instead, his objective was similar to that of
early- and mid-nineteenth-century German critics, writers, and aestheticians such as
Novalis, Jean Paul, and Hoffmann: the poeticization of daily life and the
transformationthrough transcendenceof the everyday world. Novalis had earlier
issued a Romantic imperative: The world must be romanticized. By giving the common
14
See Chapter 1 for a fuller discussion of postclassical variation-sets.

Plantinga, Schumann as Critic, 227.
16
John Rink, Tonal Architecture in the Early Music, in The Cambridge Companion to Chopin, ed. Jim
Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 82; Jim Samson, Chopin (Oxford: Oxford
17
Other critics did take this approach. A. B. Marx, for example, described a performers focus on
canonized classics as the most important measure of his seriousness. See Sanna Pederson, A. B. Marx,
Berlin Concert Life, and German National Identity, 19th-Century Music 18, no. 2 (1994): 104.
15
Chapter Two 88
a higher meaning, the everyday a mysterious semblance, the known the dignity of the
unknown, the finite the appearance of the infinite, I romanticize it. 18 This project of
romanticization led Schumann, particularly in his 1830s piano works, to convert genres
associated with quotidian musical diversion into springboards for poetic experience and,
in his critical writings, to locate musical poetry in such works by other composers. If, as
Daverio has suggested, Schumanns Neue Zeitschrift aspired to be a barrier against
convention, Schumanns own works and writings revealindeed, revel inthe
porousness of this boundary. 19 His piano cycles, as Reiman has noted, often use the
conventional, domestic genre of the dance medley as a point of departure. 20 Virtuoso
variation-sets and other showpieces, though, were equally part of everyday listening and
music-making and, as Schumanns critique of postclassical virtuosity emphasizes, were
often designed specifically as vehicles for casual musical diversion. Schumanns desire to
poeticize a prosaic world thus shaped his critical and compositional approach to virtuoso
showpieces.
In doing so, Schumann appropriated the L ci darem la mano Variations for an
aesthetic for which Chopin himself never developed much sympathy. Although Chopin
never recorded a response to Schumanns article, he sneered at another essayby
Friedrich Wieckthat also employs a programmatic reading of the Variations. In an
18
Jean Pauls and Hoffmanns fiction, for example, often transforms and defamiliarizes everyday scenes
and conventional literary genres with digressive narratives and unexpected, fantastic details and events.
Die welt muss romanticisirt werdenIndem ich dem Gemeinen einen hohen Sinn, dem Gewhnlichen ein
geheimnivolles Ansehn, dem Bekannten die Wrde des Unbekannten, dem Endlichen einen unendlichen
Schein gebe, so romantisiere ich es. From Novaliss Neue Fragmentensammlungen in Schriften, ed.
Kluckhohn, vol. 2, Fragmente und Studien, 335. Translated in Novalis, Notes for a Romantic
Encyclopedia: Das Allgemeine Brouillon, trans. David W. Wood (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2007), xvi.
19
Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 105.
20
Erika Reiman, Schumanns Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul, 6-7, 37-47. Kreisleriana, Op. 16,
whose links to the dance medley are few, is a notable exception.
Chapter Two 89
1831 letter, Chopin wrote, I could die laughing at this Germans imagination and called
the programmatic concept really very stupid. 21 If Chopin designed the innovative
features of his work to better display his dazzle his audiences with its novelty and
difficulty, though, Schumann saw them as elevating the bravura variation-set beyond its
conventional orientation towards accessible entertainment and giving a familiar musical
commodity a transcendental touch of unfamiliarity and otherworldliness.
Ein Opus II in Dialogue

The points that Schumanns Ein Opus II makes emerge more clearly when we place the
essay in its larger critical context. Ein Opus II appeared on December 7, 1831 in the
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. As we saw in Chapter 1, the AmZ of the 1830s
primarily addressed the interests of amateur musicians and included numerous reviews of
light, fashionable virtuoso pieces. It was a natural venue in which to publish a review of a
popular virtuoso showpiece. Although Schumann intended the article to stand alone,
Gottfried Wihelm Fink, editor of the AmZ, issued it as part of a brief dialogue about the
merits of Chopins Variations and the aesthetics of virtuoso music in general. Alongside
Schumanns review, Fink printed another, anonymous essay (likely by Fink himself)
whose viewpoint diverged from Schumanns. He also promised that the next issue would
present yet another review of the piece, this one by Friedrich Wieck. Wiecks essay
eventually appeared not in the AmZ but in Gottfried Webers journal, Caecilia, in late
21
Wieck had sent a version of his review to Paris in the hope of having it published. Chopin to Titus
Woychiechowski, December 12, 1831, in Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, ed. Bronislaw
Edward Sydow and trans. Arthur Hedley (London: Heinemann, 1962), 99.
Chapter Two 90
1832. 22 The three essaysthe anonymous AmZ contributors, Wiecks, and
Schumannsrepresent, respectively, an evaluation of the Variations use value as a
recreational bravura piece, an appraisal of its style, and a statement about its poetic
potential.
The AmZ not only gave Chopins Variations a thoroughly negative evaluation but
also disparaged Schumanns essay itself as insubstantial. Finks preface only identifies
the unsigned writer as a distinguished and worthy representative of the old school. 23
The contributor claims that his critical methodology consisted of playing through a work
over the course of several weeks, analyzing it thoroughly, and only then daring to commit
his judgment to paper.24 Next to Schumanns depiction of the Davidsbndlers seemingly
spontaneous responses to Chopins work, the AmZ writer implicitly positions himself as
the more learned, objective critic. Perhaps in order to buttress this claim, he concentrates
on short, specific passages in Chopins Variations. His criticisms collectively allege that
the pianistic difficulties and musical idiosyncrasies of Chopins Opus 2 introduce an
excessive, unwelcome complexity that compromises the works attractiveness and
accessibility. Of Chopins dense textures, he writes, Everything is packed to the brim for
both hands. Only very capable playerslike a Paganini of the pianofortewill be able to
conquer and perform it. 25 He points out stretches awkward for most pianists: In any
case, without hands that are large as a pair of medium-sized violas, one can only study up
22
Friedrich Wieck, L ci darem la mano vari pour le pianoforte avec accompagnement dOrchestre, par
Frdric Chopin, Caecilia 14 , no. 55 (1832): 219-23.
23
Die andere [Beeurteilung ist] von einem angesehenen und wrdigen Reprsentanten der ltern Schule.
Fink, Gottfried Wilhelm, Vorbemerkung, AmZ 33, no. 49 (December 7, 1831): 805.
24
L ci darem la mano vari pour le Pianof. AmZ 33, no. 49 (December 7, 1831): 808-9.
25
Alles ist, fr beyde Hnde, bervoll gepackt. Nur ganz tchtige Spielerso etwa Paganinis auf dem
Pianof.werden es bezwingen und ausfhren. Ibid., 810.
Chapter Two 91
to Variation 4 and, especially, Variation 5. 26 Elsewhere, he cringes at the dissonances
with which Chopin embellishes Mozarts harmonies. The reviewer clarifies that he does
not object to pianistic and harmonic difficulty per se, but rather that One will not be
proportionally rewarded. Nothing but bravura and figuration! 27 In a seeming paradox,
the AmZ implies that a virtuoso showpiece should avoid certain kinds of difficulty. Such
a viewpoint, though, is consistent with the postclassical ideals of harmonic simplicity,
textural transparency, and adherence to conventional pianistic idioms in the name of
ready appeal for listeners and recreational players.
Wieck and Schumann both found innovation and merit where the AmZ found
ungrateful difficulty. Similarities between their articles risk compromising the originality
of Schumanns essay. Both authors, for example, build their reviews around virtually
identical programmatic readings of the piece. Schumann did publish his essay first, but,
as Chopins aforementioned letter shows, Wieck had circulated a draft of his essay
shortly before Schumanns appeared. It remains unclear whether Wieck imitated his
student, whether Schumann based his essay on a draft of Wiecks (or heard an oral
version in his lessons), or whether their views emerged simultaneously through frequent
conversation. Rather than presenting a disquieting problem of authorship, this overlap
presents an opportunity for scholars. Wiecks review points up that the originality of
Schumanns Ein Opus II lies in other characteristics than its mere use of a program.
Wieck also discusses with greater specificity than Schumann what musical features made
Chopins Variations unconventional, even provocative of critical debate, in 1831.
26
Allenfalls kann mans, auch mit Hnden, die nicht ganz so gross sind als ein paar mssige Bratschen,
einstudiren bis auf Var. 4 und insbesondere Var. 5. Ibid., 810.
27
Aber man wird doch nur unverhltnissmssig gering belohnt.Nichts als Bravour- und Figurenwerk!
Ibid., 810.
Chapter Two 92
Whereas musicologists tend to emphasize the conventional aspects of the L ci
darem la mano Variations, Wieck lavished praise on what he considered a highly
original bravura piece. In his view, Chopins work synthesizes the styles of John Field,
the Viennese virtuoso school, and the newest, piquant, perhaps frivolous, but elegant
and very tasteful French pianists yet stands independently in every regard. 28 In a
striking claim for a set of variations written in a conventional postclassical format, Wieck
claims that Chopins showpiece holds interest for the cultivated [die Gebildeten].
According to Wieck, Chopins work abounds in surprising and entirely new
passages. 29 Wieck singles out in particular the close of the introduction, shown in
Example 2.1. Rather than deploying the rhythmically square, rapid figuration typical of
postclassical introductions, Chopin introduces rhythmically asymmetrical, chromatic runs
in the uppermost register of the piano over an area of static harmony. During the
cadenzaa juncture that, in more conventional works, usually features single-line
flourishes traversing the range of the pianoChopin has the right hand stabilize as a
double trill while the left hand, Wieck writes, lightly touches the first measure of the
theme with unusual grace notes. 30 The final stage of the introduction, conventionally a
virtuosic transition to the first full statement of the theme, thus seems to slow and stop
time for a virtuosically embellished anticipation of the themes leading motive. The
richly textured style of bravura figuration (what the AmZ called packed writing) that
pervades the introduction informs the variations as well. In Chopins Variation 1for
28
Das Werk steht in jeder Hinsicht ganz selbstndig da und verrth...die Kenntniss der neuesten, pikanten,
vielleicht frivolen, aber eleganten und sehr geschmackvollen franzsischen Schule. Wieck,La ci darem
la mano vari pour le pianoforte, 220.
29
Der Art der Passagen, die oft berraschend und ganz neu, und dabei mit einer gewissen Soliditt
dargestellt... Ibid., 219.
30
Die Fermate eintritt, wo die linke Hand, mit ungewhnlichen Vorschlgen, den ersten Takt des Themas
leise berhrt, whrend die rechte, in Terzen und Sexten, eine unruhige Triolenbewegung ausfhrt. Ibid.,
221.
Chapter Two 93
Wieck, a true Don Juan variationrapid figuration alternately overlays the melody and
is concealed in an inner voice, while the left hand sporadically reinforces the theme and
syncopated accents disrupt Mozarts flowing rhythms. 31 (See Example 2.2.)
Wieck describes the Adagio fifth variation as original and full of poetic
features.32 (See Example 2.3.) Adagio variations by such composers as Herz, Czerny,
and Moscheles (and, earlier, Mozart and Beethoven) usually encrust their themes with
detailed, rapidly changing ornamentation but retain the themes contour and harmonic
outline. The second half of Chopins variation, by contrast, breaks from the syntax of
Mozarts theme. At m. 10, it unexpectedly moves into G-flat (VI in B-flat minor) and
introduces a new melody. Rather than falling into Mozarts pattern of four-measure
phrases, Chopins digression extends for six measures before settling into the dominant
preparation for the finale. Both Wieck and Schumann underline the striking nature of this
submediant efflorescence, lyrical outpouring, and harmonic standstill by associating it
with Don Juans seduction of Zerlina. 33
Finally, Wieck points out Chopins significant and highly interesting harmonic
vocabulary. 34 He singles out a passage in the polonaise rondo-finale, a modulatory
episode that grows out of the second statement of the refrain. As shown in Example 2.4,
Chopins perpetual-motion writing initially cleaves to B-flat and closely related keys. As
the episode continues, it introduces what Wieck calls rich, new harmonic turns. 35 The
31
[E]ine wahre Don Juan Variation. Ibid., 221.

Voll von originellen und poetischen Zgen. Ibid., 222.
33
Stephen Downes, in prose that recalls Wiecks and Schumanns, describes the appearance of G-flat as
representing a world and time stolen from elsewhere. Kierkegaard, a Kiss, and Schumanns Fantasie,
19th-Century Music 22, no. 3 (1999): 272-75.
34
Diese Composition in harmonischer Hinsicht bedeutend und hchst interessant genannt werden
kann. Wieck, La ci darem la mano vari pour le pianoforte, 219.
35
How rich the continuation [of the rondo theme] is in harmonic turns, Wieck writes, how new! Die
Fortfhrung wie reich an harmonischen Wendungen, wie neu! Ibid., 223.
32
Chapter Two 94
figuration moves through chromatic sequences that begin with chromatic-mediant shifts.
In its final stages, at m. 64, the episode re-approaches B-flat by tonicizing B major and Csharp minor (enharmonically spelled flat-II and flat-iii, respectively) before the soloist
closes by rocketing across the keyboard over a viio 6/5/C#. Only four measures of tutti
reinterpret the diminished sonority and prepare for a closing section firmly in B-flat. 36
Three of the most display-oriented moments of the L ci darem la mano Variations,
thenthe close of the introduction, the second half of the Adagio variation, and the
episode in the finalecontain three of Chopins most unconventional details.
Schumann on Chopins Poetic Virtuosity

Schumanns Ein Opus II refers to many of these musical features, if often obliquely
and imagistically. Like his teacher, Schumann opens with a claim for the sheer quality
and originality of Chopins work with Eusebiuss famous exclamation, Hats off,
gentlemen, a genius! and with the Davidsbndlers astonishment that the Variations
could be an early opus by a then lesser-known pianist-composer. Also like Wieck,
Schumann suggests that the Variations possesses a blend of virtuosity and compositional
substance that can appeal to the musically Gebildeten when Florestan muses that the
variations might have been written by Beethoven or Schubert, had either of these been a
piano virtuoso. 37
36
John Rink has similarly noted the striking harmonic shape of this passage. Perhaps because his graph
seeks to demonstrate the young Chopins early control of tonal architecture, though, it underplays the
audacity of the episode. It masks the emphasis Chopin throws upon more remote harmonies and does not
distinguish between the solos harmonically ambiguous ending and the orchestras last-minute reassertion
of the tonic. Tonal Architecture in the Early Music, 83.
37
Schumanns remark contains a meaningful inaccuracy: Beethoven had of course been a successful
virtuoso pianist. The error, calculated or inadvertent, creates an exaggerated distinction between Beethoven
the heroic innovator and icon of artistic seriousness and the works of postclassical virtuosos. Freilich
bestand Florestans ganzer Beifall in nichts als in den Worten, da die Variationen etwa von Beethoven
Chapter Two 95
Schumann, however, uses programmatic criticism for a different purpose than did
his teacher. Wiecks essay maps elements of the Don Giovanni story onto the Variations
to highlight significant structural junctures and to illustrate the affects of certain passages.
Schumann, by contrast, guides listeners through a process in which Chopins music and
Don Juans story merge into one dreamlike vision. By describing a synesthetic state in
which words, images, and music become one, Schumanns review models a specifically
poetic state of transcendence. As Susan Bernstein explains, such criticism imagines a
transcendent realm in which all of the arts communicate with the listener through a
single, universal language. 38 This artistic homeland (to use Bernsteins wording) can be
called poetic in the sense that Jean Paul imparted to Schumann: the convergence of
Chopin and Don Giovanni depicts the synthesis of matter (Chopins piece) and spirit (the
programmatic visions) that occurs in the minds of the Davidsbndler and implies that
Chopins piece itself enacts such a synthesis of mechanism (in this case, particularly
showy passagework) and imagination (embodied, for Schumann, in its boldly
unconventional touches).
Schumanns review traces an arc from the quotidian to the transcendent.
Especially in the version printed in the 1831 AmZ, which includes several details
Schumann later omitted from the 1854 Gesammelte Schriften, Schumann highlights the
role Chopins style of virtuosic writing plays in reaching this poetic state.39 The story
opens with a scene of everyday, recreational music making. When Eusebius walks in,
oder Franz Schubert sein knnten, wren sie nmlich Clavier-Virtuosen gewesen. Schumann, Ein Opus
II, 806.
38
Susan Bernstein, Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century: Performing Music and Language in Heine, Liszt,
and Baudelaire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 60-65. This part of Bernsteins study is
concerned with Heines criticism of Liszt, Chopin, and Meyerbeer, but her analysis applies equally well to
Schumanns writing.
39
For the later, anthologized version, see Schumann, GS, 1:5-7.
Chapter Two 96
score of Chopin in hand, Florestan and Julius are sitting at the piano, apparently playing
through four-hand music. Juliuss first brush with the poetic occurs as he flips over the
pages of Chopins score. In imagery that refers unmistakably to Chopins unusual
figuration and wide-ranging harmonic vocabularyboth of which are visually apparent
on the printed page Julius imagines that he sees strange eyesflowers eyes, basilisk
eyes, peacocks eyes, maidens eyes peering at him as Mozarts theme wind[s] through
a hundred chords.40 Each eye adds its own poetic connotation to the brief torrent of
images. Whereas the maidens eyes perhaps invite Julius to peer closer, those of the
basilisk, a mythological creature whose gaze can prove lethal, would have been more
unsettling than alluring. The eyes on the peacocks feathers are not really eyes at all
and might add a hint of exotic mystery and opulence. As the surface of the music absorbs
Julius, he glimpses another world: Leporello definitely seemed to wink at me, and Don
Juan flew by in his white cape. 41 Julius thus experiences the sense of otherworldly
transport that early Romantic aesthetics prized as a hallmark of the poetic. At the same
time, Julius acknowledges the more conventional aspects of Chopins piece with a
metaphor that evokes the postclassical virtues of clarity and transparency when he notes,
In many places it became brighter.42
The friends rush with their discovery to another of Schumanns fictional
characters, the cooler-headed Meister Raro. In the original AmZ publication, Raro laughs
off their insistence that he look at the piece at once: I already know your newfangled
40
Hier aber war mirs, als blickten mich lauter fremde Augen, Blumenaugen, Basiliskenaugen,
Pfauenaugen, Mdchenaugen wundersam an ich glaubte Mozarts L ci darem la mano durch hundert
Accorde geschlungen zu sehen. Schumann, Ein Opus II, 806.
41
Leporello schein mich ordentlich wie anzublinzeln und Don Juan flog im weissen Mantel vor mir
vorber. Ibid., 806.
42
An manchen Stellen ward es lichter. Ibid., 806.
Chapter Two 97
enthusiasm for Herz and Hntenbut bring me the Chopin sometime anyway. 43
Schumanns detail hints that Raros dismissive attitude toward popular virtuoso
showpieces and assumption that all such works share Herz and Hntens accessible style
initially prevents him from sharing the younger mens poetic vision. It also suggests
obliquely that the music-loving Davidsbndler are (as Schumann himself was) wellversed in the latest bestsellers from Parisian pianist-composers but that the Chopin offers
an unprecedented musical experience.44
Schumann reaches the peak of his transcendent arc later in the story, when
Florestan appears at Juliuss residence and spins out the Don Giovanni program while
lying in a dreamlike state on the narrators sofa. Although his vision occurs well after
Eusebius physically plays the Variations, Florestan does not forget the pieces virtuosic
elements. In another sentence that appeared in the AmZ but not the Gesammelte Schriften,
Florestan remarks, In Eusebiuss playing I regretted the lack of Paganinian rhetoric
[Vortrag] and a Fieldian touch.45 It is presumably this imaginary, flashier performance
that inspires Florestans inner experience, calling forth Don Juan himself. Florestan
lavishes the most narrative detail on the most unconventional sections of Chopins
Variations, as if their unusual features begged for more explanation or plunged deeper
into a poetic realm. In the Adagio, Florestan (like Wieck) describes a narrative process
traced by the digressive tonal structure; in Schumanns case, the B-flat minor opening
suggests a moral warning and the appearance of B-flat major (Schumann apparently
43
Denn, ich kenn Euch schon und euren neumodischen Enthusiasmus von Herz und Hntennun bringt
mir nun den Chopin einmal her. In the Gesammelte Schriften version of this essay, Schumann omits the
reference to Herz and Hnten. Ibid., 807.
44
Schumanns repertoire during his studies with Wieck included Herzs Variations on Carafas Violette,
Op 48.
45
...obgleich ich Paganinischen Vortrag und Fieldschen Anschlag in Eusebiuss Spiel vermisst habe.
My translation. Schumann, Ein Opus II, 807.
Chapter Two 98
means G-flat major) the first kiss of love. 46 He calls the polonaise-finale the best part
of the work. Florestans description packs in a flurry of dizzying, otherworldly activity
that suggests the piling up of bold harmonic progressions and shifting figurational
patterns: the polonaise is the whole of Mozarts finale: popping champagne corks,
clinking glassesLeporellos voice in the midst of this, then the grasping, snatching
spirits, the fleeing Don Juan.47 Finally, Florestan passes into an imaginary realm beyond
Juliuss sofa and compares his experience with the Variations to how he felt beholding a
Swiss landscape:
When, particularly on a beautiful day, the evening sun climbs red and pink
up glaciated peaks, then flattens and disappears, and over all the
mountains and valleys there lies a quiet air, but the glacier stands still,
cold and strong, like a titan awakening from its dreams. 48
Raro Speaks on the Variations: Schumanns Unpublished Conclusion to Ein Opus II

In the Ein Opus II that the AmZ published, the story ends here, with Florestans vision.
However, Schumanns essay originally extended beyond this scene of poetic transport.
Fink not only disparaged Schumanns essay in printhe also cut this final portion
without Schumanns permission. (Whether he did so simply for reasons of space or out of
exasperation with the upstart critics style of writing is unclear). The following year, in
April, 1832, Schumann attempted to persuade Ignaz Castelli of the Allgemeiner
musikalischer Anzeiger in Vienna to publish his review unabridged. His offer went
46
Das Adagio aus B moll spielt, was nicht besser passen kann, da es den Don Juan wie moralisch an
sein Beginnen mahnt.Und das aufgeblhte B dur den ersten Kuss der Liebe recht bezeichnet. Ibid., 808.
47
Das ist das ganze Finale im Mozartlauter springende Champagnerstpfel, klirrende Flaschen
Leporellos stimme dazwischen, dann die fassenden, haschenden Geister, der entrinnende Don Juan. Ibid.,
808.
48
Wenn nmlich an schnen Tagen die Abendsonne bis an die Gletscherspitzen roth und rosa
hinausklimme, dann zerflattere und zerfliege, so lge ber alle Berge und Thler ein leiser Duft, aber der
Gletscher stnde ruhig, kalt und fest, wie ein Titane da, wie aus Trumen erwacht. Schumanns
Gesammelte Schriften version of this essay uses a slightly different (but similarly evocative) Alpine image.
Ibid., 808.
Chapter Two 99
unanswered, and, when Schumann included Ein Opus II in his 1854 Gesammelte
Schriften, he did not take the opportunity to rectify Finks omission. In 1967, Plantinga
described the closing portion of the essay as lost. 49
A manuscript draft of the original conclusion of Schumanns review does,
however, exist at the Robert Schumann Haus in Zwickau and, most likely, closely reflects
the material the young critic sent to the AmZif not in details, than at least in
substance. 50 Until now, its implications for our understanding of this iconic essay and
Schumanns writings on poetic virtuosity have remained unexplored. Even though this
portion of Ein Opus II never reached the public, it offers additional insight into the
larger claim that Schumann sought to make in his critical debut. The two brief paragraphs
present an epilogue in which Florestan, Eusebius, and Julius finally bring Chopins
Variations before Raro, who praises Chopins Variations as a work of genius, validates
their newfangled enthusiasm, and claims that the works originality and sophistication
justify comparison to canonized, Gebildete composers.
Florestan, Eusebius, and Julius, the epilogue recounts, wait in suspense for Raros
judgment, since he is often all-too Sebastian-Bachish toward youths (though less so
toward composing men).51 Your joy over this new work, he says to their surprise,
does not displease me. Distancing himself somewhat from Florestans earlier visions,
Schumann (as Raro) makes it clear that the poetic nature of Chopins showpiece lies not
in any ability to evoke specific images from Mozarts opera but in its sheer originality.
49
Plantinga, Schumann as Critic, 35.

Robert Schumann, Ein Opus IIEntwurf zu Chopin Aufsatz, Zwi 17, 4871,V,2-A3, Robert Schumann
Haus, Zwickau. I would like to thank Dr. Thomas Synofzik, director of the Schumann Haus archive, for his
transcription of Schumanns handwritten draft.
51
Wir waren auf Meister Raros Urtheil ber Chopin sehr gespannt, da er gegen Jnglinge (gegen
componirende Mnner weniger) oft allzu sebastian-Bachisch ist. Ibid.
50
Chapter Two 100

You know how little I can suffer picturesque music, Raro begins. But Chopin can do
no such thing, because in the first place he only guides the hand of his own genius (and
one must therefore praise that hand) and secondly because it is entirely different merits
that distinguish his work. 52 Schumann thus clarifies that his imagistic criticism
represents not merely an attempt to illustrate the affective qualities of Chopins
Variations but a strategy for conveying and underlining its transcendence of everyday
convention.
Schumann, through Raro, then pays Chopin the highest compliment of which he
is capable and proposes that Chopins work, through its poetic qualities, reaches an
inspired union with Mozart. He uses one of the nineteenth centurys most powerful
metaphors for transcendence, the apotheosis:
The lingering inspiration, which to me seems to be an apotheosis of
Mozart, allowed him to avoid those mistaken paths that so often dazzle the
poet. Save for a single passage, the octaves on the penultimate
pagethere is not a dull, weak minute. Also, the grace that runs through
the whole thing, this give and take, this overflow and restraint mark every
bar. 53
Chopins choice of a theme by Mozart rather than a French or Italian operatic hit surely
influenced Raros judgment. Raro also suggests, though, that this communion with a
classic allowed Chopins work as a whole to avoid mistaken paths and to embody the
compositional excellence Mozart represented for the nineteenth-century imagination as
well as quintessentially Romantic values of transcendence. Raros reference to overflow
52
Eure freude ber das neue Werk, began er, mifllt mir nicht. Wie wenig ich die pittoreske Musik
berhaupt leiden mag, wit Ihr. Dafr kann aber erstens Chopin wenigstens nichts, da er nur die Hand
seines Genius fhrte (u. dann ist sie zu loben), u. zweitens sind es nach ganz andere Vorzge die sein Werk
auszeichnen. Ibid.
53
Die anhaltende Begeisterung, die mir eine Apotheose Mozarts zu seyn scheint, hat ihn alle Irrwege
vermeiden lassn, die den Dichter oft blenden. Eine einzige Stelle ausgenommen (die Octavenpassagen auf
der vorlezten Seite)...ist...keine matte, schwache Minute. Auch die Grazie, die durch das Ganze geht, dieses
Geben u. Nehmen, diese Uebervolle u. Handhalten zeichnen jeden Tact aus. Ibid.
Chapter Two 101

and restraint in every bar and his willingness to single out a lone octave passage for
criticism argue that his evaluation rests not on whimsically subjective reactions to the
Variations but on a close examination of the work and, presumably, comparison with
others that did trod mistaken paths (perhaps Herz and Hnten, the composers Raro
earlier dismisses?). For Raro, Chopins work combined a reference to the venerated
Mozart with an innovative, complex bravura idiom that creates an inspired apotheosis of
its borrowed theme. Such features transcendor, to use Novaliss wording,
romanticizethe world of postclassical variation sets by amalgamating the seriously
canonic, the familiarly everyday, and the otherworldly poetican intersection at which
Julius glimpses visions, Florestan dreams, and Raro analyses and commends.
After an imagistic journey in which the younger Davidsbndler convert Chopins
harmonies and textures into poetic experience, a critical voice given to objective
contemplation and bar-by-bar analysis emerges to legitimatize their enthusiasm and
poetic rhapsodizing. Small wonder that Schumann attempted to have this part of the essay
published in the years before he founded his own journal. 54 Although Schumann never
reinstated Raros final speech in this essay when he anthologized it in his Gesammelte
Schriften, later Schumann reviews we will consider make similar attempts to show the
interdependence of his concrete analytical observations and a poetic aesthetic.
Even in the form in which it appeared before the public, Schumanns Ein Opus
II praises Chopins harmonic and figurational style not simply as a mark of excellence
and novelty. For Schumann, these features allowed the work and its players and listeners
to maintain contact with the familiar world of recreational virtuoso showpieces but to
54
Although Fink may well have omitted this part of the essay for reasons of space, the cut exaggerates the
spontaneous, subjective qualities of the review, making the distance between Schumann and Finks
objective, cool-headed representative of the good old school seem greater.
Chapter Two 102

poeticize it by infusing some of its most pyrotechnic moments with details that depart
from postclassical convention, including surprising ruminations on the theme, dizzyingly
complex textures, and wide-ranging harmonic and phraseological digressions. If, as
Daverio has suggested, Ein Opus II represents a struggling pianists effort to sidestep
his technical limitations through literary music criticism, it also opened a new possibility
for Schumanns career: the synthesis of mechanism and imaginationpreviously
expressed as the culminating phase of piano studyhad become a way of understanding
the poetic potential of bravura compositions. 55
A Poetic Virtuoso Makes His Debut: Schumanns Abegg Variations, Opus 1

At the same time as he was drafting his essay on Chopins L ci darem la mano
Variations, Schumann had a second project underway: his first published composition,
the Abegg Variations, Opus 1. Schumann had begun sketching the piece while still a
university student in Heidelberg and enjoying local fame as a salon pianist, continued
working on it during his studies with Wieck, and published it with Kistner in Leipzig in
November of 1831, a month before Ein Opus II appeared in the AmZ. Noting the
symbolic importance of an Opus 1, Daverio has written, Through the Abegg
Variations, Schumann announced himself to the world as a virtuoso pianist-composer. 56
Indeed, Schumann initially designed the Abegg Variations as a showpiece for his own
use. In the early sketches, the work even featured an orchestral introduction modeled on
that of Chopins Variations. 57 Recent studies of the Abegg Variations have further
55
Daverio, Robert Schumann, 76.

Ibid., 65.
57
See Joachim Draheim, Schumann und Chopin, in Schumann Studien 3/4, ed. Gerd Nauhaus (Kln:
Studio, 1994), 235.
56
Chapter Two 103

illuminated its relationship with Schumanns early immersion in postclassical bravura
music. Hans Joachim Khler and Matthias Hansen, for example, have found passages
that suggest the influence of various pieces that the young Schumann kept in his
repertoire, notably the L ci darem la mano Variations themselves and Moscheless
Alexander Variations. 58
Rather than tracing parallels between specific pieces, it might prove more
revelatory to consider the Abegg Variations in a wider context and explore its
engagement with the conventions and aesthetics of entertainment-oriented, postclassical
variation sets. Schumanns early reviewers were quick to place the work in this familiar
context. In 1832, for example, Ludwig Rellstab reviewed the Variations for his
periodical, Iris im Gebiete der Tonkunst and wrote, They are the work of a gifted pianist
and indeed are as grateful and brilliant as many similar pieces for piano by Czerny and
Herz and consequently merit equal recognition.59 Considering this larger background
reveals that the Abegg Variations relies upon postclassical conventions but reworks
them through an idiosyncratic approach to virtuosic writing and variation structure, an
approach that incorporates aspects of Schumanns concept of poetic music. Whereas
Chopins departures from convention are often subtle (though they still impressed
Schumann and Wieck and annoyed Fink), Schumanns Variations radically transforms
58
Some of the parallels Khler and Hansen suggest are persuasive. In other cases, though, they fail to
convince that motivic resemblances they suggest are more than coincidental. Both argue, for example, that
Schumanns G-F# motive at the beginning of the first variation refers to a chromatic gesture in Moscheless
introduction. One can just as plausibly explain this detail as part of Schumanns daring harmonization of
the Abegg theme. Khler , Ein Werk I Zur Genese der Abegg-Variationen op. 1 von Robert
Schumann, in Schumanniana Nova: Festschrift Gern Neuhaus zum 60 Geburtstag, ed. Bernhard R. Appel,
Ute Br, and Matthias Wendt (Sinzig: Studio, 2002), 365-79; Matthias Hansen, Robert Schumanns
Virtuositt, in Musikalische Virtuositt, ed. Heinz von Loesch, Ulrich Mahlert, and Peter Rummenhller
(Mainz: Schott, 2004), 137.
59
Was die Variationen sonst anlagt, so hat sie ein geschickter Klavierspieler gemacht, und sie sind ein
eben so dankbares u. glnzendes Stck, als vieles ihres Gleichen von Czerny, Herz pp, verdienen daher
auch eine gleiche Anerkennung. Ludwig Rellstab, Theme sur le nom Abegg pp. Iris 3, no. 8 (Feb 24,
1832): 31.
Chapter Two 104

basic stylistic and structural norms of the postclassical variation-set while retaining its
larger framework. If Ein Opus II suggests that a showpiece published by another
composer possessed poetic features, Schumanns own Opus 1 makes a complementary
proclamation and announces a composer who had come to regard even lightweight
showpieces as vehicles for transcendent experience.
Schumanns Abegg Variations follows the larger formal outline typical of
postclassical variation-sets. As shown in Figure 2.1, it consists of a theme and four
variations, the last of which uses a slow tempo and connects via cadenza to an extended
finale in a different meter. Like many of the composers of bravura salon music we
encountered in Chapter 1, Schumann also imbues his work with an air of aristocratic
refinement, albeit a whimsically ironic one: the piece bears a dedication to the fictional
Countess dAbegg. The tuneful, almost simplistic waltz theme itself sounds unassuming
enough. Only its use of the musical name A-B-flat-E-G-G foreshadows the
idiosyncrasies to come.
Indeed, the four subsequent variations treat this theme using dazzlingly
unconventional virtuosic figuration. As we saw in our consideration of Czernys School
of Practical Composition and variation sets by Herz, Kalkbrenner, Dhler, and other
composers in Chapter 1, bravura variation-sets from Schumanns time often exemplified
the postclassical values of accessibility and elegance. Even at their most digitally
demanding, individual variations from such works maintain transparent pianistic textures
and generally explore one musical topic or pianistic gesture; they also preserve the
themes actual melodic contours or at least follow closely its harmonic scheme. Rather
than charming the listener with various ways of decorating a readily-perceptible tune,
Chapter Two 105

however, Schumanns Abegg Variations creates a process of thematic and formal
concealment and allusion. The first variationshown in Example 2.5presents a
particularly striking case. In the first burst of virtuosic figuration in his Variations,
Schumann confronts the listener with a rapidly shifting kaleidoscope of topics and
figurational patterns. The opening four measures switch abruptly between leaps followed
by cascading arpeggios, rapid chromatic scales, and a combination of arpeggios and
repeated notes. Although this variation features the single-line runs typical of
postclassical piano music, Schumann enriches and obscures them with complex textures.
By m. 13, the glittering arpeggios converge with an accompaniment that morphs into
dissonant harmonies by adding and sustaining one note at a time. The second half of the
variation overlays running arpeggios, what I have called harmonic blurs, and
descending, syncopated figures.
If Schumann subverts the postclassical principle of textural transparency, he plays
an even more elaborate game with that of thematic recognizability. Schumanns Variation
1 mirrors the formal and harmonic outline of the Abegg theme. 60 At the same time, it
obscures this structure through its handling of harmonic, figurational, and thematic
details. The rapidly changing figuration makes the phrase structure of the theme difficult
to discern, doubly so when Schumann places accents in the middle of the measure. The
four measures of leaping chords also cloud the simple harmonic structure by embellishing
the themes dominant and tonic harmonies with common-tone diminished-seventh
chords. One must also listen carefully to hear the Abegg theme itself. Variation 1 does
60
In the first variation, Schumann does add extra repetitions of the first half of the theme. The first repeated
section of the variation is sixteen measures long; essentially, it writes out a repeat of the themes first
phrase. Schumann then adds repeat signs anyway so that we hear four times a phrase the theme presents
only twice.
Chapter Two 106

begin with an A-B-flat second but veers away into a series of ascending sequences. The
melodic contour of the theme does not appear explicitly until m. 8, where it remains
buried beneath the right-hand arpeggios and, after four measures, fades into a diminished
harmony. Rellstabs Iris review suggests the unusual nature of Schumanns approach
and the difficulty it might have presented to listeners accustomed to more conventional
works: In the variations the theme as good as disappears and is almost never to be
discovered, except here and there in basso marcato, but even then only the first bar and
not the rest of the melody. 61 Fink, in his 1833 AmZ review of the piece, makes a similar
point when he cautions amateur musicians that the variations are not of the usual mold
and very curious. 62 Gottfried Weber of the journal Caecilia took a less neutral tone in a
review of the Abegg Variations and three other early Schumann compositions (Opuses
2, 4, and 5). He describes them as bizarre and overripe and questions whether the
upstart composer will ever find his way back to simplicity and naturalness. 63
Schumanns subsequent variations continue this concealment strategy in a variety
of ways. Example 2.6 presents excerpts from Variations 2 and 3. Variation 2 renders the
harmonic structure of the theme virtually imperceptible. Every harmony from the theme
remains present, but Schumann intersperses and displaces them with chromatically
sliding chords. He exacerbates this harmonic obfuscation with a perpetually syncopated
61
Bey den Variationen das Thema so gut wie verschwindet und fast nirgend mehr zu entdecken ist,
ausgenommen hie u. da im basso marcato, aber alsdann auch nur der erste Takt desselben, nicht aber die
Folge der Melodie. Rellstab, Theme sur le nom Abegg pp, 31.
62
Die Variationen [sind] durchaus nicht nach dem gewhnlichen Schlage, wirklich eigenthmlich.
Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, Thme sur le nom Abegg vari pour le Pianoforte, AmZ 35, no. 37 (September
11, 1833): 615.
63
When, however, we turn from the title page to the notes, there meets us on every page a whole horde of
audacious novelties along with truly bizarre things. Wenden wir aber von den Titelblttern, so tritt uns
auf jeder Blattseite ein ganzes Heer von khnen Neuheiten mitunter auch wirklichen Bizarrerien.
Gottfried Weber, Papillons; Theme, vari pour le Pianoforte; Intermezzi Op. 4; Impromptus, Op. 5 par R.
Schumann, Caecilia 17, no. 62 (1832): 94-98.
Chapter Two 107

left-hand part that crosses between bass and treble. Variation 3 presents a more
transparent, typically postclassical texture. The Abegg theme, though, only appears in
m. 8 at the written-out repeat of the first half and emerges seamlessly from the
accompaniment. As if to disorient the listener after this moment of thematic exposure,
Schumann follows it with a descending chain of parallel first-inversion chords.
Schumanns Finale alla Fantasia employs and subverts postclassical virtuosic
convention in a different way. The title of this movement seems to announce a structure
guided by spontaneous musical free-association. In fact, Dana Gooley has shown that
Schumanns openingwhich repeats and varies a four-measure chord progression
might derive from the contemporary practice of improvising variations on short, simple
harmonic progressions. 64 Such music differs substantially from the dance-infused,
alternately tuneful and brilliant finales of Kalkbrenner, Thalberg, Herz, and, indeed,
Chopins Opus 2. For all its evocation of free improvisation, though, the Abegg finale
retains the larger formal outlines of the rondo conventionally expected at this point in a
variation showpiece. Figure 2.2 shows the ABACA layout of the finale: recurrences of
the ruminative chord progression serve as refrains, while, in the tradition of the bravura
rondo-finale, intervening episodes present brilliant, less clearly thematic figuration.
This feature of the Abegg finale has gone unnoticed in the Schumann literature,
perhaps because the composer, in a sense, turns the rondo form inside out. The refrain,
for example, unfolds over a dominant pedal. It does not provide a strong, recurring tonal
anchor but rather hints obliquely at F and periodically creates a state of dreamlike
harmonic stasis. Recurrences of the refrain eventually move to material over tonic pedals.
64
Dana Gooley, Schumann and the Agencies of Improvisation, in Rethinking Schumann, ed. Laura
Tunbridge and Roe-Min Kok (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 145-46.
Chapter Two 108

In A and A, though, these occur only after sequences that touch but lightly on the
dominant; the dominant pedals thus seem to evaporate without resolution, and the tonic
pedal emerges without strong preparation. The finale as a whole also features an
unusually adventurous key scheme. Whereas postclassical works tend to avoid difficult
harmonic processes, Schumanns fantasia-like rondo features a first episode in A major
and begins the second by briefly tonicizing F-sharp.
Just as strikingly, the Finale alla Fantasia inverts the thematic process typical of
bravura rondo-finales. As we saw in Chapter 1, such pieces generally base their refrains
on a complete statement of the theme in a faster meter and might draw upon its motives
for episodes. 65 Schumann, by contrast, bases his refrain on a particularly obscure
reference to the Abegg theme. Far from a whimsically chosen chord progression, the
refrain actually encapsulates the themes harmonic structure. As if called forth by this
simulation of improvisation, subsequent parts of the finale present clearer allusions to the
theme. Section A, for example, fills in the outline of the theme with broken octaves. The
analogous point in A uses the notes A, B-flat, E, and G but redistributes them over the
octave. In both instances, Schumann does not use the Abegg theme as a melody to be
savored in complete statements, nor as a motive for rigorous development, but as a source
to which different parts of the form refer more or less obliquely.
Schumann reserves his clearest reference to the Abegg theme for a seemingly
peripheral juncture in the rondo form: the transition to the second episode, shown in
Example 2.7. He singles this moment out, though, as a climactic one. The conclusion to
A builds tension through motivic foreshortening and by suddenly accelerating the
65
Chopins L ci darem la mano Variations begins with a straightforward, polonaise-style statement of

Mozarts theme.
Chapter Two 109

harmonic rhythm. Schumann gives the leading motive of the theme a forceful sound
through horn-like doublings and a triadic contour and sets it at the most harmonically
distant point in the movement (V7/F#). This surprising recall coincides witheven seems
to catalyzethe finales virtuosic fireworks. More than the rest of the movement, this
section presents a typical postclassical pianistic style that sets fast, single-line figuration
in one hand against a light accompaniment. Schumann infuses it, though, with rhythmic
and harmonic intricacy. 66 He introduces fleeting hemiolas between mm. 55 and 58. He
also changes the rate and method of modulation almost every measure: m. 55 features a
falling-fifth progression, m. 56 an ascending chromatic sequence, m. 57 a sequence of
rising fourths, and mm. 58-62 a descending chromatic line.
The Abegg Variations, in sum, subverts the postclassical principles of
transparency and accessibility and instead asks the listener to discern (or willingly lose)
the theme in a tangle of complex detail, to follow a network of fleeting thematic
reminiscences, and to recognize the outlines of an obscure rondo structure in the finale.
By taking this approach, Schumann announced himself to the public as a composer
whose style of sparkling virtuosity could poeticize a genre widely associated with
everyday musical recreation. At the simplest level, the Variations satisfies Novaliss
definition of poetic experience, cited at the outset of this chapter, by presenting a degree
of unconventionality that Schumanns early reviewers found disorienting. But
Schumanns Opus 1 also appeals to the poetic in a more complex way: it seems to evoke
perceptual faculties that figure prominently in early Romantic literary aesthetics and, as
more recent scholars have argued, informed other, less virtuosic early piano works by
66
By introducing wide-ranging modulations and perpetual-motion figuration in the second episode,

Schumanns finale resembles (at this juncture) that of Chopins Variations. Schumanns episode, while
shorter than Chopins, includes more metric dissonance and a faster rate of modulation.
Chapter Two 110

Schumann. Both Daverio and Reiman have described these faculties as manifestations of
Witz, a literary device developed with particular brilliance in the novels of Jean Paul. Jean
Pauls Vorschule der sthetik describes Witz as the ability to discover partial equality
hidden in greater inequality. 67 As Reiman explains, it challenges one to bring the most
far-fetched comparisons to life and perceive similarities underlying immense
superficial differences. 68 No mere display of cleverness, Witz represented, in Jean Pauls
novels, a means of accessing a vibrant, transcendent worlda Zweite Weltin which
characters saw their surroundings transfigured by their heightened powers of perception
and comparison. 69
Most often, scholars have used these concepts in analyses of Schumanns piano
cycles, many of which demonstrate Witz through subtle inter-movement connections,
motivic cross-references, and other linking techniques. 70 The literature on Schumanns
concept of the poetic has had little to say about the Abeggs and usually cites its
unproblematic generic identity as a reason for not looking closer. 71 However, Witz is
equally applicable to Schumanns Opus 1 and its strategies for concealing and alluding to
the formal outlines and melodic contour of its theme, strategies that create significant
superficial differences where listeners attuned to postclassical showpieces expected
immediate thematic recognizability. The Abegg Variations, then, uses its style of
67
Margaret R. Hale, trans., Horn of Oberon, 122.

Reiman, Schumanns Piano Cycles, 15-17.
69
Ibid., 18.
70
Daverios and Reimans aforementioned studies have explored this aspect of the cycles. For two other
studies of inter-movement organization in the cycles, see Peter Kaminsky, Aspects of Harmony, Rhythm,
and Form in Schumanns Papillons, Carnaval, and Davidsbndlertnze(PhD. diss, Eastman School of
Music, 1989) and Lawrence Kramer, Carnaval, Cross-Dressing, and the Woman in the Mirror, in
Musicology and Difference, ed. Ruth Solie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 311-323.
These four works approach Schumanns cycles for different purposes: Daverio and Reiman seek to explain
Schumanns style in terms of nineteenth-century literary theory; Kaminsky to demonstrate structural
coherence without recourse to literary models; and Kramer to explore questions of gender identity and the
carnivalesque.
71
See Reiman, Schumanns Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul, 73-4.
68
Chapter Two 111

virtuosity and reinterpretation of a virtuoso genre to inspire the search for inner meaning
(in this case, the connections between theme and variations) essential to the Schumannian
poetic.
Nevertheless, the Abegg Variations offers a different glimpse of Schumanns
Witz-driven art than do the piano cycles. In the cycles, Schumann creates relationships
between pieces that, in a conventional dance medley, would be understood as separate
entities. Perhaps for this reason, studies that seek to analyze them often undertake a
search for structural coherence, however recondite. The Abegg Variations, by contrast,
creates its moments of Witz in almost the opposite way: by obscuring relationships
between theme, variations, and finale that, in conventional exemplars of the genre, were
meant to be obvious and ingratiating. Schumann does not create unity but rather partially
conceals it. In this way, the Variations points up an essential feature of Witz: not so much
its capacity to create coherence as its demand that a receiver exercise a heightened ability
to observe unexpected, ephemeral connections. The Variations, in fact, suggests that
Schumann may have developed a Witz-influenced style not only out of an interest in
organizing cycles of contrasting movements but also in response to the postclassical
principles of transparency and accessibility.
Like his Ein Opus II essay, Schumanns Variations reveals in its own way the
symbiotic relationship between the poetic and the recreational. As we have seen, the
Variations retains many structural features of conventional, postclassical variation-sets.
In addition, Schumann had begun to abandon his own aspirations of virtuoso stardom by
late 1831. His Opus 1, published as a lightweight solo work, addressed not an audience of
spectators at his own performances but a wide market of fleet-fingered amateur pianists
Chapter Two 112

who purchased variation sets en masse for domestic music makingdomestic
virtuosos, to use James Parakilass term (introduced in Chapter 1). In fact, Schumanns
reviewers described the Variations as, for all its strangeness, enjoyable and even
playable. Rellstab had described the piece as grateful and brilliant, and Finks
amateur-oriented AmZ reported that the Abegg theme was well invented and
attractive and that the variations themselves were not too difficult for good players. 72
In the context of an entertainment-oriented genre and in a piece accessible for many
amateurs, then, Schumann presented a style of virtuosity that mingled spirit and
substance. Through its profusion of digitally demanding surface detail, Schumann invited
drawing-room pianists to search for fleeting, obscure connections and comparisons that,
according to Jean Pauls Romanticism, represented one portal to the poetic.
A Pianistic Sampler and a Poetic Network: Schumanns Unpublished Fantaisies et

finale
Four years later, in 1835, Schumann completedalbeit provisionallya more expansive,
complex variation set that applies compositional strategies associated with his concept of
the poetic to a virtuoso genre. Schumann titled the work Fantaisies et finale. However, he
never published it, and scholars know it primarily as an early version of what became the
tudes symphoniques, Op. 13. Currently, one can access the Fantaisies only through
Schumanns working manuscript (currently housed at the Bibliothque du Muse Royale
72
Das Thema ber den Namen Abegg ist gut erfunden und ansprechend; die Variationen...nicht leicht,
aber auch nicht zu schwierig fr ordentliche Spieler. Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, Thme sur le nom
Abegg, 615.
Chapter Two 113

de Mariemont in Belgium), 73 a copyists manuscript based on the Mariemont manuscript
(housed as the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna), an edition presented in Damien
Ehrhardts dissertation on Schumanns variation forms, 74 or the many secondary studies
that outline its sequence of movements. 75
The Fantaisies et finale represents one step in the tortuous genesis of the tudes
symphoniques, which stretched from 1834 to 1837, and it is in this capacity that scholars
have approached it. 76 However, the Fantaisies also constitutes a substantial but largely
unrecognized work that Schumannat least for several monthsconsidered complete
and ready for publication. He titled the piece, dated it January 18, 1835, added a
dedication, and provided an opus number. 77 He also used the Mariemont manuscript as
the basis for the copyists manuscript, which he may have intended to send to the
publisher Haslinger in Vienna.
The style and structure of the Fantaisies differ substantially from that of the later
tudes symphoniques. The 1835 incarnation of the work includes six variations that
Schumann excluded from the 1837 publication. Five of these appeared posthumously
73
Schumann, Fantaisies et finale sur un thme de Mr. le Baron de Fricken, Morlanwelz-Mariemont,

Belgien, Bibliothque du Muse Royale de Mariemont, 1132-c. I would like to thank Bertrand Federinov of
the Bibliothque du Muse Royale for sending me copies of this manuscript.
74
Damien Ehrhardt, La variation chez Robert Schumann: Forme et evolution, (PhD diss., Universit
Paris-Sorbonne, 1997) 2:758-94.
75
See, for example, Ernst Herttrich, preface to Schumann, Symphonische Etden (Munich: G. Henle,
2006), v-vi; Ehrhardt, Les tudes symphoniques de Robert Schumann, Revue de Musicologie 78, no. 2
(1992): 293-303.
76
Studies of the tudes list anywhere from three to five different preliminary versions, each of which
places a different selection of variations in a different order. These sources and orderings include:
Schumanns autograph sketches for some of the etudes (now at the Yale University Music Library); the
Mariemont manuscript (in which Schumann experimented with two different orderings before deciding on
a third); the copyists manuscript (which initially followed the final Mariemont ordering but, on the flyleaf,
lists yet another); and the published 1837 version. Schumann also reworked the piece yet again for its
republication in 1852, eliminating two variations and making smaller changes to ones he retained. See
Margit McCorkle, Robert Schumann: Thematic-Bibliographic Catalogue of the Works (Munich: G. Henle,
2003), 56-59; Ehrhardt, Les tudes symphoniques, 293-94.
77
Schumann initially designated the work as Opus 9, the number that ultimately went to the roughly
contemporaneous Carnaval.
Chapter Two 114

when Brahms published them in the 1893 Supplement volume to the first complete
edition of Schumanns compositions. Schumann left incomplete a sixth variation that has
never been published in a performing edition. 78 The Fantaisies also does not include six
variations Schumann later composed for the tudes and places so-called posthumous and
published variations in a different order than does the later work. Figure 2.3 charts this
arrangement.79 For example, what became Etude 10 appears as Fantasy 7 and forms part
of an ABA form in which the B section (or, one might say, the trio) is Posthumous
Variation 4. Fantasy 10 became Etude 4 in 1837, and so on. Scholars, though, have yet to
explore the Fantaisies et finale on its own terms, not merely as a preliminary step in the
genesis of a later work. Considering the Fantaisies in this light reveals a piece thatin
ways strikingly different than the Abegg Variations or the later tudesblends
virtuosity, variation structure, and elements of the Schumannian poetic.80
The Fantaisies, more than the later tudes, testifies to Schumanns project of
poeticizing recreational bravura music. Whereas Schumann dedicated the tudes to
professional virtuoso pianist William Sterndale Bennett, the Fantaisies are geared more
toward the capabilities of a gifted amateur and the venue of the salon. The variations
unique to the 1835 Fantaisies (accurately but somewhat confusingly called the
posthumous variations) are not as flashy or pianistically demanding as those composed
78
For transcriptions of this unpublished variation, see Boetticher, Robert Schumanns Klavierwerke
(Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichshofens Verlag, 1984), 2:255-56 and Ehrhardt, Les tudes symphoniques,
305. Ehrhardts edition completes the variation by using material from a preliminary version from
Schumanns sketches. La Variation chez Robert Schumann, 778-79. Thomas Warburton has completed
the variation using newly composed material. Some Performance Alternatives for Schumanns Opus 13,
Journal of the American Liszt Society 31 (1992): 44-45.
79
Except where otherwise noted, I have constructed examples using material from the tudes
symphoniques and from the posthumous variations as given in the 1879 Schumann critical edition. In cases
where the textual details of Schumanns Fantaisies differ from those in the later critical edition and
published tudes, I have adapted my examples from Ehrhardts edition (in most cases omitting the
performance indications Ehrhardt inserts).
80
I will explore the tudes symphoniques in greater detail in Chapter 3.
Chapter Two 115

for the 1837 publicationthey tend to stress introverted lyricism and form a
counterweight to the Fantaisies handful of virtuosic variations. Ernst Herttrich
speculates that Schumann might have intended the work to be played by his then-fiance,
Ernestine von Fricken, an amateur pianist whom Schumann met while she was studying
with Friedrich Wieck. 81 Indeed, Schumann made the Fantaisies a (prospective) family
affair by dedicating it to Ernestines mother and by using a theme written by her father,
the amateur flutist and composer Baron Ignaz von Fricken. Example 2.8 shows
Schumanns chorale-like piano version of von Frickens theme, which the composer
described in a December 28, 1834 letter to the Baron as a Trauermarsch.82
If Ernestine was the intended performer of the Fantaisies, though, she surely
qualified as a domestic virtuoso and a serious amateur. Some of the variations
particularly the finalerequire a formidable technique. The scope and overall complexity
of the work also presupposes a pianist willing to pursue variation sets other than the
fashionable variety. Schumanns Fantaisies avoids the glittering, transparent figuration
typical of postclassical showpieces, and its more display-oriented variations challenge the
pianist with thick, contrapuntally rich textures. Ehrhardt, furthermore, has placed both the
Fantaisies and the later tudes in categories he terms variations fantastiques and
variations srieuses, respectively. In his taxonomy, such works imbue the variation set
with an unconventional degree of structural complexity, exhibited particularly in various
strategies for grouping separate variations to create larger formal shapes and a tendency
to base variations on the themes harmonic scheme rather than its melodic contours.
81
82
Herttrich, preface, v.
For the text of Schumanns letter, see Boetticher, Robert Schumanns Klavierwerke 2:245.
Chapter Two 116

Ehrhardts examples of such variation sets include Beethovens Eroica Variations, Op.
35 and Mendelssohns Variations srieuses, Op. 54. 83
Alongside these references to a learned style of variation set, the Fantaisies et
finale incorporates elements of postclassical convention. Like the variation sets of Herz
and Czerny, Schumanns concludes with a rondo finale. Furthermore, scholars have
identified the refrain of the rondo finale as freely based on an opera themethe romance
with chorus Wer ist der Ritter hoch geehrt from Heinrich Marschners 1829 hit Der
Templer und die Jdin. No documentary evidence from the nineteenth century
acknowledges this allusion, though I will argue that strong, heretofore unexamined
contextual evidence does support it. Furthermore, even though Schumann scholars have
long assumed the existence of this reference, they have not acknowledged its connection
to postclassical convention.84 Schumanns first variation, too, with its quasi-fugal
opening, recalls Thalbergs Opus 10 and 12 opera fantasies (discussed in Chapter 1), both
of which follow their themes with a contrapuntal variation. 85
In the midst of this engagement with fashionable and learned traditions,
Schumanns Fantaisies et finale invites listeners and performers to comprehend
relationships between separate variations that infuse the pianists technical display and
the works wide range of affects and styles with Witz-driven allusions. In comparison
83
La Variation chez Robert Schumann 1:117-125. Although Ehrhardts discussion of different variation
traditions helpfully notes the distinctions between more typically fashionable and learned styles, it risks
understating the fact that such serious works as the Variations srieuses, Op. 54 and Eroica Variations,
Op. 35 include their share of pyrotechnic passagework and served their composers as display vehicles. It
might ultimately be more useful to describe these works, as well as Schumanns Fantaisies and tudes, as
displaying technical brilliance alongside a high degree of structural enterprise or compositional
learnedness.
84
Writing fantasies, variation sets, and other showpieces that incorporate themes from different,
heterogeneous sourcesfor example, different operas, or a combination of original and borrowed
materialwas an accepted practice among pianist-composers during Schumanns lifetime.
85
The Neue Zeitschrift had already printed a review of Thalbergs Opus 10 in 1834, and Schumann would
write a review of Opus 12 early in 1835.
Chapter Two 117

with the Abegg Variations, Schumanns means of engaging the listeners faculties of
Witz more closely resembles the unity-building strategies that scholars have observed in
the character-piece cycles. Schumanns variations cohere not only through their use of a
common theme but also through a complex of cross-references between separate
variations. Whereas each variation derives its harmonic, motivic, and phraseological
structure from von Frickens theme, separate variations also incorporate unexpected
references to one another. Schumanns choice to call the work a collection of Fantasies
perhaps refers to the way in which a pianist or listener not only encounters a sampler of
pianistic techniques and musical topoi (such as one would expect from a variation-based
salon showpiece) but also follows a network of fleeting, subtle comparisons.
Two pairs of adjacent variationsFantasies 2 and 3, and Fantasy 7 and its Trio
or B sectionillustrate this strategy. As shown in Example 2.9, Fantasy 2 features a
dense, rhythmically complex texture: it uses the theme as a cantus firmus against a new,
arching melody and throbbing chordal accompaniment and superimposes dotted sixteenth
notes upon sixteenth-note triplets. Fantasy 3 invites comparison to 2 by using a bass line
that initially resembles the themes opening arpeggio. At the same time, it strips away the
textural complexity of the preceding variation and takes a turn toward structural
simplicity. Fantasy 3 spins out a two-part texture consisting of a walking bass line and
circling arpeggios and, instead of using the complete theme, uses the arpeggio motive to
spin out a series of sequentially repeated segments.
Fantasy 7 and its Trio present an equally striking juxtaposition. (See Example
2.10.) With its full, detached chords and marcato, running bass line, Fantasy 7 presents
the most extroverted and virtuosic of the variations. The Trio mirrors virtually all of
Chapter Two 118

Fantasy 7s melodic gestures, including the scalar contour of the opening melody, the
neighbor-note motion that follows, the ascending motion at the end of the first repeated
section, the sequences that begin the second repeated section, and the subsequent innervoice scales. However, the lyrical Doppelgnger changes its predecessors C-sharp minor
into D-flat major, dissipates the dense chords into widely-spaced, delicate lines, and
defuses its driving rhythmic energy by placing most of its characteristic melodic gestures
in a syncopated inner voice.
Fantasy 4, shown in Example 2.11, places inter-variation quotation in the midst of
an elaborate distortion and disguising of the themes harmonic and phrase structure. The
initially waltz-like variation begins off tonic by reinterpreting the opening harmony as a
V4/2/iv (which resolves unexpectedly to the major subdominant). When the tonic C#
minor does finally arrive in the fifth measure, the waltz topic disappears, and the themes
arpeggio motive appears in spectral tremolos. Although these initial eight measures
mirror the phrase and basic harmonic outline of the theme, the strong contrasts and
ruminative repetition of the arpeggio motive create the illusion that the theme is being
quoted out of context. The remainder of Fantasy 4 departs more radically from the
themes structure. Measures 9 and 10, for example, compress into two measures the
harmonic and thematic content of four of the themes measures. This distortion leads not
into the repetition of the opening material we expect at this point in the rounded binary
form but into another surprising quotation, in this case the opening melody of Fantasy
2. 86 Schumann extends the ending of the variation to accommodate yet a further citation
of the themes opening arpeggio (this one truly out of formal context), stated first in the
86
Harmonically, measures 11-14 correspond roughly to the last phrase of the theme. However, Schumann
ends this phrase not on tonic, as in the theme, but on a V7/IV to prepare for the extended ending.
Chapter Two 119

major subdominant and then in the tonic major. What began as a tonally ambiguous waltz
dissolves into a string of musical memories.
In addition to the Fantaisies et finales array of short-range contrasts and
comparisons, the final several variations create a broader process, one that differs from
the endings of many other variation sets. In the aforementioned letter to von Fricken,
Schumann wrote that he hoped to build the funeral march little by little into a proud
Siegeszug [victory procession]. 87 Both conventional and serious variation sets often
build incrementally toward virtuosic conclusions. However, Schumanns Fantaisies
prepares for its climactic finish by following an unconventional route: the variations
reach their virtuosic peak with Fantasy 7 and gradually shed intensity over the next three
variations. Fantasy 8 replaces the running bass and rebounding chords with smoothly
moving inner voices. Fantasy 9 features full, accented chords in a canon between the
hands but inserts rests between them. Finally, the waltz-like Fantasy 10 takes rhythmic
and textural dissipation to the extreme. (Example 2.12) Its syncopated melody
consistently lags behind the accompaniment. The variation also stretches the themes
phrase structure and slightly distorts its balanced arrangement: the first and third phrases
of the theme occupy sixteen measures each, whereas the second and fourth consume
twelve. By the Fantaisies et finales last variation, then, the muscular virtuosity of
Fantasy 7 has become a pliant strand of melody in a languid waltz. Unlike more
conventional variation-sets, which often accumulate virtuosic intensity with each
variation and precede a fast finale with a slow, heavily ornamented variation,
87
Ich mchte gern den Trauermarsch nach und nach zu einem recht stolzen Siegeszug steigern. Quoted
in Boetticher, Robert Schumanns Klavierwerk 2:245.
Chapter Two 120

Schumanns Fantaisies does so with a gradual process of textural thinning and rhythmic
deceleration that bottoms out in a slow waltz almost bereft of ornamentation.
Beyond Introversion: The Fantaisies as an Allusive, Musical-Cultural Statement

Schumanns Fantaisies et finale draws material from a variety of sources, including the
Barons theme, the diverse musical topoi to which separate variations refer, Schumanns
own literature-inspired style, and, arguably, Marschners romance. Most scholars stress
the biographical significance of this richly allusive combination. Herttrich writes: A set
of variations on a theme by the father was to be dedicated to the mother and played by the
daughter, uniting his fiances entire family in a single piece of music. 88 Similarly, when
they acknowledge Schumanns nod to Marschners Wer ist der Rittera paean to King
Richard the Lionhearted that includes the text Proud England, rejoice!they
consistently describe it as a personal tribute to William Sterndale Bennett, who studied
with Mendelssohn in Leipzig, garnered positive reviews in the Neue Zeitschrift, and
eventually received the dedication of the reworked, published version of the Fantaisies,
the 1837 tudes symphoniques. But this explanation appears problematic, since Bennett
did not arrive in Leipzig until 1836, at least a year after Schumann drafted the finale
(though Schumann may well have later recognized the affinity between Bennetts
nationality and the text of the romance). 89
Setting aside the Bennett interpretation, we might ask what kind of statement the
Fantaisies would have made if the work had gone to press in 1835 instead of waiting for
88
Herttrich, preface, v.
For examples of current sources that apply the biographical interpretation, see Arnfried Edler, Werke
fr Klavier zu zwei Hnden bis 1840, in Schumann Handbuch, ed. Ulrich Tadday (Weimar: Metzler,
2006), 220 and R. Larry Todd, On Quotation in Schumanns Music, in Schumann and his World, ed. R.
Larry Todd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 82.
89
Chapter Two 121

extensive revision. Most likely, Schumanns choice of materials not only would have
paid tribute to personal acquaintances such as the von Frickens but would have also made
a more public statement that brought together virtuosity, amateurism, German musical
culture, and the poetic, a statement also implicit in the tudes symphoniques (though, as
the next chapter will discuss, differently inflected). The Fantaisies et finale thus connects
the inner experience of the Schumannian poetic with more worldly references and
concerns.
The piece nods to serious musical amateurism, explicitly in its use of a theme by
Baron von Fricken and implicitly in its apparent destination for Ernestine and other
drawing-room virtuosos. Germany boasted a particularly vibrant and visible community
of amateur musicians during the first half of the nineteenth century. In this context, the
terms amateur and dilettante did not necessarily have the pejorative connotations
they would later acquire. During the late 1830s and 40s, critics did begin to disparage the
amateur in favor of the professional, taking aim at the formers lack of thorough musical
education as well as his or her taste for accessible salon music.90 However, the Barons
decision to write an original theme that lent itself to a chorale- or funeral-march-like
setting rather than, for example, writing his variation set on a borrowed operatic aria
evinced his own aspiration toward seriousness. As we have seen, too, the piece would
have invited Ernestine to play a kind of variation set as close to the learned, AustroGerman tradition as it was to postclassical bravura music. Like Henriette Voigt
(discussed at the close of Chapter 1), Ernestine and her father were real-life amateur
90
See, for example, Dana Gooley, The Battle Against Instrumental Virtuosity in the Nineteenth Century,
in Franz Liszt and his World, ed. Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2006), 83-85.
Chapter Two 122

musicians whose orientation toward serious music contrasted starkly with the vapid,
fictional aristocrats Schumann caricatured in his reviews.
Schumanns own variations invoke to a wide range of contemporary musical
styles. Popular and elevated, domestic and symphonic, styles rub shoulders in the
Fantaisies network of inter-movement links. Fantasies 4 and 11 present waltz topics, and
their initially simple textures, introverted affects, and decorative ornaments suggest an
orientation toward the drawing room or salon. The written-out rubato of Fantasy 11 might
hint specifically at Chopins piano music.91 Other fantasies evoke the symphonic style of
Beethoven, notably the scherzo-like fifth fantasy and the sonorous explosion of the
seventh. Besides the scherzo topics association with Beethoven, both fantasies, to a
greater degree than the others, develop short, rhythmically incisive motives.
Schumann closes his tribute to serious amateurism and allusive variations with a
rondo finale apparently based on a motive from Marschners Der Templer und die Jdin.
Examples 2.13 and 2.14 present Marschners romance and Schumanns rondo refrain. To
an extent, my points about the significance of this allusion must remain somewhat
speculative. The status of the widely recognized Marschner quotation in Schumanns
rondo-finale resembles that of the more famous putative allusion to Beethovens An die
ferne Geliebte in the first movement of the Fantasie, Op. 17. Nicholas Marston has
cautioned in the case of the latter work that only in the twentieth century did writers on
music suggest a connection between Beethovens song and Schumanns piece. If
Schumann intended the allusion or if nineteenth-century listeners recognized it, they left
91
Around the time he was writing the Fantaisies, Schumann wrote a pastiche of Chopins style for the
Chopin movement of Carnaval.
Chapter Two 123

behind no written evidence. 92 Similarly, although twentieth-century Schumann scholars
have widely acknowledged an allusion to Wer ist der Ritter in the finale of the tudes,
neither they nor I have been able to find a smoking gun in the form of a review, letter,
or other contemporary document that acknowledges the link. 93
Even so, strong contextual evidence supports my argument that Schumanns
finale refers pointedly to Marschners romance and that the allusion would have been
apparent and meaningful for contemporary listeners. Marschners Der Templer became
one of the most widely-known German Romantic operas of its time: it received over 200
performances in Germany, England, Denmark, Holland, and Russia during its composers
lifetime and saw several revivals after his death. As late as the 1880s, Eduard Hanslick
described it as a favorite opera of the Germans. 94 The romance Wer ist der Ritter
itself became one of Der Templers signature numbers. It appeared in several sheet-music
editions for solo voice or mens chorus, Hanslick described its popularity as comparable
to that of a folk song, and A. Dean Palmer reports that many audiences at performances
actually sang along during the choral interjections. 95 In 1829, Schumann personally met
Marschner in Leipzig through his friends the Caruses. He had an opportunity to see Der
Templer during its 1830-31 run in Leipzig, wrote admiringly about it, and, throughout his
92
Nicholas Marston, Schumann: Fantasie, Op. 17 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 36-37.
For further discussion of nineteenth-century musical allusion and quotationas well as the challenges of
exploring works that seem to allude to others but whose composers and critics did not acknowledge such
connectionssee Christopher Reynolds, Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century
Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
93
Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewskis Schumann biography provides an illustrative example. The 1858 first
edition did not mention the Marschner connection. Only the 1906 fourth editionoverseen by
Wasielewskis son, Waldemarstates that the rondo refers to Wer ist der Ritter in tribute to Bennett. See
Wasielewski, Robert Schumann: Eine Biographie, first edition (Dresden: Rudolph Kunze, 1858), 137-38.
Fourth edition (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1906), 151-52.
94
Hanslick, Der Templer und die Jdin (1883), in Musikalisches Skizzenbuch: Neue Kritiken und
Schilderungen (1888; repr. Farnborough: Gregg, 1971) 4:119.
95
Hanslick, Der Templer, 125; A. Dean Palmer, "Templer und die Jdin, Der," in The New Grove
Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie (New York: Grove, 1992), 688; Palmer, Heinrich August
Marschner, 1795-1861: His Life and Stage Works (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1978), 414.
Chapter Two 124

years at the Neue Zeitschrift, promoted Marschners works. 96 Furthermore, Schumanns
finale cites the most easily recognizable motive from the romance, which appears at the
beginning of Ivanhoes verse, repeats in Ivanhoes refrain (m. 16), and returns in the
choral interjections (m. 24). Placed at the outset of Schumanns rondo finalethe very
place where, in a postclassical variation set, one would expect to hear a popular operatic
tuneand echoed frequently thereafter, the allusion begs to be heard. 97
The textual and musical details of the romance made it a natural choice for the
triumphant ending Schumann hoped to create. Although it occurs as part of a static series
of dances and choruses at the beginning of Act III, the song paints an aggressive picture
of knightly victory in which Ivanhoe, his beloved Rowena, and a chorus all join.
Ivanhoes text extols King Richards bravery, honor, and record of putting his Muslim
enemies to flight during the crusades. (Figure 2.4) Marschner has the chorus repeat
Ivanhoes refrain in homophonic style to add sonority and collective zeal, a touch that, as
Palmer suggests, perhaps reflects the composers experience singing in German choral
societies. 98
Schumanns refrain accentuates this triumphant affect. Unlike more conventional
finales, it does not use a complete statement of the opera theme (perhaps reflecting the
composers practice of avoiding obvious thematic recognizability). Rather, it opens with
Marschners leading motive but departs from it to develop a new rounded binary form.
For example, Schumanns refrain does not repeat the triadic motive as often as Marschner
96
Palmer, Heinrich August Marschner, 418; on Schumanns meeting Marschner through the Caruses, see
Wasielewski, Robert Schumann, first edition, 39-40.
97
One simple reason for the critical silence on the Marschner allusion may have been the limited popular
success of Schumanns 1830s piano works. As Chapter 3 will note, few periodicals reviewed the tudes,
and only the Neue Zeitschrift printed a substantial, musically detailed review.
98
Palmer, Templer und die Jdin, Der, 688.
Chapter Two 125

does but rather intersperses its recurrences with contrasting subphrases. The result is a
largely original refrain in which many phrases either begin with the Marschner motive (as
in mm. 1, 5, and 13) or incorporate variations on it (as in mm. 11-13). 99 The new setting
also adds dotted rhythms and ends the motive not by sinking back to its starting note but
with repeated melodic arrivals on D-flat (harmonized deceptively as vi) and concludes
both sections of the binary form with cascading sweeps down the keyboard. Schumanns
widely-spaced sonorities and homophonic texture may represent an attempt to capture not
Ivanhoes clarion tenor but the sound of the choral interjections. The Marschner motive,
then, functions as a banner of chivalric victory at the front of Schumanns Siegeszug
rondo.
Schumanns choice of material has broader significance than the expression of an
affect. The Fantaisies and later the tudes finale might have made an appeal to German
musical nationalism. Where a more conventional showpiece would offer a
straightforward presentation of a theme from the latest Italian or French hit, Schumann
incorporates a number from a successful German opera. When Schumanns writings
lamented the hegemony of compositions by Parisian pianist-composers in the German
sheet-music market, they occasionally added complaints about the prominence of French
and Italian composers on the German stage. The foreword to his 1854 Gesammelte
Schriften, for example, describes the overwhelming popularity of Rossini and Bellini as
99
Schumanns style of quotation in the finale of the Fantaisies resembles that which he employed in other
works from the 1830s, most famously the Fantasie, Op. 17. The Fantasie opens a section of music with the
leading motive of Beethovens song but develops a new phrase structure that transforms the borrowed
material. The Finale alla Fantasia from the Abegg Variations, Op. 1 similarly opens with an allusion to
the first phrase of the Abegg theme before veering in a different direction.
Chapter Two 126

indicative of what Schumann saw as the sorry state of German musical culture in 1834. 100
Schumann often describes Marschner as a significant contributor to contemporary
German opera and opposes him to French and Italian vocal and piano music. In an early
aphorism on Rossini, Schumann (as Florestan) bemoans the adulation and financial
success bestowed on Henri Herz and implies that Marschnerdespite the success of his
Templer has been slighted:
Doesnt the stenographer Herz, who only has his heart in his fingers
doesnt Herz, I say, receive four hundred Thaler for a volume of variations
and Marschner scarcely more for all of [his opera] Hans Heiling? Once
more I sayit makes the tips of my fingers twitch. 101
Schumanns opera notebook (published only later in his Gesammelte Schriften) describes
Der Templer itself as the most significant German opera after Weber.102 Earlier, the
Neue Zeitschrfit printed a lengthier tribute to Marschner, an 1842 article by Carl
Kossmaly that spanned several issues of the NZfM. It describes Marschner as a German
antidote to French and Italian opera and opposes such stereotypes as French and Italian
shallowness and triviality to the German depth Marschner supposedly
exemplified.103
Wer ist der Ritter represented not only one of the signature numbers of Der
Templer but alsothrough its volkstmlich styleone of its most characteristically
100
Rossini ruled the stage, and almost exclusively Herz and Hnten at the piano. [Auf der Bhne
herrschte noch Rossini, auf den Clavieren fast ausschlielich Herz und Hnten.] Schumann, Gesammelte
Schriften 1:1.
101
Erhlt nicht der Stenograph Herz, der sein Herz nur in seinem Fingern haterhlt dieser, sag ich,
nicht fr ein Heft Variationen vierhundert Thaler und Marschner fr den ganzen Hans Heiling kaum mehr?
Noch einmales zuckt mir in allen Fingerspitzen. Ibid., 1:127-28.
102
In sum, the most significant German opera of recent times that has come after Weber. [In Summa,
nach den Weberschen die bedeutendste deutsche Opera der neuern Zeit.] Ibid., 2:160.
103
The installments in Kossmalys tribute to Marschner stretch from the first to the twelfth issue of the
sixteenth volume. For his discussion of German versus Italian and French characteristics, see, for
example, NZfM 16, no. 2 (January 4, 1842): 1-2 and 16, no. 3 (January 8, 1842): 1-2.
Chapter Two 127

German. 104 Early reviews of the opera pointed out the romances folk-like idiom, a
feature that contributed its popular success. 105 Indeed, its context in the plot of the opera
reinforces the specifically German associations of Ivanhoes song. Der Templer concerns
not the crusades but a conflict between Saxons, Normans, and Knights Templar. 106 It sets
an episode from Walter Scotts Ivanhoe in which Ivanhoe wins a victory for King
Richard and the Saxons by rescuing Rebecca (the Jewess of Marschners title) from the
Templars (who are threatening to burn her as a sorceress) and fights a duel with the
rapacious Norman knight Bois-Guilbert (who schemes to make Rebecca his mistress). An
audience member with even a passing acquaintance with European history would have
recognized the Saxons as the most Germanic of the groups. Wilhelm August
Wohlbrcks libretto strengthens the distinction between German Saxons and French
Normans by giving die Sachsen Germanicized names while retaining the French names
Walter Scott gives the Normans. 107 Schumanns rondo, then, aims for an apotheosis not
of an Italian or French operatic melody but of a Germanic, volkstmlich tune. The
virtuosic close of the Fantaisies et finale uses not the glittering, texturally transparent
figuration characteristic of postclassical salon pianists but massive sonorities that evoke
the choral singing of (operatically recreated) Saxon knights and ladies.
These features combine to give Schumanns virtuosic rondo-finale a distinctly
German quality that would have been difficult to overlook in the 1830s. The message
becomes all the more pointed given Schumanns invocation of a variation tradition more
104
The genre of the romance, in Germany, generally implied a folk-like style.

See, for example, Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, Der Templer und die Jdin, AmZ 40 (October 6, 1830):
658.
106
For plot summaries, see Palmer, Templar und die Jdin, 687-88; Jerome Mitchell, The Walter Scott
Operas (University of Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1977), 157-66.
107
Scotts Locksley becomes Lockslei, Isaac of York becomes Isaac von York, The Black Knight
(actually King Richard in disguise) becomes Der schwarze Ritter, and Friar Tuck becomes Tuk.
105
Chapter Two 128

stereotypically serious and associated with Austro-German composers than the
postclassical variety. Schumanns unpublished Fantaisies et finale, then, includes appeals
to serious amateurism, references to a range of musical styles, and an expression of
German musical nationalism, all arranged in allusive, Witz-provoking patterns by the
Jean-Paul influenced sensibility of a composer-critic and advocate of self-consciously
serious music. With its allusions to a wide variety of sources, strong stylistic contrasts,
and heterogeneous makeup, Schumanns Fantaisies seems to employ the something-foreveryone, potpourri-like approach that the NZfM and Schumann himself criticized in
Thalbergs opera fantasies. Here, though, the bravura variation-set becomes an appeal to
an everyone that encompassed admirers of Beethoven, serious amateurs, aficionados of
German Romantic opera, and salon pianists attuned to the combinative possibilities of
musical Witz. The Fantaisies et finale invokes the transcendent world of the poetic even
as it gestures toward a real (if idealized) vision of German musical culture, achieving the
mix of the imaginary and the everyday central to Schumanns style and aesthetic.
In the end, though, Schumann scrapped the Fantaisies et finale, and the gestation
of the tudes symphoniques continued for more than a year. After having the copyists
manuscript prepared based on the Mariemont manuscript, Schumann wrote out a new
order of movements on the flyleaf and changed the compositional logic of the piece yet
again: the new version of the Fantaisies ends with Posthumous Variation 2, so that the
virtuoso display empties into colorful tremolos and formally off-kilter citations of the
theme.108 This version, however, also became a compositional dead end for Schumann. It
was not until 1837 that the composer, in his most radical change to the project, discarded
108
The copyists manuscript indicates the following ordering: theme, I, II, V, PV4, IV, PV3, X, PV5, PV2,
XII. Ehrhardt, La Variation chez Robert Schumann, 1:172.
Chapter Two 129

six variations, replaced them with new ones, and devised yet another ordering. This new
version reflected a distinct vision of a transcendent, elevated virtuosity, one we will
explore in Chapter 3.
From chiaroscuro Depth to Poetic Distance: Poetic Texture and Figuration

According to Schumann
Just as Schumanns criticism of postclassical variation sets and etudes often called
attention to pianistic clichs that, he argued, evinced an entertainment-oriented aesthetic
and took aim at the postclassical principle of transparency, his concept of poetic
virtuosity also extended beyond structural features and included ways in which piano
figuration and texture themselves could create poetic experience, a possibility that
Schumanns essay on the L ci darem la mano Variations and the quirky glitter of the
Abegg Variations both suggest.
Approaches to piano writing were a timely topic during Schumanns Neue
Zeitschrift years. As is well known, the virtuoso repertory during the first half of the
century offered both a laboratory for unprecedented innovation in piano writing and, at
the same time, helped to standardize piano technique. Sets of pianistic idioms and styles
became conventionalized, a process Simon Finlow relates to the proliferation of etude
books and the systematization of piano pedagogy. 109 At the same time, a confluence of
factorsincluding changes in piano technology, the need to distinguish oneself in a
competitive concert scene, and, at least in some cases, the Romantic vision of the artist as
an original creatordrove the development of new varieties of piano sound. In
109
Simon Finlow, The Twenty-Seven Etudes and their Antecedents, in The Cambridge Companion to
Chopin, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 54-57.
Chapter Two 130

Schumanns critical writings, standardization and innovation in piano texture and
figuration became tied to his concept of poetic (and, by implication, non-poetic) music.
Schumann expounded upon this approach in one of his earliest substantial
reviews, which treats Ferdinand Hillers Twenty-Four Etudes, Op. 15. 110 The essay
appeared in several installments in 1835, the first full year of the Neue Zeitschrifts
publication. It served not only as a thorough discussion of Hillers etudes but as a public
exposition of Schumanns poetic aesthetic, a defense of his critical style, and a
demonstration of his acumen as analyst and evaluator. For these reasons, discussions of
Schumanns criticism often cite the article, particularly his summary of his credo as
critic:
We most highly value criticism that leaves behind an impression similar to
that which is created by the original work that stimulates it. In this sense,
Jean Paul, by means of a poetic companion piece, could contribute more to
the understanding of a Beethoven symphony or fantasia (without himself
actually speaking of the symphony or fantasia) than a dozen little judges
of art, who place ladders against the Colossus [of Rhodes] and measure it
carefully by the yard. 111
As widely known as parts of this review have become, scholars generally have not
recognized that Schumanns poetic manifesto concerns a work in a virtuoso genre
specifically, a virtuosic work whose modest scale and technical demands suggest an
orientation toward talented amateur pianists. Schumann often links what he calls the
110
Hiller groups the etudes in his Opus 15 into six suites. Schumanns review, however, does not
acknowledge this organizing feature of the work.
111
[Wir halten] fr die hchste Kritik, die durch sich selbst einen Eindruck hinterlt, dem gleich, den das
anregende Original hervorbringt. In diesem Sinne knnte Jean Paul zum Verstndnis einer
Beethovenischen Symphonie oder Phantasie durch ein poetisches Gegenstck mglich mehr beitragen
(selbst ohne nur von der Phantasie oder Symphonie zu reden) also die Duzend-Kunst-richtler, die Leitern
an den Kolo legen und ihn gut nach Ellen messen. GS 1:44. There could hardly be a more succinct
explanation of Susan Bernsteins artistic homeland in which, according to the Romantic imagination, all
of the arts communicated via a universal metaphorical language.
Chapter Two 131

poetic qualities of Hillers etudes directly to their composers virtuosic capabilities and
novel approach to virtuosic piano writing.
Throughout his discussion, Schumann employs his theoretical knowledge and
understanding of the physical practicalities of piano playing in the service of his poetic
aesthetic and its emphasis on transcendental experience. His evaluation proceeds in three
sections: one dedicated to aesthetic (the poetry of the work, bloom, spirit), one to
theoretical (i.e., harmonic and formal), and one to mechanical (i.e., pianistic) questions.
Apparently directed at other critics who would accuse him of insufficient learnedness or
objectivity, Schumanns essay argues that his ideal of poetic music rests not on purely
subjective criteria but on a holistic, multifaceted approach to musical evaluation that
extends from the abstract to the physical. 112 In this sense, Schumanns connecting of
imagistic, poetic descriptions to legible formal and tangible pianistic features adumbrates
Watkinss identification of the spirit-matter synthesis at the heart of the Schumannian
poetic.
Schumann argues that Hiller possesses the originality required for poetic music:
I believe that Hiller will never be imitated. Why? Because he, original in
his own right, takes to himself so much from other originalities that his
native-foreign essence breaks forth in very remarkable rays. 113
He attributes this poetic inimitability to Hillers immersion in the competitive world of
virtuoso pianism. His biographical sketch of the composer traces his stylistic
development through his training under Hummel, experiences in Paris, and encounters
112
Schumanns essay seems to be responding in part to G. W. Fink, whose articles for the AmZ frequently
implied that Schumanns writings betrayed a lack of learnedness and a slipshod, capricious approach to
evaluation. His response to Schumanns Ein Werk II, cited at the outset of this chapter, represents only
the first such instance. Plantinga, Schumann as Critic, 32, 39.
113
Ich glaube, Hiller wird nie nachgeahmt werden. Warum? weil er, eigentlich Original, sich so viel von
anderen Originalen beigemischt, da sich nun dieses fremd-eigne Wesen in den sonderbarsten Strahlen
bricht. GS 1:45.
Chapter Two 132

which Chopin. Hillers virtuoso technique itself guided his innovations, writes
Schumann: For young composers who are also virtuosos, nothing is more inviting than
to write etudes, where possible the most monstrous[ly difficult]. A new figure, a difficult
rhythm, are easily invented and harmonically developed. 114
Despite this praise, Schumanns review provides a useful window into his
aesthetic of virtuosityand, in 1835, advanced a demonstration of his own critical
prowessprecisely because it argues that Hiller occasionally fails to meet this standard.
Schumann regrets, for example, that [Hiller] strives after the first and best of all times
with such overconfidence that it is no wonder that so much of his work fails. 115 For
this reason, Schumanns descriptions of individual etudes vary widely in tone and style.
Whereas some provide imagistic descriptions that invite the reader into a synesthetic,
poetic sphere, others use more technical language to criticize approaches Schumann
considered prosaic.
Schumann usually identifies as poetic etudes that feature harmonic, textural, and
rhythmic complexity. He hints at these qualities early in the review:
[There are] fantasy and passion (though not the enthusiasm or inspiration
occasionally present in Chopin) cloaked in a Romantic chiaroscuro.
Hiller moves in adventurous and fantastic [feenhaften] waysnot as
poetically as Mendelssohn, but always with very fortunate results. And,
his second, seventeenth, twenty-second, and twenty-third etudes are
among the most successful things in the collection, as well as among the
best things overall that have been written [for the piano] since the F-minor
sonata of Beethoven and other things by Franz Schubert, which seem to
have first opened up this kingdom of marvels. 116
114
Fr junge Componisten, die dazu Virtuosen sind, giebt es nichts Einladenderes, als Etden zu
schreiben, wo mglich die ungeheuersten. Eine neue Figur, ein schwerer Rhythmus lassen sich leicht
erfinden und harmonisch fortfhren[.] Ibid., 1:45.
115
[A]ber er strebt den Ersten, Besten aller Zeiter mit einer Vermessenheit nach da es gar kein
Wunder ist, wenn gar manches milingt. Ibid., 1:45-46.
116
Sie sind: Phantasie und Leidenschaft (nicht Schwrmerei und Begeisterung, wie etwa bei Chopin)
beide in ein romantisches Cla[i]r-obscur eingehlltDennoch bewegt sich Hiller im Abenteuerlichen und
Chapter Two 133
Schumanns use of the term chiaroscuro synaesthetically encapsulates this approach to

piano texture and hints at its poetic potential. Chiaroscuro refers to a painting technique
(most commonly associated with the Renaissance but revived in the nineteenth century)
that uses strong contrasts of light and shadow to create the illusion of depth and to
heighten dramatic or emotional effects. Schumanns praise of chiaroscuro figurationas
well as its propensity to cloak the fantastic qualities of Hillers etudescontrasts
strikingly with the postclassical virtues of clarity and transparency. As Schumann
suggests, Hillers etudes use surface detail (piano figuration) to create what the critic
saw as an illusion of depth.
The review numbers Hillers Etude No. 2, shown in Example 2.15, among the
collections adventurous, fantastic pieces. Schumann describes subterranean wonders
elusive to the beholder and hidden in the chiaroscuro figuration:
A dream. Subterranean pursuits. The spirits of the earth sing and hammer;
fairies lean on diamond flowers. All goes on jocularly. The dreamer
awakes: What was that? 117
Pieces featuring rapid arpeggios and turns were common in etude books and popular
variation sets. However, Hiller combines this common idiom with distinctly nonpostclassical rhythmic, harmonic, and textural murkiness to produce Schumanns
chiaroscuro. The fast figuration moves over a percussive bass in the low register of the
piano: the first three measures alternate between hollow, perfect consonances and
dissonant major seconds, and the transition to the second theme features closely-voiced
Feenhaften, wenn auch nicht so poetisch sein wie Mendelssohn, doch immer sehr glcklich, und die zweite,
siebzehnte, zweiundzwanzigste, dreiundzwanzigste Studie gehren, wie zu den gelungenen in der ganzen
Sammlung, zu dem Besten berhaupt, was seit der F moll-Sonate von Beethoven und Anderen von Franz
Schubert, welche dieses Wunderreich zuerst erschlossen zu haben scheinen, geschrieben worden ist. Ibid.,
1:45-46.
117
Traum. Unterirdisches Treiben. Die Erdgeister singen und hammer. Feen neigen sich auf demantnen
Blumen. Das geht lustig. Der Trumer wacht auf: was war den das? Ibid., 1:49-50.
Chapter Two 134

diminished and half-diminished sevenths in the bass. Harmonic and rhythmic ambiguity
exacerbates textural complexity. Hiller establishes a subtle but nearly perpetual state of
metric dissonance by having most harmonic changes occur a sixteenth note before the
beat. Etude No. 2 also begins on the dominant, so that the tonic D minor does not appear
until m. 3. The second key area similarly delays the arrival of tonal and metric stability
by twice feinting at ii4/3-V7 progressions before B-flat briefly appears in m. 17.
Other etudes complicate and cloud etude-book idioms in ways that similarly elicit
Schumanns poetic responses. He describes Etude No. 22 (also in the feenhaft
category) as Light throughout, breezy, hazy, Aeolian-harp music. An excellent
exercise. 118 The etude features stationary arpeggios and narrow chromatic twists in the
right hand, much like Etude No. 36 from Johann Baptist Cramers bestselling (and, by
1834, classic) Studio per il pianoforte. (Example 2.16) Hillers etude, however, consists
not of sixteenth notes but quintuplet sixteenths, which create a constant stream of
rhythmically asymmetrical figures that occasionally begin with chromatic twists. The left
hand, meanwhile, leaps to place fanfare-like motives above and below the figuration.
Two other etudes, by contrast, seem to have attracted Schumanns criticism
specifically for their textural clarity. Etude No. 4, according to Schumann says nothing,
though it is a passable exercise.119 (Example 2.17) The piece presents a rhythmically
uncomplicated, two-part texture that balances chromatic figures and dissonant harmonies
with extended diatonic passages. In the spirit of the pedagogically useful piano exercise,
it often repeats measures literally or sequentially. Schumann reserves his harshest words
for Etudes Nos. 7 and 18:
118
119
[D]urchaus leicht zu halten, duftig und luftig, Aeolsharfenmusik. Vortreffliche Uebung. Ibid., 1:51.
Nichts sagend, leidliche Uebung. Ibid., 1:50.
Chapter Two 135

I have already said that this was the weakest of all and promised to say
why it is. Well, here it is: because Chopin has written two etudes, one in F
minor, the other in C minor, and Hiller must have known them, before he
wrote numbers 7 and 18. Now, he does not want it to be noticed that
something similar already exists and suddenly becomes tender, which one
is not at all used to from him. No souls speak like this[.]120
Excerpts from Hillers and Chopins pieces appear in Example 2.18. Hillers Etude No. 7
uses an accompaniment pattern similar to Chopins Op. 10, no. 9, and Hillers Etude No.
18 one that resembles Chopins Op. 10, no. 12. 121 Schumanns dismissal of Hillers
pieces stresses their apparent derivation from a previous model. But he also takes aim at
Hillers particular use of Chopin-esque figuration, which contrasts with the chiaroscuro
of the subterranean and hazy Etudes Nos. 2 and 22. In Etudes Nos. 7 and 18, Hiller
keeps the harmonic vocabulary diatonic, the texture transparent, and the harmonic rhythm
slow. Both etudes subsume virtuosic figuration under clearly articulated periodic
melodies whose frequent appoggiaturas and grace notes might even suggest a light
operatic style. The result, as Schumanns description of tenderness implies, bears little
resemblance to the either the syncopated agitato of Chopins Opus. 10, no. 9 or the
thrusting march of no. 12.
One of Schumanns reviews of Chopins music also employs poetic rhetoric to
praise complex, innovative textures for their indistinctness and power to conceal. His
1837 essay on Chopins Etude in A-flat, Op. 25, no. 1 narrates an experience of dreaming
and forgetting that parallels his thumbnail sketch of Hillers Etude No. 2:
120
Nannte ich schon frher die schwchste von allen und versprach zu sagen, warum sie es geworden.
Darum, weil Chopin zwei Etden, eine in F-, die andere in C moll geschriben, die Hiller jedenfalls gekannt
hat, ehe er seine siebente und achtzehnte machte. Nun will er aber durchaus nicht merken lassen, da es
etwas Aehnliches gbe, wird auf einmal zrtlich, was man gar nicht an ihm gewohnt ist; aber so sprechen
keine Seelen[.]. Ibid., 1:51.
121
Chopins Opus 10 appeared in print in 1833, Hillers Opus 15 in 1834.
Chapter Two 136

One would err to think that [Chopin] makes every little note audible; it
was more like an undulation of the A-flat-major chord, here and there
newly brought out with the pedal. But throughout, one could hear through
the harmony a melody in large notes, wondrously, and only in the middle
section a tenor voice, near to the melody, emerged out of the chords. After
the etude it was as if one had seen a blissful image in a dream and, already
half awake, wanted to catch it again. Speech can say little about this, and
praise nothing at all.122
Schumann observes that the pieces notationwhich differentiates between small and
large notesas well as Chopins own performance resembled not the strings of clearly
articulated tones one would expect from a postclassical showpiece but rather a wash of
blended sound. Indeed, Jim Samsons description of Chopins idiosyncratic approach to
piano sound resonates with Schumanns early evaluation. In Samsons analysis (which
treats etudes other than Op. 25, no. 1), Chopin often blurs the boundaries between
textural filler, counterpoint, and melody, dissolving passagework into pure color and
momentarily suspending harmonic functionality or contrapuntal clarity at climactic
moments. 123 (Example 2.19) Such an approach pervades Op. 25, no. 1. Chopins writing
hangs melody notes above the static, A-flat undulation. As Schumann recognizes, inner
voices sporadically break through and collapse back into this blur of sonority, contrasting
and blending clearly articulated melodies with the background sound effect. At the end of
the etude, melody fades back into texture: it reaches the tonic pitch on the fourth beak of
m. 43 and merges with a series of A-flat arpeggios.
122
Man irrt aber, wenn man meint, er htte da jede der kleinen Noten deutlich hren lassen; es war mehr
ein Wogen des As dur-Accordes, vom Pedal heir und da von Neuem in die Hhe gehoben; aber durch die
Harmonieen hindurch verhahm man in groen Tnen Melodie, wundersame, und nur in der Mitte trat
einmal neben jenem Hauptgesang auch eine Tenorstimme aus den Accorden deutlicher hervor. Nach der
Etude wirds einem wie nach einem selgen Bild, im Traum gesehen, da man, schon halbwach, noch
einmal erhaschen mchte; reden lie sich wenig darber und loben gar nicht. GS 1:254-55.
123
Samson, Chopin, 124-25, 166-67.
Chapter Two 137

Virtuosity and Distant Sound
Schumann also employed an approach to piano texture and figuration that could evoke
the poetic not by creating the illusion of chiaroscuro depth but by imitating a literary
trope that fascinated nineteenth-century German authors and that invited the listener to
peer into the distance: the dying or distant sound. Berthold Hoeckner has explored this
Romantic trope and its relevance for Schumanns music. 124 He notes that early Romantic
writers and aestheticians were not only fascinated with the concept of distance but
actually used the image of a sound that decays and fades away to define Romanticism
itself. 125 An entry from Novaliss unfinished encyclopedia, Das allgemeine Brouillon, for
example, speculates: Distant philosophy sounds like poetrybecause in the distance
everything becomes a vowel Thus, in the distance everything becomes poetry
poem. 126
Romantic writers suggested various ways in which distant sound could evoke
poetic, transcendental experience. Novalis claimed that language, when heard at a
distance, loses its articulating consonants and becomes a series of vowel-like sounds. He
considered vocalic sound more inherently musical than everyday speech and mapped
the disappearance of consonants onto his distinction between the prosaic and the poetic:
when prose fades into the distance, it becomes poetry. 127 Jean Pauls 1804 Vorschule der
sthetik similarly regarded distant, fading sound as a symbol of transcendence because of
124
Bertold Hoeckner, Schumann and Romantic Distance, Journal of the American Musicological Society
50, no. 1 (1997): 55-132.
125
Several other writers have noted the importance of distance to Romantic aesthetics. See, for example,
Charles Rosens chapter Mountains and Song Cycles in The Romantic Generation, 116-237.
126
Hoeckner, Schumann and Romantic Distance, 55. Ferne Phil[osophie] klingt wie Poesieweil jeder
Ruf in die Ferne vocal wirdSo wird alles in der Entfernung PosiePom. Hoeckners translation.
127
Ibid., 58-60.
Chapter Two 138

its ability to suggest, through its lingering decay and increasing indistinctness, an infinite
space:
The Romantic is beauty without limit, or beautiful infinity, just as there is
a sublime infinityIt is more than an analogy to call the Romantic the
undulating hum of a vibrating string or bell, whose sound waves fade
away into ever greater distances and finally are lost in ourselves and
which, although outwardly silent, still sound within. 128
Hoeckner finds a variety of analogies in Schumanns music and writing for distant sound,
including Schumanns use of borrowed material in his Sonata, Op. 11 and Fantaisie, Op.
17, as well as the cyclic elements of Davidsbndlertnze, Op. 6.
I would additionally propose that two of Schumanns showpieces attempt to
capture distant sound in more literal waysand as means of pointedly subverting the
conventions of bravura showpieces. Hoeckner points out one literal depiction of dying
sound in his discussion of Papillons, Op. 2. The piece closes by mimicking the ending of
Jean Pauls Flegeljahre, in which the tone of a flute fades into the distance. (Example
2.20) Actually, though, Schumann first used this effect in a showpiece written a year
previously, the Finale alla fantasia of the Abegg Variations. The brilliant second
episode pauses on a cadential 6/4, a gesture that conventionally demands a cadenza or at
least a virtuosic flourish as a transition to the final refrain. Schumann, instead, calls for a
quiet sound effect. The pianist plays two chords in which the first two notes of the
Abegg theme form an articulated inner voice. 129 After the second chord, he or she
completes the motive by lifting keys one by one. This is the first time in history,
128
Ibid., 60. See also Jean Paul, The Horn of Oberon, 61.
The sheer quietness and subtlety of this sound effect (which risks becoming inaudible in the concert
hall) attests to the Variations orientation toward home or salon performance.
129
Chapter Two 139

Charles Rosen writes, that a melody is signified not by the attack but by the release of a
series of notes.130
More specifically, this passage imbues a climactic recollection of the Abegg
theme with a quality of distance. 131 The first two notes are articulated normally. The E
and G, however, begin to fade into the Romantic horizon. Their attacks (or consonants)
concealed in the second chord, the release of notes reveals them as ringing piano strings
without a percussive beginningvowels, according to Novaliss logic. The second G
continues the fade-out by sounding, if at all, through the pianists lifting the damper pedal
to add an extra shimmer of sympathetic vibration. 132 There could hardly be a more
pointed response to the glittering passagework and thematic and textural clarity required
by postclassical convention. At a conventional site of improvisatory bravura and in a
genre given to the clear presentation of appealing themes, we find ourselves
contemplating the leading motive as a remote, fading echo and, according to Jean Pauls
reasoning, becoming aware of the beautiful infinity into which its last note disappears.
After Papillons, Schumann never again used this effect. In his Toccata, Op. 7,
however, he used a more conventional approach to piano figuration to imply poetic
distance, in this case combining a process of motivic transformation with several musical
metaphors for fade-out. 133 Schumann developed this evocation of distance at a late stage
of the Toccatas composition. The piece went through two distinct versions: Schumann
began an early version in 1830 entitled Exercise pour le pianoforte and considered it
130
Rosen, The Romantic Generation, 10.

Hoeckners discussion of the Papillons ending simply describes it as a literal portrayal of fade-out and
stops short of explaining how the passage literally depicts an articulated melody converted into vocalic
utterance.
132
Rosen observes this effect. The Romantic Generation, 11.
133
Aspects of the Toccata other than the coda will concern us in Chapter 3.
131
Chapter Two 140

sufficiently complete to play for friends in Heidelberg. In 1833, equipped with more
compositional training and committed to career paths other than performance, he
extensively revised the work and published it in 1834. 134
The coda of the published version differs considerably from the coda of the early
version. 135 The Exercise ends with a forceful bravura climax. (Ex. 2.21) The coda opens
with a chain of scales in double thirds that crescendo to a fortissimo display of the
double-stop figuration that pervades the piece. Having reached this peak, Schumann
descends and decrescendos for four measures in preparation for a closing gesture in
which the pianist hammers out spare octaves. The larger coda that Schumann ultimately
published includes even more forceful, muscular effectsas I will discuss in Chapter 3
but ends with a surprising decrease in virtuosic intensity. (Example 2.22) In fact,
Friedrich Wieck privately complained to Schumann that this aspect of the Toccata made
it less suitable as a virtuosic warhorse for his daughter and star pupil, Clara. Henriette
Voigt reported on this exchange in a letter to her husband:
[Schumann] said to me that Wieck had been pestering him to change the
ending of his Toccata because his daughter was going to play it on her
next concert on September 11 (at a benefit for the poor in Plauen) and [the
ending] was not brilliant enough. What craziness. 136
134
Michael J. Luebbe has transcribed and edited Schumanns copy of the early version in Robert
Schumanns Exercise pour le Pianoforte, in Schumanniana Nova: Festschrift Gerd Neuhaus zum 60
Geburtstag, ed. Bernhard R. Appel, Ute Br, and Matthias Wendt (Sinzig: Studio Verlag, 2002), 436-48.
The manuscript itself is currently housed at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.
135
Schumanns Heidelberg classmate and chamber-music partner Theodore Tpken later recalled this
difference: The Toccata, which [Schumann] played often and distinctly, was later changed in character by
him in ways not insignificantin particular, the ending is different. Die Toccata, die er viel und
eigentmlich spielte, ist spter nicht unwesentlich, selbst in Charakter, von ihm gendert, namentlich ist der
Schlu ein anderer. Tpkens letter to Schumanns biographer Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski is
quoted in Boetticher, Klavierwerke 1:11.
136
Er [Schumann] sagte mir, da ihn Wieck geqult habe, er soll den Schlu der Toccata ndern, da es
seine Tochter im nchsten Konzert 11 September (fr die Abgebrannten in Plauen) spielen wrde, es wre
nicht brillant genugwelche Tollheit. Voigts letter of September 1, 1834 appears quoted in Boetticher,
Klavierwerke, 1:11.
Chapter Two 141

The coda of the published Toccata, though it showcases motoric, climactic
virtuosic display, closes not by building to a grand finish but by slipping into the
distance. This evocation depends in part on Schumanns manipulation of a particular
pianistic figure. After eight measures of moving in stepwise fashion through a narrow
melodic range, the melodic compass expands to introduce a figure marked A in the
example. Figure A uses a common style of nineteenth-century piano figuration (typical in
both virtuosic and non-virtuosic works) that divides the hand between a melodic line and
an accompaniment. At this point, A also articulates a melodic and harmonic high point:
the melody leaps a fourth, and it functions as an appoggiatura that descends sequentially
down the keyboard. By the point marked B, the texture thins when the pianist releases
rather than sustains the first note. At the point marked C, the figure begins to take on a
new role. Rather than articulating an appoggiatura, it makes repeated arrivals on the same
pitch while the left hand circles through chromatic progressionsthe effect is less that of
an expressive melodic gesture than of buzzing activity in the pianos middle register.
Even here, though, the figure retains its melodic role and, after several measures,
articulates an upward ascent that breaks into the crashing, alternating chords of the
pieces culmination.
During the close of the coda, Schumann implies a decay or fading via easily
recognizable means. The texture thins. In the second phrase, both hands descend into the
middle register, the dynamic drops to piano, and the inner-voice melody becomes a
downward-sloping bass line. The final cadence completes the effect by slowly and
quietly easing into the final tonic: Schumann elaborates a plagal cadence with chromatic
voice-leading so that the bass falls from F to C while the other voices indicate a vii0 4/3-I
Chapter Two 142

progression. Schumann seems to have regarded the subdued dynamic as essential to the
Toccatas effect and recognized that it might have appeared counterintuitive to a player
bent on a brilliant ending: his note at the beginning of the piece admonishes, In order to
leave the player the most freedom of interpretation possible, only passages that could be
played erroneously are provided with markings. 137
In this understated denouement, Schumann adds to his depiction of poetic
distance by transforming the figure we began tracking at box A. What first appeared as a
means of articulating melodic and harmonic structure through a conventional pianistic
idiom changes into a glittering sound effect (marked D in the example) that envelops the
inner-voice melody. The figure now appears not as a recognizable melody that outlines a
harmonic progression but as a static series of repeated arrivals on pitches mildly
dissonant against the bass and inner voice. Its syncopations, which previously created the
metric dissonance from which the coda derived its inexorable energy, now create a slight
metric ripple in the downbeat-stressing coda. Schumanns instruction to accelerate
heightens the figures quality of twinkling, glittering oscillation.
Unlike the Abegg effect, which literally turns a motive into a series of vocalic
tones, the coda of the Toccata consists of clearly articulated notes at the piano. However,
it too follows the logic of Jean Pauls and Novaliss dying sound. Not only does it convey
the effect of fading into the distance and ringing to a standstill; it also turns gestures and
motives informed by pianistic convention and functional harmony into a sound effect
thatas Samson has noted of Chopins etudescrosses the boundary between melody,
harmony, and texture. After its performer has ridden the storms of virtuosic bombast, the
137
Dem Spieler mglichste Freiheit des Vortrags zu lassen, sind nur Stellen, die etwa vergriffen werden
knnten, genauer bezeichnet.
Chapter Two 143

Toccata offers a last stroke of transcendent virtuosity by tracing a path into poetic
distance. The piece endsif we believe Jean Pauls Vorschuleby drawing us into a
beautiful infinity.
***
These essays and compositions, all drawn from the early, formative years of Schumanns
professional career, reveal in myriad ways the composer-critics efforts to poeticize
virtuosity by achieving the synthesis of surface brilliance and poetic depth that he
idealized. The inner, transcendental experience associated with the poetic could appear
not only in affectively introverted music but also in the brilliance and display of virtuoso
showpieces. These works also broaden our understanding of the Schumannian poetic by
illustrating its diverse musical implications, which range from the overall harmonic and
figurational originality and complexity of Chopins L ci darem la mano Variations to
the Toccatas use of piano figuration to imitate a specific literary and philosophical trope.
Schumanns virtuosic works and writings on virtuosity, then, trace multiple routes to the
synesthetic, transcendent realm of the poetic. And, they demonstrate a variety of ways of
merging the conventions of postclassical virtuoso music and the metaphysical ideology of
Schumanns Romanticism.
At the same time, these works also illustrate the worldlyif nonetheless still
idealisticaspects of the Schumannian poetic. For Schumann, poetic music was not a
sanctuary from conventional, appealing, playable, showy, or even marketable music, but
rather a way of transforming quotidian reality according to the logic of early German
Romanticism. His virtuosic works incorporate styles and generic conventions associated
Chapter Two 144

with recreational salon music, and others, such as the Fantaisies et finale, make elaborate
musical-cultural statements. Schumanns Fantaisies and Abegg Variations, as well as
Hillers Etudes, Op. 15, all address themselves to a public of talented amateurs, and
Schumann seems to have envisioned such serious amateurs as Baron and Ernestine von
Fricken and Henriette Voigt as ideal listeners, patrons, and players for his brand of
virtuosity. The final version of the Toccata, Op. 7, which became associated with the
concert stage rather than the drawing room and the formidable professional rather than
the amateur, similarly aims to transport into the Romantic distance a large public
audience, such as that which the young Clara Wieck addressed in September 1834 at a
benefit concert. So fundamental was the poetic to Schumanns musical style and
worldview that this concept will continue to inform our discussion of other works and
issues. In the next chapter, in fact, we will discuss a different variety of transcendental
experience and its implications for Schumanns virtuoso music.
Chapter Three 145

CHAPTER 3:
SCHUMANNS 1830S SHOWPIECES AND THE
RHETORIC OF THE SUBLIME
Schumann, in his virtuosic works, engaged with a different aesthetic category that,
according to the logic of German Romanticism, could elevate virtuosity (indeed, music
itself) above the status of entertainment: the sublime. Whereas the Schumannian poetic
invited the listener on a search for inner meaning, the sublime sought transcendence and
uplift in the overwhelming, fearsome, heroic, or monumental. Clara Wieck hinted at this
experience in an 1838 letter on her then-fiancs Kreisleriana, Op. 16, in which she
wrote, I am amazed at your genius, and all the new things in ityou know, I am
actually frightened of you sometimes.1 Her description of a combination of enjoyment
and apprehension evokes Kreislerianas drastic swings between sharply contrasting
moods and styles as well as the ferociously virtuosic passages in the faster movements.
The opening movement, for example, infuses twisting, perpetual-motion arpeggios with
metric dissonance. As shown in Example 3.1, Schumann displaces the accompaniment by
an eighth note, creating a pounding, unsettled pattern that persists for twenty-one
measures. The penultimate movement creates a similarly violent affect by hammering
repetitively at accented diminished chords. Not only Wieck but writers as diverse in
background and approach as John Daverio, Charles Rosen, and Roland Barthes have
Erstaunt bin ich vor Deinem Geist, vor all dem Neuen was darinberhaupt weit Du, ich erschrecke
manchmal vor Dir? Clara Wieck to Robert Schumann, July 30, 1838. Clara und Robert Schumann
Briefwechsel: Kritische gesamtausgabe, ed. Eva Weissweiler (Basel and Frankfurt: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern,
1984) 1:213. Translation adapted from The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann, ed.
Eva Weissweiler, trans. Hildegard Fritsch and Ronald L. Crawford (New York: Peter Lang, 1994) 1: 21920.
Chapter Three 146

noted the incessant, rhythmically dissonant drive of Kreislerianas virtuosic movements
and associated them with qualities of panic, fear, and violence.2
The concept of the sublimeone older and more widely-recognized than the
Romantic poeticdeveloped through a varied critical discourse that began in the
eighteenth century, extended into the nineteenth, and encompassed a range of often
divergent definitions and interpretations. Writers on the sublime ranged from Edmund
Burke of the mid-eighteenth century, through Immanuel Kant of the late eighteenth, to
Johann Gottfried von Herder (parts of whose 1800 Vom Erhabnen und vom Ideal
Schumann copied into a collection of quotations on music he called Dichtergarten
between 1852 and 1854), to Jean Paulthe author closest to the Schumann of the
1830swhose 1804 Vorschule der Aesthetik includes a chapter on the sublime. 3 These
authors distinguished the sublime from what they called the beautiful. Whereas the
beautiful encompassed artistic objects whose proportions brought pleasure to the
beholder, the sublime possessed such scale, complexity, or intensity as to confront the
beholder with an overwhelming, borderline-unpleasant experience. Kant began the
tradition of differentiating among varieties of the sublime, in his case between the
mathematical (overwhelming in scale and complexity, as in the starry night sky) and the
dynamic (which overwhelms through irresistible, violent force that exceeds humanitys
2
John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), 168. Rosen refers to the raging violence on the opening page. The Romantic Generation
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 669. Roland Barthes, describes the rhythmic beating in
Kreisleriana as emblematic of panic and suggests that it requires rage and pounding from the
performer. Rasch, in The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation,
trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985), 302-303.
3
See Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
(1757), ed. J. T. Boulton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958); Immanuel Kant, The Critique of
Judgment (1790), trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952); Jean Paul, Horn of Oberon:
Jean Paul Richters School for Aesthetics (1804), trans. Margaret R. Hale (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1973); Robert Schumann, Dichtergarten fr Musik: Eine Anthologie fr Freunde der Literatur und
Musik, ed. Gerd Nauhaus, Ingrid Bodsch, Leander Hotaki, and Kristin R. M. Krahe (Frankfurt: Stoemfeld
and Bonn: StadtMuseum, 2007), 161-64.
Chapter Three 147

physical capacity to resist, like a storm at sea). All manifestations of the sublime, though,
mixed ecstasy with unease and uplift with the feeling of being overpowered.
The musicological literature has generally reserved discussion of the sublime for
works of monumental formal proportions requiring numerous performers: symphonies
and large choral pieces in general and the heroic works of Beethoven in particular. 4
With a few exceptions that I will discuss below, the sublime has remained almost absent
from discussions of virtuosity. However, virtuoso musicwith its extremes of velocity,
difficulty, and intricacy, as well as the image of the virtuoso as a conquering, striving
herowould seem to offer an especially promising route to the sublime. Of course,
postclassical virtuosity had no such aspirations. Exponents of this style sought to astound
audiences (often with rapid figuration spotlighted by clear textures) but avoided
unsettling them with harsh sounds, extraordinarily complex harmonies and textures, or
other qualities that risked being perceived as unpleasant or excessively difficulty. Other
virtuosi more closely allied with the Romantic avant-garde, though, did develop styles
that nineteenth-century audiences and critics understood as reaching toward the sublime.
The best-known such figure in the piano world was surely Franz Liszt. As Dana Gooley
and Katherine Ellis have shown, sublimity of the violent, dynamic kind became a
See, for example, Alexander Rehding, Music and Monumentality: Commemoration and Wonderment in
Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3, 34-36, which stresses orchestral
and choral works by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Liszt, Mahler, Wagner, and other composers; Richard
Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 2, The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 643-51, 656, 732-34, which discusses the late choral and
symphonic works of Haydn and Mozart and the heroic style of Beethovens Third and Fifth Symphonies
(but also mentions Beethovens Piano Sonata Op. 111); Elaine Sisman, Learned Style and the Rhetoric of
the Sublime in the Jupiter Symphony, in Wolfgang Amad Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, ed.
Stanley Sadie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 213-240; and James Webster, The Creation, Haydns Late
Vocal Music, and the Musical Sublime, in Haydn and his World, ed. Elaine Sisman (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1997), 57-102. None of these studies mentions virtuosity or, indeed, Schumann.
Chapter Three 148

hallmark of Liszts style and reception.5 Nineteenth-century accounts of Liszts
performances teem with stock sublime imageryvolcanoes, cataracts, storms, religious
revelation, and military struggleand often present Liszt himself as a pianistic
superman. 6
Liszt, though, was not the only composer of virtuosic music who sought and
gained such a distinction. Schumann, in his compositions, also developed a style of
virtuosity that differed substantially from the Lisztian and that critics recognized as
sources of sublime experience. Additionally, Schumanns critical writings located
sublimity in music and performances by select virtuoso-composers (including Liszt, but
also Ludwig Schuncke and Chopin). This approach did not merely represent an effort to
impress audiences with new extremes of difficulty and complexity. It also served
Schumanns project of bringing virtuosity and its capacity to astonish into alignment with
the ideologies of Romanticism and serious music. In the minds of many Romantic critics,
sublimity was the ultimate aspiration of music, the quality that enthroned it as foremost
among the arts. E. T. A. Hoffmanns famous review of Beethovens Fifth, for example,
describes it as the fulfillment of Romantic aspirations in part because of what he
identified as the symphonys fearsome, titanic qualities. 7 Such music, its promoters
imagined, could bring into the concert hall forces that Kant and other more speculative
Katherine Ellis, Liszt, the Romantic Artist, in The Cambridge Companion to Liszt, ed. Kenneth
Hamilton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6-8; Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 47.
6
Richard Leppert, Cultural Contradictions, Idolatry, and the Piano Virtuoso: Franz Liszt, in Piano Roles,
ed. James Parakilas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 254-68.
7
E. T. A Hoffmann, Beethovens Instrumental Music, ed. Ruth Solie, in Source Readings in Music
History, rev. ed., edited by Leo Treitler (New York: Norton, 1998), 1194-95.
Chapter Three 149

writers believed resided only in the mightiest natural phenomena.8 Music could thus
become not necessarily pleasing or appealing but demonstrably great.
The sublime offered significant rewards for those who wished to establish music
as a serious art form important to a listeners or practitioners Bildung. It is a testament to
the appeal this concept held for Romantic musicians that the 1835 Encyclopdie der
gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften oder Universal Lexikon der Tonkunst, edited
by Gustav Schilling, contained a four-page entry on Erhaben that summarizes Kant
and applies his philosophy to musical phenomena.9 According to the pre-Romantic Kant,
the sublime unsettled but ultimately edified the beholder, a view that echoes in
subsequent nineteenth-century writings. The dynamic sublime raised the soul above the
vulgar and commonplace, Kant wrote, moved the mind into states of inspiration, and
taught awareness of the supersensible aspects of ones being. He adds that truly
appreciating the sublime requires one to possess a certain level of cultivation and
receptiveness to abstract thinking. 10 Schilling likewise cautions readers that to
contemplate the infinite and the overpowering, one needed strong intellectual faculties. 11
The sublimeas invoked by a critic or pursued by a composerserved multiple
purposes: to astonish and impress, to improve and uplift, and to affirm ones membership
in a cultural group that valued such philosophical ideals enough to seek musical
cultivation in self-consciously difficult listening experiences. It amalgamated the wow
Henrik Naesteds study of the concept of the sublime as it relates to Beethovens Eroica Symphony is
appropriately titled, How to Bring the Ocean into the Concert Hall: Beethovens Third Symphony and the
Aesthetics of the Sublime. Danish Yearbook of Musicology 31 (2003): 17-36.
9
Gustav Schilling, Erhaben, in Encyclopdie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften oder
Universal Lexikon der Tonkunst, ed. Gustav Schilling, 7 vols. (Stuttgart: Khler, 1835) 2:615-18.
10
Kant, Critique of Judgment, 106-116. In one particularly condescending passage, he tells of a Savoyard
peasant who merely feels fear at the prospect of climbing snow-covered mountains, not the uplift that
educated, thrill-seeking mountain-climbers experience.
11
Schilling, Erhaben, 615.
Chapter Three 150

factor characteristic of Beethoven and virtuosity alike with a more rarefied kind of
seriousness.
Despite the status of erhaben as a buzzword of nineteenth century music, the
extent to which contemporary thinking on the sublime is applicable to music has proven
to be a problematic issue. One of the most influential eighteenth-century writers on the
sublimeKant himselfand a present-day scholar of eighteenth-century musicWye J.
Allanbrookhave issued significant challenges to scholars who week to locate sublimity
in works of music. According to Kants complex, often rigid system of definitions, only
natural objects could arouse a sense of the sublime. Works of art could not offer the
superhuman complexity or force needed for sublime experience. And, in any case, the
sublime lay only in the mind of the beholderit was a subjective experience rather than a
property of an object. 12 Allanbrook, in response to studies that have claimed to find selfconsciously sublime moments in the late works of Haydn and Mozart, expresses concern
that the scholars risk indiscriminately applying the sublime to any unusually loud or
climactic musical scenario. There is, she argues, no sublime musical topic, no set of
objectively identifiable stylistic traits that analysts can label as a reach for the sublime.
She also notes the very difficulties of translating the crucial word erhaben as found in
music treatises: its meanings extend from sublime to simply lofty or elevated. 13
But the very flexibility of the sublime as a concept, the range of contemporary
definitions of this species of aesthetic experience, and its persistence in the discourse on
aesthetics prompted a variety of musical interpretations during the nineteenth century.
12
Kant, Critique of Judgement, 100, 114, 134.

Wye J. Allanbrook, Is the Sublime a Musical Topos? Eighteenth-Century Music 7, no. 2 (2010): see
especially 263-65. Allanbrook convincingly argues, too, that the sublime was more a nineteenth-century
preoccupation than an eighteenth-century one.
13
Chapter Three 151

The cultural capital of the sublime made it too attractive an ideal to treat as restrictively
as Allanbrook and Kant before her prefer. I would propose, though, not to treat the
sublime as a topicas something one can identify in musical passages given the right
criteriabut as an aspiration and a rhetorical strategy. The style and reception of
Schumanns sublime showpieces prompts us to ask not whether the music is in fact
sublime but rather what insights commentators offered about a piece when they discussed
it in sublime terms, how composers courted this distinction, and what kind of claims for
particular works and performers these attributions of sublimity staked. Such an approach
emphasizes the historical and cultural situatedness of notions of the sublime rather
focusing on Kants universalizing postulations and deductions. A confluence of factors
including structural and stylistic conventions and extramusical associationsshaped
what musicians and audiences of a particular time and place found awe-inspiring,
uplifting, or thrillingly abrasive. And, the notion that music could offer a gateway to
sublime experience arose from the aesthetic and worldly concerns of several generations
of musicians who made this possibility a cornerstone of the nineteenth-century
Kunstreligion.
Even the philosophical tradition that Schumann inherited invited a broad, though
not indiscriminate, application of the sublime. Kants restrictiveness, ultimately, was an
idiosyncrasy while Burkes propensity to see sublimity in a variety of embodiments was
more characteristic of the Romantic discourse. Writers on the sublime from Burke to
Schilling used a consistent but varied cornucopia of stock images to symbolize the
sublime: vast oceans, storms, waterfalls, volcanos, lions, eagles, and mountains. Jean
Paul, whose Vorschule Schumann read during the 1830s, claimed that the dynamic
Chapter Three 152

sublime best found expression in auditory events of unusual power and force, a
suggestion that would seem to privilege music as a means of artistically capturing this
unnerving transcendence. Jean Paul additionally wrote that sublime experience could
arise from small but meaningful symbols: Jupiters eyebrow, in one of his examples,
could intimate the sublime by hinting at the potential thunderbolts lurking behind it.14
Writers also freely merged the lofty or heroic meaning of erhaben that Allanbrook
cites as a pitfall for scholars with its more strictly sublime sense. Kant strayed
somewhat from his own restrictive view by suggesting that, since war was potentially
sublime, the soldier or general (or more generally the nation at war) therefore took on a
sublime quality because of his frequent immersion in extreme danger. More broadly,
Kant added, individuals who withdrew from society for idealistic purposes or who
struggled boldly toward a difficult object also approached the sublime. 15 These qualities
of striving and heroism led writers to describe the sublime in general as a quintessentially
masculine category, a distinction that men oughtbut that women ought notto seek. 16
The musical critical discourse mirrored this flexibility. At the extreme of
abstraction lay E. T. A. Hoffmann, who saw in the ineffability of instrumental music in
general the experience of ungraspable, sublime infinity. At the concrete end was
Christian Friedrich Michaelis, who attempted to describe what amounted to sublime
topics. He proposed two: extremely dense, elaborate counterpoint (when the
imaginationcannot easily and calmly integrate the diverse ideas into a coherent whole
without strain) and music that eschews straightforward phrasing and appears intractable
14
Jean Paul, Horn of Oberon, 74.

Kant, Critique of Judgment, see especially 112-13, 129.
16
See, for example, Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1989), 74-77. Schillings encyclopedia article similarly describes the sublime as a masculine category as
opposed to what he calls the naive feminine. Erhaben, 616.
15
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to rhythmic laws. More often, writers ascribed sublimity based on the perceived
magnitude, intensity, and spiritual or heroic loftiness of compositions or performances.
Schillings encyclopedia entry named extraordinary scale and intensity as prerequisite for
the sublime and cited examples including the choruses and fugues of Bach and Handel,
Haydns Die Schpfung, and numbers from Beethovens Fidelio. The portion of Herders
essay that Schumann copied locates sublimity particularly in climactic passages that offer
release from complex tonal labyrinths. 17 Most of all, Beethovens symphonic works
constituted the epitome of sublimity for the nineteenth-century imagination with their
unprecedented scale, extremes of rhythmic and harmonic violence, and struggle-tovictory narratives. In a way that mirrors Kants transfer of sublimity from phenomena to
individuals, the hero implied by some of Beethovens works and the figure of Beethoven
himself acquired an aura of sublimity. 18
Briefly returning to the example of Liszt illustrates the range of strategies by
which virtuosi could take for themselves the mantel of sublimity. Liszts style of piano
writing itself encouraged and received application of sublime rhetoric. As Gooley has
shown, Liszt developed a style of virtuosity based on simultaneous, shifting layers of
digitally demanding material infused with an extraordinary profusion of detail and often
leading to massive pile-ups of figuration. The sheer quantity of information he put
forth, Gooley writes, was far beyond what audiences were accustomed to hearing and
seeing at a virtuoso concert and exceeded what their minds could reasonably process.
Listening to him was the aural equivalent of the experience of the sublime, often
17
18
Herder, quoted in Schumann, Dichtergarten, 163.

See Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Chapter Three 154

overwhelming or terrifying the listener.19 Additionally, Liszt deliberately associated
himself with the centurys most characteristic symbols of the musical sublime, such as in
his piano transcriptions of Beethovens symphonies. As Jonathan Kregor has argued,
these transcriptions confront the performer with extreme pianistic difficulty in an attempt
to capture every detail of Beethovens originals. They require a skill of execution
tantamount to the exaggerated stature of the composer Beethoven, he writes. Such
transcriptions made a case for Liszts ability to merge virtuoso technique, a typical
virtuoso genre, and his own public image with the heroic, monumental aspects and
cultural prestige of Beethovens symphonies. 20
This chapter will show that several of Schumanns virtuosic works from his 1830s
piano decade pursue their own manifold strategies for capturing the sublime. They
include certain of the Paganini etudes, Opuses 3 and 10, the Concert sans orchestre, Op.
14, the Toccata, Op. 7, and the tudes symphoniques, Op. 13. Unlike many of the works
described in Chapter 2, these potentially sublime showpieces were written specifically for
performance by professional soloists. While many appeared in salon performances as
well as in public concerns, their titles gesture toward the public arena: concerto,
symphonic, and Paganini. The potential sublimity of these works did indeed lie in the
eyes of many of their beholders, notably a few important critics who offered some of the
few sympathetic writings on Schumanns early piano works but whose commentary
Schumann scholars have left unexamined. These criticslike Schumann himself when
he wrote of sublime virtuositysuggest that sublime features rendered these showpieces
more transcendental or noble than conventional virtuosic works.
19
20
Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 47.

Jonathan Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 124-148.
Chapter Three 155

Sublime Virtuosity in Schumanns Critical Writings
Virtuosity stimulated Schumann to employ sublime rhetoric in his critical writings as did
no other subject save the symphonies of Beethoven. 21 Perhaps not surprisingly, the
richest sources for Schumanns thoughts on the virtuosic sublime are his Neue Zeitschrift
reviews of Liszts performances and publications. Schumanns reviews of the 1837
Grandes tudes (the early, even more difficult version of the 1851 tudes dexcution
transcendente) and coverage of Liszts 1840 performances in Dresden and Leipzig
contributed to the construction of Liszt as the sublime virtuoso. 22 In the later instance, in
fact, Schumanns writings eased Liszts reception in Leipzig and defended him before an
initially skeptical press. 23 Schumann proclaimed Liszt not only as a popular celebrity but
as a serious artist who possessed noble and ennobling characteristics. Like Clara Wieck,
Liszt provided Schumann with an exemplar of how virtuosity and the ideology of serious
music could be merged in practice.
Schumanns essays anticipated Gooleys analysis of Liszts virtuosic writing by
describing it in sublime terms. In his review of the Grandes tudes, Schumann combined
nature imagery with a descriptor of subjective experience, describing them as etudes of
storm and dread. The fearsomeness of these pieces, according to Schumann, extended to
the experience of the pianist who would master them: he warns readers of the etudes
extreme difficulty and claims that only ten or twelve pianists in the world would be equal
to the challenge, whereas weaker executants will only raise a laugh. 24 He describes
21
Schumanns writings on sonatas, chamber music, and operas rarely, if ever, invoke the sublime.
See Robert Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften ber Musik und Musiker, ed. Martin Kreisig, 5th ed.
(Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1914) 1:438-44 and 1:478-85 for Schumanns reviews of Liszts concerts
and Grandes tudes, respectively.
23
Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 157-64.
24
Es sind wahre Sturm- und Grau-Etden Schwchere Spieler wrden mit ihnen nur Lachen erregen.
GS 1:443.
22
Chapter Three 156

Liszt himself struggling with [the instrument] and subduing it, casting him as an
embattled creator who contends with forces beyond most human beings control and,
indeed, almost greater than himself.25 Schumann draws on the lofty, martial tropes of the
sublime as well. In his review of Liszts Leipzig performance of the Weber Konzertstck,
he (like several of Liszts early critics) compared the pianist to Napoleon. 26 Schumann
invokes Napoleon as a sublime soldier wreathed in the violent ecstasy of battle when he
describes the accumulation of momentum in the march-like section of Webers piece:
Liszt conceived the piece with such force and grandeur of expression that
it resembled a march toward the battlefield. He continued increasing from
minute to minute up to the passage where he seemed to place himself at
the head of the orchestra and took up the theme himself in a joyful
manner. At this point, he indeed seemed to resemble the military
commander to whom we have compared him in appearance, and the
applause for the performance was not unlike a Vive lEmpreur! 27
The result of this combination of sonic overload and seemingly superhuman effort is, in
Schumanns account, an overpowering experience for the audience: I have never found
any artist, except Paganini, to possess in so high a degree as Liszt this power of
subjugating, elevating, and leading the public.28
A comparison Schumann makes between Liszt and Thalberg reveals the
polemical side of his ascriptions of sublimity. As we saw in Chapter 2, Schumann and his
Neue Zeitschrift writers often criticized Thalberg for his perceived orientation toward a
stylistically innovative but aesthetically postclassical, ingratiating approach to bravura
25
Und auch sehen mu man den Componisten wo wir den Componisten selber mit seinem Instrumente
ringen, es bndigen, es jedem seiner Laute gehorchen sehen. Ibid., 1:443.
26
On the larger tradition of comparing Liszt to Napoleon, see Gooley The Virtuoso Liszt, 78-116.
27
Wie Liszt gleich das Stck anfat, mit einer Strke und Groheit in Ausdruck, als glte es eben einen
Zug auf den Kampfplatz, so fhrt er es von Minute zu Minute steigend fort bis zu jener Stelle, wo er sich
wie an die Spitze des Orchesters stellt und es jubelnd selbst anfhrt. Schien er an dieser Stelle doch jener
Feldherr selbst, dem wir ihn an uerer Gestalt verglichen, und der Beifall darauf an Kraft nicht unhnlich
einem Vive lempereur. GS 1:483.
28
Diese Kraft, ein Publicum sich zu unterjochen, es zu heben, tragen, und fallen zu lassen, mag wohl bei
keinem Knstler, Paganini ausgenommen, in so hohem Grade anzutreffen sein. GS 1:479.
Chapter Three 157

salon music. Schumann himself often presented Thalberg and other postclassical
composers using feminizing, aristocratic imagery. In his Liszt review, Schumann wrote
that comparing Liszts and Thalbergs portraits encapsulates the differences between their
musical styles. Thalberg, Schumann writes, resembles a beautiful countess with a mans
nose, whereas Liszt could sit for every painter as a Grecian god. 29 Schumanns review
had earlier compared Liszt to Jupiter, the Olympian most associated with sublimity and
hyper-masculinity. Schumann thus invoked and opposed two stereotypes regarding the
gendering of postclassical salon music and the sublime. His comparison positions the
sublime as the masculinizing, serious antidote to the light postclassical style: if the latter
prized clarity, ease, and elegance for the sake of accessibility and broad appeal, the
former idealized difficulty and struggle for the sake of edification and transcendence. The
sublime, Schumann suggests, rendered virtuosity heroic and transcendental and thereby
rescued it from the postclassical orientation toward recreation and the stigma of
feminization and aristocratic-ness.
These rhetorical strategies reveal the complexity of Schumannsand, by
extension, other criticsappeals to sublimity. Schumanns descriptions of the
overwhelming style and difficulty of Liszts works recognize concrete ways in which
Liszts music differed from contemporary virtuosic showpieces and that scholars
continue to acknowledge. However, Schumanns opposition between the aristocratic
Thalberg and the Olympian Liszt seems more constructed. Not least, it disregards Liszts
well-known aristocratic connections. In fact, Gooley has shown that Liszts aristocratic
aura, practice of charging exorbitant ticket prices, and penchant for associating with the
29
Ich erinnere mich des Ausspruchs eines bekannten Wiener Zeichners, der den Kopf seines Landsmanns
nicht uneben mit dem einer schnen Comte mit einer Mnner nase verglich, whrend er von Liszts
Kopfe sagte, da er jedem Maler zu einem griechischen Gott sitzen knne. GS 1:481.
Chapter Three 158

social elite initially hindered his reception in Germany and even created personal tension
between him and Schumann. 30 (In one anecdote, Liszt complained of the dearth of local
aristocracy in Leipzig, and Schumann retorted that Leipzig did have an aristocracy,
namely its local newspapers and booksellers.) Schumanns invocation of the sublime,
with all its associated symbols, stereotypes, and ideals, represented not only a response to
Liszts radical style of virtuosity but also an effort to recuperate the star as a serious artist
and, perhaps, to harness Schumanns own critical project to Liszts popular success. It
mixed perceptive commentary on the music with subjective response and strategic image
construction. Schumanns reviews thus reveal both the potential of extraordinary musical
styles to invite description as sublime and the ideological issues sublimity raised for
nineteenth-century readers.
Schumanns criticism recognized other virtuosi besides Liszt as creators of
dynamically sublime works. His review of Chopins Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 35, when it
comes to the presto finale, evokes the threatening, unmusical noise and aesthetic
discomfort that Jean Paul described as auditory signs of sublimity:
From this joyless, unmelodious movement an original and terrifying spirit
breathes on us, which holds down with its overbearing fist everything that
seems to resist, so that we listen all the way to the end spellbound and
without murmuringthough not to praise, for this is not music.31
Whereas Schumanns description of the sublime Liszt amounts to unequivocal praise, his
review of Chopins sonata mixes fascination with revulsion. The Chopin review also
30
Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 161.

Und doch gestehe man es sich, auch aus diesem melodie- und freudlosen Satze weht uns ein eigener
grausiger Geist an, der, was sich gegen ihn auflehnen mchte, mit berlegener Faust niederhlt, da wir
wie gebannt und ohne zu murren bis zum Schlusse zuhorchenaber auch ohne zu loben: denn Musik ist
das nicht. GS 2:14-15. Translation adapted from Robert Schumann, On Music and Musicians, ed. Konrad
Wolff, trans. Paul Rosenfeld (New York: Norton, 1946), 142. Taruskin has cited this review and noted its
evocation of the sublime. Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, Music in the Nineteenth Century,
366-67.
31
Chapter Three 159

implies that Chopins sublimity resides in different musical characteristics than does
Liszts. Chopins presto presents no accumulating layers of sonority and no climactic,
breakthrough moments. (Example 3.2) Prior to the abrupt, fortissimo ending, the piece
remains sotto voce and simmers more than it roars. Schumann refers to the finales
undifferentiated, turbulent expanse of labyrinthine figuration, which outlines tonally
ambiguous harmonic progressions. As he suggests, Chopins perpetual motion is
unrelieved by elements that, in more conventional fast finales, would mitigate the frantic
affect; specifically, he notes the absence of a lyrical melody to subsume the virtuosic
triplets. One might add the finales unstable harmony and spare octaves. In a way that
echoes Michaeliss recipe for musical sublimity, Chopins movement resists falling into
clearly demarcated phrases and foments metric ambiguity by placing melodic peaks on
the second and fourth beats.
Not all poetic virtuosi, according to Schumann, could capture (or indeed
attempted to capture) the sublime. His writings leave room for poetic but not sublime
virtuosi whom Schumann did not devalue for their emphasis on inwardness and delicacy
instead of musically enacted heroism or excess. Schumanns 1837 essay on William
Sterndale Bennett, for example, specifically denies that the English pianist and his music
possessed sublime characteristics. Bennetts compositional voice is not [one like]
Beethoven, drawing years of struggle after it, nor [one like] Berlioz, preaching revolution
with a heroic voice and spreading around itself destruction and terror. 32 Yet, Schumann
maintains, Bennett reaches the synesthetic realm of the poetic in his own, more reserved
way. Comparing Bennett to his mentor Mendelssohn, Schumann writes, Whereas
32
Es ist dies keine Beethoven, die jahrelangen Kampf nach such zge, kein Berlioz, der Aufstand predigt
mit Heldenstimme und Schrecken und Vernichtung um sich verbreitet. GS 1:245.
Chapter Three 160

[Mendelssohn], in one of his own overtures [presumably Calm Sea and Prosperous
Voyage or the Hebrides] spreads the great, deeply slumbering surface of the sea before
us, [Bennett, presumably in the character piece The Lake that Schumann discusses in
the review at hand] lingers over a quietly breathing lake on which the beams of the moon
tremble.33 Schumann mentions Bennetts larger works, including three piano concertos
and several overtures, but singles out for particular praise three short character pieces,
The Lake, The Mill-Stream, and The Fountain. Schumann, then, did not scorn the
beautiful in favor of the sublime (a viewpoint that, Taruskin generalizes, informed the
broadest pattern in nineteenth-century musical thought) but rather saw both categories as
potential routes to transcendental experience. 34
Schumanns writings on Beethovens symphonic works additionally reveal his
involvement with the nineteenth-century discourse on musical sublimity and its full range
of musical and extramusical components. One early essaypresented as a speech by the
Davidsbndler Florestanprovides running commentary to Beethovens Ninth
Symphony. During the Adagio, Florestan whispers to his neighborapparently an oldfashioned church musiciana metaphor that sets sublime and aristocratic imagery
against one another and perhaps warns of the Schreckensfanfare that begins the finale:
Cantor, beware the thunderbolt! The lightning sends no liveried servants before it
strikes, at most a storm and then the thunderclap. 35 Of the Fifth Symphony, Schumann
later wrote: This symphony wields its power unchanged over every age, just like many
33
[W]enn jener in einer seiner Ouvertren eine groe tiefschlummernde Meersflche ausbreitet, so weilt
der andere am leisathmenden See mit dem zitternden Monde darin. GS 1:246.
34
See Taruskin, Oxford History, 3:440.
35
Cantor, nehmen Sie such vor den Gewittern in Acht! Der Blitz schickt keinen Livreebedienten, eh er
einschlgt hchstens einen Sturm vorher und drauf einen Donnerkeil. Fastnachtsrede von Florestan, GS
1:40.
Chapter Three 161

great phenomena of nature that, no matter how often they recur, fill us with fear and
admiration.36
Schumann and his alter egos also connect Beethoven to the sublime in less
specifically musical terms. In an essay on a proposed monument in Bonn for Beethoven,
Florestan describes the breakthrough finale of the Fifth Symphony as a sublime
experience.37 But he also paints Beethoven himself as a sublimely isolated yet striving
hero. Employing a stock sublime image, Florestan, in an imaginary encounter with
Beethoven, compares him to a crowned lion, yet with a splinter in his paw. He speaks
from his pain.38 Eusebius imagines other ways to symbolize Beethovens sublimity. At
the end of the aforementioned performance of the Ninth, he suggests that the very sound
of Beethovens name resounds as if in eternity. 39 In the essay on the proposed
monument, he speculates that one needs a colossal edifice to commemorate Beethoven
properly, such as a massive statue of Beethoven positioned to gaze upon mountains. In
Eusebiuss vision, a monument of human manufacture depicting a Great Man in heroic
36
Schweigen wir darber! So oft gehrt im ffentlichen Saal wie im Inneren, bt sie unverndert ihre
Macht auf alle Lebensalter aus, gleich wie manche groe Erscheinungen in der Natur, die so oft sie auch
wiederkehren, uns mit Fucht und Bewunderung erfllen. Schumanns words come from a January, 1841
review of the Leipzig Gewandhaus subscription concerts. GS 2:49-50.
37
At this moment, the basses rest on that deepest tone in the scherzo of the symphony; not a breath; a
thousand hearts hang by a thread over a fathomless deep; but now it snaps, and the glory of the highest
things builds rainbow upon rainbow. In diesem Moment ruhen die Bsse auf jenem tiefsten Ton im
Scherzo der Symphonie: kein Atemzug: an einem Haarseil ber einer unergrndlichen Tiefe hngen die
tausen Herzen und nun reit es, und die Herrlichkeit der hchsten Dinge baut sich Regenbogen ber
Regenbogen aneinander auf. GS 1:132.
38
Florestan invokes the fable of Androcles and the lionperhaps positioning himself as one who must
rescue and safeguard the wounded creature and eventually be redeemed for his deed. Ich trete in sein
Zimmer: er richtet sich auf, ein Lwe, die Krone auf dem Haupt, einen Splinter in der Tatze. Er spricht von
seinem Leiden. GS 1:131.
39
Beethovenwas liegt in diesem Wort! Schon der tiefe Klang der Sylben wie in eine Ewigkeit
hineintnend. GS 1:41.
Chapter Three 162

style communes with natural objects that Kant and his successors regarded as gateways to
the sublime. 40
Although the dominant trend in the nineteenth-century critique of virtuosity saw
the symphonic canon (with Beethoven as its centerpiece) and crowd-pleasing virtuosity
as antitheses, Schumanns writings imply that certain works by Beethoven and certain
virtuosic showpieces shared a destination in the elevated sphere of the sublime. In his
own 1830s showpieces, Schumann often attempted to combine these two tropes and
preoccupationsthe sublimity to which virtuosic music could aspire and the heroic,
Beethovenian sublime.
Poeticizing and Appropriating Paganini: The Roots of Schumanns Sublime

Virtuosity
Schumanns own sublime showpieces employ compositional strategies and a style of
virtuosic writing that the composer first developed in his piano transcriptions of Paganini
caprices. These appeared in two sets. Schumann composed and published the first, Opus
3, in 1832, two years after hearing Paganini in Frankfurt. Designed as a pedagogical work
for advanced piano students, the work includes a foreword with remarks on piano
technique and preparatory exercises. Schumann composed the second, Opus 10, between
April and July of 1833 and published it the following year. In a review of the set (the
only substantial essay Schumann ever published about one of his own works), he
described Opus 10 as intended for the concert stage rather than the practice room. 41
Certain etudes from both sets of transcriptions incorporate aspects of Paganinis radical
40
41
See GS 1:134-35.
NZfM 4, no. 32 (April 19, 1836): 134. GS 1:212-14.
Chapter Three 163

style of virtuosity but also exaggerate many of its characteristics and add new ones barely
hinted at in the original caprices. They use the star violinist as part of an image of
idealized, dynamically sublime virtuosity that stemmed from Schumanns imagination as
much as it does from Paganinis own style.
Schumanns Paganini transcriptions fall into the space that Allanbrook describes
as problematic for studies of the musical sublime. Like movements of Kreisleriana that
have attracted such descriptors as violent and fearsome, Schumanns Paganini
studies use a harmonically and metrically edgy style to create virtuosic ferocity and
excess. Despite this, nineteenth-century reviews of the Paganini etudes, while almost
unanimously positive, neither mention the sublime nor use stock sublime imagery. More
often, they praise the set for its novelty and pedagogical utility. 42 Schumanns own
review of the Opus 10, while abundant in poetic rhetoric, does not invoke the sublime.
To an extent, though, Paganini himself connoted sublimity for some nineteenthcentury writers. Sublime imagery did not saturate Paganinis reception as it did Liszts,
and most clichs surrounding the violinist sensationalized him as a demonic, morbid
figure rather than a source of overwhelming force or uplift. Schumanns most vivid
description of Paganinithe reminiscence of the Frankfurt concert quoted in the
Introductionhints at the violinists ability to astound his listeners and bend them to his
will. Although the passage foreshadows Schumanns later description of Liszt
overpowering his audiences, Schumanns Paganini accomplishes his feats more by
hypnotic, intricate musical configurations than by sheer force. One strand in the Paganini
42
Three journals reviewed Schumanns Opus 3 set and praise these aspects of the set. Etuden fr das Pfte.,
nach den Capricen von Nicolo Paganini, von R. Schumann, Iris im Gebiete der Tonkunst 4, no. 1 (January
4, 1833): 3-4; Etudes pour le Pianoforte, daprs Caprices de Paganini, par R. Schumann, Allgemeiner
musikalischer Anzeiger Wien 15, no. 10 (March 7, 1833): 37-38; Recensionen, AmZ 37 (September 11,
1833): 613-15.
Chapter Three 164

reception, though, does liken the violinists extraordinary feats of virtuosity to
characteristics typical of Kants dynamic sublime. Hector Berliozs 1840 obituary for
Paganini compared him as a comet, for never did a flaming bodyexcite in the
course of his long orbit greater amazement mixed with a sort of terror. Berlioz claimed
that Rossini felt for the violinist a sort of devotion mingled with fear. Invoking the
sublime image of the striving hero who struggles with hazardous, larger-than-life forces,
Berlioz described Paganini daring and accomplishing the impossible with his violin. He
even lent Paganini an air of Beethovenian greatness by comparing the mute Paganini
(while he was suffering from laryngeal tuberculosis) to the deaf Beethoven. 43 For
Berlioz, the imagery of apprehension, shock, and ecstasy that permeates Paganini
reception following his tours north of Italy hinted at not only the demonic but the
dynamic sublime.
Schumanns Paganini etudes often reinterpret the original caprices to capture this
poeticized vision of the virtuoso. His Opus 3, no. 6, etude, shown in Example 3.3,
embeds Paganinis writing in a dense contrapuntal texture, creating a more tightly knit
version of the layered detail that characterizes Liszts virtuosic works. The violin
figuration becomes a churning bass on which Schumann heaps arching melodies and
complex inner voices. More striking is Schumanns manipulation of the rhythmic style of
Paganinis caprice, a feature of Opus 3, no. 6, that John Daverio has noted.44 Paganinis
Caprice No. 16 makes its effect not only with perpetual-motion writing and daring leaps,
but also with what Harald Krebs has described as metric dissonance. In most cases,
43
Hector Berlioz, Evenings with the Orchestra, trans. Jacques Barzun (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956),
194-6.
44
John Daverio, Il circolo magico: Schumann e la musica di Paganini, in Schumann, Brahms e lItalia
(Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2001), 41-58. I would like to thank Claudia Macdonald for
providing me with Daverios unpublished English version of this paper.
Chapter Three 165

Paganini places accents on unexpected parts of the measure (creating what Krebs calls
displacement dissonances) to create syncopated patterns that are often maintained for
several measures. 45 Daverio speculates that it was the rhythmic aspect of the caprices, a
hypnotic atmosphere charged with electrical impulses, that attracted Schumann. 46
Although Krebs cites several influences on Schumanns treatment of metric dissonance
including Beethovenhe argues that Paganini played an important role because of the
frequency with which metric dissonance appears in his caprices in comparison to other
contemporary virtuosic music. 47
Schumann intensifies Paganinis metric dissonances and adds several of his own.
The atmosphere becomes more turbulent than hypnotic, and impulses become jolts. This
is particularly true of the coda, shown in Example 3.4. As Daverio has noted, Schumann
underlines the displacement dissonances already present in Paganinis caprice, using
triads to turn surprising inflections of the scalar line into percussive hits. 48 I would add
that Schumann appends an extra measure in which the bass wobbles between the flatsixth degree and the dominant while the right hand hammers at a metrically displaced
minor-ninth chord. In the final measures, two displacement dissonances collide.
Paganinis violin figuration stresses the second half of every beat, and Schumanns
additions stress the second sixteenth-note. Charles Rosens remark on metric dissonance
in Schumanns Toccata, Op. 7, aptly describes the etude: such passages create shock
45
Harald Krebs, Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 31-39.
46
As evidence to support his suggestion, Daverio cites the Paganini movement from Schumanns
Carnaval, Op. 9, which displaces right-hand and left-hand accents by one sixteenth-note. Il circolo
magico, 53.
47
Krebs, Fantasy Pieces, 69-70. Despite this important observation, Krebs limits his discussion of
Schumanns Paganini etudes to two works, Opus 3, no. 4 and the texturally complex lyrical piece Opus 10,
no. 2.
48
Daverio, Il circolo magico, 50-53.
Chapter Three 166

value, as if a competing system of rhythm had suddenly invalidated one already
established in the piece, but without being able to replace it completely. 49
Even if Schumann did not generally join in propagating the myth of Paganini the
diabolical virtuoso, he fictionalized Paganinis music in other ways. Schumanns
metrically dissonant, harmonically adventurous settings of the caprices represent a
selectiveand, in its own way, sensationalizedview of Paganini that seizes upon and
exaggerates only one aspect of his work, arguably not the one the violinist cultivated the
most extensively. There is in fact little evidence that Paganini performed the caprices at
his public concerts. Instead, he programmed compositions more familiar to audiences
accustomed to postclassical showpieces, notably his variation sets on familiar themes and
his concertos.50 The variation sets present brilliant, innovative violin writing but, more
than the caprices, wear their transcendental technique lightly. 51 Paganini often uses
such techniques as playing on one string, harmonics, dizzying leaps, or extreme velocity
not only to astound his listeners but also for comic purposes. Gooley argues that
Paganinis practice of rapidly alternating between different affects and timbres within a
single variation creates miniature comic dialogues and that, elsewhere, Paganinis rapid
passagework imitates Rossinian patter. 52 These simultaneously innovative and diverting
features coexist with more conventionally appealing characteristics, including borrowed
49
Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 655.
Paganinis repertoire at the time of his Frankfurt concerts included his Concerto No. 1, the La
Campanella rondo from his Concerto No. 2, and his variations on Il carnevale di Venezia and the
preghiera from Rossinis Mos in Egitto. Daverio, Il circolo magico, 42.
51
Dana Gooley, La Commedia del Violino: Paganinis Comic Strains,Musical Quarterly 88, no. 3
(2005): 370-427.
52
Ibid., 382-401
50
Chapter Three 167

popular themes and catchy quasi-operatic melodies. 53 It may have been these
conventional and farcical aspects that led Schumann, in his diary entry on the 1830
concert, to register some initial reservations about Paganinis artistic integrity. 54 At the
same time, his later Vieuxtemps review suggests, their intricate figuration, seemingly
impossible challenges, and ability to whip audiences into states of ecstasy resonated with
his transcendence-seeking aesthetic.
It was, furthermore, these more conventional, opera-oriented features of
Paganinis work that the earliest piano transcriptions of his music stressed. Moscheles
and Hummel both composed potpourri fantasies on Paganini themes in 1831: Moscheles
three potpourris collectively titled Gems la Paganini and Hummel one fantasy,
Recollections of Paganini. Both showcase Paganinis more singable melodies, including
themes from the rondo-finales of his concertos, variation sets, and quartets. 55 Both
composers use minimal textural complexity and metric dissonance and offer little hint of
the seemingly impossible feats Paganini wrote into his caprices and variation sets. These
features attest not only to the transcribers postclassical stylistic orientations but also to
the pieces apparent destination for amateur pianists. Schumanns etudes, in contrast with
other contemporary piano virtuosi and with Paganinis own practices, distill and
exaggerate the radical effects Paganini used occasionally in his variation sets and more
consistently in some of his caprices. Etudes such as Opus 3, no. 6, present an image of a
53
In fact, Rossini remarked that, if Paganini had become an opera composer, he would have been a serious
rival. Edward Neill, "Paganini, Nicol," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second
edition, edited by Stanly Sadie (London: Macmillan and New York: Grove, 2001) 18:888.
54
Doubts about his artistic ideals and his lack of the great, noble, priestly tranquility of art. Zweifel am
Ideal der Kunst u. s[ein] Mangel an der grossen edeln priesterischen Kunstruhe. Tagebcher 1:282-83.
55
Hummels Recollections incorporates material from two of the simpler, more melodic caprices (Nos. 9
and 11).
Chapter Three 168

fearsome virtuoso with scarcely a hint of the comedic, an image that represents only part
of the persona Paganini cultivated.
Schumann continued to develop this metrically dissonant style of virtuosity in
other Paganini studies, particularly those of his Opus 10 set. Despite its roiling closing
number, Opus 3 at times shares Hummels and Moscheless postclassical interpretation of
Paganini. Perhaps because of its pedagogical orientation, many of the Opus 3 etude fit
unobtrusive, rhythmically square accompaniments to Paganinis violin writing. Opus 10,
by contrast, aimed for presentation on a concert stage, and Schumanns sensationalized
Paganinian style became part of the etudes challenge to performers and a means of
generating virtuosic excess.
Etudes Opus 10, nos. 1 and 3, illustrate the variety of effects Schumann
developed. The first, unlike Opus 3, no. 6, projects a largely sunny affect with its A-flatmajor tonality and smooth melodic lines. (Example 3.5) Whereas Paganinis original
caprice featured little metric tension, the etude opens with a pervasive displacement
dissonance that accents the second half of each beat. New dissonant patterns emerge
throughout the etude. In a later developmental passage beginning at m. 31, contrapuntal
lines dovetail on weak beats of the measure. At m. 34, two syncopated accents grate
against one another, a process intensified through motivic foreshortening in m. 37. Opus
10, no. 3, shown in Example 3.6, features more of the minor-key fury that characterizes
Opus 3, no. 6. Paganinis staccato dialogue between different registers of the violin
becomes an exchange between percussive octaves in the right hand and a churning bass
in the left. As Paganinis fast figuration careens through the low register of the piano,
Schumann overlays a twisting melody that unexpectedly breaks into a displacement
Chapter Three 169

dissonance in mm. 6-7. The coda, like that of Opus 3, no. 6, introduces more intense
rhythmic disturbances. Measures 66-68 accent the second eighth note of every dotted
quarter with dense, dissonant chords before arriving suddenly on a Neapolitan chord. One
could argue that both etudes retain something of their original composers comic style,
No. 1 in its wobbling broken octaves, No. 3 in the scherzo-like effects. Even so,
Schumann gives any traces of wit or humor an increased fore and abrasiveness with new
metric dissonance, contrapuntal complexity, and textural overload.
Schumann also infused Paganinis radical virtuosity with overtones of sublimity
through a different strategy that, like pervasive metric dissonance, echoes in his later,
original showpieces. His etude Opus 10, no. 4, carved an allusion to Beethovens
symphonic music into Paganinis original. Schumann wrote in his NZfM review, While I
was working out No. 4, I had in mind the funeral march from Beethovens Eroica
Symphony. People may well find this own their own.56 Perhaps appropriately for a critic
who went on to write of both Beethoven and virtuosity as potential purveyors of
sublimity, Schumann blended the work of a virtuoso widely regarded as superhuman with
an allusion to a Beethoven movement that evoked the lofty, soldierly variety of sublimity
through the struggles of the symphonys fictional hero.
Making this Beethovenian allusion apparent in Paganinis Caprice No. 4, shown
in Example 3.7, required considerable reinterpretation and reworking. Only the C-minor
tonality and general contour of Paganinis opening phrase hint at Beethovens funeral
march, a resemblance easily overlooked as coincidental. The rest of Paganinis caprice
incorporates sharply contrasting, mostly non-funereal affects into its sonata form, all of
56
Bei der Ausfhrung von Nro. 4 schwebte mir den Todtenmarsch aus der heroischen Symphonie von
Beethoven vor. Man wrde es vielleicht selbst finden. GS 1:213.
Chapter Three 170

which display various configurations of multiple stops. The opening theme grows from a
single strand of melody that gains intensity as it adds triple stops. Transitional material
introduces a series of bravura scales in thirds and tenths. The second theme group dispels
the firsts melancholy and bravado by breaking into chirping runs in the upper register.
Schumann reinterpreted Paganinis textures to create an air of funereal gravity
and monumentality that strengthen his proposed Eroica allusion. (Example 3.8) At the
outset, open fifths in the bass give the theme added lugubriousness and might suggest
muffled drums. When the lyrical theme returns at the close of the exposition, a deep
tremolo and rolled chords further suggest drums and celestial harps. Paganinis
transitional bravura scales become an explosion of sound commensurate with the largerthan-life dimensions of the Eroica. Schumann fills them out with massive chords that
force their way through bracing harmonic gestures. His reworking departs further from
Paganinis original concept in the second theme group. Here, Paganinis glittering
passagework moves to the middle register and becomes a trembling accompaniment over
which Schumann lays a lyrical melody in E-flat major. The alteration eliminates the lightfingered bravura that breaks the solemn mood of the first theme group in Paganinis
caprice and instead relieves the gloom with a melody that, in this context, begs to be
heard as consolatory or elegiac. Beethovens own Eroica march includes, after its
somber opening, a Maggiore section with rippling accompaniment and lyrical
woodwind melodies. 57
Just as Moscheles and Hummel packaged Paganinis melodies for amateurs
oriented toward postclassical fantasies and potpourris, Schumanns Paganini etudes put
57
Several other famous, later funeral marches similarly follow a lugubrious opening with elegiac lyricism,
including the funeral march from Chopins Sonata No. 2, Op. 35 and the second movement of Schumanns
Piano Quintet, Op. 44.
Chapter Three 171

forth an idealized vision of virtuosity. They combined an association with a virtuoso
widely received as superhuman (and in some corners as dynamically sublime) with
extremes of textural and rhythmic complexity and allusions to the music of Beethoven,
both of which came as much from Schumanns own ideology and aspirations as form
Paganinis own persona and style. In subsequent works, this style of virtuosity became
not a portrait of Paganini but an approach to bravura compositions destined for
professional soloists in the public arena. Although Schumanns critics remained
frustratingly silent on the musical style of the etudes, they did not hesitate to describe
these later compositions in terms that evoke the sublime in all its flexibility.
A Concerto with an Ocean for a Finale

In 1836, Schumann employed this driving, metrically dissonant style of virtuosic writing
in a more expansive, wholly original work for solo piano, the somewhat paradoxically
titled Concert sans orchestre, Op. 14. Unlike reviewers of the Paganini etudes, several
nineteenth-century writers explicitly employed the rhetoric of the sublime when
describing the musical features of Schumanns Concert, particularly its pyrotechnical
finale. Studies of the works genesis often trace its fluctuating generic status, though
generally without exploring the significance of the titles Schumann considered.
Schumann originally designed the work as a five-movement sonata but, during his
exchanges with Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger, dropped the two scherzo
movements and changed the title from sonata to concerto. Despite this designation, the
published version leaves the sonata form of the first movement untouched and uses no
concerto-like formal structures. In 1853, Schumann reinstated one scherzo, slightly
Chapter Three 172

revised some passages, and changed the works title to Sonata No. 3 in F minor,
ostensibly as part of his late efforts to place his earlier piano works in widely recognized
generic categories and appeal to classical values of balance and order.58 Turning our
attention to two neglected aspects of the workits early reception and the musical details
that prompted itreveals the Concert sans orchestre as a showpiece that, according to
some writers, confronted listeners with a dynamically sublime style of piano virtuosity.
Ultimately, these features of Schumanns Concert shed new light on the titles seemingly
anomalous reference to a genre it little resembles.
Nineteenth-century writers on the Concert pointed to the prestissimo possibile
finale as a source of dynamically sublime unease and overload. Their reviews read like
catalogues of conventional sublime imagery (of the watery kind rather than the
mountainous or heroic), attribute irresistible force and power to the piece, and describe
the effect as overwhelming and almost unpleasant for the listener. Ignaz Castellis
Allgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger in Vienna printed such a review in 1837. When
discussing the first movement, the author (who signs himself only as 76) adopts an
analytical tone and describes its unconventionally wide-ranging tonal structure. At the
finale, though, he takes a turn for the poetic and launches into a torrent of imagery:
The prestissimo possibile finale, at lastis like a violent, booming
cataract whose flood of waves does not stop, that storms forth raging over
rocks and crags, and, in wild swoops, pulls everything with it that dares to
restrain its clangorous course. It is a single phrase that gives the
impression of a powerful breaking wave. Although it appears in shaded
colors, it never stops and only in the last periodalbeit barely half quieted
58
For a summary of the Concerts genesis up to 1836, see Linda Correll Roesner, The Autograph of
Schumanns Piano Sonata in F Minor, Opus 14, The Musical Quartery 61, no. 1 (1975): 101-104, 128-29.
Anthony Newcomb has countered that Schumann never intended for both scherzi to be included in the
initially proposed sonata: he notes that one of the scherzos, which was only published posthumously,
features no motivic links to the other movements, as one added in 1853 does. Schumann and the
Marketplace, in Nineteenth-Century Piano Music, ed. R. Larry Todd, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge,
2004), 283-84.
Chapter Three 173

and almost like a meteoric appearancelets the harsh key sound with a
reconciling major third. 59
Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski offered a similar description of the finale in his 1858
Robert Schumann: Eine Biographie and hints more directly at the musical features that
gave it a quality of incessancy and fury:
[T]he finale, Prestissimo possible takes up again and pursues the
heaven-storming, completely unsettled character of the first movement,
with the only difference that a second, calming subject scarcely becomes
noticeable. Rather, everything drives to the close in an incessant storm, as
if in desperation. In such form, it offers no resting point. The enjoyer,
without being able to come to his senses, is torn away; in the end, the
sensation is thrust on him of being thrown into a sea of tones whose waves
break incessantly over his head. 60
Both writers stress that the momentum of the virtuosic juggernaut overwhelms any
attempt at resistance, a necessary condition for the dynamic sublime.
The refrain of Schumanns finale announces and encapsulates the relentless,
violent affect that struck Wasielewski and the Anzeiger reviewer. (Example 3.9) Even as
it offers tonal clarity, formal closure, and phraseological balance, the theme is fraught
with metric dissonance. Measures 1-3 displace the accent one sixteenth-note into the
measure, and the fourth measure, instead of resolving the dissonance, displaces the stress
59
Das finale endlich, gleiche Tonart, im ungewhnlichen 6/16 Rhythmus, (simplisicirt; 3/8 meter)
prestissimo possibile, gleich einem ungestm brausenden Katarakt, dessen Wogenstrom nichts aufhlt, der
ber Felsen und Klippen tosend fortstrmt, und im wilden Sturzfluge alles mit sich reit, was seinen
drhnenden Lauf zu hemmen wagt. Es ist eine einzige, das Phnomen dieser gewaltigen Brandung
characterisirende Phrase, die, obschon in schattirten Abstufungen, dennoch nie aufhrt, und erst in der
letzten Schluperiode, doch kaum halb nur beruhigend, und fast blo als meteorische Erscheinung, die
harte Tonleiter mit der vershnenden groen Terz erklingen lt. Allgemeiner Musikalischer Anzeiger 19,
no. 26 (July 29, 1837): 102.
60
[D]as Finale, Prestissimo possible, wieder ganz und gar den, von Grund aus bewegten,
himmelstrmenden Charakter, welchen der erste Satz ausdrckt, aufnimmt und verfolgt, nur mit dem
Unterscheide, das kaum ein zweites, beruhigenderes Element bemerkbar wird, sondern Alles in
[un]aufhaltsamen Sturme, wie verzweiflungsvoll, dem Schlusse entgegen drngt. Solchergestalt bietet es
keinen Ruhepunkt; der Genieende wird, ohne zur Besinnung kommen zu knnen, fortgerissen, und zuletzt
drngt sich unwillkrlich die Empfindung auf, in einem Tonmeere, dessen Wellen ber dem Haupt
unaufhrlich zusammenschlagen, umhergeworfen zu werden. Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski, Robert
Schumann: Eine Biographie (Dresden: Rudolph Kunze, 1858), 154.
Chapter Three 174

one sixteenth-note further. The second phrase repeats this process and exacerbates it in
m. 12 with a fermata and a surprise diminished-seventh chord. After finally stressing the
downbeat in m. 16, Schumann turns to transitional passagework that again shifts metric
stress one sixteenth-note into the measure. As the transitional passagework repeats and
the displacement loses its edge, Schuman overlays metrically dissonant counterpoint,
including a countermelody in mm. 24-28 that opens with displacement dissonances and
moves to a grouping dissonance that pits four against six.
As both reviewers suggest, the idiosyncratic formal structure of the finale
charted in Figure 3.1also prompted the descriptions of storms, cataracts, and drowning
seas. Linda Correll Roesner has classified the last movement of Opus 14 as an instance of
what she has termed Schumanns parallel form. Such forms, in her analysis, consist of
two halves that move through the same procession of thematic material and may
incorporate some defining gestures of sonata form; the second wing of the structure
transposes the first down a fifth to create what amounts to a large sequential repetition. 61
Roesner accurately describes the overall layout of keys and themes in the Concert finale.
However, she does not take into account the details of Schumanns movement, the
question of what formal functions these components serve, and how they engage with
more traditional structural paradigms. In fact, the final movement of the Concert does not
establish a distinctly Schumannian formal logic so much as it rejects and stages the
breakdown of formal discourse conducted according to classical norms.
Throughout the finales 714 measures, Schumann repeatedly initiates passages
that promise relief from the driving refrain by absorbing the perpetual-motion
61
Linda Correll Roesner, Schumanns Parallel Forms, 19th-Century Music 14, no. 3 (1991): 268-73.
Chapter Three 175

accompaniment into metrically stable, lyrical melodies in keys distant from F minor. At
every turn, though, metrically dissonant virtuosic material disrupts these gestures and
leaves them incomplete. Wasielewski and 76 both nod to this strategy, the former by
noting that a calming second theme never fully materializes and the latter by describing
the movement (with some exaggeration) as a single, continuous phrase. By employing
these strategies of disruption, Schumanns finale subverts and rejects traditional formal
schemes applicable to the final movement of a sonata. Nineteenth-century sonatas (such
as those of Weber and Hummel) frequently conclude with rondos. If, like Roesner, one
interprets the Concert finale as approaching sonata-rondo form, it is a rondo in which the
refrain only recurs two times in a tonally stable form and in which episodes do not find
tonal or formal closure. The finale equally rejects the norms of sonata form: it never
settles on a second theme in a normative key and, in any case, avoids firmly establishing
every secondary key it does suggest.
Schumann first promises a lyrical episode or second subject with a theme in the
Neapolitan (hardly a viable key for a second theme), shown in Example 3.10. It opens
with several evenly-proportioned phrases but, by m. 64, the oasis begins to dissipate
when the left hands phrase ends inconclusively on a C. The right-hand answer only
progresses four measures before an inner voice accompanied by the transitional
figuration cuts it short and reasserts F minor. Transitional figuration takes over entirely,
and modulation continues. Schumann similarly destabilizes the lyrical subjects marked C
in Figure 3.1. Both are slowly unfolding sequences rather than closed themes, and both
wander from their opening keys without establishing them. Example 3.11 shows the
swerve away from the B-flat version of theme C. At m. 194, the sequence, instead of
Chapter Three 176

gently descending, repeatedly arrives on D. By m. 202, Schumann abandons the sequence
and launches into a variant of the refrain in which each upward rush of figuration collides
with a diminished seventh chord.
The two most extended lyrical zones of the finale precede the most spectacular
intrusions of metrically dissonant virtuosity. Both mark the hinges of Roesners parallel
form: before the return of the first subject/refrain and before the coda. (Example 3.12)
Schumann reintroduces the Neapolitan theme (transposed to D-flat in the second half).
This time, he disrupts it with a variant of the refrain whose second half segues into a
falling-fifth sequence. Having gone through several hundred measures of dissonant
harmonic gestures and thwarted themes, the finale seems finally to burst through confines
and hurtle toward a harmonic goal. A dominant pedal in m. 312 gestures toward an
impending recapitulation. At this moment, though, Schumann deploys the most radical
metric dissonance in the Concert when the meter suddenly changes from 6/16 to 5/16.
With the original meter still in the listeners ear, the change compresses the measure into
a shorter, asymmetrical shape and creates a string of displacement dissonances that, with
each 5/16 measure, seem to arrive one beat earlier in the six-beat normative measure. 62
The retransition ends not with further dominant prolongation, but with a seeming
breakdown of the process of harmonic preparation. The cycle of displacement
dissonances begins a second time, now overlaying a premature tonic pedal with a vii07/V.
Tonic arrival and dissonant prolongation of the dominant collide. Only after this
combination repeats five times at decreasing tempo does the refrain return.
62
Schumann encountered a similar a metric effect (albeit used for a briefer span of time and less
disruptively) in Paganinis Caprice No. 13, which he set as his own Opus 3, no. 4. Harald Krebs, Fantasy
Pieces, 52, 69. Somewhat later, Liszt himself also used a six-compressed-into-five passage in Wilde Jagd
from the Transcendental Etudes. (Many thanks to Robert Wells for sharing the latter example with me.)
Chapter Three 177

An even more violent collapse occurs immediately before the coda, after the
second span of the parallel form has reached the falling-fifth sequence and point of
maximal metric dissonance. The overlay of tonic pedal and vii07/V leads to a cadenza,
though one consisting of clangorous, rapid-fire alternation between dissonant harmonies:
initially viio7/V and open fifths on F, and then viio7/V and two neighboring pitches. A
retransitional passage whose function conventionally relies upon dominant preparation
ends in arrhythmic noisemaking. The effect of both metrically dissonant junctures is not
of a hinge that prepares for the resolution of structural dissonance but of breaking down
and starting anewin the case of the first breakdown, to cycle through the same material
transposed, and, in the second, hurtling into a coda and last-minute assertion of the major
mode. Moreover, both breakdowns conclude processes that run through a series of
thematic ideas and key areas without forming coherent sonata forms or delivering the
periodic, tonally anchored thematic return typical of rondo finales. The coda thus caps an
idiosyncratic movement that has unfolded as a series of thwarted gestures toward formal
logic and closure, one that, as Wasielewski and 76 might have said, overwhelms and
sweeps them away in its virtuosic torrent.
The finale of Schumanns Concert sans orchestre, then, uses a style of virtuosity
that promises not a light, alternately sparkling and tuneful conclusion but a level of
dissonance and sheer violence that contemporary critics described in terms that evoked
the dynamic sublime. Seen in this light, Schumanns decision to publish a large sonata as
a concerto takes on new significance. On one hand, it reflects Schumanns and
Haslingers interest in reaching a broader audience by engaging with the nineteenthcentury rage for virtuosity and the popularity of virtuoso genres. At the same time, it begs
Chapter Three 178

listeners to compare Schumanns Concert with more conventional postclassical
showpieces and understand it as an effort to infuse showiness with seriousness. Reviews
of the Concert by two pianist-composers whom Schumann promoted as serious
virtuosiIgnaz Moscheles and Franz Lisztacknowledge this aspect of the work. 63
The precise origins of Schumanns title remain obscure. Schumanns
correspondence with Haslinger traces the development of the title and certain aspects of
the works sequence of movements but leaves several ambiguities. A letter from
Haslinger to Schumann dated June 13, 1836 does suggest that the exact title was at least
partly Schumanns idea, even if the publisher might have been the first to suggest
appealing to the concerto genre rather than the sonata:
I regard your idea for the Concert very appropriate for the times (with
which one must always move) and I would like to go forward with
publishing itIn my own insignificant opinion as a publisher, it would be
helpful to have a short foreword (of one page), wherein you could indicate
that this Concert has been composed entirely for the piano aloneThe
present is new, should be new, and should break a path forward. 64
As Haslinger suggests, the title was designed partly to give the work a wider
appeal and greater sense of contemporaneity. By 1836, many critics regarded the sonata
as a venerable but old-fashioned form, a risky prospect for a publisher with sales figures
in mind. 65 The Allgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger proposes this very explanation for the
63
Moscheless article appears in Schumanns Gesammelte Schriften 2:224. Liszts appears in Franz Liszt,
Compositions pour piano, de M. Robert Schumann, in Smtliche Schriften, vol. 1, ed. Rainer Kleinertz
(Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 2000), 374-83.
64
Ihr Idee mit dem Concert halte ich fr die Zeit (mit der man doch immer gehen soll) sehr passend, und
es soll lieb seyn, selbes bald zu erhalten Nach meiner unmageblichen verlegerschen Meynung drfte
wohl ein kurzes Vorwort (von einer Seite) zweckmig seyn, worin angedeutet, da dieses Concert blos fr
das Pianof. allein componirt worden sey, wenn sich dieses mit ein Paar Worte nicht auf dem Titel selbst
ausdrk[en] lie. Der Gegenstand ist neu, soll neu seyn, und die Bahn brechen. Tobias Haslinger to Robert
Schumann in Leipzig, June 13, 1836. Transcribed in Schumann Briefedition Series III vol. 8, Briefwechsel
Robert und Clara Schumanns mit Verlagen im Ausland 1832 bis 1853, ed. Michael Heinemann and
Thomas Synofzik (Cologne: Dohr, 2008), 184.
65
William Newman cites numerous nineteenth-century writers who note that the sonata fell out of favor in
comparison with less learned genres (variations, potpourris, etc.). Even if, as John Rink counters,
Chapter Three 179

title of the Concert. The designation was most likely chosen entirely for the reason that
even simpletons can grasp: the sonata today belongs to the category of strongly scorned
items with which even a hungry smuggler barely wants to occupy himself. 66 In a largely
positive 1837 NZfM review of Schumanns earlier Sonata in F-sharp minor, Op. 11, J. F.
C. Sobolewski wrote on the state of the sonata with humor, suggesting that fashionable
postclassical genres have buried the eighteenth-century tradition:
Que me veux tu, Sonata! What is there for you among the
divertissements, Souvenirs, Potpourris, etc., compositions of good form?
Your time is past! Who speaks on a philosophical theme in society
nowadays? Who discusses all of the pros and cons of a subject? One
must lightly touch upon the facts and gambol from one to another, just as
the masters Hnten, Herz, and Czerny do! These people understand how!
They have gone along with the time and are men of the world. Therefore,
the genteel will rightly give them entrance into the salonsDont you
know that the sonata is a dead flower that only grows in those fields in
which the bones of old rubbishcounterpoint, fugues, and canonsare
moldering? O, you have gravely sinned against the Bonton!67
To some extent, Schumanns title does reflect certain aspects of the work, notably
its emphasis on virtuosic display. 68 Schumanns early reviewers, though, were quick to
publishers continued to issue sonatas and arrangements of sonatas and the Beethoven sonatas gained
considerable exposure and prestige, Newmans remarks about the perceived inaccessibility and
unfashionable character of the sonata are well documented. William S. Newman, The Sonata Since
Beethoven, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1972), 37-40, 84-85. John Rink, 19th century, in Sandra
Mangsen, et al. "Sonata," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by
Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan and New York: Grove) 23:683.
66
[] jenes Signalement hchst wahrscheinlich blo aus dem zureichenden Grunde gewhlt wurde, da
schon der einfache Nahme: Sonata, heut zu Tage in die Rubrik der streng verpnten Artikel gehrt, womit
kaum mehr ein hungriger Schmuggler sich besassen will. Allgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger 19, no. 26
(29 June 1837), 102.
67
Que me veux tu, Sonata? Was suchst du unter den Divertissements, Souvenirs, Potpourris, u., diesen
Tonstcken des guten Tons? Deine Zeit ist vorbei! Wer spricht wohl jetzt in einer seinen Gesellschaft ber
ein philosophisches Thema? Leicht berhen mu man die Data, von einem zum andern hpfen, wie es
die Mstri Hnten, Herz, und Czerny machen! Diese Leute verstehen den Comment! Sie sind mit der Zeit
mitgegangen, sind Weltleute! Daher warden sie mit Richt in die Salons der Vornehmen eingelassen.
Wit Ihr nicht, da die Sonate eine Todtenblume ist, die nur auf jenem Acker wchst, wo die Gebeine des
alten Krimskrams, Contrapuncte, Fugen und Canons, modern? O, Ihr habt schwer gesndigt gegen den
Bonton! J. F. C. Sobolewski, Betrachtungen und Trume nach der Fis-Moll-Sonate von Florestan und
Eusebius, NZfM 5, no. 28 (October 4, 1837): 112.
68
Wasielewsk suggested that Schumanns three-movement format was meant to imitate the usual format of
a concerto. Robert Schuman: Eine Biographie, 153. Nevertheless, several of Beethovens middle-period
Chapter Three 180

note the mismatch between the implications of the title and the form of the Concert. In an
1837 issue of the Neue Zeitschrift, Schumann printed some largely positive remarks
Moscheles had sent to him about the showpiece.69 The older pianist-composer noted that
the work had more the characteristic features of a large sonata, such as several we know
by Beethoven or Weber than a concerto.70 Liszts 1837 Gazette musicale review of the
Concert and two other Schumann works similarly pointed out that Opus 14 lacked the
defining formal features of a concerto.
Both pianist-composers, though, went on to note the contrast between the Concert
and more conventional concertos. If their reviews hint that Schumanns work possessed
limited popular appeal, they also credit it with unconventional originality and
seriousness. Their remarks suggest that titling the work Concert was not merely a
misleading generic appellation designed to placate a publisher but an invitation to
compare the Concert both with the venerated sonatas of Beethoven and Weber and with
more current, postclassical bravura works. Moscheles makes such a comparison explicit
at the outset of his comments:
In concertos, one is (unfortunately) used to seeing, apart from unity of
style, consideration taken for glittering bravura and coquettish elegance of
playing, which could find no place in this workThe seriousness and
passion that rule the whole stand very much in opposition to that which a
sonatas, notably the Appassionata, Opus 57, and the Waldstein, Opus 53, have three movements.
Schumanns eventual decision to publish the Concert as a three-movement work did heighten its emphasis
on virtuosic display by omitting the less pyrotechnic scherzo movements.
69
By printing Moscheless comments, Schumann was able to promote his own music in the Zeitschrift
without literally reviewing the work himself. Schumanns introduction to the review humorously distances
himself from Moscheless praise by upbraiding that pair of rogues Florestan and Eusebius for publishing
the Concert under Schumanns name as a prank. Schumann writes that, as punishment, hell say nothing
about their piece but rather let Moscheles have the floor. GS 2:224.
70
Das Werk had weniger die Erfordnisse eines Concertes und mehr die Charakteristischen Eigenheiten
einer groen Sonate, wie wir einige von Beethoven und Weber kennen. Ibid., 2:224. My translations of
Moscheless remarks are adapted from Henry Pleasants, The Musical World of Robert Schumann: A
Selection from his Own Writings (London: V. Gollanz, 1965), 197-98.
Chapter Three 181

concert audience of our time expects. For one thing, [such an audience]
doesnt want to be deeply shaken. 71
Moscheles barely touches upon the last movement and focuses on the harsh dissonances
and complex suspensions of the first movement. However, his description of the work as
capable of leaving audiences deeply shaken hints at the unsettling qualities that 76
and Wasielewski describe and identifies them as part of the Concerts resistance to
convention and tone of seriousness.
Liszt made a similar observation. His review distances the Concert from more
fashionable works by suggesting that it rejects clarity and brilliance (apparently of
the transparent, postclassical type) and aims for a more select, elite group of listeners.
Liszt elevates the work as serious, too, through his descriptions of a rich and powerful
style and by hinting at the shocking harmonic configurations of the finale:
In music as in literature, there have always been two large categories.
There are things written or composed for presentation or performance in
public, that is to say, things with a sense of clarity, a brilliant style, and
broad appeal. And then there are those intimate works of a more solitary
inspiration, where the imagination dominates, which are by nature only
appreciated by small number. The concerto of M. Schumann appears
completely to be in this latter class. It is therefore an error, we think, for
him to give the piece a title that seems to appeal to a number of listeners
and that promises brilliance that one will search for in vain. But our
criticism is limited to this quarrel about nothing, because the piece in
itself, considered as a sonata, is rich and powerfulThe finale especially,
a sort of toccata in 6/16, is an extremely interesting piece through its
harmonic combinations, the strangeness of which could nevertheless
shock the ear a bit, were it not for the extreme rapidity of the tempo.72
71
In Concerten ist man (leider) gewoht, neben der Einheit im Stile Rcksichten auf glnzende Bravour
coquettirende Eleganz des Spieles genommen zu sehen, welche in diesem Werke keinen Platz finden
knnten. Der Ernst und die Leidenschaft, die im Ganzen herrschen, stehen sehr in Gegensatz mit dem,
was ein Concert-Auditorium unserer Zeit erwartet. Es will eines Theils nicht erschttert werden[.] GS
2:224. Pleasants somewhat misleadingly softens the word erschttert by translating it as deeply moved.
72
Mais en musique comme en literature, il y aura toujours deux grande divisions: les choses crites ou
composes pour la reprsentation ou lexcution en public, cest--dire les choses dun sens clair, dune
expression brillante, dune allure large; puis les oeuvres intimes, dune inspiration plus solitaire, o la
fantaisie domine, qui sont de nature ntre apprcies que du petit nombre. Le concerto de M. Schumann
appartient compltement cette dernire classe. Cest donc un tort, suivant nous, de lui donner un titre qui
Chapter Three 182
He goes on to express hope that Schumann will become better known in France and will
serve as a model for young pianist-composers. 73
If Liszt and Moscheles tendered their remarks as qualified praise, it was praise
that Schumann welcomedand, in Moscheless case, reprinted in one of his Neue
Zeitschrift essays on concertos. 74 Both pianist-composers recognized the Concert as
addressing a broad audience with its title but adopting a tone that appealed especially to
cultivated, serious listeners who sought not accessible entertainment but deeply
shaking, borderline-unpleasant experiences, apparently in a spirit of both thrill-seeking
and edification. Some of this seriousness resided in the works form, which appealed to a
learned classical tradition rather than to contemporary salon and virtuoso-concert music.
The four critics quoted above also suggest, though, that the Concert elevated itself
through a virtuosic idiom whose unconventional abrasiveness promised not light, tasteful
listening but an immersion in a fearsome, overwhelming experience that begged
comparison to the dynamic sublime, with all of its power to astound and, in the Romantic
worldview, to ennoble both creator and listener.
semble appeler un auditoire nombreux et promettre un clat que lon y chercherait en vain. Mais cette
querelle dAllemande se bornera notre critique, car le morceau en lui-mme, considr comme sonate, est
une oeuvre riche et puissante. Le finale surtout, sorte de toccata six-seize, est un morceau extrmement
intressant par ses combinaisons harmoniques, dont ltranget pourrait nanmoins un peu choquer
loreille, sans lexcessive rapidit de movement. Franz Liszt, Smtliche Schriften, 381-82.
73
We closeby expressing the desire that M. Schumann will soon make known in France those of his
works that are still only available in Germany. Young pianists will profit from his example in a system of
composition that encounters much opposition among us but that, more than any other today, holds within
itself the seeds of something that will last. Nous termineronsen exprimant M. Schumann le dsir
quil fasse bientt connatre la France celle de ses productions qui sont encore restes exclusivement
germaniques. Les jeunes pianists se fortifieraient son exemple dans un systme de composition qui
rencontre beaucoup dopposition parmi nous, et qui pourtant aujourhui est le seul qui parte un lui des
germes de dure[.] Ibid., 382.
74
Schumann adds at the end of Moscheless comments, Make yourselves worthy of such a well-wishing
review, Florestan and Eusebius, and may you be as a artistically strict with yourselves as you are so often
with others. Macht euch aber, Florestan und Euseb, eines so wohlwollenden Urtheils dadurch wrdig,
da ihr auch knstighin so streng gegen euch selbst seid wie so manchmal gegen Andere. GS 2:224.
Chapter Three 183

A Toccata Emblazoned with the Name of Beethoven
Two years before completing the Concert sans orchestre, Schumann composed a
showpiece that also employs his trademark metrically dissonant style of virtuosic writing
but engages with the sublime in broader ways. During the 1830s, the Toccata, Op. 7
served as one of Schumanns signature virtuosic works. As noted in Chapter 2, he often
performed an early version of the piece titled Exercise pour le pianoforte while still an
aspiring virtuoso pianist in Heidelberg. 75 After he completed the published version of the
Toccata in late 1833, he dedicated it to the pianist-composer Ludwig Schuncke and
encouraged Clara Wieck to include it on her programs. Wieck gave the first public
performance of the Toccata at a benefit concert on September 11, 1834. During her visit
to Paris in 1838, Robert asked her to play the Toccata as a way of introducing Parisian
audiences to his work and, when she arranged to meet Liszt, Robert specifically asked her
to perform the Toccata for him. 76
Schumanns Toccata showcases one of the most common postclassical virtuosic
techniques, pianistic double-stop writing. Etudes and showpieces displaying this kind of
figuration proliferated during the early nineteenth century; Example 3.13 excerpts
toccatas for the concert stage by Czerny, Francesco Pollini, and George Onslow, as well
as etudes by Cramer. 77 Joel Lester and Mark Kroll have also noted that several works by
75
See Theodore Tpkens letter, cited in Chapter 2.

Robert wrote to Clara on November 3, 1838, I received a letter from Heller in Paris yesterday; he writes
that Im quite well-known there as a composer, even if only by reputation; make sure you play something
by me in your later concerts (I can only think of the Toccata); it would be very helpful to me here; think
about it. See also Schumanns letters from April 13 and December 4, 1838 in The Complete
Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann, ed. Eva Weisweiler 1:149, 299, and 322.
77
Boetticher and other scholars have attempted to find among these double-stop showpieces specific
models for Schumanns Toccata. Wolfgang Boetticher, Robert Schumanns Klavierwerke (Wilhelmshaven:
Heinrichshofen, 1976) 2:14-16. However, it seems more plausible that Schumann drew upon a variety of
showpiece that attracted numerous different interpretations among pianist-composers than that he based his
work on one or two individual models, a point Gooley suggests in Schumann and the Agencies of
76
Chapter Three 184

Hummel (including the Sonata in F-sharp Minor, Op. 84, over which Schumann toiled as
a student) employ this kind of figuration. 78 Nevertheless, the critical reception of the
Toccata differentiated the work from more conventional showpieces. An 1834 review of
Claras premiere performance in the Leipzig journal Der Komet, for example, describes
the work as a gushing of originality and newness that, despite its strict style, worked
on all listeners with a profound magic. 79 The reviewer, poet Ernst Ortlepp, wrote that
Schumann had the power to elevate the modern musical school to its highest splendor
because he is known to reach, in his own way, a very different goal than that of
fashionable composition, which contains no higher thought than to make every morsel
bite-sized for the audience. 80
Part of Schumanns reshaping of the conventional double-stop etude involved the
distant, poetic ending discussed in Chapter 2, in which virtuosic figuration becomes a
murmuring sound effect. The rest of the Toccata is more extroverted than innig and, as
critics suggested, imbues virtuosic display with an aura of sublimity. Although it uses
perpetual-motion, metrically dissonant writing similar to that of the Concert, nineteenthcentury commentators on the Toccata did not use imagery of storms, cataracts, or
apprehension but instead invoked the striving, superhuman, and Beethovenian
Improvisation, in Rethinking Schumann, ed. Laura Tunbridge and Roe-Min Kok (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 139.
78
Joel Lester, Robert Schumann and Sonata Forms, 19th-Century Music 18, no. 3 (1995): 199-200.
Lester suggests that the Exercise might have been an autodidactic etude to aid Schumanns practice of
the Hummel sonata. Mark Kroll, Johann Nepomuk Hummel: A Musicians Life and World (Lanham, MD:
Scarecrow, 2007), 288-89.
79
Das Werk ist ein Gu von Originalitt und Neuheit und wirkte trotz seinem strengen Stil auf alle
Zuhrer mit einem Tiefergreifenden Zauber. Der Komet: Beilage fr Literatur, Kunst, Mode,
Residenzleben, und Journalistische Controle 39 (September 26, 1834): 310-311.
80
[E]r besitzt die Kraft, die moderne musikalische Schule durch die eigentmlichen Productionen zu
ihrem hchsten Glanze zu erheben. Dem Geschmack des Publicums frhnt er nicht und wird ihm trotz allen
oft an ihn gemachten Anforderungen nicht frhnen; aber gewi wird er auf seinem Wege ein ganz anderes
Ziel erreichen als die Modecomposition, die keinen hhern Gedanken fassen als den Leuten jeden Bissen
mundgerecht zu machen. Ibid., 310-311.
Chapter Three 185

associations of the sublime. Reviewers located some of this sublimity in the works
extreme difficulty. An 1835 review in the Allgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger described
the Toccata as a Herculean pianistic task testing the limits of human capability. The
author, who signs himself only 56, writes that mastering the work requires strength,
vigor, daring, and (the fourteen-year-old Clara Wiecks apparently stellar performance
notwithstanding) masculine athleticism. 56 recalls that Ludwig Schuncke had been
equal to such a gigantic task before his untimely death of tuberculosis in December
1834. Lesser pianists, he writes, should beware:
Whoever does not feel himself to be of comparable athletic strength and
who is not ensnared by arrogant vanity would in no way consider himself
worthy to attempt it: quid valent humeri, aut quid ferre recusent [one
should know what his shoulders can bear and what they cannot]. Such a
person does not dare it and instead heads down his own street quietly and
with due reverence, thinking to comfort himself, non omnia possumus
omnes [not all of us are capable of everything]. 81
Ortlepp claims that, in Leipzig, only Clara Wieck and Ludwig Schuncke were capable of
playing the Toccata. 82
Ortlepps Der Komet review hinted that the Toccatas compositional style
possessed sublime characteristics. We are convinced, he wrote, that what a Sebastian
Bach, what a Beethoven, what a Paganini carried within himself also rests in
81
Dieser [Schuncke] war allerdings einer solchen gigantesken Aufgabe gewachsen; wer aber nicht
gleiche Athletenkraft in sich fhlt, und von arroganter Eitelkeit nicht umgarnt, es keineswegs unter seiner
Wrde ht, vorerst zu prfen: quid valent humeri, aut quid ferre recusent,der wage nimmermehr sich
daran, sonder ziehe, mit gebhrender Reverenz, ruhig frba seine Strae, denkend, non Omnia possumus
omnes. Allgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger 17 no. 39 (September 25, 1835): 155-56. The author of this
review, like that of the Concert sans orchestre, wrote under a numerical pseudonym, in this case 56. His
first Latin quotation comes from Horace, the second from Virgil.
82
Schumanns Toccata ist so schwer, da sie auer Schuncke und der Clara Wieck hier wohl Niemand gut
spielen kann. Der Komet 39 (September 26, 1834): 311. Ortlepps remark suggests that Schuncke had
already performed the work, most likely in private or semi-public settings, prior to Claras benefit concert,
which represented the public premiere.
Chapter Three 186

Schumann.83 His encomium stakes a striking claim for Schumanns etude, setting the
still little-known composer among figures regarded as epitomes of learnedness, cuttingedge virtuosity, and musical seriousness and heroismall in a review of a singlemovement virtuoso showpiece. Two of the composers named, Beethoven and Paganini,
enjoyed Romantic receptions that awarded them the distinction of sublimity. Ortlepp
himself, indeed, contributed to the romanticization and veneration of Beethoven with an
1836 book, Beethoven: Eine phantastische Charakteristik, that mingles fictionalized
accounts of Beethovens life, commentary on the Ninth Symphony, and a dreamlike
vision in which the author meets Beethoven and Jean Paul.84 Just as the mention of
Paganini refers to the Toccatas frenetic, metrically dissonant figuration and the mention
of Bach likely refers to a fugato episode in the development (and perhaps to the Toccatas
overall motoric rhythms), Ortlepps comparison to Beethoven was not an offhanded
appeal to serious music but rather a way of pointing up specific features of the piece that
have since gone unnoticed in the scholarly literature.
Schumanns choice of Ludwig Schuncke as the dedicatee of the Toccata was one
sublime, Beethovenian thread in the pieces composition and reception. Schumann and
Schuncke met late in 1833, when the former was completing the final version of the
Toccata and the latter had come to Leipzig. 85 They became fast friends and, by March
1834, were living in adjoining apartments. They also shared similar opinions about the
state of the music profession in Germany: Schuncke became one of the founding
83
Wir sind berzeugt, was ein Seb. Bach, was ein Beethoven, was ein Paganini in sich getragen, das ruht
auch in Schumann. Ibid., 310.
84
Ernst Ortlepp, Beethoven: Eine Phantastische Charakteristik (Leipzig: Joh. Fr. Hartknoch, 1836).
85
Schuncke had spent 1827-30 in Paris and the next three years in Stuttgart, Augsburg, and Vienna before
arriving in Leipzig. Ruskin King Cooper, Robert Schumanns Closest Jugendfreund: Ludwig Schuncke
(1810-1834) and his Piano Music (Hamburg: Fischer, 1997), 51-69.
Chapter Three 187

contributors to the Neue Zeitschrift and, like Schumann and his other writers, engaged in
a critique of postclassical bravura pieces. Also like Schumann, Schuncke experimented
with imagistic, poetic criticism in a review of Schuberts Groes Rondo for piano, four
hands, Op. 107 and with a dialogic, Davidsbndler style review of Kalkbrenners
Variations brillantes sur une Mazourka [sic] de Chopin, Op. 120.86
Several years before his essays on Liszt, Schumann portrayed Schuncke as a
sublime virtuoso in his reviews of his compositions. (Schumann, in fact, later likened
Liszt to Schuncke in appearance and playing style.) 87 He described Schunckes virtuosic
prowess and stage presence using conventional sublime imagery: He flew like an eagle
and with Jupiters bolts, his eye scintillating but calm, every nerve full of music. If a
painter had been near, [Schuncke] would have certainly been able to take a place on
paper as a god of the muses.88 Schumann also suggests a kinship between Schuncke and
Beethoven. In his essay on Schunckes Caprice in C minor, Op. 10, he recounts a
moment when Schuncke asked him to suggest a title for the work:
With that he finally sat at the piano and with fire [played] the second
[caprice] in C minor. Rather enraptured, I answered in jest, Call it
Beethoven, scne dramatique, and so it appeared on the concert program.
But in reality the piece only reflected a thousandth part of Beethovens
soul-life, one small dark line on his brow. 89
86
For the Kalkbrenner review, see NZfM 1, no. 14 (May 19, 1834): 55-56 and, for the Schubert review, see
NZfM 1, no. 20 (June 9, 1834): 78. Both are translated in Cooper, Robert Schumanns Closest
Jugendfreund, 205-7.
87
Liszts similarity to the deceased Ludwig Schuncke is striking, so that I often, during Liszts playing,
believed that I was listening to something I had already heard previously. Auffallend ist auch die
Aehnlichkeit Liszts mit dem verstorbenen Ludwig Schuncke so da ich oft bei Liszts Spiel schon
frher Gehrtes wieder zu hren glaubte. GS 1:480.
88
Wie ein Adler flog er und mit Jupiterblitzen, das Augue sprhend aber ruhig, jede Nerve voll Musik, und war ein Maler zur Hand, so stand er gewi als Musengott auf dem Papier fertig. Ibid., 1:193,
translation adapted from Cooper, Robert Schumanns Closest Jugendfreund, 247.
89
Einmal in Frhling 1834 trat Schunke [sic] mit seiner gewhnlichen Hast in meine Stubeund warf
hin: er wolle in einem Concert spielen und wie er das Stck nennen solle, den Caprice sage ihm zu
wenig. Dabei sa er lngst am Flgel und im Feuer der zweiten in C moll. Leidlich entzckt antwortete ich
im Spa: nenn es Beethoven: scne dramatiqueund also kam es auf den Concertzeddel; in Wahrheit
schattet das Stck aber nur ein Tausendtheil Beethovenschen Seelenlebens ab, nur eine kleine dunkle Linie
Chapter Three 188
Schumanns language echoes Jean Pauls suggestion that Jupiters eyebrow can intimate
the power and sublimity associated with the thunder-godeven if Schumann heard only
imitations of Beethovens style in the Caprice.
To an extent, Schumanns talk of sublimity and Beethoven surely reflected his
impulse to eulogize and idealize his friendthe reviews all appeared after Schunckes
death. However, it also acknowledged aspects of Schunckes own compositional style
that critics other than Schumann noticed. Schuncke incorporated Beethovenian touches
into several of his virtuosic works. Especially in light of Schunckes later involvement
with the Neue Zeitschrift and its critique of postclassical virtuosity, this style begs to be
heard as an effort to combine virtuosity with Beethovenian seriousness and expressive
intensity. Schunckes Allegro Passionato, Op. 6, offers one instance of his strategy. G. W.
Fink of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote in an October 1834 review of several
Schuncke virtuosic works, The Allegro Passionato shows us the talented composer in
another sphere, moving into Beethovens deeper realm, following this heros example in
form, indulging only in free independence and developing the character of the passionate
idea.90 The piece opens with a pithy introduction that differs from the alternately
maestoso and brilliant variety typical of early nineteenth-century showpieces. (Example
3.14) 91 It sustains tonal tension by withholding the tonic A minor until m. 5 and through
such jarring harmonic features as the opening minor ninth. The hammered-out leading
in der Stirn. GS 1:192-93. Translation adapted from Cooper, Robert Schumanns Closest Jugendfreund,
247.
90
Das Allegro passionato (Op. 6) zeigt uns den talentvollen Componisten in einer andern Sphre, in
Beethovens tieferes Reich einschreitend, in der Form sich dieses Heros anschliessend, allein in frey
gehaltener Selbststndigkeit sich ergehend und das Charakteris[t]ische der leidenschaftlichen Aufgabe in
Unabhngigkeit treue durchfhrend. AmZ 36, no. 42 (15 October 1834): 689-91. Translation adapted from
Cooper, who similarly notes the pieces motivic unity. Ibid., 145, 217.
91
I would like to thank Ruskin King Cooper, American representative of the Schuncke Archive, for sharing
copies of these and other now-rare Ludwig Schuncke works.
Chapter Three 189

motive bears an unmistakable resemblance to that of Beethovens Fifth. The sonata form
that follows extensively develops this short motive and aims at a Beethovenian kind of
motivic and formal integration, as seen in the transitional passages. 92 Material resembling
the introduction returns during later transitional passagework, a procedure derived from
the first movement of Beethovens Pathtique Sonata, Op. 13.
Schunckes Caprice, Op. 10 attracted Schumanns Beethoven comparison more
through its turbulent, C-minor mood than through specific structural procedures or
thematic allusions. The rhapsodic opening section, shown in Example 3.15, grows several
times from murmur to outburst, interspersed with rhetorical pauses reminiscent of
Beethovens Pathetique or Appassionata sonatas. The end of the introduction
dissolves chromatic octaves into a single strand of bass figuration that Ruskin Cooper
suggests may have been borrowed from the first movement of Beethovens Waldstein
Sonata, Op. 53. 93
In the early 1830s, Schumann, like Schuncke, frequently alluded to Beethoven in
the midst of virtuosic showpieces. 94 In addition to the Paganini Study Op. 10, no. 4,
discussed above, Schumann penned a set of etudes (composed between 1833 and 1835
but ultimately unpublished) based on the second movement of Beethovens Symphony
No. 7, as well as the less pyrotechnic Impromptus, Op. 5 of 1833, modeled on
Beethovens Eroica Variations, Op. 35. Schumanns Fantasie, Op. 17, with its widely
recognized citation of An die ferne Geliebte, represents a somewhat later instance, one
92
Despite its Beethovenian flavor, the Allegro presents a sonata form without a development section,
though motivic development does occur in the extensive transitional passages.
93
Cooper, Robert Schumanns Closest Jugendfreund, 151-57.
94
Schuncke and Schumann shared a penchant for Beethoven-influenced piano showpieces but most likely
developed these styles independently of one another. Schumann, for example, completed the published
version of his Toccata between Michaelmas and Christmas of 1833, and Schuncke did not decide to leave
Vienna for Leipzig until late October of that year. Schumanns other Beethoven-evocative virtuoso works
predate the Toccata.
Chapter Three 190

more linked to Beethovens intimate vocal music than his symphonies and variation
sets. 95
Scholars have yet to recognize the Toccata as part of this string of Beethovenevoking compositions. In this work, Schumanns Beethovenian touches resemble
signature passages and compositional strategies closely associated with the first
movement of the Eroica symphony. Schumanns strategy characterizes the published
version of the Toccata more than it does the early Exercise. A few studies have compared
the two versions of the work. 96 The final version, they often stress, displays a tighter,
more sharply chiseled sonata form than the early one. Schumann shortens the Exercises
lengthy transitional passages and gives them a clearer sense of goal-direction. Similarly,
he expands the first and second thematic areas and replaces the Exercises second theme
(which closely resembles the first) with a contrasting idea. Although Daverio has
incorporated Ortlepps review into his discussion of the Toccata, he only mentions the
pieces overall use of sonata form as a Beethovenian and thus classicizing (rather than a
heroicizing or potentially sublime) feature. 97 In fact, though, Schumanns
Beethovenian approach extends to the details of the Toccata and represents one of his
most significant additions to the early version. Exploring these Eroica-like features
95
Schumanns symphonies include their own Beethoven citations. Indeed, Schumanns first substantial
attempt at symphonic composition, the unpublished Symphony in G minorwhich he worked on during
1832 and 1833 and which includes only the first two movementsfeature what Nicholas Marston has
described as clear references to the Eroica. More widely publicized during the nineteenth century were
the transition between the third and fourth movements of Schumanns Symphony No. 4 (modeled on that of
Beethovens Fifth) and another possible quotation of An die ferne Geliebte, in the finale of his
Symphony No. 2. On the Symphony in G minor, see Marston, Schumanns Heroes: Schubert, Beethoven,
Bach, in The Cambridge Companion to Schumann, ed. Beate Perrey (Cambrdige: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 52-53.
96
See Richard Green, Robert Schumanns Exercise and the Toccata, Opus 7; Harald Krebs, Fantasy
Pieces, 136-43; Michael J. Leubbe, Robert Schumanns Exercise pour le Pianoforte, in Schumanniana
Nova: Festschrift Gerd Nauhaus zum 60 Geburtstag, ed. Bernhard Appel, te Br, and Matthias Wendt
(Sinzig: Studio Verlag, 2002), 427-28.
97
John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), 65.
Chapter Three 191

reveals the Toccata as a composition that matches the virtuosic heroism that the Anzeiger
describes as prerequisite for performing the work with an evocation of a sublime
composers most stereotypically heroic work.
The very opening of the Toccata announces a Beethovenian approach. (Example
3.16) The exposition of the early Exercise opens with a virtuosic gesture, a scale in
octaves that segues into a murmuring, sixteen-measure first theme. The Toccata, by
contrast, opens with two measures of syncopated chords that form a dominant upbeat to
the first theme. With its abrupt, abrasive quality and homophonic texturemore
suggestive of an orchestral tutti than of postclassical virtuositySchumanns gesture
resembles the opening of the Eroica, also announced by two measures of bracing, loud
chords. 98 Like the Eroica chords, too, Schumanns opening gesture contains the
motivic substance for the subsequent thematic material. The double-stop figuration spins
out the openings semitone and double-neighbor figures, and, unlike the Exercise, uses a
bass line that continues its syncopated rhythm. 99 The exposition infuses the virtuosic
figuration with topics that further suggest Eroica-like militant heroism, as in m. 22,
which concludes the first theme with fanfares highlighted by high and low points in bass
and treble. Three variants of the second theme answer the fanfare with music whose
triadic contour and placement in the middle register evoke horn writing, particularly at
the close of the exposition, where the melodic fourth rebounds and fades into a
transitional passage. (Example 3.17)
98
Nineteenth-century and present-day commentators have described such terse, unstable openings as
essential to the heroic quality of Beethovens mature symphonic works. See, for example, Burnham,
Beethoven Hero, 32-45, and Thomas Sipe, Interpreting Beethoven: History, Aesthetics, and Critical
Reception (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1992), 255. Sipe in particular quotes contemporary
critics who described the Eroicas opening as the hero idea stepping forth after two forceful blows and
the beginning of an inexorable flow.
99
Joel Lester has noted this feature of the Toccata in Robert Schumann and Sonata Forms, 197; see also
Krebs, Fantasy Pieces, 137.
Chapter Three 192

The Toccatas transitions add more intense metric dissonances that, as Krebs
notes, often produce processes of intensification that rush into more metrically stable
thematic areas. 100 Like several points in the Concert sans orchestre finale, the Toccata
transitions emphasize displacement dissonances that accentuate the sixteenth note
immediately before or after the bar. Instead of the broadly syncopated groove of first
theme-group, these displacements create sudden jolts of rhythmic upset as metric stresses
unpredictably arrive the slightest bit early or late. The transition to the closing theme,
shown in Example 3.18, initially displaces accents to a sixteenth note before the bar; the
resulting sforzandi grate against the downbeat-oriented left-hand part. As the theme itself
approaches, Schumann accelerates to two displaced accents per measure embedded in a
rising harmonic sequence.
The retransition to the Toccatas recapitulation also mirrors a famous Eroica
passage. The early Exercise, shown in Example 3.19, segues into its recapitulation on the
momentum of its virtuosic octave scales and uses only a brief dominant preparation. The
Toccata, by contrast, turns its retransition into a buildup-and-climax moment. After five
measures over a dominant pedal, the chordal, orchestral writing of the opening gesture
returns and hammers repetitively at syncopated dominant-seventh chords. The voicing
heightens the chords inherent dissonance by hiding the root in an inner voice and placing
two tritones in the right hand. The passage echoes one of the signature moments of the
Eroica development in which syncopated, dissonant chords introduce a significant
structural juncture. (Ex. 3.20) Also like Beethoven, Schumann builds to this peak of
harmonic and metric dissonance with a fugato. The first half of the Toccatas
development consists of perpetual-motion scales in octaves. Measure 133, though, takes a
100
Chapter Three 193

turn for the learned and begins a fugato that combines the octave-scale motive with the
pieces opening gesture. 101 The texture thickens as the subject entries accumulate, and
measures 137-38 and 140-41 introduce strettos of the opening motive. A statement of
both subjects in octaves at m. 144 leads to a moment of textural plenitude in m. 146,
which presents dovetailing scales and an upper voice that anticipates the syncopated
rhythm of mm. 151-52. 102 Unlike Schumanns, Beethovens chords do not prepare for the
recapitulation, but rather for the introduction of a lyrical theme that is ostensibly new but
that derives from the opening theme. The Toccata thus repurposes one of Beethovens
most tension-generated passages not to stage a buildup and breakdown, but to demarcate
an important juncture of the sonata formnot to imply the momentary collapse of the
heroic narrative, but rather one of its breakthroughs.
The Toccatas expansive coda makes a final Beethovenian gesture, though one
more related to formal proportions and compositional procedures than to specific, wellknown passages. The Toccatas length396 measuresmakes it an Eroica among
double-stop showpieces: it is almost twice as long as the Exercise and exceeds any of its
postclassical antecedents. In some respects, the formal proportions of the work do not
follow a Beethovenian model. The development, for example, consumes a mere 45
measures, whereas the exposition, if the repeat is taken, occupies 197. However, in the
tradition of Beethovens end-weighted approach to sonata forms (whose first notable
representative was the Eroica) Schumanns coda combines unequivocal tonal closure
101
Despite their structural similarity, Beethoven and Schumann establish different relationships between
their fugatos and subsequent chords. In Beethovens Eroica, the buildup of chords subsumes and
ultimately overwhelms the fugato with its harmonic and rhythm violence. In Schumanns Toccata, the
fugato (which is longer than Beethovens) serves as preparation for the chords, which only arrive after the
fugato has reached a peak of complexity and plenitude.
102
Schumanns fugato illustrates Michaeliss point that elaborate contrapuntal writing can not only display
learnedness but attempt to overwhelm the listener with the complex interactions of multiple themes.
Chapter Three 194

with a climax that includes an apotheosis-like elaboration of the main theme. Schumanns
coda extends for 70 measures of virtually unadulterated C major and gradually increases
in virtuosic intensity. (Example 3.21) Its opening promises tonal and metric resolution
with its strong downbeat arrivals. At measure 243, though, Schumann unexpectedly
unleashes the Toccatas most intense, sustained passage of displacement dissonance. The
double-stop figuration resembles the first theme, now infused with a displacement of
metric stress by one sixteenth note. The coda thus expands and intensifies a metric
dissonance previously introduced in the transition passages. 103 A new, gentler
displacement with a descending chain of appoggiaturas enters at m. 251. Measure 274
reaches a peak of metric dissonance and textural density that surpasses even the
retransition. In a cascade of sonority, both hands articulate fully textured triads one
sixteenth note apart. As Krebs notes, the chords initially set in motion a rapid-fire
alternation of dissonant and consonant accents but, as the hands converge, create a roar of
metrically undifferentiated sonority. 104
In the end, it would be misleading to map an Eroica-type narrative too literally
onto Schumanns Toccata, Op. 7. For all its references to the first movement of
Beethovens symphony, the Toccatas conventional key scheme and brief development
offer little of the tonal drama typical of Beethovens heroic works. Schumann also creates
no analogues for the troubling C-sharp in the first theme, the new E-minor theme in the
development, or the premature announcement of the first theme in its retransitionall
features that, for nineteenth-century writers on Beethoven, presented anomalous features
103
Numerous commentators have pointed out this passage of the Toccata. See, for example, Krebs, Fantasy
Pieces, 139; Daverio, Robert Schumann, 65; Rosen, The Romantic Generation, 656.
104
Chapter Three 195

that begged for programmatic, heroic interpretations. 105 The Toccata stages
breakthroughs and climaxes without musically expressed adversity and presents the
image of a heroic virtuoso whose exploits never risk collapse or tragedy. To adopt
Schumanns own words, the Toccata captures only Beethovens furrowed brow (or, one
might say, his flexed muscle) rather than the sublime composers entire being. And, as
we saw in Chapter 2, Schumanns piece ends not with symphonic triumph but by leaving
behind the codas fireworks and fading into the poetic distance, a state to which the
second-themes horn calls may have been summoning us all along. Somewhat like
Ortlepps later Phantastische Charakteristikwhich ends with Beethoven and Jean Paul
vanishing into shadow and leaving the narrator to monumentalize their achievements
Schumanns coda demurs from reenacting Beethovenian closure and instead creates
poetic distance, perhaps recognizing the impossibility or even the undesirability of
simply imitating Beethovens style without incorporating contemporary, poeticizing
touches. 106 Nevertheless, this gesture toward Beethovenian seriousnesscombined with
a driving, excessively difficult Paganinian styledid not fail to impress Ortlepp, who
noted the amalgamation of superhumanly difficult virtuosity with the aura of a newly
venerated master. It also made the work an ideal warhorse for the equally Beethovenobsessed Ludwig Schuncke, who, if the Allgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger and Neue
Zeitschrift can be believed, possessed a performing and compositional style that matched
the Toccatas evocations of Beethovenian heroism. One of Schumanns early signature
works, then, appealed to the nineteenth-century preoccupation with the sublime not
105
106
See, for example, Burnham, Beethoven Hero, 3-28; Thomas Sipe, Interpreting Beethoven, 255-66.
Ortlepp, Beethoven, 89-90.
Chapter Three 196

through music that could evoke storms, cascades, or other unpleasant dangers, but rather
with the concepts association with the lofty, striving, and Beethovenian.
From the Poetic to the (Beethovenian?) Sublime: The 1837 tudes symphoniques
Schumanns tudes symphoniques, Op. 13 represents a final manifestation of his interest
in creating virtuoso showpieces that could elicit comparisons to the dynamic sublime in
general and, in some cases, Beethoven in particular. The 1837 published version of this
work substantially restructures the barely unpublished 1835 Fantaisies et finale
(discussed in Chapter 2). Figure 3.2 charts the new sequence of movements, which
includes five new variations, omits the five that were eventually published posthumously
(as well as the unfinished variation), and places some of the variations it retains in a new
order. 107
One of the few contemporary reviews to discuss in detail the musical features of
the tudes appeared in the Neue Zeitschrift on August 18, 1837. 108 The author, Leipzig
organist and early-music enthusiast Carl Ferdinand Becker, spins a Davidsbndler-style
dialogue between several unnamed interlocutors, all of whom propose different critiques
and interpretations of the work. His first speaker, for example, notes the pieces
combination of genres. Whereas etudes should provide merely the alphabet tables to the
soul-language of pure composition, he says, Schumanns piece is only variations on a
107
As noted in Chapter 2, Schumann considered one ordering between the Fantaisies and the tudes; the
sequence of movements in this version appears on the flyleaf of a copyists manuscript based on the
Fantaisies.
108
NZfM 17, no. 14 (August 18, 1837): 50. Ludwig Rellstabs negative review of the tudes for Iris im
Gebiete der Tonkunst does not even recognize the individual etudes as part of a variation cycle and
describes them as sketches for what Rellstab opines should have been more substantial works. Iris im
Gebiete der Tonkunst, 19, no. 5 (February 2, 1838), 18-19.
Chapter Three 197

theme. 109 The fourth and sixth speakers voice criticisms, though ones that Becker
presents as humorously pedantic. The former quibbles that Schumanns fugal passages do
not adhere to Marpurgs rules of counterpoint, and the latter alleges that beginning with a
theme in C-sharp minor but ending with a rondo in D-flat disregards the individual
affective characters of the keys. Becker presents the third speaker as more erudite. In
response to the firsts puzzlement, he offers a surprising interpretation of the generic
identity of the tudes symphoniques, distancing the work from the popular variation
genre and associating it with the symphonic tradition. The intellectual expression
Becker gives his interlocutor might explain not only his knowledge of Beethovens
symphonic works but also his interest in the dynamic sublime, suggested in his
description of the piece gradually accumulating energy and breaking forth in a torrent:
I regard the whole piece as nothing other than the last movement of a
symphony for piano and hope that I have hit the nail on the head. Havent
you noticed that everything grows bit by bit until the actual finale breaks
through and moves forward in a flood? If these are etudes or variations,
the finale of Beethovens Eroica Symphony is also nothing more. 110
Wolfgang Boetticher has dismissed Beckers review as comic and absurd
evidence that Becker was out of his depth when discussing piano music. 111 I would argue,
though, that Beckers third speaker did in fact hit the nail on the head. Becker adds to
109
Etuden sollen gleichsam die bloen Buchstabirtafeln fr die Seelensprache der reinen Tonkunst sein,
und hier finden sich nur Vernderungen ber ein Thema. NZfM 17, no. 14 (August 18, 1837): 50.
110
Nun, wenn es Variationen wren, fllt ein Dritter mit geistreichem Angesicht dem Zweiten sogleich
ins Wort: so mchte es wohl angehen aber auch diese sin des nicht. Ich halte das Ganze fr nichts
Anderes, als fr den letzten Satz einer Symphonie fr das Pianoforte und hoffe den Nagel auf den Kopf
getroffen zu haben. Bemerkt ihr denn nicht, wie Alles nach und nach anwchst, bis das eigentliche Finale
losbricht und in einem Strome sich fortbewegt.Wenn das Etuden oder Variationen sind, dann ist
Beethovens Schlusatz in seiner Eroica auch nichts weiter. Ibid., 50.
111
Immerhin: diese skurrile und phantastische Rezension bezeugt die ganze Hilflosigkeit einem
Klavierwerk gegenber. Robert Schumanns Klavierwerke 2:249.
Chapter Three 198

the many analyses of Schumanns Opus 13 two heretofore unexplored insights. 112 Firstly,
his language describes the tudes process of intensification and climax not merely as an
instance of structural enterprise but as a progression of dynamically sublime
forcefulnessits transcendence of conventional variation sets lies not only in its
innovative layout but in its aesthetic effect, Becker implies. Secondly, Becker makes the
necessarily more speculative point that Schumanns symphonic etude-variations bear
comparison to the final (presumably variation-based) movement of a symphony;
specifically, he cites the finale of Beethovens Eroica as a comparable work.
For his tudes, Schumann reworked the Fantaisies succession of variations to
create a continuous accumulation of intensity. Schumann himself anticipated Beckers
application of sublime imagery to this process, though in a way that invoked the
concepts associations with heroism, militarism, and monumentality rather than forces of
nature. In 1834, early in the genesis of what became the tudes symphoniques
Schumann wrote to Baron von Fricken: I would like to build from the funeral march
[theme] little by little into a proud Siegeszug [victory procession]. 113 Jean-Pierre
Bartolis 1992 study of the tudes echoes Becker and Schumann by also using language
reminiscent of nineteenth-century notions of the sublime. Schumanns work, he writes,
advances inexorably and forms an irresistible progression toward a triumphal
112
For analyses of the tudes, see Jean-Pierre Bartoli, Les tudes symphoniques de Schumann: plaidoyer
analytique pour le rejet des Variations posthumes, Analyse musicale76 (1992): 76-86; Craig Cummings,
Large-scale coherence in selected nineteenth-century piano variations (PhD. diss., Indiana University,
1991), 114-171; Damien Ehrhardt, La variation chez Robert Schumann: Forme et evolution, (PhD diss.,
Universit Paris-Sorbonne, 1997), 174-85
113
Ich mchte gern den Trauermarsch nach und nach zu einem recht stolzen Siegeszug steigern und
berdies einiges dramatisches Interesse hineinbringen. Quoted in Boettischer, Robert Schumanns
Klavierwerk 2:245.
Chapter Three 199

song. 114 Gone indeed are the Fantaisies et finales fleeting inter-movement connections
and their potential to stimulate listeners faculties of Witz. Instead, the 1837 tudes move
forward with momentum that increases almost continuously until the titanic chords of the
rondo finale. Some variations retained from the Fantaisies appear in reverse order so that
what had been a gradual decrease in textural and rhythmic intensity becomes a crescendo.
Etudes IV, VI and X mark this progression by retaining the themes opening arpeggio.
The fourth presents a canon between the hands whose detached chords are separated by
rests. Newly composed for the published work, Etude VI sustains the chords, adds a
metrically displaced bass part, and implies an increase in tempo with its 2/4 meter. Etude
X (formerly Fantasy 7) introduces rebounding chords and a non-legato running bass.
Unlike in the Fantaisies, no lyrical, D-flat Doppelgnger transforms its melodic material.
Between these arpeggio-tracing variations, Schumann interpolates other variations whose
motivic content relates more distantly to theme and that also trace an increase in
tempo. 115 The stylistic consistency of the later variationscharacterized by thick textures
and driving temposdownplays the contrasts and variety expected in a nineteenthcentury variation showpiece and contributes to the intensification.
The unconventional tonal design of the tudes also creates forward motion.
Schumann had earlier demonstrated concern for continuity in his Fantaisies et finale by
smoothing transitions between individual variations, but each variation had remained in
either C-sharp minor or D-flat major. The tudes, by contrast, introduces a tonal arc
outlined in Figure 3.3that only finds resolution with the rondo finale. Schumann treats
114
Schumann a donc cr leffet dune course qui avance inexorablement. Tout cela est command par
une ncessit expressive imprieuse: une progression irrsistible vers un chant triumphal souligne par
lensemble des paramtres. Bartoli, Les tudes symphoniques, 85-86.
115
The quasi-Baroque Etude VIII does present a slower tempo and momentarily checks the works
momentum.
Chapter Three 200

E major, for example, as an important tonality. Etudes III and V begin in C-sharp and end
in E major. Etude VII is completely in E. The final variation, Etude XI, is in the minor
dominant; even as it offers a lyrical break, it makes a muted demand for harmonic
resolution. In the 1837 tudes, the theme itself presages this harmonic continuity by
ending on the dominant and seguing directly into Etude I.
In the later stages of the crescendo, two etudesVII and IXadd formal
expansion and a sense of departure from the theme to the rhythmic and tonal
trajectory. 116 Brahms termed Schumanns approach fantasy variation: such variations
use formal and harmonic structures that depart significantly from the theme and refer
only selectively to its motives. 117 Etude VII, shown in Example 3.22, consists of doublestop figuration whose harmonic shape little resembles the theme. Schumann expands the
second section of the rounded binary form by opening with a sequential development of
the themes arpeggio motive and by extending the final cadence. Etude IX, shown in
Example 3.23, is the longest of the variations and displays an irregular form. Schumanns
opening figuration elaborates the themes opening arpeggio motive, but this reference
becomes an unevenly phrased group of measures and, at m. 17, a sequence over a
chromatic bass line. When the scalar descent appears again, it introduces further
harmonic variety: the first recurrence, at m. 34, initially tonicizes E major and only
reaches C-sharp in the last measure, and the second, at m. 58, repeatedly moves from iv
to i. The variation ends with a twelve-measure arpeggio through viio7. These two etudes
flank the quasi-Baroque Etude VII, which, while mostly congruent with the theme,
develops contrapuntal figuration only obscurely evocative of the themes motives. Etudes
116
117
Cummings has noted this feature of the tudes. Large-Scale Coherence, 126-27.
Elaine Sisman, Brahms and the Variation Canon, 19th-Century Music 14, no. 2 (1990): 134-35.
Chapter Three 201

VII-IX thus form a span of music that departs more radically from the theme than do the
surrounding variations.
Beckers review potentially offers a richer understanding of Schumanns
symphonic descriptor than scholars have thus far advanced. Commentators have often
pointed to Schumanns polyphonic, thickly doubled style of virtuosic writing as the
source of the tudes symphonic-ness. 118 Tatjana Bhme-Mehner has proposed a more
structural interpretation of Schumanns title. She writes that the symphonic character of
the tudes lies in its overall unity and continuity, its manner of development, which far
surpasses a mere succession of individual variations. 119 But Becker alone among
nineteenth-century or present-day writers suggested a kinship between Schumanns
unconventional set of variations and the symphonic, specifically Beethovenian tradition.
His point must remain a speculative one: no writing from Schumann himself mentions
the Eroica finale as a model for the tudes, and no other critics made the comparison.
Even so, Beckers comparison was not far-fetched. As we have seen, Schumann
frequently alluded to Beethoven (specifically the Eroica) in his early piano works. His
plan to bridge funeral march and triumphal procession might have also suggested the
Eroica Symphony as a model: nineteenth-century critics established a longstanding
tradition of reading precisely those meaningstragic defeat and victorious celebration
into the funeral-march second and variation-based fourth movements of Beethovens
symphony. During the 1830s, moreover, the finale of Beethovens Third was easily the
118
Wolfgang Boetticher, for example, cites an 1839 review in the Prague journal Ost und West that
proclaimed, Schumann turns the piano into an orchestra. [Schumann macht das Klavier zum
Orchester.] Robert Schumanns Klavierwerke (Wilhelmshaven: Heinrichshofen, 1984) 2:249. Bartoli notes
that it uses polyphonic textures and rich doublings to imitate the texture of the post-Beethovenian
orchestra. Les tudes symphoniques op. 13, 79, 83.
119
Der Manier der Durchfhrung die weit ber die Aneinanderreihung einzelner Variationen
hinausgeht. Tatjana Bhme-Mehner, Sinfonische Etden fr Klavier, Op. 13, in Robert Schumann:
Interpretationen seiner Werke, ed. Helmut Loos (Laaber: Laaber, 2005), 72.
Chapter Three 202

most famous set of symphonic variations and the most widely-known precedent for the
tudes approach to variation structure. 120 If Schumann did turn to Beethovens finale
while planning the 1837 version of the piece, he did not reference signature passages (as
he did in the Toccata, Op. 7 and the Paganini etude Op. 10, no. 4) but emulated the
Eroica finales fluid approach to variation form. The fourth movement of the Eroica,
like the tudes, introduces a system of secondary keys throughout its succession of
variations, and, like Schumann, Beethoven occasionally tonicizes one key at the outset of
a variation but ends in a different one. Beethoven additionally takes a free approach to
the formal construction of variations, somewhat like Schumann later did. The G-minor
variation shown in Example 3.24, for example, initially follows the themes phrase
structure, but its second half is based not on the theme itself but develops the opening
bass line and adds several measures to extend the cadence. Elsewhere, Beethoven inserts
developmental sections and fugatos between variations, an approach that Schumann did
not take, unless one counts the tonally and formally digressive Etudes VII-IX or the more
conventional developmental passages in the rondo finale. As Michael Broyles notes, the
finale of the Eroica combines the progressive intensification characteristic of variation
120
Beethovens variation sets and variation movements for piano and string quartet present no structures
comparable to the Eroica or the tudes. Even such unconventional works as the Eroica Variations, Op.
35 and Diabelli Variations, Op. 120 keep their variations in the tonic key and adhere to the themes
formal structure. Beethovens Six Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 34 places each variation in a
different key but creates a chain of tonalities related by minor third that resembles neither the Eroica
finale nor Schumanns tudes symphoniques. The variation movements of the late sonatas and string
quartets do feature inventive tonal and formal features. (To cite one example, the final movement of the
Piano Sonata, Op. 111 is in C major but features an extended section in E-flat.) In these cases, though,
Beethoven creates disrupted, fragmented structures and brief moments of expressive, lyrical intensity rather
than the momentum and continuity one finds in the Eroica finale and Schumanns tudes.
Chapter Three 203

sets with a more sonata-like resolution of non-tonic keys, an observation that applies
equally to the tudes symphoniques. 121
Schumanns work does differ from Beethovens in significant ways. Whereas the
Eroica symphonys funereal and celebratory components appear in separate
movements, the tudes implies a progression from tragedy to triumph within a single,
continuous series of variations. Schumanns showpiece uses a full rondo finale, a feature
of postclassical variation sets rather than the symphonic traditionthough the rondo in
Opus 13 uses chordal, symphonic piano textures and links back to the funeral march by
incorporating major-key statements of its leading motive in the transition passages. The
tudes symphoniques thus combines transformed elements of the popular virtuoso
tradition with a flexible approach to variation form that finds its nearest precedent in
Beethoven, all subsumed into a long-range trajectory that evoked for some commentators
the overwhelming experience of the dynamic sublime.
Beckers review notwithstanding, the total arc of the work and its possible
Beethovenian aspects remained hidden from most listeners during Schumanns lifetime.
Clara Wiecks premiere performance of the tudes excerpted only four variations and,
although her correspondence with Robert hints that she went on to perform the work for
several private and public audiences, it does not indicate whether any of these
performances were complete. 122 Schumanns own 1852 republication of the tudes
121
Michael Broyles, Beethoven: the Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven's Heroic Style (New York:
Excelsior, 1987), 93.
122
See, for example, Claras letter to Robert from Vienna on January 18, 1838, in which she writes that her
father has urged her to perform the tudes along with the Toccata, Op. 7. Around a week later, Clara wrote
that she was going to perform the work, but only Quatre tudes symphoniques. In March of that year,
Clara wrote again from Vienna that she had decided not to perform the tudes on a public concert (on the
grounds that too many of the other pieces on the program were in minor keys) but played it for the
experts in a more informal setting. Weissweiler, ed., The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert
Schumann 1:78, 89, 114-15.
Chapter Three 204

removed some of its more unconventional features, notably Etudes III (which begins in
C-sharp and ends in E) and XI (a fantasy variation). Along with the title of this new
version, tudes en forme de Variations, these changes bring the work more in line with
conventional variation structure and remove the potentially puzzling, allusive reference to
the symphonic tradition. After Schumanns death, Brahms became a champion of the
tudes but often interpolated the posthumous variations into the work, drawing it back
into the realm of salon music and Witz and increasing the presence of intimate lyricism
within the pieces virtuosic juggernaut. Later theoretical writingsfrom Vincent
DIndys 1909 volume on variations for his Cours de composition musicale to Robert
Nelsons 1949 study of variation formsdescribe the work not as an enigmatic virtuoso
showpiece that defied easy classification but as an early, laudable instance of a free
approach to variation structure that gained ground later in the century. 123 In 1837, though,
the tudes symphoniques represented an attempt to combine the conventional variation
set with an inexorable buildup of intensity, a formally unconventional approach possibly
derived from Beethoven, and a process leading from mourning to triumphall potential
hallmarks of musical sublimity.
***
As Schumann and several of his reviewers recognized, these showpiecesand
Schumanns ideal of a sublime virtuoso, imagined in his critical writingsoffered an
alternative to postclassical, brilliant but not difficult showpieces. Works such as the
Concert sans orchestre, the Toccata, and the tudes symphoniques confronted listeners
123
Vincent dIndy, Cours de composition musicale, vol. 2 (Paris: Durand, 1909), 439-446, 465. Robert U.
Nelson, The Technique of Variations: A Study of the Instrumental Variation from Antonio de Cabezn to
Max Reger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), 91-95.
Chapter Three 205

with virtuosity that was brilliant and difficult by reaching for extremes of complexity,
subverting the expected transparency, clarity, and variety of popular virtuoso showpieces,
and incorporating Beethovenian narratives of heroism and striving. Virtuosity that gained
the distinction of sublimity also brought into play philosophical and cultural associations
of lofty, noble ideals and hyper-masculinity, both of which could be understood as
antidotes to the postclassical bravura Schumann dismissed as effeminate and concerned
only with finding commercial success. The category of the sublime and the influence of
Beethoven, then, were not restricted to monumentally proportioned, symphonic genres
during the nineteenth century but rather offered strategies for composers of virtuoso
music committed to the ideology of serious music.
Schumann thus engaged with Romantic concepts of transcendence not only
through his trademark introverted style but also through his less-recognized interest in a
more overwhelming, less esoteric variety of quasi-spiritual experience. In doing so, he
developed a style of virtuosity that, for some critics, served one of the most prized
objectives of the ideology of serious music. It harnessed and maximized the seeming
superhuman difficulty and extraordinary complexity of virtuosity music to create an
experience that could not only astound listeners but also edify and uplift them. Just as the
sublime imbued all that it touched with a quality of greatnesswhether unsettling,
impressive, or heroicso too did it redeem virtuosity.
Chapter Four 206

CHAPTER 4:
THE VIRTUOSO ON MOUNT PARNASSUS:
SCHUMANN AND THE CONCERTANTE PRINCIPLE
In his retrospective essay for the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik on the 1836-37 Leipzig
Gewandhaus concert season, Schumann paused from his appraisals of individual
performances to offer a panoramic view of the orchestra and its concerts as a musical
Mount Parnassus:
As I was leafing through the programs of the last twelve subscription
concertsmy imagination strove to gather everything into one picture.
Unprompted, a sort of blossoming mountain of the muses stood before me,
upon which I saw new paths and arcades laid under the eternal temple of
the older masters and, among them, merry virtuosos and lovely singers
like birds and butterflies. All this so rich, so diverse that the common and
more insignificant aspects became easy to ignore. 1
Schumanns mountainsuggestive of mythic greatness, Olympian eternity, and artistic
elevationharmonizes several components of contemporary musical culture. The
temple of the older masters refers to the music of canonized German composers and the
new pillars to freshly composed symphonies and overtures. The idyllic glow touches
the musicians themselves. Schumanns Leipzig retrospectives, a regular feature of the
Zeitschrift between 1837 and 1840, often present the Gewandhaus concerts as an ideal
community of serious musicians. His 1837 article reads, If ever an orchestraevery
member of ittrusted in and followed its director, ours thoroughly deserves praise for
doing so. Of so-called cabals and such things we have heard nothingthus things are
right and thus do art and artist thrive. In 1838, he wrote, The musicians here form a
Als ich heute die Zettel der letzten zwlf Abonnementskonzerte durchflog...strebte die Phantasie, alles in
ein Bild zusammenzufassen, und unversehens stand eine Art blhender Musenberg vor mir, auf dem ich
unter den ewigen Tempeln der lteren Meister neue Sulengnge, neue Bahnen unterlegen sah,
zwischendurch, wie Blumen und Schmetterlinge, lustige Virtuosen und liebliche Sngerinnen: alles in so
reicher Flle und Abwechselung durcheinander, da sich Gewhnliches und Unbedeutenderes von selbst
bersah. GS 1:311.
Chapter Four 207

family; they see each other and rehearse together dailyAdd to these a concertmaster
[Ferdinand David] who knows the scores by heart and a director [Felix Mendelssohn]
who likewise knows them inside and out, and the wreath of honor is finished. 2 The
second installment of the 1837 Fragments from Leipzig concludes with praise for the
orchestras performance of Beethovens Ninth: But how the heavens opened up in the
Adagio to receive Beethoven like an ascending saint. Then one wanted to forget all the
banalities of the world and tremble in awe at a notion of the heavenly. 3 An idealized
description of a community of musicians merges with an equally idealized apparition of
the sublime Beethoven.
One of the more striking details of Schumanns Leipzig Parnassus is the
conspicuous presence of virtuosos enlivening the temple of high art. As if to reiterate the
importance of virtuosos in his vision, Schumann writes, If the larger works formed the
pillars of musical life, the virtuosos wind themselves around and through the pillars like
fragrant wreathes. He refers elsewhere to singers and virtuosos who embellishedlike
arabesquesthese concerts that can never be praised enough. 4 If Schumann does
relegate virtuosos to a lower rung of a musical hierarchydecoration more than
substance and butterflies more than pillarshe stresses that these figures give added
appeal to the more monumental fixtures of Parnassus. In contrast to critics who agonized
2
Wenn ein Orchester, ohne Ausnahme eines einzelnen, an seinem Dirigenten hngt und an ihn glaubt, so
gebhrt unserm das Lob...Von sogenannten Kabalen und dem hnlichen hrt man hier nichts, und so ists
recht und mssen Kust und Knstler gedeihen. GS 1:309. Die Musiker bilden hier eine Familie, die sich
tglich sehen, tglich ben...Dazu nun ein Konzertmeister, der ebenfalls z.B. die Partituren des letzteren
auswendig, einen Direktor, der sie gleichfalls aus- und inwendig wei,und der Ehrenkranz ist fertig. GS
1:378.
3
Wie sich aber freilich im Adagio alle Himmel auftaten, Beethoven wie einen aufschwebenden Heiligen
zu empfangen, da mochte man wohl alle Kleinigkeiten der Welt vergessen und eine Ahnung vom Jenseits
die Nachblickenden durchschauern. Ibid., 1:315.
4
Bilden so die grern Leistungen die Sulen des Musiklebens, so schlingen sich die der Virtuosen wie
duftige Krnze hindurch. Ibid., 1:311. Und jetzt zu den Sngerinnen und Virtuosen, die diese nie ganz zu
lobenden Konzerte verschnerten als Arabesken. Ibid., 1:315.
Chapter Four 208

over the problematic relationship between virtuosity and serious music, Schumann
emphasized the potential for select virtuosos to serve as some of the most productive
members of the community of self-consciously serious German musicians.
Just as Schumanns writings on the Gewandhaus concerts passed easily between
paeans to the works being performed and praise for the community of flesh-and-blood
musicians, his vision for the virtuosos role in musical culture informed not only his
views on the professional activities of real-life virtuosos but also, I will argue, his own
concertos. Schumanns description of virtuosos inhabiting the mountain of the muses was
not an unrealized musical utopia but a practical (if nonetheless still idealized) vision for
the virtuosos role in musical life, one thatfor Schumanncertain virtuosos realized. It
also formed the background to some of the more idiosyncratic, innovative aspects of
Schumanns violin and piano concertos. These works employ a variety of strategies to
present the soloists virtuosity as part of the experience of serious music: they stage
syntheses between the flashy but poetic virtuoso and some of the figureheads of the
serious concert, particularly the symphonic tradition and the symphony orchestra itself.
By critically and compositionally considering the virtuosos position in the
community of serious musicians, Schumann addressed one of the more anxietyprovoking strands of the nineteenth-century virtuosity discourse. As Dana Gooley has
argued, behind such clichs as virtuoso egotism and charlatanry lurked the concern
that virtuoso concerts drew audiences away from symphonies and oratorios, the staples of
the serious concert.5 Eduard Krger, one of the Neue Zeitschrifts frequent writers on
virtuosity, took what Gooley has shown to be a Hegelian approach to the topic. In his
5
Dana Gooley, The Battle Against Instrumental Virtuosity In the Early Nineteenth Century, in Franz
Liszt and his World, ed. Dana Gooley and Christopher Gibbs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006),
88-94.
Chapter Four 209

1841 article, Das Virtuosenconcert: Gesprch (which stages a fictional dialogue
between a Virtuoso, a Music Director, and a Dilettante), Krger has his Director accuse
the Virtuoso of undermining the cause of serious music by performing only his own
popularly styled concertos and variation sets. He further alleges that this practice models
an unhealthy approach to self-expression by elevating the Virtuosos own personality and
ego above more serious objectives. 6 As an alternative, Krger suggests that the performer
use his or her virtuosity to serve a more serious, supposedly timeless entity, most often a
canonized masterwork. Krger thus brought to bear on the virtuosity discourse some of
Hegels ideas about how an individual could completely realize his own potential. As
Jerrold Siegel has observed, Hegel thought that the individual needed to merge himself
with something greater and objective, transforming both it and himself.7 Gooley, Mary
Hunter (in a recent article), and Krger before them have all stressed that this Hegelinflected imperative recommended a certain relationship between performer and work:
the canonized masterwork could serve as the larger entity with which the virtuoso could
merge his own subjectivity. 8 But Krgers charges could also, as Gooley recognizes,
involve the virtuosos relationship with his or her fellow musicians. Krgers Music
Director fears that the rage for virtuosity creates undesirable competition among
musicians. Moreover, Krger identifies his Director with genresnotably the symphony
See, for example, Krger, Das Virtuosenconcert NZfM 14, no. 41 (May 21, 1841): 164.
Jerrold Siegel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth
Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 391-426. As Siegel shows, Hegel often used
political, community-oriented metaphors for this approach to subjectivity. Early political systems, Hegel
believed, offered the individual only unsatisfactory choices, either reducing them to participants in
collective values and institutions or by allowing individuality to become withdrawn into itself. Ideally,
however, the modern state could allow individuals to become, in Siegels words, agents of their own
integration, finding a synergistic reconciliation between their individual existences and the objective
reality that surrounded them.
8
See Mary Hunter, To Play as If from the Soul of the Composer: The Idea of the Performer in Early
Romantic Aesthetics, Journal of the American Musicological Society 58, no. 2 (2005): 357-98.
7
Chapter Four 210

and oratoriothat require the collective efforts of large numbers of professional and,
presumably, amateur musicians. In the end, the Director expresses hope that the epic
and dramatic will come to dominate concert life at the expense of the brilliant and the
soloistic. 9 Das Virtuosenconcert, however, proposes few suggestions as to what kind of
relationships between virtuoso and musical community would embody a wholesome
approach to subjectivity.
Schumanns writings on virtuosity do not employ the Hegelian language Krger
uses. Instead, they display greater concern for the virtuosos potential to shape public
taste and command an audience than with abstract issues of subjectivity and selfhood.
Nevertheless, his writings and concertos tackled issues similar to those Krger discussed.
They offer their own solutions for merging the virtuosos individual achievement and
display with something epic, collective, and supposedly greater, solutions that do not
rely exclusively on the ideal of the virtuoso as a champion of canonized repertoire.
Schumanns essays on Leipzig concert life teem with virtuosos whose activities,
according to Schumann, cultivated the symphonic, the canonic, and the serious. Antonio
Bazzini, cited at the outset of the Introduction, offered one example. French pianist Marie
Pleyel offered another. In a review of Pleyels 1839 concerts, Schumann praised her for
contributing to the dissemination of the noblest in art, stressing her performing choices,
which included Mendelssohns Concerto No. 1, Op. 25, Webers Konzertstck, and
Beethovens Concerto No. 3. 10 Schumann also singled out Mendelssohn himself for
Die Aristokratie des Epischen und Dramatischen ber das Lyrische, d.h. fr den Concersaal, das ists
was ich behaupte. Krger, Das Virtuosenconcert NZfM 14, no. 43 (May 28, 1841): 172. Gooley also
notes this striking proposal of Krgers. The Battle Against Instrumental Virtuosity, 93.
10
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. GS 1:444
Chapter Four 211

offering Beethovens Concerto No. 5, Bachs Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, and his
own concertos.
The composer-critics 1839-40 retrospective article featured a particularly
colorful story about an initially uncultivated virtuoso ennobled by association with the
Leipzig orchestra, the now little-known violinist Christoph Wolfgang Hilf. Born into a
family of linen weavers in Elsen, Hilf spent his early years playing at dances. 11 In 1838,
he toured cities in Saxony and, as Schumann writes, made for Leipzig, which had
hovered before him since his childhood as the shining goal of his wanderings. An
artistic rags-to-riches tale ensues. Rough and unhewn as a block of marble, Hilf began
studies with Ferdinand David, who soon recognized that to bring out the inner beauties
of this remarkable talent he only needed to chip away the rude exterior. 12 Hilf debuted
as soloist with the orchestra only a year later. Schumann wrote of Hilfs performance of
de Beriots Swedish Concerto, perhaps a hundred listeners would have preferred the
concerto performed in a more galant or Parisian style. But seldom have I heard such
original freshness and naivet or such a spirited tone in performance. 13 As David Gramit
has noted, many nineteenth-century critics took pains to distance the culture of serious
music from tavern fiddlers and dance bands: associations with popular entertainment and
working-class surroundings threatened the music professions claim to cultural prestige
11
For a biographical sketch of Hilf, see Hans-Rainer Jung, Das Gewandhaus Orchester: Seine Mitglieder
und seine Geschichte seit 1743 (Leipzig: Faber, 2006), 94.
12
Schon andere Bltter haben berichtet wie er...von unwiderstehlicher Liebe zur Musik getrieben...sich
nach Leipzig aufmachte, was ihm wohl schon seit der Kindheit als leuchtendes Ziel seiner Wanderschaft
vorgeschwebt haben mochte. So kam er hier an, roh und unbehauen wie ein Marmorblock und der Dinge
wartend, die ber ihn ergehen sollten. Er geriet in de besten Hnde, in die unseres Konzertmeisters David,
der denn bald erkannte, da die inneren Schheiten dieses merkwrdigen Talentes herauszufrdern es nur
der Fortschaffung der groben Hlle bedrfe. GS: 1:508.
13
Hunderte gibt es vielleicht, die das Konzert galanter oder pariserischer vortragen mgen; aber diese
originale Frische, diese Naivitt diesen lebensvollen Ton im Vortrag hab ich noch wenig gehrt. Ibid.,
1:508.
Chapter Four 212

and middle-class respect.14 Schumanns story made this anxiety part of a narrative in
which virtuosity becomes perfected and cultivated through membership in a high-art
community.
Most of all, Clara Wieck, later Clara Schumann, embodied serious virtuosity for
Schumann and a generation of music critics. If Roberts published writings on Claras
performances generally appeared in the early 1830s, correspondents for the Neue
Zeitschrift during and after Roberts time as editor promoted her as an idealized, serious
virtuoso. 15 Although she programmed the latest virtuoso fare from Parisian pianistcomposers during her 1830s concerts, she also became at an early age an ambassador for
repertoire that the Romantic generation prized. Even in the 1830s, her concerts often
included historical repertoire (Beethoven and Scarlatti sonatas, for example, and Bach
preludes and fugues) and more contemporary specimens of Romanticism (notably works
by Chopin, Mendelssohn, and, occasionally, Robert Schumann himself). Claras
credentials with the Leipzig musical press also derived from her close association with
the Gewandhaus orchestra: during her lifetime, she collaborated with the orchestra more
frequently than did any other nineteenth-century pianist. 16
After mostly ending his activities as a critic and editor in 1844, Schumann
continued to explore the virtuosos place in the serious concert through his concertos, all
of which date from the 1840s and early 1850s. 17 Schumanns most intense compositional
14
David Gramit, Cultivating Music: Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German
Musical Culture, 1770-1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), see, for example, 132.
15
Robert Schumanns Schwrmbriefe and aphorisms from Aus Meisters Raros, Florsetans, und
Eusebiuss Denk- und Dicht-Bchlein laud Clara Wieck as a performer of Innigkeit, genius, and depth.
16
Nancy Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman, rev. ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2001), 276-77.
17
Schumann worked on two unfinished concerto projects during the 1830s. In 1831, he completed the solo
part of the first movement of an F-major concerto designed for his own use, and in 1839 completed most of
a D-minor first movement that has become known as the Konzertsatz.
Chapter Four 213

engagement with the concerto paralleled a shift in his compositional activity. During the
1840s, he moved away from piano music suited to the salon and toward more public
venues and genres (notably the symphony, but also the oratorio, choral society, and opera
stage). His interest in serious virtuosityone that had occupied him from his earliest
days as a composer, writer, and aspiring performersimilarly turned outward. The
concertos handle concerto form and solo-orchestra interaction through a variety of
strategies that enact symbiotic relationships between the virtuoso and the Parnassian
fixtures of the serious concert. In the last two decades of his career, then, Schumann
published showpieces in which the virtuoso merges his or her bravura with something
greater.
Discussion of the virtuosity discourse, particularly the strand that agonized over
the virtuosos role in musical culture, has been curiously scarce or absent in scholarship
on Schumanns concertos. Claudia Macdonald, Stephen Lindeman, Michael Struck,
Joseph Kerman, and Juan Martin Koch have all published insightful studies of these
compositions. Even the long-marginalized Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134 and
the violin Phantasie, Op. 131 (not to mention the posthumous Violin Concerto, WoO 23)
have figured prominently in discussions of Schumanns luckless late works. 18 These
scholars tend to view Schumanns concertos in terms of their engagement with concerto
conventions, often situating them in the context of mid-century innovations in concerto
form. Macdonald in particular has produced a comprehensive study of Schumanns
18
Claudia Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto (New York: Routledge, 2005); Stephen
Lindeman, Structural Novelty and Tradition in the Early Romantic Piano Concerto (Stuyvesant, NY:
Pendragon, 1999); Michael Struck, Die umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke Schumanns (Hamburg: Karl
Dieter Wagner, 1984); Joseph Kerman, The Concertos, in The Cambridge Companion to Schumann, ed.
Beate Perrey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Juan Martin Koch, Das Klavierkonzert des
19. Jahrhunderts und die Kategorie des Symphonischen, Musik und Musikanschauung im 19. Jahrhundert
8 (Sinzig: Studio, 2001).
Chapter Four 214

critical writings on the concerto and his own concerted works. She reconstructs the
composers main stylistic criteria for reviewing, and presumably when composing,
concertos: substantial interplay between orchestra and solo, motivic interconnections
between sections of the concerto form, overall continuity, and complete sonata-form
structures. Other writers have drawn attention to the symphonic aspects of some of the
concertos. However, scholars have yet to consider how Schumanns priorities as a critic
and composer of concertos engage with his view of serious virtuosity.
From one point of view, indeed, the concerto genre is about the channeling and
presentation of virtuosity. The most public vehicle for nineteenth-century virtuosos, the
concerto inherently involves interaction between the star soloistgenerally expected to
offer virtuosic fireworksand the orchestra. Its formal features themselves could mix
symphonic tradition, a postclassical approach to concerto construction, and the latest
trends in virtuoso music. As Joseph Kerman has observed (in a Mozartian, not a
Schumannian context), concertos balance and mingle discourse and display. The
former inheres in the exchange and altering of themes between solo and orchestra as well
as their mutual navigation of a sonata form. The latter appears in the fast, showy playing
so common at the closes of expositions and recapitulations where, in Kermans words,
the soloist transforms from rhetorician to athlete. 19
Particularly at a time when virtuosity and the figure of the virtuoso attracted
public fascination and critical scrutiny and when the orchestra and the symphonic
tradition enjoyed unprecedented cultural prestige, how the concerto negotiated between
discourse and virtuosic display could play to postclassical attitudes about virtuosity or to
19
Joseph Kerman, Mozarts Piano Concertos and their Audiences, in Write All These Down: Essays on
Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 322-34.
Chapter Four 215

self-consciously serious views like Schumanns. In the present chapter, I consider how
four of Schumanns concertosthe Piano Concerto, Op. 54, the Introduction and Allegro
Appassionato, Op. 92, the Introduction and Concert-Allegro, Op. 134, and the Phantasie
for violin, Op. 131frame and stage virtuoso display. 20 Arriving at these insights will
lead us through Schumanns critique of the postclassical concerto as well as to several
new observations about stylistic and structural aspects of the concertos. In the end, I
argue, each of these four showpieces merges virtuosity with the symbols and institutions
of serious music, uniting wreath and pillar for the sake of appeal and elevation.
Schumanns critical writings on the concerto suggest the potential value of such a
combination. They often describe the genre as a link to the public, a site of
contemporaneity through its absorption of the latest virtuoso trends, and a connection
with a classical past. His largely positive 1836 review of Wilhelm Tauberts Concerto
No. 1 in E Major, Op. 18, for example, begins by rebutting a concertgoer who had
sneered that Tauberts concerto lacks nothing save the faults of modern times
ostensibly referring to the concertos nontraditional form (to be discussed later in this
chapter) and its pervasive display of light-fingered bravura. Schumann turns the
naysayers words on their head and praises the concerto precisely for its modern layout
20
I omit the unfinished early concertos, as well as three later, published concerted works, all of which open
lines of inquiry that beg for separate consideration. The Konzertstck for four horns, Op. 86 showcases the
horn section of an orchestra rather than a single virtuoso. The Cello Concerto, Op. 129, which Schumann
planned to publish simultaneously in versions for both full orchestra and with quartet accompaniment, blurs
the boundary between chamber music and the public concert. On the Cello Concerto see, for example,
Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto, 288-91. And, finally, the Violin Concerto was not
published until 1937; aside from correspondence between members of Schumanns circle, it did not have a
critical reception in the nineteenth-century, and its twentieth-century reception presents issues that extend
far beyond the virtuosity discourse. This later discourse intertwined the wishes of Schumanns descendants
(who wanted the Violin Concerto to remain unpublished), the efforts of violinist Yehudi Menuhin to bring
the work to light (which resulted in him giving the American premiere of the work), and the Third Reich
propaganda ministry (which preempted Menuhin and sponsored the world premiere of the Violin Concerto,
albeit in a version reworked by Paul Hindemith).
Chapter Four 216

and audience appeal, even suggesting that more conservative German musicians could
learn something about winning an audience from French virtuosi:
With a concerto, a crowd of a hundred should be pleased, if possible be
delighted, which will in turn delight the virtuoso with applause. It appears
now that the French overuse savory stimulations and are constantly
attempting to invent new titillationstoo much of the bad. But we
Germans, to the disadvantage of the virtuoso, who also wants to live, on
the average make too little use of the good.
In this sense, we are not tackling the concerto under review but rather the
entire principle of a few composers, located apparently in Berlin, who
mean to muffle virtuoso-nonsense by repeating certain old-fashioned
formulas and turns of phrase as if they were the greatest wisdom. 21
Schumanns approval implicitly extended to Mendelssohns Concerto No. 1 in G Minor,
Opus 25, which, as the review points out, shares structural features with Tauberts and
may have served as a model for the slightly later work. 22 The appeal of a concerto to the
public could also be less compatible with the ideology of serious music. Schumanns
1843 review of Charles Mayers Piano Concerto, Op. 70 dismissed it with the accusation,
One often speaks of the depravity of audiences; and who has corrupted them? You,
virtuoso composers! 23
Schumann elsewhere stressed the classical heritage of the concerto. His scathing
review of Dhlers Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 7 suggests that the concerto demands
greater seriousness than the bravura rondo or variation set: Anyone has the right to
21
Mit einem Konzerte soll eine hundertkpfige Menge erfreut, womglich entzckt werden, die wiederum
ihrerseits den Virtuosen mit Beifall entzcken soll. Offenbar tun nun namentlich die Franzosen im
Gebrauch pikanter Reizmittel und in immer-whrender Aufbietung, neue zu erfinden, zu viel des
Schlimmen, wir Deutschen aber zum Schaden des Virtuosen, der doch auch leben will, im Durchschnitt zu
wenig des Guten. In dieser Hinsicht greifen wir nicht sowohl das vorliegende Konzert, als das ganze
Prinzip eingier Tonsetzter, deren Stammsitz namentlich Berlin zu sein scheint, an, welche den
Virtuosenunfug dadurch zu dmpfen neinen, wenn sie gewisse altbackene Formeln und Rebensarten, als
wr es Wunder was, vorbringen. GS 1:158-59.
22
Both Taubert and Mendelssohn studied in Berlin with the pianist-composer Ludwig Berger.
23
Man spricht so oft von Verderbtheit des Publikums; wer hat es denn verdorben? Ihr, die KomponistenVirtuosen. GS 2:143.
Chapter Four 217

compose a merry rondo. But if one would contend for a noble bride, it will be presumed
that his birth and sentiments are noble; orwithout overstating the caseif one works in
such a large art form, which the best composers in the land approach with modesty and
trepidation, he must be aware of what he is doing. 24 What Schumann envisioned,
though, was not a continuation of eighteenth-century tradition but a fusion of the
postclassical virtuoso concerto with gestures toward seriousness and transcendence. His
review of Chopins Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21, credits the composer with
leading a Beethovenian spirit into the concert hall.25 The Taubert review speculates,
Were a genius like Mozart born today, he would write Chopinesque concertos rather
than Mozartian ones. 26 For Schumann, Tauberts concertoand, by implication, select
other concerted showpiecesdemonstrated to traditionalists on one side and diversionseeking Philistines on the other that one can definitely measure up to certain demands
and wishes of our time [including, presumably, audience appetite for virtuosity] without
giving up any dignity as an artist. 27
The Virtuoso Concerto and Schumanns Critique of Postclassicism

The conventional early- to mid-nineteenth-century concerto channeled virtuosic display
and minimized solo-orchestra discourse in response to the postclassical aesthetic and the
practicalities of the touring virtuosos career. Claudia Macdonald has shown that
24
Denn schreibt jemand ein lustiges Rondo, so tut er recht daran. Bewirbt sich aber jemand um eine
Frstenbraut, so wird vorausgesetzt, da er edler Geburt und Gesinnung sei; oder, ohne berflssig bildern
zu wollen, arbeitet jemand in einer so groen Kunstform, vor welche die Besten des Landes mit
Bescheidenheit und Scheu treten, so mu er das wissen. GS 1:149-50.
25
Wie Hummel den Stil Mozarts dem einzelnen, dem Virtuosen zum Genu im besonderen Instrumente
verarbeitete, so fhrte Chopin Beethovenschen Geist in den Konzertsaal. Ibid., 1:166.
26
[E]in Genie, wie das eines Mozart, heute geboren, eher Chopinsche Konzerte schreiben wrde als
Mozartsche. Ibid., 1:159.
27
[M]ge es nur bedenken, da man gewissen Anforderungen und Wnschen der Zeit sehr wohl gengen
knne, ohne sich dadurch etwas von seiner Knstlerwrde zu vergeben. Ibid., 1:159.
Chapter Four 218

Schumanns criticism of concertos continually returned to issues of formal and stylistic
discontinuity and to the presence or avoidance of orchestra-solo interaction. 28
Recognizing these writings as part of Schumanns critique of the postclassical style
(discussed in Chapter 1) reveals the aesthetics and ideology that underlay both
Schumanns reviews and the postclassical concertos they discussed.
Juan Martin Koch describes the concerto genre as an important calling card for
nineteenth-century pianist-composers and a free space in which they could showcase a
multiplicity of contrasting styles. 29 A marginalized role for the orchestra during solo
spans made the postclassical concerto adaptable to various performing situations: at any
given engagement, a virtuoso could find him- or herself playing a concerto with full
orchestra (in various states of professionalism and preparedness), with quartet
accompaniment, or as a solo piece in a more intimate setting. Postclassical composers
also partitioned and filled the free space according to their principles of clarity,
transparency, and variety. Virtually all follow a similar trajectory that differs somewhat
from their classical forebears. The expositional and recapitulatory solo spans of Mozarts
concerto first movements tend to move from solo-orchestra discourse in the articulation
of first and second theme groups to more exclusively soloistic display in their closing
areasall governed by and opening tutti that has, Kermans words, laid down the basic
conditions for musical discourse by exposing most of the movements thematic
content.30 By contrast, postclassical first-movement solo spans intersperse quasi-operatic
first and second themes with two lengthy zones of brilliant display, a plan that unfolds
28
Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto, 134.

Koch, Das Klavierkonzert des 19. Jahrhunderts, 52.
30
Kerman, Mozarts Piano Concertos, 325.
29
Chapter Four 219

with minimal input from the orchestra save in light accompaniment and disposable
tuttis. 31
Schumann became familiar with the postclassical model of the concerto early in
his career. He performed Johann Nepomuk Hummels Concerto No. 2 in A Minor, Op.
85 during his years in Heidelberg and continued to study it under Friedrich Wieck.
Hummels concertoas one might expect from a star pupil of Mozart whose career
extended into the 1830scombines features of the nineteenth-century virtuoso concerto
with ones more redolent of the Mozartian, eighteenth-century tradition. 32 More typical of
the concertos Schumann critiqued is Henri Herzs 1829 Concerto No. 1 in A Major, Op.
34. Despite his well-known antipathy to the Paris-based star, Schumann studied Herzs
concerto and, as Macdonald has shown, actually used its formal proportions as a model
for his own, unfinished Concerto in F Major. 33
The exposition of Herzs first movement, charted in Figure 4.1, exemplifies the
postclassical concertos trajectory from lyricism to display. The opening tutti projects a
symphonic style. It leads with a scalar motive in the low strings and an answer in the
winds, both of which the tutti develops in modulating sequences. However, the
symphonic opening turns out to be not the groundwork for a discourse between piano and
orchestra (as it would in a Mozart or Beethoven concerto) but one of several styles to
which the first movement refers: other than the jaunty second theme, the solo spans use
no material from the tutti. Herzs expository solo and its counterpart in the recapitulation
31
For summaries of the nineteenth-century virtuoso concerto, see Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the
Piano Concerto, 13-36 and John Rink, Chopin: The Piano Concertos (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 1-6. Neither summary, though, connects concerto conventions to the postclassical aesthetic.
32
On Hummels studies with Mozart, see Mark Kroll, Johann Nepomuk Hummel: A Musicians Life and
World (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2007), 12-18.
33
Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto, 51-66.
Chapter Four 220

introduce the soloist with a series of fantasia-like flourishes that lead to a melody
decorated with bel canto ornaments and a nocturne-like accompaniment. An observation
about virtuoso concertos that Carl Borromaeus von Miltz made in an 1837 Allegemeine
musikalische Zeitung article applies equally to Herzs. Virtuoso concertos, he notes, often
begin like overtures or symphonies but, with the entrance of the soloist, turn into a song,
[operatic] scene, or ensemble.34 Herz contrasts the singing lyricism of the first and
second themes with two spans of bravura writing that serve in the first case as a
modulatory transition to the second theme and in the final case as the longer section of
brilliant material I shall call the closing display. 35
The closing displaythe crowning moment of exposition and recapitulation
consists of a string of subtly contrasting pianistic gestures, all highlighted by a
transparent texture, placement in the pianos upper register, and metrically uncomplicated
rhythm. (The one from Herzs exposition appears in Example 4.1.) As Macdonald has
shown, conventional nineteenth-century closing displays differ from those in eighteenthcentury concertos. Concerto first movements by Mozart and Beethoven generally
conclude with complete, embellished cadential phrases; because of the long gestures in
play, such closing displays tend to use a limited range of pianistic figures. By contrast,
Herz, Kalkbrenner, and (to a lesser extent) Hummel close with concatenations of short
34
Im Concerte mache eine krftige Ouvertre oder der erste Satz einer Sinfonie den Anfang Ihm folge
ein Gesangstck, Scene oder Ensemble, am liebsten frs Concert geschrieben. Carl Borromaeus von
Miltitz, AmZ 39, no. 8 (February 22, 1837): 126.Cited in Koch, Das Klavierkonzert des 19. Jahrhunderts,
53-54.
35
Different authors have used different terminology when referring to these virtuosity-laden zones.
Macdonald distinguishes between thematic and passagework areas, and John Rink refers to
Spielepisoden between the themes. James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, in their eighteenth-centurycentered study of sonata forms, describe a display episode at the end of expositions and recapitulations.
Elements of Sonata Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 543-48. My term closing display,
while referring to the same part of concerto first-movement as these other authors, differentiates between
transitional and closing areas (since Schumann tends to treat these parts of the concerto form differently)
and stresses that, far from a mere episode that merely confirms arrival in a primary or secondary key,
these strings of virtuosic figuration represented one of the highlights of the concerto.
Chapter Four 221

harmonic gestures, each of which cadences on the tonic at hand or, in some cases,
secondary tonal centers. At the outset of Herzs closing display, arrivals on the tonic or
tonic minor occur every two bars; later passagework makes more distant tonal forays,
such as the vamp over A-flat in m. 174. The result is more atomized and kaleidoscopic
than in Mozart and Beethoven. The brevity of each harmonic gesture allows Herz to
introduce numerous subtly contrasting modules of figuration, many of which literally or
sequentially repeat before moving on. The closing display, in this sense, adheres to the
postclassical virtue of pleasing variety in its measure-to-measure changes. It also shows a
quintessentially postclassical structural clarity with the extensive signpostingin the
form of flourishes and trillsthat announces the end of the display. Herzs exposition
and its counterpart in the recapitulation, without engaging in substantial discourse with
the orchestra, thus trace a line from the symphonic through the quasi-operatic to a
climactic display of bravura.
Schumanns writings on concertos often read into this heterogeneity and
discontinuity a meretricious desire to entertain and appeal. His 1836 review of Friedrich
Kalkbrenners Concerto No. 4 in A-flat, Op. 127 took a similar approach to the Neue
Zeitschrift reviews of Thalbergs I Capuleti and Norma Fantasies cited in Chapter 1.
Like the earlier reviews, Schumanns Kalkbrenner essay critiques its subject for what it
claims is a stylistic eclecticism calculated to offer something for everyone. In the A-flatMajor Concerto, Schumann saw a vacillation between the conventional glitter of the
postclassical concerto and an attempt to introduce stylistic features more characteristic of
cutting-edge Romantic musicin this case, innovative approaches to keyboard virtuosity
a wide harmonic palette.
Chapter Four 222

Macdonald interprets this heterogeneity as Kalkbrenners attempt to disguise the
purely virtuosic aims of his music behind false emotion and join the new Romantic
school. 36 Schumanns primary focus, though, is on Kalkbrenners supposed attempt to
increase his own audience appeal and mitigate novel aspects of his work with recourse to
postclassical convention. Even his description of the lure of Romanticism suggests that
the acclaim up-and-coming virtuosos enjoy is what entices Kalkbrenner:
We see...Kalkbrenner standing at a crossroads, wondering whether he
should continue on the old path with the laurels he has already acquired or
whether he should struggle for new ones on the other. There the
comfortable and the usual entice him, here the fiery shouts that the
Romanticists experience. Entirely in his own conciliatory character, he
does not throw himself too strongly into the new sphere, just as if he
would first test what the audience thinks about it. 37
Schumann further accuses Kalkbrenner of a lack of authenticity and an orientation toward
ease and elegance by using the aristocratic imagery that often seasons his writings on
postclassical music (perhaps recognizing Kalkbrenners practice of hosting salons at his
Paris residence?). Through he put on the most diabolical mask, Schumann writes, one
would recognize him by the kid gloves with which he held it. 38 He hints at the specific
stylistic features that drew his allegations of faux-Romanticism. Let him delight us anew
36

Wir sehen nmlich in vorliegenden Konzert unverkennbar den Einflu der jungen romantischen Welt,
die Kalkbrenner aus der Schule lief, ihn selbst aber wie zweifelhaft an einem Kreuzweg, ob er auf der alten
Bahn mit den erworbenen Krnzen weiterziehn oder auf der anderen neue erkmpfen solle. Dort lockt ihn
das Bequeme und Gewohnte, hier der feurige Zuruf, den die Romantischen erfahren. Ganz seinem
vermittelnden Charakter gem wirft er sich aber nicht zu stark in die neue Sphre, gleich als ob er erst das
Publikum probieren wolle, was es dazu meine. GS 1:156.
38
Wenn er sich eine diabolische Mask vorbnde, man wrde ihn an den Glacehandschuhen kennen, mit
denen er sie hlt. Ibid., 1:156.
37
Chapter Four 223

with his flashing trills and flying triplets. We esteem them far higher than his four-part
fugal passages, his falsely yearning appoggiaturas, etc. 39
The sharp contrast between the second theme group and the closing display of the
exposition of Kalkbrenners first movement exemplifies this stylistic disjuncture for the
sake, arguably, of tasteful variety. (Example 4.2) Kalkbrenner adds an element of pathos
to the theme with striking harmonic gestures, including frequent, unexpected arrivals on
the Neapolitan and tonic minor. (The Neapolitan in m. 80 and the G-flat that concludes
the second theme might have been what Schumann meant by falsely longing
appoggiaturas.) As the theme unfolds, Kalkbrenner introduces a more elaborate pianistic
idiom: the theme appears momentarily transfigured beneath trills and is then belted out
with filled-in octaves (to be played con disperazione). The expositional closing display
dispels the charged rhetoric by snapping into a harmonically straightforward postclassical
idiom. Kalkbrenner does not conclude the solo span with harmonically or texturally
adventurous passagework (such as Schumann found in Chopins L ci darem la mano
Variations and employed in his own Abegg Variations) to match his second theme,
but, having beguiled his audiences, returns to more familiar territory. 40
Schumanns critique of postclassical bravura music also formed part of the
ideological basis of a trend that surfaces throughout his concerto criticism. His writings
often promote contemporary efforts to integrate the movements of the concerto and to
introduce an element of structural enterprise into the genre. Tauberts Concerto No. 1, for
example, forgoes a long orchestral opening tutti, compresses the recapitulation of the first
39
[E]rfreue er uns immerhin von neuem mit seinen blitzenden Trillern und fliegenden Triolen, wir
schlagen sie weit hher an als seine vierstimmigen fugierten Takte, falsch sehnschtigen Vorhalte usw.
Ibid., 1:156.
40
As if to underline the switch in styles, Kalkbrenner changes the meter from common to cut time.
Chapter Four 224

movement, plays the movements attaca, and interpolates a reminiscence of the first
movements opening theme before the coda of the finale. Is [Tauberts concerto]
overgrown in form, unnatural, confused, or broken up, Schumann asks, the favorite
epithets of classicists when they cannot immediately understand something? 41 In his
1836 review of Ignaz Moscheless Concerto No. 6, Op. 90 (Concerto Fantastique),
Schumann famously envisioned a showpiece that could present, in a single movement,
the allegro, adagio, and rondo components of a concerto, anticipating (though not
perfectly) the structure of the first movement of his own Piano Concerto, Op. 54:
Indeed, there is a lack of smaller concert pieces in which the virtuoso can
unfold at the same time his performance of an allegro, adagio, and rondo.
One would have to plot out a genre that consisted of a larger movement in
a moderate tempo, in which the preparatory part would take the place of a
first Allegro, the cantabile [possibly meaning either the second theme or
the lyrical beginning of the development customary in virtuoso concertos]
the Adagio, and the brilliant close the rondo. 42
Despite this openness to structural innovation, though, Schumann consistently
gave negative reviews to one of the most common integrative strategies mid-nineteenthcentury concerto composers developed. In this scheme, the first movement was truncated
by cutting the sonata form off at the exposition or development. The first movement of
Moscheless Concerto Fantastique, for example, does not complete its recapitulation.
Schumann speaks highly of Moscheless concerto overall but maintains that these
positive qualities impress in spite of the concertos undecided form. We have already
declared ourselves opposed to this form, he writes. Even though it does not seem
41
Ist es ausgewachsen in der Form, unnatrlich, verworren, zerrissendie beliebten Worte der
Klassischen, wenn sie etwas nicht gleich verstehen...? GS 1:158.
42
Allerdings fehlt es an kleineren Konzertstcken, in denen der Virtuose den Allegro-, Adagio- und
Rondo-Vortrag zugleich entfalten knnte. Man mte auf eine Gattung sinnen, die aus einem greren Satz
in einem migen Tempo bestnde, in dem der vorbereitende Teil die Stelle eines ersten Allegros, die
Gesangstelle die des Adagios und ein brillanter Schlu die des Rondos vertrten. Ibid., 1:163.
Chapter Four 225

impossible to create an agreeable whole with it, the aesthetic dangers appear too great in
comparison with what can be achieved. 43
Such opposition may seem surprising, given Schumanns use of fragmentary
structures throughout his early piano works. As Macdonald has noted, Schumanns
recognition of the concertos classical pedigree informed his demand for an agreeable
whole. I would add that Schumanns critique of the postclassical aesthetic also seems to
have shaped one of the more conservative aspects of his views on concerto form.
Moscheless concerto uses a shortened first movement to create a fantastic, quasiimprovisatory quality. Other concertos, however, seem to have shortened their first
movements for a more quintessentially postclassical purpose. By omitting full
recapitulations or cutting off the first movement at the exposition, a composer could treat
the first one or two solo spans of a concerto not as components of a sonata-form first
movement but as a topic to be sampled and then dropped in favor of something else. In
abbreviated first movements, then, the postclassical virtues of variety and brevity could
replace the symphonic imperative of formal balance and override the grammar of sonata
form.
Charles Mayers Concerto, Op. 70the one that prompted Schumann to accuse
virtuoso-composers of corrupting audiencesadopts this strategy. Its first movement,
charted in Figure 4.2, is a fragment of a sonata form, an exposition without development
or recapitulation. Mayer navigates a single progression from the symphonic to the brillant
by way of the operatically lyrical without completing the sonata form the movement
43
Gegen die Form haben wir uns schon frher erklrt. Scheint es auch nicht unmglich, in ihr ein
wohltuendes Ganzes zu erzeugen, so ist die sthetische Gefahr zu gro gegen das, was erreicht werden
kann...[D]as phantastische Konzert...ist tchtig berall, originell, durch sich selbst gltig und trotz der
etwas schwankenden Formen von voller Wirkung. Ibid., 1:163.
Chapter Four 226

implies. Encasing the soloists lyrical themes are two vast display areas, the closing one
alone occupying 61 of the expositions 152 measures. And thus Mayers first movement
ends: having completed an exposition and landed on the dominant of D major, it
transitions to the next attraction, the F-major slow movement. Herzs Concerto No. 2 in C
Minor, Op. 74, follows a similar pattern. In his reviews of these concertos, Schumann
does not refer specifically to formal issues. However, his accusations of frivolity,
orientation toward entertainment, and deleterious influence on the publicall frequent
tropes in his critique of postclassicismrecognize that the works in question respond to
other priorities than symphonic imperatives of closure and balance.
Schumanns Critique of Postclassical Virtuosity and Clara Wiecks Concerto in A Minor,

Op. 7
Schumanns doubts about concertos that take shortcuts with sonata form and their
connection to his critique of postclassicism help to explain his ambivalent reception of
one particularly innovative showpiece, Clara Wiecks Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7.
Completed in 1835, when Wieck was 15, used as a warhorse on her concerto tours of
Germany, and published in 1837, the work partakes of contemporary innovations in
concerto structure. Though it includes a development, Wiecks concerto, like other
abbreviated first movements, omits the recapitulation, a feature that leads Janina Klassen
to describe the work as having the character of a free Phantasiestck. 44 The concerto
showcases a range of conventional postclassical topoi. The solo entrance in the first
movement opens with the fantasia-like fanfares typical of virtuoso concertos, and the first
44
Janina Klassen, Clara Wieck-Schumann: Die Virtuosin als Komponistin, Kieler Schriften zu
Musikwissenschaft 37 (Kassel: Brenreiter, 1990), 140.
Chapter Four 227

and second thematic areas both present bel canto melodies decorated with turns and
appoggiaturas. The finale, as in many postclassical concertos, adopts a dance meter, in
this case a polonaise.
At the same time, Wieck combines these more-or-less conventional features with
strikingly original ones, some of which Stephen Lindeman has described as radical and
unprecedented.45 As many commentators have observed, Wieck motivically unifies the
concertos three movements: the second theme group of the first movement, the secondmovement Romanze theme, and the rondo-finales polonaise theme all use motives from
the first theme group of the first movement. 46 The second movement presents an
unusually intimate scoring, a sparsely ornamented duet for piano and solo cello. The
closing display of the first-movement exposition also features several harmonic twists
that scholars have yet to point out. (Example 4.3) Wiecks second theme is in F major
rather than the expected C major. Although the closing display corrects this irregularity
with a strong arrival on C, it never settles firmly on a single key. Instead, the rapid
passagework, including two measures of chromatic sequences, navigates a series of
fleeting tonics. Most surprisingly, the closing display does not end with a cadence and
orchestral tutti but segues directly into the development, which begins in the distant key
of A-flat. 47
Schumanns response to the concerto was initially enthusiastic. He attended
Wiecks premiere on November 9, 1835 and recorded his impressions in one of his early
articles on Leipzig concert life, his Schwrmbriefe:
45
Lindeman, Structural Novelty and Tradition, 133-38.

See, for example, Klassen, Clara Wieck-Schumann, 141.
47
Klassen notes this segue but not its striking departure from concerto convention. Ibid, 141.
46
Chapter Four 228

The first strains that we heard flew before us like a young phoenix
fluttering upwards. Passionate white roses and pearl lily cups leaned
down, orange blossoms and myrtle nodded above, and between them,
alders and weeping willows threw their melancholy shadows. In their
midst, however, a girls radiant face bobbed and searched for flowers to
make a wreath.48
The torrent of images resembles Schumanns ecstatic response to Chopins L ci darem
la mano Variations. Like Chopins Variations, Wiecks concerto resonated with the
young Schumanns interest in imbuing postclassical genres with unconventional, at times
difficult, elements. (See Chapter 2 for a fuller discussion of this aspect of Schumanns
aesthetic.) The wide-ranging harmonic gestures in Wiecks closing displaylike those in
Chopins Variationsadd new complexity to the transparent figuration one
conventionally finds at this juncture of a concerto first-movement.49 Schumann might
have also seen a parallel between the surprise movement to A-flat after the closing
display and the digressive, Jean-Paul-inspired tonal and formal plans that he himself used
in his early piano works. The motivic links between movements, while less obscure than
some of the unifying strategies in Schumanns piano cycles, could have appealed to the
composer-critics sense of Witz.
But Schumanns response cooled during the 1830s. His Schwrmbriefe already
hints at reservations: I often saw skiffs floating boldly over the waves, and only a master
hand at the tiller, a tautened sail was lacking that they might cut across the waves as
quickly and victoriously as they did safely. 50 He did not review the concerto himself for
the Neue Zeitschrift but delegated the task to Carl Ferdinand Becker, whose review
appeared in February, 1837. Schumanns stated reason for not writing on Wiecks
48
Translated in Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto, 161-62.

Chopins Opus 2 Variations served as one of Clara Wiecks concert warhorses during the early 1830s.
50
Translated in Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto, 162
49
Chapter Four 229

concerto was that his hostile relationship with Claras father would have raised doubts
about his objectivity. Unfortunately for Clara, Becker wrote little about the style of her
concerto and focused on the novelty of a large work composed by a woman, and a
teenager at that. 51 Finally, Schumann criticized the concerto to Wieck herself. During her
1837 tour of Vienna, Robert wrote to her, Do you always play your concerto of your
own initiative? There are stellar ideas in the first movementyet it did not make an
impression of completeness on me. 52 Schumanns allegation of incompleteness
summons the critique he was applying to other formally innovative concertos. He seems
to be asking whether Wiecks concertofor all its unprecedented featuressubscribed to
a postclassical, potpourri-like approach with its abbreviated first movement.
Ironically, it was not only what Macdonald calls Schumanns conservative
stance on concerto form that caused him to question the merits of Wiecks showpiece but
also a more progressive desire to reject the aesthetic of postclassicism and bring bravura
concertos into line with the imperatives of serious, in this case symphonic, music.
Schumann was intensifying his critique of postclassicism in the late 1830s with his essays
on concertos and variation sets. Wieck herself was beginning to abandon the postclassical
showpieces she had programmed in the early 1830 and was increasingly becoming an
ambassador for German Romanticism and serious music. Schumanns letter might have
suggested to the maturing virtuoso that it was time to drop yet another postclassical piece
from her repertoire. Indeed, Clara Wiecks response to his letter cites the wide appeal the
51
Claudia Macdonald has discussed the often gendered critiques of Clara Wiecks Concerto, Op. 7 in her
Critical Perception and the Woman Composer: The Early Reception of Piano Concertos by Clara Wieck
Schumann and Amy Beach, Current Musicology 55 (1993): 24-37.
52
Spielst Du Dein Koncert immer auf eignen Antrieb? Es sind Sterne von Gedanken im ersten Satzdoch
hat [es] keinen ganzen Eindruck auf mich gemacht. Robert Schumann to Clara Wieck, November 29,
1837. In Eva Weissweiler, ed., Clara und Robert Schumann Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe
(Basel and Frankfurt: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1984) 1:53. Translated in Macdonald, Robert Schumann and
the Piano Concerto, 165.
Chapter Four 230

work offered rather than disputing Roberts claim: You ask if I play if I play it of my
own initiativecertainly! I play it because everywhere it has so pleased and satisfied
connoisseurs as well as the general public. 53 Adding to critiques of Wiecks concerto
based on stereotypes about female creativity, then, was a private critique from Robert
aimed at postclassical experiments in concerto form. The fact that Clara herself did not
perform her own concerto after the late 1830s suggests that, for all the works popularity,
she may have been stung by discouraging but mostly un-gendered criticism that Robert
dispensed in private and by reviews that publically discussed her work in patronizingly
gendered terms. Perhaps, too, she herself realized that her own artistic identity and
programming practices were assuming a shape less amenable to postclassical bravura.
Vehicles for Serious Virtuosity

Schumanns Opuses 54, 92, 131, and 134 rework the framework of the conventional
postclassical concerto and employ various strategies for combining its conventional
trajectory toward virtuoso display with self-consciously serious, transcendental touches.
The free space that Juan Martin Koch describes in the concerto could not only
accommodate a sampler of symphonic, bel canto, and dance styles, but also an interaction
between virtuoso display, musical styles prized by the German culture of serious music,
and the figureheads of the serious concert. If the concerto served as a calling card for
composer-pianists and a link to the virtuosity-loving public, it could also serve a
composer-critic and his preferred virtuosos as a place to put virtuosity in what he
53
Du fragst, ob ich es aus eignem Antriebe spieleallerdings! ich spiele es, weil es berall so sehr
gefallen, und Kenner wie Nichtkenner befriedigt hat. Clara Wieck to Robert Schumann, December 21,
1838, in Weissweiler, ed., Robert und Clara Schumann Briefwechsel, 58. Translation from Macdonald,
Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto, 165.
Chapter Four 231

considered its ideal context, its own corner of the partly imaginary musical Parnassus.
Just as the Gewandhaus concerts of Schumanns essays offered a venue for virtuosos to
inhabit the temple of the muses, so did the concertos themselves.
The interaction between soloist and orchestra was one of Schumanns main
priorities as a critic of concertos as well as the most significant element that his own
concertos manipulate in their staging of virtuosity. Of course, solo-orchestra interaction
has been a central part of the development of the concerto and in scholarship on the
genre. Mozartsand to a lesser extent Beethovenspiano concertos alone have
nourished a substantial literature that explores how dialogue between the individual
soloist and the collective orchestra reflects not only manipulations of formal models but
also dramaturgical concepts and cultural beliefs about the relationship between individual
and society. 54 Exploring just how Schumann intertwines virtuoso and orchestra reveals an
equally intricate, meaningful dialogue. Though I do not discount the possibility that these
interactions might speak to a range of nineteenth-century preoccupations, the most
immediate concern for Schumann and his critics involved the relationship between the
virtuoso expected to offer the pleasures of fast, flashy playing and the symphony
orchestra as a centerpiece of serious, German musical life.
54
Kermans study, cited above, reads the solo-orchestra interactions in Mozarts Concerto in C minor, K.
491, as an expression of Mozarts disillusionment with the rituals of public performance. Mozarts Piano
Concertos, 330-33. For further cultural and literary interpretations of Mozarts and Beethovens concertos,
see Susan McClary, A Musical Dialectic from the Enlightenment: Mozarts Piano Concerto in G Major,
K. 453, movement 2, Cultural Critique 4 (1986): 129-69; Simon P. Keefe, Mozarts Piano Concertos:
Dramatic Dialogue in the Age of Enlightenment (Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2001) and Tia DeNora, The
Concerto and Society, in The Cambridge Companion to the Concerto, ed. Simon P. Keefe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 19-32. To cite one discussion of late twentieth-century repertory,
Richard Taruskin describes Alfred Schnittkes concertos as rich in instrumental dramaturgy that
recaptures the heroic subjectivity with which bourgeois audiences love to identify. Oxford History of
Western Music, vol. 5, The Late Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 466-67.
Chapter Four 232

One of Schumanns most substantial statements on the relationship between
orchestra and soloist views it specifically as a balance of power and claims that the
orchestra was entitled to more presence and agency than the postclassical concerto
conventionally offered. His review of Kalkbrenners Concerto No. 4 begins:
I reprimand composers of concertos for concerts (no pleonasm here) for
two reasons: firstly, they finish the solos before the tuttis,
unconstitutionally enough, because the orchestra represents the
parliament, without whose approval the piano can undertake nothing. 55
[Schumanns second reason involves a chord progression that, he alleges,
Kalkbrenner and other composers overuse.]
Schumann was not unique in using political metaphors that invoked autocracy and
democracy when discussing concerto structure. An unsigned 1838 Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung review of Mendelssohns Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 40, for
example, describes two types of concertos. In the first, the soloist rules as the absolute
sovereign, to whom the orchestra or accompanying instruments act merely as servants, as
support, proceeding alongside the soloist in abject obedience. In the other, the orchestra
is enabled to exercise a decisive influence on the shape of the whole. 56 Schumanns
and the AmZ writers rhetoric assumes the anti-aristocratic views common among
middle-class Germans, and their description of the concerto soloist as a potential autocrat
perhaps recognizes the aristocratic flavor popular virtuosos often gave their works and
personas. The larger point, though, seems to be not that political systems may be encoded
in ensemble interactions, but rather that the genre can potentially express an ideal (or
less-than-ideal) relationship between bravura soloist and communal orchestra. The
55
Zweierlei rge ich besonders an Konzert-Konzertkomponisten (kein Pleonasmus), erstens, da sie die
Solis eher fertig machen und haben als die Tuttis, unkonstitutionell genug, da doch das Orchester die
Kammern vertritt, ohne Zustimmung das Klavier nichts unternehmen darf. GS 1:154.
56
Translated by Thomas Grey in The Mendelssohn Companion, ed. Douglas Seaton (Westport, CT:
Greenwood, 2001), 546-48. For the original article, see AmZ 40, no. 36 (Sept. 3, 1838): 588-90.
Chapter Four 233

attribution of democracy or at least constitutional monarchy endows this relationship with
an enlightened, sociable veneer and offers the orchestra the moral high ground and a tone
of civilized seriousness by identifying it with a parliament rather than, for example, a
mob. 57
In addition to the strategies of channeling and framing virtuosity that I will
explore, Schumanns concertos make a practical demand that conventional, postclassical
concertos generally do not. Schumanns concertos demand a full orchestra, and the
dialogue presupposes an orchestra at a certain level of preparedness and professionalism
and a soloist comfortable sharing the stage with such an ensemble. They also aim for
seriousness through their intended first soloists. Robert Schumann composed all of his
concerted works for piano to be premiered and championed by arguably the most
elevated of German virtuosos and a perennial guest at the Gewandhaus, Clara
Schumann. The Opus 131 Phantasie for violin went to another serious virtuoso, Joseph
Joachim. In fact, aspects of Claras and Joachims artistic personas might have shaped
stylistic aspects of their Schumann concertos in ways that scholars have yet to recognize.
These four concertos stage the virtuoso in synthesis with the symphony orchestra
and as a purveyor of trajectories that merge virtuosic display with expressions of
inwardness, transcendence, or seriousness. Rather than evincing a consistent approach to
the concerto, these showpieces exhibit various strategies. In some cases, in fact, they
trace the Schumanns attempts to make a synthesis of virtuosity and seriousnessoften
described in nineteenth-century critical discourse as a lofty goal requiring the sacrifice of
wide appealaccessible to the public and attractive to performers.
57
Both Kerman and McClaryperhaps naturally for writers at the end of the twentieth centurytake an
opposite approach and cast the soloist as a sympathetic, self-expressive individual and, in McClarys case,
the orchestra as an agent of conformity and repression.
Chapter Four 234
Twin Strategies: Schumanns Piano Concerto, Op. 54

Schumanns Piano Concerto, Op. 54, remains his most popularly and critically successful
virtuoso workone of his most frequently performed compositions of any kind. The first
Leipzig performance on January 1, 1846 (with Clara Schumann at the piano and Niels
Gade conducting) was well-received enough to persuade Hrtel to publish the work
immediately. It passed almost immediately into the standard repertoire, largely at Claras
hands: Bernhard R. Appel has counted at least 100 performances of the work by Clara
Schumann throughout her career.58 Reviews of the Dresden premiere on December 4,
1845, the first Leipzig performance, and the published score were almost unanimously
positive. Perhaps to Schumanns chagrin, critics occasionally invoked the Piano Concerto
as a standard to which his other concerted works did not quite measure up.
Critics in the nineteenth century consistently described Schumanns concerto not
only as appealing but as a serious essay in a virtuoso genre. Often, they specifically
invoked the close solo-orchestra interaction and the adoption of a symphonic style.
After the Dresden premiere, for example, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung observed:
[Schumanns concerto] happily avoids the customary monotony of the
genre and does full justice to the obbligato orchestral partwithout
compromising the impression made by the pianos contribution. Amid the
countless ephemera which each week brings in the field of piano
composition, it really is good to encounter for once such a worthy and
accomplished work. It provides new proof of the old principle of how well
form and thorough schooling can be combined with an inspired
[geistreich] concept, heartfelt invention, and all the brilliance of the new
and the newest technique.59
58
Appel acknowledges that his list is most likely incomplete. See his critical report in Robert Schumann,
Klavierkonzert a-Moll op. 54, ed. Bernhard R. Appel, in Robert Schumann: Neue Ausgabe smtlicher
Werke, ser. 1, Werkgruppe 2, vol. 1 (Mainz: Schott, 2003), 212.
59
Sie die gewhnliche Monotonie der Gattung glcklich vermeidet und der vollstndig
obligaten...Orchesterpartie, ohne den Eindruck der Pianoleistung zu beeintrchtigen, ihr volles Recht
Chapter Four 235

The AmZ reported after the first Leipzig performance that the concerto constituted
pleasing proof that Robert Schumanns excellent talent is turning with rare success to
the composition of brilliant solo works. The reviewer went on, Let us add that this
concerto should not merely be relegated to the ranks of Solosbut rather designs a
musical picture in the symphonic manner, in which the piano plays the main part.60
Scholarship on the Piano Concerto frequently points out its symphonic ambition, an
aspect of the work that Juan Martin Koch locates in the interweaving of solo and
orchestra and in the first movements extensive thematic transformation. 61
If the Piano Concerto represented Schumanns most acclaimed effort to stage
serious virtuosity, though, it is far from his most strategically consistent one.
Composition of the concerto proceeded in two distinct stages. Schumann composed the
first movement as an independent Phantasie in 1841, which Clara read through with the
Gewandhaus orchestra at a rehearsal on August 13 of that year. The orchestra, though,
never programmed it. After the rehearsal, Schumann made several revisions to the
orchestration and proportions but could not find a publisher. In 1845, now living in
Dresden, he added the second and third movements, and it was this form that met the
public at the premiere. These two stages of the works compositionthe first movement,
widerfahren lsst...Unter der zahllosen Menge von Ephemeren, welche jede Woche auf dem Gebiete der
Pianoforte-composition erzeugt, thut es wahrhaft wohl, einmal einem so gediegenen, tchtigen Werke zu
begegnen, das einen neuen Beweis fr alte Behauptung liefert, wie gut sich Form und Grndlichkeit der
Schule mit geistreicher Auffassung, gefhlter Erfindung und allem Glanze der neueren und neuesten
Technik vereinigen lasse. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 47, no. 52 (December 31, 1845): 927.
Translation adapted from Appel, ed., Klavierkonzert in a-Moll, 195-96.
60
Das neue Pianoforteconcert.. ist ein...geistreiches Werk, welche einen erfreulichen Beweis gibt, da
Rob. Schumanns ausgezeichnetes Talent mit seltenem Glcke auch der Composition glnzender
Solostcke sich zuwendet. Damit jedoch der eben gebrauchte Ausdruck nicht zu Missdeutungen Anlass
gebe, fgen wir hinzu: das Concert ist um deswillen nicht blos in die Reihe der Soli einzurangiren, weil es
nicht, wie die Concerte einer gewissen Periode, in ein Solo- und Tuttistze zerfllt, sondern in
symphonischer Weise ein Tongemlde entwirft, in welchem das Pianoforte die Hauptrolle spielt. AmZ 48,
no. 1 (January 1846): 12. Translation adapted from Appel, ed., Klavierkonzert in a-Moll, 201.
61
Koch, Das Klavierkonzert des 19. Jahrhunderts, 230-35.
Chapter Four 236

and the pair of movements II and IIIoffer divergent ways of adapting postclassical
convention to create a self-consciously serious display piece: the first radically subverts
and suppresses conventional expectations of bravura display in favor of more
stereotypically serious styles, whereas the second presents the most postclassical music in
Schumanns output (save perhaps the Abegg Variations), though with subtle twists that
present solo and orchestra acting in symbiosis.
Schumanns first movementan adaptation of the 1841 Phantasiesubmerges
and reworks the standard features of the virtuoso concerto more fully than any of
Schumanns later concerted works. Macdonald (with some oversimplification, I shall
argue) describes the movement as a concerto not for the virtuoso, paraphrasing a letter
Robert had written to Clara in 1839 about his unfinished Konzertsatz in D minor. 62 The
formal features of the first movement of Opus 54 are well known: the thematic
transformation, the interspersing of orchestral material throughout the sonata form, and
the three-movements-in-one plan. 63 The works formal balance (it features a full
recapitulation) and motivic tightness (the thematic transformation that binds primary
material to transitional passages, the second theme group, and the lyrical start of the
development) beg to be understood as responses to the principle of variety that informed
postclassical concertos. 64
62
Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto, 224. Roberts letter to Clara reads, I spent all
last week composing; however, there isnt any real joy in my thoughts or any exquisite melancholy either...
I see that I cant write a concerto for a virtuoso; Ill have to think of something else. Instead of a refusal to
write a concerto in a conventional virtuosic style (as Macdonald interprets it), the letter actually seems to
express Roberts frustration with the project and difficulties writing a piece that could adequately showcase
a soloist. Robert Schumann to Clara Wieck, January 24, 1839. Eva Weissweiler, ed., The Complete
Correspondence of Robert and Clara Schumann 2:31.
63
For overviews of the first movements form, see Lindeman, Structural Novelty and Tradition, 154-57;
Koch, Das Klavierkonzert des 19. Jahrhunderts, 213-28.
64
The key of Schumanns concerto and the duet between the piano and the cello section in the second
movement might allude to Clara Wiecks Concerto, Op. 7, and its formal balance and integration might
Chapter Four 237

Acknowledged but less fully explored is the movements reliance on postclassical
concerto convention. As Macdonald has shown, Schumann retains many hallmarks of the
postclassical concerto, including the opening virtuosic flourish and the lyrical start of the
development.65 She also notes several ways in which Opus 54, within the framework of
the virtuoso concerto, departs from stylistic convention to keep virtuosic display out of
the spotlight. Brilliant passagework, she generalizes, nearly always serves as a texturegenerating element, an accompaniment for melodies shared between solo and tutti. 66
Macdonald cites the transition between the first and second thematic areas, shown in
Example 4.4. Whereas postclassical concertos transition between thematic areas using
spans of transparently textured passagework, here the soloists sixteenth notes remain in
the background. Meanwhile, the strings weave together motives that become a fanfare
theme trumpeted by the full ensemble and announced not by flashy trills and runs but by
octaves in the pianos middle and low ranges. Schumann, Eduard Krger might have
said, takes a turn for the epic where a more conventional concerto deploys a brilliant
style. Schumann also covers up bravura figuration with what Macdonald calls the
movements nearly unbroken lyric moodthe themes use small, singable ranges, and
display areas use full phrases rather than strings of cadential gestures. 67
Considering in greater detail Schumanns alternatives to postclassical display, I
would argue, allows us to refine and expand upon Macdonalds insights. The first
movement contains lyricism of a specific type. Postclassical concertos, too, often adopt a
represent an attempt to improve or correct the earlier work. Christoph-Hellmut Mahling suggests this
interpretation in Das Klavierkonzert op. 54 von Robert Schumann. Eine Antwort auf das Klavierkonzert
op. 7 von Clara Wieck? in Schumann Forschungen 9, ed. Matthias Wendt (Mainz: Schott, 2005), 149-152.
65
66
Ibid., 239.
67
Ibid., 233.
Chapter Four 238

lyrical mood outside of their display areas. Their lyricism, though, is typically of an
operatic type, replete with elaborate ornamentation and wide ranges. Schumanns first
movement, by contrast, employs lyricism characteristic of Mendelssohns or Adolph
Henselts Lieder ohne Worte or some of Schumanns own solo piano works, such as the
Romanzen, Op. 28 and Des Abends from Fantasiestcke, Op. 12. Mendelssohns piano
concertos use this style of writing in some casesfor example, the second theme of the
Concerto No. 1, Op. 25but never with the consistency of Schumanns Opus 54, nor in
such unconventional places. A lyrical section of the development, shown in Example 4.5,
features the narrow range, sparse ornamentation, and division of accompaniment between
the hands that characterize the pianistic lied, albeit in long phrases that stretch across the
development rather than the more concise phrase-period structures typical of piano
miniatures. Still more surprising is Schumanns use of this style in the closing display
area that precedes the cadenza and coda. (Example 4.6) The display follows not a clear
musical signpost such as one finds in postclassical concertos but a short rumination on
the final melodic turn of the second theme group. The first measures of the closing
display assume the most intimate of piano texturesa single-note melody with rippling,
triplet accompaniment. Measure 269 brings the soloists rapid figuration to the fore by
simply reversing the hands roles. Instead of straightforward boom-chuck patterns, it uses
four-measure progressions that confirm A major but frequently place agogic and dynamic
stress on V6/5/ii chords, infusing the display with expressive melodic gestures highlighted
with subtle harmonic tension. The virtuositized lied ends not with trills or flourishes
but by merging directly with the epic, fanfare-like material.
Chapter Four 239

The first movement of the piano concerto not only synthesizes the concerto with
the symphonic, then, but also uses Lieder ohne Worte textures writ large across a
symphonic canvas, textures that subsume display areas with lyricism associated with
values of introversion and sensitivity. He might well have been thinking of the concertos
intended virtuosohis wife, Clarawhen selecting this keyboard idiom. Clara
Schumanns concert programs during the late 1830s and early 1840s frequently included
sets of three or four short solo pieces in the middle of her program, oases of intimate
playing in the midst of more extroverted bravura pieces or concertos. 68 Mendelssohns
Lieder ohne Worte appeared occasionally in these solo sets, as did Roberts Romanzen.
Still more typical were showpieces by Adolph Henselt that combine lied-like lyricism
with virtuosic accompaniment patterns. Clara gravitated in particular to Henselts etudes
Opus 2, no. 1 (subtitled Orage, tu ne saurais mabattre! [Storm, you will not subdue
me!]), no. 3 (Exauce mes voeux! [Grant my wishes!]), and no. 4 (Repos damour
[Loves Repose]), excerpted in Example 4.7. She also frequently programmed
Henselts Andante et Allegro Concertante, Op. 3, subtitled Pome damour. This
showpiece includes an opening Andante in song-without-words style and an equally liedlike Allegro that presents the virtuosic figuration as a wide-ranging, arpeggiated
accompaniment.
Robert praised Mendelssohns pianistic lieder for embodying an introverted kind
of poetic transcendence. In an 1835 review of Book 2, Op. 30, for example, he imagined
a solitary pianist improvising such pieces in a darkened room and directly translating
imaginary verses into music, settings that could carry this secret poetry to a sensitive
68
These selections might include nocturnes and mazurkas by Chopin, preludes and fugues by Bach, and
perhaps longer selections such as the second and third movements of Beethovens Appassionata.
Chapter Four 240

listener.69 Schumanns 1838 review of Henselts Etudes, Op. 2, similarly suggested that
the combination of virtuosity and lied-like lyricism gave these showpieces qualities of
inwardness and wholesomeness. He compared the pianist-composer to a troubadour who
calmed the spirits of a wild, confused time, who reminded [his listeners] of earlier,
simpler, more moral lives. He sings of himself, Schumann writes, and we must listen
to it. Thus the melody of a single voice predominates over the other voices in nearly all of
these lovely etudes. 70 Invoking metaphors of depth and concealment in implicit
opposition to postclassical transparency and images of nature in contrast to those of
artifice and aristocracy, Schumann writes, Henselts charming melodies only become
completely so through the concealing figuration in which he hides themrich fruit
pouring from a fullness of green leaves and branches. 71
Although these reviews do not apply nationalistic rhetoric to Lieder ohne Worte
showpieces, Schumanns critical writings on actual lieder for voice evince what Jon
Finson has called an inherently nationalistic concept of the genre, one perhaps
implicated in the style of the Concerto, Op. 54. Finson cites, for example, an 1837 review
of lieder by Ferdinand Stegmayer in which Schumann touts the lied as a means of driving
foreign singing from the field and for what he calls the genres quintessentially German
introversion, simplicity, and sensitivity. 72 Just as the lied and its cultural associations
stood in contrast to Italian opera, which German critics often dismissed as frivolous,
69
GS 1:98-99.
So ist er mir, sah ich ihn am Klavier, auch oft wie ein Troubadour erschienen, der die Gemter
besnftigt in wilder, durcheinander geworfener Zeit, sie an die Einfachheit und Sittigkeit frherer
Jahrhunderte mahnt...[E]r singt von sich, und wir mssens hren. Also herrscht denn auch die Melodie der
einzelnen Stimme beinahe in smtlichen seiner Liebestudien ber die andern[.] GS 1:355-56.
71
Henselts reizende Melodien werdens aber nun vollends durch das heimliche Figurenwerk, in das er
jene versteckt; reiche Frchte aus grner Zweig- und Bltterfulle herausquellend. Ibid., 1:357.
72
Jon W. Finson, Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2007), 7-8, 52. For the Stegmayer review, see GS 1:271-72.
70
Chapter Four 241

shallow, or foreign, the lied-like lyricism of piano pieces by Henselt, Mendelssohn, and
Robert Schumann implicitly offered a German antidote to the quasi-operatic melody and
embellishment typical of postclassical showpieces. 73 In the context of a virtuoso
concerto, it refracts the pianists technical display through a lens of Innigkeit and
Germanness, staging the virtuoso Clara as wholesome, introverted, and of familiar,
sympathetic national orientation.
Schumanns first movement showcases other stereotypically serious, German
styles that featured prominently in Clara Schumanns repertoire. The first half of the
cadenza, shown in Example 4.8, evokes a neo-Baroque texture that imitates a short
subject in all four voices before spinning it out, Fortspinnung-like, in a series of
sequences. The arrival on F Major in m. 420 similarly develops a short subject
sequentially and unfolds over a walking bass. Schumann not only invoked a Baroque
style in homage to the canonized Bach and Handel but also, perhaps, nodded to his wifes
programming of Bachs preludes and fugues as well as her occasional performances of
keyboard concertos by Bach.
Schumanns first movement thus subverts and reworks the conventions of the
postclassical concerto to create displays of virtuosity-infused Innigkeit and symphonic
style. The result elevates the soloist and stages her with a community of serious
musicians by enmeshing the public genre of the concerto, the intimate lyricism of the
Lied ohne Worte (or lied-like etude), and the epic qualities of the symphony within a
single showpiece. Soloistic display, here couched in a style redolent of inwardness and
Germanness, finds its frame in a work that connects it with the symphonic doings of the
73
If Robert did compose the piano Phantasie partly to replace or respond to Claras concerto, then, his
corrections involved not only formal rounding but also a rejection of postclassical bravura and operatic
lyricism in favor of the symphonic and the lied-like.
Chapter Four 242

orchestra. For Robert, the sources closest at hand for this mixture of mutually elevating
elements were not only his own ideals about virtuosity and virtuosos, but Claras own
practices, which included performing historical repertoire, promoting Mendelssohn and
Henselt, and collaborating with professional symphony orchestras such as the
Gewandhaus.
Ultimately, Schumann could not find a publisher for the one-movement
Phantasie. The surviving correspondence suggests that publishers were skeptical about
the market appeal of such a large-scaled composition. (The same letters that turned down
the Phantasie often asked for smaller works such as lieder and piano pieces.) 74 The
works suppression of virtuosic display and the intricacy of the collaboration may have
also discouraged publishers: after all, it was not only the publishers who rejected
Schumanns work, but Felix Mendelssohn and the Gewandhaus orchestra itself, which
never followed up the read-through by asking Clara Schumann for a public performance.
Schumanns concerto found an audience and a publisher only when he added the
next stage of the composition: the second-movement Intermezzo and the Allegro vivace
finale. If the first movement radically subverts the conventions of the virtuoso concerto,
the third movement takes nearly the opposite approach and presents the most
conventionally postclassical movement in Schumanns concerto output. Clara Schumann
seems to have recognized and praised this aspect of the three-movement version of the
work. After Robert had finished all of the finale but the orchestration, she confided to her
diary on July 27, 1845, I am very glad about it, since I have always lacked a large
74
For a summary of the correspondence, see Appel, ed., Klavierkonzert in a-Moll, Op. 54, 185-88.
Chapter Four 243

Bravourstck by him, 75 suggesting that, for Clara, the Phantasie did not really count as
a bravura piece or that it only became one with the addition of the finale.
Claudia Macdonald writes that the finale of Schumanns concerto shuns
virtuosity but at the same time gives the virtuosoin this case Clarasomething to do. It
stirs up excitement not through conventional bravura but through a dance of changing
metric divisions that take a leisurely pace to a rousing climax and a splendid
denouement.76 Stephen Lindeman similarly calls Opus 54 as a whole a highly original,
organically structured work that is devoid of formulaic or hollow virtuosity. 77 Although
Macdonald helpfully notes several striking features of the finale, she and Lindeman
exaggerate its suppression of conventional virtuosity. Like an inverse image of the first
movement, the sonata-form third delivers lightly scored, transparently textured bravura
composed largely of single-line runs in all the expected transitional and closing display
areas, as well as the expected contrasts between themes. 78 If Schumann does subvert
expectations, it is with the consistency of the bravura figuration, which moves in steady
eighth notes and does not include the variety-producing changes typical of postclassical
showpieces. 79 The transitional and closing displays, too, often infuse bravura
passagework with metric dissonance, creating the dance of meters Macdonald
describes. The closing display, for example, alternates groupings of two beats with
figuration in the reigning triple meter.
75

Ibid., 264
77
Lindeman, Structural Novelty and Tradition, 168.
78
Macdonald calls the finale a sonata-rondo, and several nineteenth-century reviewers simply term it a
rondo. Schumanns finale is in fact a sonata form. It does impart a subtle rondo flavor through the
recurrence of the primary theme during the closing display and at the tuttis before the development and
coda, touches that add the rondos association of lightness to the sonata discourse.
79
Macdonald notes the figurational consistency. Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto, 267.
76
Chapter Four 244

In the midst of this metrically quirky bravura, piano and orchestra integrate
themselves in ways less intrusive to bravura display than in the first movement. Piano
and orchestra share virtually all of the rhetorical gestures that demarcate thematic and
display areas of the movement. As light as Schumanns scoring may be in the transitional
and closing displays, it is the orchestra that initiates and rounds off these areas. To use an
anthropomorphic metaphor, the orchestra opens the portals to virtuosic display or, to
invoke Schumanns parliamentary model of the piano concerto, the pianos forays into
display occur after discourse with the orchestra. As shown in Example 4.9, Schumann
signals the switch from the soloists elaboration of the second theme to the closing
display with a gesture from the orchestra that all but interrupts the soloists cadence. It is
the orchestras citation of the primary theme, too, that ends the dance of metrically
dissonant figuration and announces the approach to the expositional cadence. The end of
the closing display features the extended trill for the soloist that, in postclassical
concertos, often serves as a signpost for structural junctures. Schumanns movement
overlays this structurally significant virtuosic gesture with orchestra-solo discourse in the
form of an exchange between the pianists left hand and responding horn calls.
Truly transparent, metrically square bravura only appears in the finales coda.
(Example 4.10 shows the piano part at the beginning of the coda.) For 208 measures, the
pianist receives downbeat-accented strings of nearly perpetual eighth notes that repeat
and recycle figuration. Orchestral interjections occasionally provide springboards for
cascading arpeggios from the pianist. Though Donald Francis Toveys discussion of the
finale uses symphonic language in its invocations of unity and peroration, he
acknowledges that the culmination derives from the codas profusion of figuration and
Chapter Four 245

the light character: Never has a long and voluble peroration been moreperfectly in
character with the great whole which it crowns with so light a touch. 80
A finale that finally delivers the bravura fireworks standard in postclassical
concertos thus balances a first movement that stresses displays of intimacy and
inwardness and subordinates bravura to symphonic development. Even here, though,
Schumann presents soloistic bravura as catalyzed by dialogue with the orchestra. In doing
so, he may have turned to the eighteenth-century piano concerto, particularly those of
Mozart, for a model. Kermans analysis of discourse and display in Mozarts concertos
interprets last movements as rituals of consensus and agreement, specifically in the
convention of having the soloist start the movement and in the close, often repetitious
exchanges that often occur between soloist and orchestra. Schumanns final movement
creates a similar kind of agreement and parity. Not only does the soloist introduce the
primary waltz theme (and at various points splits and shares it with the orchestra), but it
proceeds into its display areas with seeming orchestral approval. The Opus 54 finale
privileges virtuosic display but does so in a state of quasi-Mozartian harmony.
The divergence in strategies between the first and third movements of
Schumanns Piano Concerto accounts for the curiously conflicted reception of the work.
Although critics were almost unanimously positive about the concerto as a whole, they
tended to respond differently to the first and third movements, either describing them in
different terms or preferring one to the other. Often their differences of opinion seemed to
hinge on the unconventionality of the first movement (which could appear as either
laudably serious or puzzlingly complex) and the conventionality of the virtuosic finale
80
Donald Francis Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis, reprint ed., vol. 3, Concertos (London: Oxford
University Press, 1969), 184.
Chapter Four 246

(judged either appealing or derivative). Following the Dresden premiere, the Neue
Zeitschrift reported that the first movement is less intelligible and not as grateful as the
other movements.81 On the other hand, the AmZ reported after the first Leipzig
performance that the first movements lofty spirit understandably took the prize. 82
When the published score appeared in 1847, the Neue Zeitschrift printed another review,
this one authored by Alfred Drffel, likely with some input from Franz Brendel. 83 His
substantial essay uses the Hegelian rhetoric favored by New German School critics and
expresses hope that the Concerto augurs future compositions in which Schumann will
reconcile his youthful tendency toward radical, subjective experimentation with his
early 1840s, objective phase. Drffel preferred the first and second movements for
preserving Schumanns deep inwardness and individuality while also striving for
objective expression.84 The review located this synthesis in the combination of piano
textures reminiscent of Schumanns early piano works with more symphonic material
and, presumably, in the works structural clarity and balance. It also hints at Schumanns
suppression of virtuosity. The NZfM interprets the closing displays progression from
virtuositized lied to orchestral fanfare as the strength of an artistic geniuscelebrating
the triumph of his own self-masteryperhaps in reference to the transformation of
introverted lied into symphonic music. 85 The finale does not fare as well in Drffels
81
[D]er erste ist...weniger verstndlich und nicht so dankbar als die brigen. NZfM 24, no. 9 (January 29,
1846): 36.
82
AmZ 48, no. 1 (January 1846): 12.
83
Appel speculates that Brendel assisted Drffel in writing this review. Klavierkonzert in a-moll, Op. 54,
206.
84
In ihnen bewahrt der Componist seine tiefe Innerlichkeit, seine Eigenthmlichkeit bei dem Streben nach
jenem objektiven Ausdruck am meisten. NZfM 26, no. 5 (January 15, 1847): 17. Translations of this
review adapted from Appel, Klavierkonzert in a-Moll, Op. 54, 206-8.
85
Ists nicht, als erlebte man Momente hchster Freude, in denen die Kraft des Knstlergenius uns
emportrgt, weit ber diese Welt hinaus? Scheint es nicht eben, als feierte sie den Triumph in der eigenen
Selbstbeherrschung? Ibid., 18.
Chapter Four 247

review for reasons that stem partly from its embrace of concerto conventions. He finds
the waltz theme not sufficiently significant. In language that evokes the shifting
virtuosic figures and contrasting themes, he alleges that the finale lacks the unity and
completeness of the previous movements, consisting more of subtle, inspired
[geistreiche] detailsrather than creating any great overall impression. 86 Ten years
later, Eduard Hanslick recognized the differences between the two components of the
concerto in a review of Clara Schumanns November 14, 1858, Vienna performance,
albeit in a way that avoided privileging one over the other. Hanslick explains the unusual
features of the first movement at length, as if its unconventionality begged for an
experienced guide. His sole sentence on the brilliant finale decorated over and over
again with charming passagework praises it as a model of composition in the true
concerto style. 87
Schumanns Piano Concerto, Op. 54 thus showcases two contrasting approaches
to staging virtuosity in symbiosis with the symphony orchestra and the symphonic
tradition. If these strategies resulted in a split reception for the two halves of the concerto,
they might have also contributed to its popular and critical success. For all Schumanns
scorn for postclassical composers who sought to court popular acclaim as well as the
respect of the learned or the avant-garde, his concerto seems to have succeeded in doing
just that (if perhaps inadvertently). The first movement impressed some of the most elitist
critics of the century with its complexity and innovativeness, whereas the third introduces
86
Auch ist dieser Satz nicht so einheitsvoll und fertig in sich abgeschlossen, als die vorhergehenden Stze:
mehr eine feine, geistreiche Detailarbeit voll vieler einzelner Schnheiten, als von groem Totaleindruck.
Ibid.,18.
87
Voll regen Lebens, glnzend, kraftvoll, ber und ber geschmckt mit neuen reizenden Passagen, in
einem Gu fortflieen bis zum End, ist dieser Finalsatz ein Muster echt concertmiger Composition.
Eduard Hanslick, Aus dem Concert-saal: Kritiken und Schilderungen (Wien: Wilhelm Braumler, 1897),
183.
Chapter Four 248

the most popularizing elements in the work. Schumann attempted to blend popular
virtuosity and musical seriousness in his three later showpieces, Opuses 92, 131, and 134,
but, thanks to a combination of factors, these compositions met with mixed, ultimately
unfavorable receptions.
Trajectories of Sublimation and Convergence: The Later, Single-Movement

Concertos
Symphonic Apotheosis Subsumes Concerto Display: Gradus Ad Parnassum?
Schumanns three single-movement concertos, Opuses 92, 134, and 131 enact the
synthesis of virtuosic display with symbols of transcendence and seriousness using a
solution that lies between the suppression of virtuosity in the first movement of Opus 54
and the embrace of virtuoso-concerto convention in its finale. These works all employ the
sonata form typical of concerto first movements and include substantial, flashy closing
displays. The single-movement concertos, though, continue past their recapitulatory
closing displays to less conventional endings. Schumann concludes these three pieces
with codas in which the soloists virtuosic display merges with orchestral apotheoses.
The soloist thus follows the virtuosity-seeking trajectory of the concerto (though a
trajectory inflected to emphasize the works affinity with the German ideology of serious
music) but ultimately becomes absorbed in one of the nineteenth centurys most powerful
metaphors for musical transcendence and the one most associated with both the
symphonic tradition and the communal effort of the orchestra. Schumann thus stages the
synthesis of virtuosity and seriousness as a process that shapes the direction and
destination of each concerto.
Chapter Four 249

Schumanns 1849 Introduction and Allegro appassionato, Op. 92 was the first and
most formally anomalous of these works. The Signale fr die musikalische Welt noted in
1850 that it differed fundamentally in form, attitude, and the shape of ideas and their
succession from all other compositions written for the piano in the concert hall. 88
Macdonald describes Opus 92 as symphonic in ambition, citing the tonally wideranging development, the motivic connections that span the work, and Schumanns
tendency to allow the orchestra to introduce material before giving it to the piano. Opus
92, she writes, is hardly a concerto at all. 89 However, a closer look at this anomalous
work reveals an intricate blending of the symphonic and the concertante that offers the
key to its handling of virtuosity. The large-scale structure, charted in Figure 4.3, encases
the expositional and recapitulatory solo spans of a virtuoso concerto within a slow
introduction and, at the coda, an apotheosis thereof. Symphonic elementsthe elaborate
development and reminiscences of the Introductioninterpenetrate the concerto
discourse. A tonally closed arc welds the mixture together. John Daverio has described
the soft-spoken Introduction and the initially martial Allegro as contrasting poles of
distance and presence that find resolution in the coda.90 The same process fuses the
showpieces virtuosic and symphonic aspects.
Schumanns Introduction, one endpoint of this process, places pianist and
orchestra in a state of idyllic unity but downplays the soloists capacity for virtuosic
display. (Example 4.11) Clarinet and horn split the melodythe horn interpolating a
88
[Opus 92] unterscheidet sich in Form und Haltung, so wie in der Bildung der Gedanken und deren Folge
wesentlich von allen anderen Compositionen, die fr Pianoforte in Concertsaal geschrieben sind. Signale
fr die musikalische Welt 20 (February 14, 1850): 66.
89
Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto, 274, 281.
90
John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997),
419-20.
Chapter Four 250

motive that might have served as a symbol of Romantic distancebefore finishing the
phrase together. 91 Part of the shared utterance, the piano trails the clarinet by a half beat.
The transition between the Introduction and the concerto form proper, shown in Example
4.12, feints at a fantasia-like flourish, but the soloists run evaporates and the strings
cover it with the opening theme. Instead, the soloist introduces the Allegro by trading
appoggiatura motives with the orchestra. 92
The Allegro Appassionatos exposition and its counterpart in the recapitulation
give freer rein to the soloists virtuosic display. Rather than presenting two outbursts of
bravura in the transitional and closing displays, Schumann gradually increases virtuosity
across each solo span. The first theme group presents the orchestra at full volume for the
first time. Although the piano completes the orchestras quasi-martial phrases with
symphonic-pianistic writing of its own, most of its first-theme-group material takes a
more affectively introverted turn. The transition, for example, presents not modulatory
bravura passagework but elaborations of a lyrical phrase that move from E minor to C
major. The soloists virtuosity emerges more fully in the second theme group and closing
display. A reminiscence of the Introductions horn-call motive precedes each increase in
bravura, so that reminders of the opening solo-orchestra unity and hint of poetic distance
mark structural junctures of the exposition. As shown in Example 4.13, two iterations of
the motive give way to a cascade of triplets that lead into the first theme of the second
group. However, the horn-call motive intrudes again before the soloist can complete its
first phrase. The material that follows resembles a miniature closing display more than a
second theme; it repeats cadentially directed melodic segments accompanied by perpetual
91
92
Kerman describes the horn call as a voice from the Romantic forest. The Concertos, 186.
The transition to the Allegro is also harmonically soft-edged, ending on the subdominant of E minor.
Chapter Four 251

triplets. The false closing display also seems to end conventionally with a trill overlaid
by four more repetitions of the horn call motive. At this point, however, Schumann
launches the true closing display, which is more than twice as long as the false one.
The pianistic idiom changes from virtuosically accompanied lied to one closer to the
Allegros martial style: chordal piano writing predominates, while the orchestra
interpolates a repeated-triplet figure and accompanies the pianos closing gestures with a
trill in the timpani.
In the final stage of the Introduction and Allegro Appassionato, though,
Schumann departs from the concerto discourse. He crowns the work not with the
recapitulations closing display, but with a coda that reenacts the Introductions ensemble
synthesis even as it culminates the increase in soloistic virtuosity. The recapitulation
anticipates this unconventional ending and implicitly rejects the norms of the sonata-form
concerto when the second group returns in G major rather than the expected E. The
sonata form warps to accommodate the coda and integrate the Introduction into the tonal
arc of the work, privileging apotheosis and the return of the idyllic Introduction material
above satisfaction of the concertos formal and tonal rubric. A tutti seems to round off the
Allegro by using the martial first theme while citing the Introductions horn-call motive,
and m. 451 seems to begin a cadenza. (Example 4.14) These flourishes grow into an
accompaniment for the return of the Introductions horn-clarinet duo and main theme.
The coda, though, does not simply return to the Introductions idyllic synthesis but newly
incorporates the soloists virtuosity. As shown in Example 4.15, the winds recollection
of the Introduction theme in the coda ends parallel to the Introductions transition to the
Allegro (seen above in Example 4.12). Instead of playing a string of lyrical gestures, this
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time the soloist launches into one of its longest spans of virtuosic figuration. The display
begins with some of the only transparent, single-line figuration in the piece and goes on
to what one might call the true apotheosis of the horn-call motive, which the piano
elaborates across several registers. The virtuositized lyricism briefly hinted at in the false
closing display finally arrives, now raised to a symphonic power in a coda that trumps
concerto convention.
Schumanns Introduction and Allegro Appassionato was not the first showpiece to
align thematic reminiscence or lyrical outpouring with virtuosic display. Tauberts
Concerto No. 1 and Mendelssohns Concerto No. 1 both recall material from their first
movements immediately before the final display areas of their finales, and William
Sterndale Bennetts Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 9, accompanies closing displays with
motives from its main theme. In Chopins Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21, the first
movements closing displays begin with bravura figuration but break into chordal
melodies that subsume the passagework. Mendelssohn and Taubert, though, use these
linking strategies not as climactic syntheses but as moments of reminiscence that
momentarily arrest the momentum before the final fireworks. The codas of Opus 92 and
its late-Schumannian fellows derive from the symphonic tradition rather than from
concerto innovations. In 1849, the most famous precedent for the unusual structure of
Opus 92 would have been the first movement of Schuberts Symphony No. 9, a work that
Schumann himself had discovered in 1839 and ecstatically reviewed. Schuberts first
movement, like Schumanns Opus 92, includes a slow introduction whose motives
interpenetrate the main sonata form and returns in apotheosis form in an extensive coda.
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Schumanns showpiece thus elevates the virtuoso by culminating in a synthesis of
the virtuosic, the lyrical, and the symphonica merger of the soloists solo bravura and
inward lyricism with the epic kind of music that Krger had promoted in his
Virtuosenconcert essay as the ideal idiom of the serious concert. Reviews of Clara
Schumanns 1850s performances of this work stressed its integration of solo and
orchestra.93 Indeed, the integration of virtuosity with the symphonic and the orchestral is
not merely a constant stylistic component of the work but a relationship that emerges
throughout the piece. An anthropomorphic reading of Opus 92such as scholars have
applied to Mozarts piano concertosmight narrate a Hegelian-toned Bildungsroman
about virtuosity. The soloist begins in perfect union with the orchestra, but her virtuosic
prowess is either undeveloped or suppressed. Over the course of a concerto movement,
she deploys increasingly showy virtuosity, seemingly spurred on by the memory of the
opening unity. But (as the reminiscences of the Introduction perhaps remind us) these
soloistic achievements unfold in conventional display areas with little opportunity for
interaction with the orchestra. Only in the coda does the soloist rejoin the orchestral
community, now using her virtuosity to glorify the symphonic apotheosis. Even if one
finds such a reading of the concerto more poetic than analytically or historically
rigorous (and there is no evidence that the Schumanns or any of their contemporaries
discussed the work in such terms) one cannot deny that the progressive union of concerto
virtuosity and such symbols of seriousness and transcendence as the orchestra and the
symphonic tradition shapes the course of the showpiece. Or that the work places concerto
virtuosity in a hierarchy that favors the symphonic while also incorporating display into
93
See, for example, NZfM 32, no. 20 (March 5, 1850): 103; Signale 8 (February 20, 1850): 66; and
Rheinische Musik-Zeitung 1, no. 47 (May 24, 1851): 374.
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something greatermuch as Schumanns own writings on the Gewandhaus concerts
suggested that his idealized Leipzig musical community did. Although Schumann largely
curtailed his activities as a critic after 1844, the Introduction and Allegro Appassionato
offers in music a solution to the then-vexing problem of the virtuosos relationship with
the culture of serious music.
Like the Piano Concerto, Op. 54, the seriousness of the Introduction and Allegro
Appassionato was also bound up with Clara Schumanns career and artistic identity.
Opus 92 first served Clara as a showpiece for some of the joint concerts (what
Macdonald has called team programs) she shared with Robert, in which Claras
performances of single-movement concerted works and solo pieces balanced full-length
symphonic compositions by her husband. 94 In a showcase of Roberts compositions held
in Dsseldorf on March 13, 1851, for example, Claras performance of Opus 92
complemented the premiere of Roberts Die Braut von Messina Overture, Op. 100 and a
performance of his Symphony No. 3. On December 6, 1855, Clara performed Opus 92 at
a Gewandhaus subscription concert to complement Roberts Symphony No. 2. More than
offering a counterpart to symphonic works by Robert, Opus 92 simultaneously showcases
his capabilities as symphonic composer and Claras serious virtuosity in a single concert
piece. The Signale review of the Leipzig premiere even used Op. 92 as an opportunity to
describe the Schumanns as an idealized artist-couple, an instance of the public face and
physical skill of the virtuoso giving life to the lofty creations of the genius composer.
This symbiosis paralleled an equally idealized (and stereotype-laden) picture of their
identity as a married couple, one in which Claras feminine charm and care (but also
her virtuosic strength) served Roberts masculine intellect and genius:
94
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One, with care and love and with the fullness of her charm and strength,
brings into the world what the other builds in the isolated stillness of his
rich intellect and in the depth of his inexhaustible creative genius. 95
The Introduction and Allegro Appassionato, then, merged virtuosity and seriousness on
multiple interrelated levels: the treatment of virtuosity within its own formal structure, its
blend of genres, and its role in the Schumanns early 1850s careers.
Schumann Aims for Popularity: The Violin Phantasie and the Introduction and Concert
Allegro
Ultimately, the Introduction and Allegro Appassionato did not hit its mark with the
German musical press or audiences. Even admiring reviews cautioned that it offered the
audience too much difficulty and the performer too little exposure. After the premiere,
the Neue Zeitschrift wrote that Opus 92 does not succeed to the degree that the Concerto
does. The two parts crowd one another somewhat, and the piano part does not offer
enough brilliant material.96 The Signale similarly described the Allegro as of a
somewhat complicated nature. 97 Later assessments concurred. The Rheinische MusikZeitung wrote of the 1851 Dsseldorf performance, Nowhere does this passionate storm
allow for lyrical repose, and so, granted, many who only want striking melodies will not
find complete satisfaction with this brilliant tangle of sound. 98 After one of Clara
95
So herrlich gestaltet sich die Thtigkeit dieses seltenen Knstlerpaares, da der eine Theil dasjenige
sorgsam und liebevoll mit der Flle der Anmuth und Kraft in die Welt einfhrt, was der andere in der
abgeschlossenen Stille seines reichen Gemths und in der Tiefe seines unermdlich schaffenden Genius
heranbildete. Signale 8 (Februrary 20, 1855): 66.
96
[D]as scheint uns nicht in dem Mae gelungen, wie im A-Moll Concerte. Beide Theile beengen sich in
etwas und die Clavierpartie bietet nicht genug Glanzvolles. NZfM 32, no. 20 (March 5, 1850): 103.
97
Das Allegro, durchweg sehr leidenschaftlicher aber etwas complicirter Natur... Signale 8 (February 20,
1850): 66.
98
Der leidenschaftliche Sturm gestattet nirgends ein lyrisches Ausruhen, und so findet freilich Mancher,
der stets nur schlagende Melodie will, seine rechte Befriedigung nicht in diesem brillante Tongewirre.
Rheinische Musik-Zeitung 1, no. 47 (May 24, 1851): 373.
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Schumanns few performances of the work after Roberts death, the Signale observed
that Opus 92 was actually an orchestral work full of inspired [geistreich] moments and
turns but not calculated to allow the soloist to emerge or shine. 99 The reviewers were
perhaps referring not only to the anomalous concerto-within-a-symphony-movement
plan, but also the relative paucity of runs and roulades in the display areas, the extensive
development, and the frequent orchestral interjections in the second theme group. Clara
only programmed the work eight times in her entire career.
Robert Schumanns final two single-movement concertos, the Introduction and
Concert-Allegro, Op. 134 and the violin Phantasie, Op. 131, take a more accessible,
conventional approach to the concerto. Macdonald suggests convincingly that Schumann
crafted them at least partly in response to criticism of Opus 92. 100 Unlike Opus 92, they
do not radically fuse genres by departing from the structural requirements of the
concerto-sonata, and orchestra-solo interaction remains less intricate than in the earlier
work. However, both late concertos follow a trajectory that resembles the earlier work in
its broader outlines: they move through the display areas typical of first-movement
concerto form and end in apotheosis-codas that merge the soloists virtuosity with the
orchestras symphonic style. More than Opus 92, Opuses 134 and 131 also trace the
elevation of virtuosity through musical styles and topoi freighted with cultural
significance and symbolism for nineteenth-century German audiences, a touch that
perhaps contributed to the accessibility many critics commended in these works.
Schumanns last published essays in serious virtuosity thus present a pathway toward
99
Das Concertstck ist eigentlich ein seines angelegtes Orchesterwerk voll geistreicher Momente und
Wendungen, nicht darauf berechnet den Clavierspieler glnzen und hervortreten zu lassen. Signale 20, no.
52 (December 18, 1862): 731.
100
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transcendence within concise concerto movements conventional in format (if not always
in their details).
The Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134, fills the concerto form with topoi
redolent of inwardness, seriousness, and historicism as well as more conventional bravura
display. Like the Lied ohne Worte and Baroque styles in the Piano Concerto, Op. 54,
these features resonated with the programming practices and public persona of the
concertos first exponent, Clara Schumann: Robert wrote the piece as a showpiece for his
wife to use during their joint November-December 1853 tour of the Netherlands. The first
theme group, for example, resembles the ritornello of a Baroque concerto more than it
does a nineteenth-century concerto. (Example 4.16) It cycles through a series of short,
sequentially repeated motives: material based on the opening flourish, a string of slurred
figures, and sixteenth-note figuration that resembles Baroque Fortspinnung writing. 101
Michael Struck and Joseph Kerman have described neo-Baroque elements as a hallmark
of Schumanns late styleStruck in the composers use of Fortspinnung figuration and
Kerman in the concerto-grosso-like elements he finds in the Konzertstck for four horns,
Op. 86but both have interpreted this turn to the past as a broadening of Schumanns
compositional palette rather than an attempt to imbue a popular virtuoso genre with
Germanness and historicism.102 The second theme group, shown in Example 4.17, moves
to a more contemporary display of stereotypically German inwardness via the Lied-ohneWorte style. 103 The closing displays of exposition and recapitulation adopt a more
101
Schumanns use of the opening flourish as a motivic component of the first theme group contributes to
the sections continuity, which subverts the sharply delineated forms typical of postclassical showpieces.
102
Struck, Die umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke Schumanns, 636. Kerman, The Concertos, 182.
103
As in Opus 92 and the first movement of Opus 54, Schumann suppresses virtuosic display in the
transitions between first and second theme groups. In this case, Schumanns unconventionally lyrical
transition occupies only four measures. It uses the Introductions leading motive and quasi-improvisatory
style to modulate to F major and introduce an unornamented theme shared between piano and winds.
Chapter Four 258

postclassically inflected style, adding conventional virtuosity to the Concert Allegros
showcase of the historical and the Innig. (Example 4.18) The display consists of short,
differentiated modules of cadentially directed figuration that move with a square
rhythmic style and boom-chuck accompaniment. A reminiscence of the transition
between second theme group and closing display at m. 87 adds a surprise moment of
retrospection and lyrical poignancy before the final plunge. However, exposition and
recapitulation both end with the expected virtuosic signposting and climactic gestures.
Schumanns coda caps this display of serious virtuosity with a turn toward the
symphonic and transcendent. Struck has noted that synthesizing coda themes, which
newly formulate motivic and thematic material from previous sections, occur frequently
in Schumanns late works. He cites as examples the Concert Allegro, Op. 134 and
Phantasie, Op. 131 as well as the three Piano Sonatas, Op. 118, the Fest-Overture, Op.
123, and the finale of the Violin Sonata No. 3, WoO 27. 104 (The coda of Opus 92, beyond
the scope of Strucks book, also exemplifies this technique.) The synthesizing coda of the
Concert Allegro, though, emerges not as a summary of what has come before but as a
surprise ending, a musical deus ex machina that introduces new material evocative of the
German musical tradition and of spiritual transcendence.
The cadenza that precedes this synthesizing coda at first prepares an introverted,
lyrical transfiguration of the second theme. (Example 4.19) The theme appears in B
major, the most distant tonal area in a showpiece that has rarely strayed far from D minor
and F major. Kerman evocatively describes this tonally remote, texturally shimmering
section as an idyll withdrawn from such reality as orchestral intervention, dialogue,
104
Struck, Die umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke Schumanns, 591-95. He contrasts these coda themes
with codas that merely consist mostly of passagework or cadential extensions.
Chapter Four 259

development, and the like. 105 Eventually, though, orchestral dialogue does intervene in
the form of quiet convergence. The cadenza returns to Dnow major for the first time
and the accompaniment accelerates again to become an unmetered tremolo. Over this
figuration, the winds play a variation of the second theme in unison with the soloist. The
passage recalls not contemporary virtuoso variations but the variation-finales of
Beethovens late piano sonatas, Opuses 109 and 111, both of which move through
progressively faster and faster figuration, before, in their final stages, accelerating into
trills and tremolos. As Charles Rosen notes of the sonatas, this technique creates
culminations of extremes of rapidity and immobility even as it hints at the complete
dissolution ofrhythmic articulation. 106 Though in a much briefer passage than those in
the late Beethoven sonatas, Schumann similarly transfigures a final appearance of the
second theme and a convergence of soloist and (section of the) orchestra with the trills
unmetered flickering, invoking not the extroverted bravura of glittering variation sets but
the equally glittering textures of late Beethoven and their association with one of the
more esoteric corners of the canon and an introverted variety of transcendence.
But the coda ultimately replaces this idyll with a more extrovertedly virtuosic
apotheosis equally rich with overtones of spirituality. (Example 4.20) Before the second
theme concludes, the piano interjects symphonic, chordal figuration, and the trumpets
and trombones begin a chorale melodyunanticipated in the Concert Allegro
supported by piano arpeggios. Struck has suggested that this theme might derive from the
chorale tune Du, meine Seele, singe. 107 Regardless of whether Schumann actually used
105
Kerman, The Concertos, 188-89.

Charles Rosen, The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, expanded edition (New York: Norton,
1997), 446-48.
107
Struck, Die umstritten spten Instrumentalwerke, 234.
106
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a real chorale melody as a source, the style itself gives a religioso, distinctly German
Protestant overtone to the coda and recalls the German tradition of concluding
symphonies with chorale-invoking finales. 108 Perhaps in response to criticism that soloorchestra interaction in Opus 92 obscured the pianists display, Schumann keeps the
orchestration understated: the brass is marked pianissimo, the strings support downbeats
with pizzicato, and the winds only add their counterpoint to the chorale in m. 280. Rather
than restoring a lost unity of orchestra and virtuoso, as Schumanns coda in Opus 92 had
done, the Concert Allegro sweeps the pianist into an ecstatic apotheosis that stylistically
swerves from the previous discourse and that the virtuosos own symphonic-style gesture
initiates. At the end of a concerto form that incorporates historical and contemporary
styles, Schumann positions a virtuosically elaborated chorale tune as the serious
virtuosos ultimate destination.
The large-scale form of Schumanns violin Phantasie, Op. 131drafted only a
few weeks after the composer completed Opus 134parallels that of the piano
showpiece: a slow introduction, a first-movement concerto form complete with expansive
closing displays, and a coda that merges soloistic virtuosity with a summarizing (if
discreetly orchestrated) orchestral apotheosis. The violin work, though, uses a different
palette of styles and some new formal twists to stage the transformation of virtuosity into
something serious and elevated. Whereas Opus 134 plays extensively with styles redolent
of historicism and Innigkeit, Opus 131 introduces popular and exotic styles into its
concerto discourse and enacts their transcendence during the synthesizing coda.
108
The most famous example, of course, is Beethovens Symphony No. 9, though Mendelssohn and
Schumann both employed the chorale style in their symphonic codas.
Chapter Four 261

Schumann introduces the violin soloist using a style of virtuosity rich in exotic
connotations: the introduction to the Phantasie represents one of the composers
relatively few uses of the style hongrois, or Hungarian-Gypsy style. 109 (Example 4.21)
John Daverio has mentioned the Phantasies use of the style hongrois, though without
considering its musical details or what it can reveal about the pieces handling of
virtuosity. 110 Specifically, the quasi-improvisatory runs and ornaments evoke what
Jonathan Bellman has termed the hallgat style, in which a soloist improvises on a tune,
overloads it with ornamentation, and at times renders the original melody all but
unrecognizable. 111 The soloist alternates between plaintive melodic gestures and rapid,
rhythmically asymmetrical scales. In m. 16, the simulated spontaneity turns an
appoggiatura-inflected turn of phrase into an ornamental figure. At m. 20, the soloist
cycles through and varies the first eight measures but adds new melodic turns and takes a
harmonic direction that closes on the tonic. Although the introduction does not use any of
the typical Gypsy modes and their characteristic augmented intervals, it does season
the figuration with chromatic and quasi-modal touches. Measure 16, for example,
prolongs the minor dominant until the harmonization swings toward a chromatic extreme
109
Discussing music in the style hongrois raises problems of terminology, since the term Gypsy is at best
a misleading and at worst a pejorative descriptor for the Roma. And yet, describing it as Romani music is
equally misleading, since actual Romani folk music differed considerably from the popular Gypsy style.
For purposes of this study, I use the term style hongrois for the most part, and, when discussing the culture
and group of musicians it evoked, place Gypsy in quotation marks. Indeed, to some extent, the Gypsy
nineteenth-century listeners heard represented in style hongrois music was an imaginary product of
stereotypes and idealizations conveyed through literature, music, and other cultural products. On such
terminological difficulties, see Ralph P. Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), 137. Other Schumannian style hongrois pieces include the finale of the
Piano Quintet, Op. 47 and the song Zigeunerleben, Op. 29 no. 3. On the former, see Julie Hedges Brown,
Schumann and the Style Hongrois, in Rethinking Schumann, ed. Roe-Min Kok and Laura Tunbridge
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 265-99.
110
John Daverio, Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002), 214. Daverios discussion of the style hongrois in this book centers on the composition and
reception of Brahmss Double Concerto, not Schumanns Phantasie.
111
Jonathan Bellman, The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe (Boston: Northeastern
Chapter Four 262

with a French augmented sixth. The soloists runs themselves hint at exotic modality with
their occasional sharp-fourth scale degrees and numerous dissonant leaps. Schumanns
orchestral introductionunusually subdued and texturally murky for a virtuoso
showpiecesows gentle metrical discord in preparation for the exotic solo. As shown in
Example 4.22, the main motive repeats in ways that give agogic and dynamic stress to
different notes, and its reverberations overlap and pass through various voices.
Schumanns use of the style hongrois might have been a nod to the dedicatee and
first performer of the Phantasie, Op. 131, the then twenty-three-year-old HungarianJewish violinist Joseph Joachim. 112 Joachim had spent most of his childhood in Budapest
before traveling to Leipzig, where he studied with Mendelssohn and became deputy
director of the Gewandhaus orchestra in the mid-1840s. By the time Schumann wrote the
Phantasie, Joachim was establishing himself as a serious virtuoso specializing in Bach
and Beethoven. With its narrative of arrival in Leipzig and subsequent stardom,
Joachims career in some respects resembles the idealized story Schumann told about
Christoph Hilf, though with the important differences that Joachim was already an
accomplished virtuoso upon his arrival in Leipzig and that his association with
Mendelssohn catalyzed and shaped his career rather than transforming him from
provincial dance fiddler to polished professional.
The outset of the Phantasie also invokes and adds to the concerto trajectory the
multifaceted associations the style hongrois held for the Romantic imagination. The style
carried more than a hint of light entertainment, thanks to the presence of Gypsy
violinists in cafes and the popularity of Hungarian style pieces. But it could also stand
112
Struck has noted that it was Ferdinand David who initially inspired Schumann to plan a concerted work
for violin. Even so, Schumann only began drafting the Phantasie after meeting Joachim in August 1853.
Die umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke, 241-42.
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not for the merely quotidian and attractive but for heightened musical expressivity. As
Bellman has shown, the tragic history of the Roma in Europe (which ranged from
economic marginalization to homicidal persecution) as well as nineteenth-century
stereotypes about Gypsies as hyper-emotional, freedom-loving outsiders contributed to
the styles powerful affective qualities. The style hongrois, Bellman writes, could express
both metahuman despair and a savage joy and suggested extremes of emotion
inaccessible to normal people, attainable only to the elemental tribe that lived in the wild
and traveled with the wind and rain. 113 Both connotationsthe light and the hyperexpressivepartook of a backhanded idealization of Gypsy musicians as supremely
gifted but untutored and unrefined. The stereotypical Gypsy, that is, possessed
extraordinary raw physical talent and virtuosity but could only play in an impulsive,
emotionally charged way that rejected the refinement of Western art music and could not
claim to be serious or, indeed, civilizedeven in the eyes of the styles admirers.
The concerto form proper adds non-exotic but still popularly styled music to the
discourse. The first theme group leads with a dance-like theme. Although Kerman
identifies the style as that of a polka (one of the dance crazes of the 1840s and 50s), any
polka-character is faint: the movement is in common time rather than 2/4, and the
rhythmic figures of the primary theme bear only slight resemblance to those typical of the
polka. 114 Even so, the primary themes repeated anapest rhythms and overall simplicity of
harmony and accompaniment evoke the world of popular, if not rustic, dance. (Example
113
Bellman, The Style Hongrois, 92.

If Kerman is right, the polka may be another (more subtly) exotic, Central European aspect of the
Phantasie, in this case calling to mind rustic Czechoslovakia. Gracian ernuak, Andrew Lamb, and John
Tyrell, Polka, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second ed., edited by Stanley Sadie
(London: Macmillan and New York: Grove, 2001) 20:34-37 and Arnold Blchel and Peter Novk, Polka,
in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, second edition, edited by Ludwig Finscher (Kassel:
Brenreiter, 1997) 7:1682-86.
114
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4.23) In addition, the Phantasie gives conventional bravura display a more conspicuous
role than does the Concert Allegro, Op. 134. The violin adds virtuosic continuations and
embellishments of both the first and second themes. Lengthy closing displays crown
both exposition and recapitulation with the module-to-module variety typical of
postclassical concertos. (Example 4.24) Schumanns violinist plays arpeggios, octaves,
and rapid triplet runs, offers a brief moment of embellished lyrical outpouring in m. 104,
and signals the closing tutti with sweeping arpeggios and scales.
In the midst of this showcase of popular virtuosity, Schumann hints at the
ascendency of more serious bravura. The development of the Phantasie returns to the
hyper-expressive, quasi-improvisational virtuosity of the style hongrois and features
hallgat-style ornamentation of the second theme. (Example 4.25) Schumann, though,
dispels this evocation of exotic expressivity and introduces a more historical brand of
virtuosity. At m. 139 (and after a short reminiscence of the Introduction) the violin breaks
the reverie with motoric, sequentially constructed Fortspinnung figuration. These
arpeggios and repeated notes broaden into a series of rebounding arpeggios that overlay
the retransition, an approach that imitates the retransition in the first movement of
Mendelssohns Violin Concerto, Op. 64 (though without inserting a cadenza before the
recapitulation, as Mendelssohn does). 115 Style-hongrois improvisation thus gives way to
neo-Baroque virtuosity and to a passage modeled on one of the emblematic serious
concertos of the early nineteenth century, one composedperhaps not coincidentally
by Joseph Joachims own mentor.
115
Kerman, Struck, and Daverio have both noted the Mendelssohn resemblance. The Concertos, 193; Die
umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke, 272; Robert Schumann, 469.
Chapter Four 265

Schumanns coda completes the transformation of the Phantasies popular,
uncultivated virtuosity by merging it with a synthesizing coda. (Example 4.26) After
the cadenza, Schumann repeats his Mendelssohnian retransitional gambit, again laying
rebounding arpeggios over a reappearance of the dance-like first theme. This time,
though, the theme breaks off after its first phrase, and the coda takes a new direction. At
m. 263, the orchestra begins to weave a contrapuntal texture that leads to a C-major
statement of the introduction. Throughout this turn from popular dance to lyrical
culmination, the soloists bravura figuration decorates and finally merges with the
orchestral texture. In the codas final stages, the leading motive of the introduction
saturates the orchestral texture, echoing between the strings and winds while the violins
broken octaves double every appearance. The coda of Schumanns Phantasie thus leaves
behind any trace of the openings style-hongrois virtuosity (and indeed never answers the
melancholy hallgat figuration with a fast, Gypsy-style dance) and swerves away from
an ending that would have positioned the recapitulations closing display, the cadenza,
and a final statement of the dance-like first theme as the pieces culmination.
Macdonald describes the Phantasie as one of Schumanns wittier, more humorous
pieces, one in which the virtuoso good-naturedly sports with his own role as virtuoso
and that ends with a coda devoted to sweet song, to assure that the joke was very gentle
and is quite over.116 But, for all its lightweight character, Schumanns showpiece makes
a statement about bravura display and its place in a concerto written for a serious,
Germanized soloist. Styles of virtuosity stereotypically associated with raw, uncultivated
physicality (in the case of the style hongrois), popular dance (the first theme), and the
glitter of postclassical bravura music (the display areas) have a place in the Phantasies
116
Chapter Four 266

discourse but do not partake in its gentle apotheosis. What Struck calls Schumanns
synthesizing coda theme synthesizes in the sense that it binds soloist with orchestra and
effects a tonal resolution by recapitulating material from the A-minor introduction in C
major, but it also omits the other styles the Phantasie has introduced. Instead, Schumann
gave Joachima virtuoso who became a member of the Gewandhauss community of
serious musicians partly through association with Mendelssohna grand finale that
presents his most elaborate virtuosic display in the context of an unexpected symphonic
apotheosis. In its last appearance, the orchestral introduction serves not as a curtain
opener for a Gypsy violinist but as a symphonic summation in which the now
thoroughly non-exotic virtuoso participates, and its gentle metric dissonance and textural
complexity remove it from the realm of the danceable and the postclassical. In what turns
out to be a deceptively lightweight work, Schumann stages his virtuoso transcending
popular or uncultivated styles of virtuosity and finding true culmination in the realm of
the symphonic and ethereal.
From Popular Warhorses to Marginalized Last Words

Schumanns last two showpieces wear their transcendent endings lightlylittle prior to
the endings hints at a blending of symphony and concerto, and the codas themselves are
concise and keep the soloists display audible. As two of the final works Schumann
produced before his decline into mental illness, the Concert Allegro and violin Phantasie
have figured in discussions of his late style and its devaluation at the hands of critics after
his death. 117 The initial reception of these showpieces, however, did not hinge on
117
See, for example, Struck, Die umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke and Daverio, Robert Schumann:
Herald of a New, Poetic Age.
Chapter Four 267

questions of aesthetic weakness or on speculation about the effects of Schumanns illness
on his compositional work but rather welcomed them as popular but elevated works
capable of charming an audience. If Schumann designed his late showpieces with
audience appeal in view, they at first had the desired effect.
The Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134 met with a particularly auspicious
reception and proved one of the highlights of Robert and Clara Schumanns tour of the
Netherlands. John Daverio describes this tour as one of the triumphs of the couples joint
career, one Robert wistfully recalled during his institutionalization in Endenich. 118 For
orchestrally supported concerts, Opus 134 often served as one of Claras contributions
their team programs. On November 26, 1853 in Utrecht, for example, she performed
Opus 134, Beethovens Waldstein Sonata, Op. 53, and two Mendelssohn Lieder ohne
Worte while Roberts Symphony No. 3 occupied the first half of the program. The
Utrecht Dagblad described the Concert Allegro as a new pearl of [Robert Schumanns]
genius. 119 German reviews of Claras subsequent performances continued to
compliment the work for its appeal. Complaints of difficulty or lack of exposure for the
virtuoso, so prevalent in the reception of the Introduction and Allegro Appassionato,
rarely surfaced. The Neue Zeitschrift reported after Claras October 23, 1854, Leipzig
performance that Opus 134 was a happily conceived, creatively [geistvoll] executed
piece of music, in every note of which Schumanns individuality and genius meet us with
unstinted freshness and charm. 120 The Signale fr die Musikalische Welt reminded
118
See, for example, Daverio, Robert Schumann, 486.

Cited and translated in Robert Schumann, Konzertstcke fr Klavier, ed. Ute Br and Bernhard R.
Appel, Robert Schumann: Neue Ausgabe smtlicher Werke ser. 1, werkgruppe 2, vol. 2 (Mainz: Schott,
2007), 261-62.
120
Ersteres ist ein glcklich concipirtes, geistvoll ausgefhrtes Tonstck, in dem aus jeder Note
Schumanns Eigenthmlichkeit und Genialitt in unverkrzter Frische und Anmuth entgegentritt. NZfM
21, no. 19 (November 3, 1854): 206-7.
119
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readers that the Concert Allegro had caused a sensation during the couples
Netherlands tour and called the piece an extended, passionately moved movement, full
of drive, individuality, and deep sentimentThe piano writing is difficult but
rewarding. 121 After Claras performance in Lbeck in November, the Lbecker Zeitung
described the work as one of those creations of this ingenious composer that, despite
many whimsical features, makes a significant impression right from the first hearing. 122
When Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms had the score published in 1855, Berthold
Senff, editor of the Signale, wrote an equally glowing review. Its positive tone surely
derived in part from Senffs interest in advertising the workit was his firm that
published the Concert Allegro. Even so, he stresses its melodic appeal and virtuosity but
also assures readers that its effectiveness with a cultivated audience is certain. 123
Although Joachim did not cause a sensation with the Phantasie, Op. 131 during
any highly publicized concert tours, reviews of his early performances similarly stressed
the works popular appeal. After he performed the work on January 12, 1854, at the
Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Signale reported, We regard the Phantasie for violin as
Schumanns best concert piece. It appears to have been written in an especially good tone
for the public. Contrasting this late showpiece with Schumanns more inaccessible early
works, the reviewer continues, All aspects of his talent display themselves in a pleasing
121
Von den zwei Manuscripten Robert Schumanns, hat uns besonders das Concerstck fr Pianoforte
interessirt, durch dessen meisterhaften Vortrag die Knstlerin schon im vorigen Jahre, auf ihrer Kunstreise
in Holland Sensation erregte; es ist ein lang ausgefhrter, leidenschaftlich bewegter Satz, voller Schwung,
Eigenthmlichkeit, und tiefer Empfindung. Die Clavierbehandlung ist schwer, aber dankbar[.] Signale 12,
no. 43 (October 26, 1854): 346.
122
Das Concertstck von Schumann, welches uns neu war, gehrt zu denjenigen Schpfungen des
genialen Tondichters, die trotz mancher Wunderlichkeiten doch gleich beim ersten Hren einen
bedeutenden Eindruck machen[.] Lbecker Zeitung (November 21, 1854). Quoted in Br and Appel, eds.,
Konzerstcke fr Klavier, 264.
123
Das innere Kunstwerth des Stckes ist aber so gediegen, seine Wirkungsfhigkeit auf eine gebildete
Zuhrerschaft so zuverlssig, da es ohne Zweifel bald ebenso fest auf dem Concertrepertoirs aller
achtungswerthen Pianovirtuosen stehen wird, wie z.B. Mendelssohns Concerte. Berthold Senff in Signale
13, no. 41 (September 27, 1855): 321.
Chapter Four 269

way, and the Romantic weaknesses are left aside.124 The Neue Zeitschrift offered praise
as well: The ingenious master enriches the musical literature and gives the player
opportunities to display himself as a multifaceted artist and the listener something truly
beautiful to enjoy. There are few recent works in this genre, which we with so much
confidence in their artistic worth recommend to artistically high-standing violin
virtuosos. 125
Despite this promising early reception, both the Concert Allegro and the violin
Phantasie became two of Schumanns most marginalized, occasionally derided
compositions. As Struck and other scholars have noted, both became implicated in the
problematic reception of Schumanns late works in general: the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century stigma of mental illness and tendency to read compositions as
manifestations of a composers inner life cast a pall on the late works. When Schumanns
illness became public knowledge, critical valuations of these works shifted toward the
negative or at least apologetic. 126 Even Senffs glowing Signale review of the Concert
Allegro took pains to distance it from the composers decline. The work stems from the
part of Schumanns life when he was in full health, Senff assures readers, and proceeds
not like a tributary of something greater, but like the original river from its own source.
When he praises the movements harmonic language, he conspicuously paints a picture
of health and youthfulness: just as hot blood moves through an abundantly healthy body,
124
Die Fantasie fr Violine von Rob. Schumann halten wir fr sein bestes Concertstck. Er scheint es in
einer besonders guten Stimmung frs Publikum geschrieben zu haben. Alle Vorzge seines Talents zeigen
sich in liebenswrdiger Weise darin, die romantischen Schwchen sind weggeblieben. Signale 19 (January
19, 1854): 28. Quoted in Struck, Die umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke, 250.
125
Der geniale Meister giebt damit eine wirkliche Bereicherung der musikalischen Literatur und dem
Spieler Gelegenheit, sich als allseitiger Knstler zu zeigen, dem Hrer, sich an wahrhaft Schnem zu
erfreuen. Es giebt wenig neuere Werke dieses Genres, welche wir mit so viel Ueberzeugung von ihrem
Kunstwerthe knstlerisch hochstehenden Virtuosen der Violine empfehlen mchten. NZfM 40, no. 4
(January 20, 1854): 42.
126
See, for example, Struck, Die umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke, 255.
Chapter Four 270

so do the harmonic progressions beat along. 127 On the other hand, one Signale review of
a performance of the Concert Allegro from 1875 calls the piece the clearest evidence of
the composers exhaustion. 128 However, the piano showpiece seems to have been more
forgotten than reviled. As Macdonald has noted, Clara Schumann dropped the piece from
her repertoire in the years after Roberts death; she no longer needed a short concerted
work as part of a team program, and her concerts began to privilege multi-movement
concertos, such as Roberts Piano Concerto, Op. 54. 129
It was reception of the Phantasie, Op. 131 that took an overwhelmingly negative
turn. Even reviews that do not draw attention to Schumanns illness raise complaints of
unpleasantness or gloominess. As early as July 1854 (well before Schumanns
institutionalization), the Neue Berliner Musikzeitung described its tone as dark and
monotonous throughout and complained that Schumanns obvious borrowing from
Mendelssohns Violin Concerto made these faults all the more apparent. Only adding an
Adagio and lighter Rondo to create a three-movement concerto would balance the
movement, the reviewer suggests. 130 The Signale in 1856 reversed its early praise for the
Phantasie, describing the piece as a painting of dark colors, only now and then
penetrated by single, sweet beams of light. 131 Several decades later, Eduard Hanslick
127
Dies eben erscheinen Werk Schumanns entstand noch in der Zeit, als sich der Componist voller
Gesundheit erfreute: es erweckt ein doppeltes Interesse durch seine herrliche Musik und durch die
Bethtigung rstiger Schaffenskraft des edeln Meisters...wie ein Strom, so fliet dies Musikstck dahin,
nicht als Seitenarm eines greren Bettes, sondern als ursprngliche Fluth eigener Quellen...[W]ie das
heie, reine Blut in einem ppig-gesunden Krper, so pocht es hier in den Harmonieadern. Berthold Senff,
Signale 13, no. 41 (September 27, 1855): 231-32.
128
The Signale calls Opus 134 die deutlichsten Spuren der Erschpfung seines Verfassers. Signale 33,
no. 18 (March 1875): 283. Quoted in Br and Appel, eds., Konzertstcke fr Klavier, 266.
129
130
Charakter und Farbeton des Stckes sind dster und im Allgemeinen monoton zu nennen, was sich
noch schrfer durch die dem Componisten eigenthmliche Anhnglichkeit an Mendelssohnschen Typus
bemerkbar macht. C. Bhmer in Neue Berliner Musikzeitung 8, no. 28 (July 12, 1854): 218.
131
Das Violinphantasie war wiederum ein Gemlde von dsterer Frbung die nur hin und wieder von
einzelnen zckenden Lichtstrahlen durchbrochen wird. Signale 14, no. 44 (October 30, 1856): 505.
Chapter Four 271

wrote that Joseph Joachim must have continued to program the piece primarily out of
respect for Schumanns memory, because it is a dark abyss, across which two great
artists join hands. [The work is] painful, dark, and wayward. 132
These complaints surely resulted in part from the memory of Schumanns illness:
Hanslick suggested that the work betrayed its composers exhaustion of invention. 133
But their criticisms also invoke concrete aspects of the Phantasie. The orchestral
introduction does begin the piece with unconventionally complex, metrically dissonant
textures. Although the critical discourse remained silent on the exotic aspects of the
Phantasie, perceptions of gloominess, darkness, and waywardness might have been
responses to Schumanns inclusion of the style hongroiswith its associations of
unrestrained lamentation and what Bellman calls metahuman despair. Daverio has
made a similar argument about Brahmss Double Concerto, Op. 102. Brahmss
incorporation of uncultivated style hongrois rhythms, modes, and performing
techniques into a serious composition, Daverio suggests, might have contributed to its
cool reception.134 It would be hard to argue that Schumanns lightweight Phantasie
transgressed the boundaries of high art in the way Daverio argues that Brahms did. Even
so, Schumanns Phantasie introduces the soloist with plaintive, hyper-expressive gestures
instead of more conventionally brilliant bravura material or the lied-like slow
introductions typical of Mendelssohns single-movement showpieces (or, indeed,
Schumanns own Opuses 92 and 134). Far from abandoning these evocations of Gyspy
132
Es ist ein dunkler Abgrund, ber dem zwei groe Knstler sich die Hnde reichen. Martervoll, dster,
und eigensinnig ringt sich die Phantasie mit sehr geringem melodischen Gehalt in fortwhrendem
Figurieren weiter. Quoted in Struck, Die umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke, 256.
133
Nur hchst selten wird das Ermdende dieser Erfindung durch eine geistreiche Harmonie oder
Orchstration unterbrochen. Ibid., 256.
134
Daverio suggests that Brahmss use of the style hongrois hit a raw nerve. His offense lay not so much
in the calling of forbidden passions to the surfacebut rather, I think, in demonstrating that passion could
be treated as a worthy of object of the intellect. Crossing Paths, 240-41.
Chapter Four 272

improvisation after the introduction, Schumann begins the development not with classical
procedures of modulation and fragmentation but with a hallgat take on the second
theme. Such uncultivated virtuosity may have seemed incongruous alongside more
stereotypically serious, Germanic neo-Baroque and Mendelssohnian references, the
buoyant first theme, and the showy closing displays. After Schumann himself had met a
tragic end, it would have been easy to connect the style hongroiss associations with
lamentation and lack of restraint with the composers own painful circumstances and loss
of mental function.
Adding to these supposed problems with musical style and appeal was the more
practical issue of Schumanns violin writing. In 1854, the Sddeutsche Musikzeitung
printed Carl Bancks bleak assessment of Opus 131, which complained, The difficulties
of the pieceforce the player to sacrifice the first demand of his art: beautiful tone with
all its manifold wonder of euphony. 135 Violinists should avoid Schumanns piece,
Banck says, since there are other works that better combine idiomatic violin writing with
good musical content. In 1937, Fritz Kreisler attempted to correct Schumanns errors
by publishing his own arrangement of the Phantasie. Kreisler rewrote large spans of the
original passagework, compressing some of the arpeggios into narrower ranges,
transposing some runs out of the violins lower register, and replacing certain figures
entirely. 136
Finally, the conventional format and popular style of both the Phantasie and the
Concert Allegro ironically worked against themas much as they may have charmed
135
Das Studium und die erstrebte Beherrshung der fr das Instrument fremdartig gesuchten und
undankbaren Schwierigkeiten zwingt den Spieler das erste Erfordniss seiner Kunst zu opfern: den schnen
Ton mit all dem mannichfachen Zauber des Wohlklanges und ihm eigenthmlichen Ausdrucks, dessen er
fhig ist. Sddeutsche Musikzeitung 3, no. 48 (November 27, 1854): 192.
136
Kreislers arrangement also extensively reworks Schumanns development and coda.
Chapter Four 273

audiences during their early performance histories, some critics did not find them
sufficiently ambitious, innovative, or weighty to join the ranks of Schumanns canonized
works. The Phantasie appeared on an 1856 Leipzig concert dedicated to Schumanns
memory. Richard Pohls Neue Zeitschrift review complained about arrangements for the
concert and the selection of pieces, particularly Opus 131. The work is a
Gelegenheitsstck, Pohl wrote, and not a successful one. It is not well written for the
violin and is ungrateful as a concert piece. 137 A Neue Zeitschrift review of Carl
Reineckes 1875 Leipzig performance of the Concert Allegro, Op. 134 damned with faint
praise: It held our attention more as a competent showpiece than through musical
poetry; the tutti were for the most part being worked out entirely according to the
traditional concerto pattern. In hesitating to publish this work, Schumann certainly
displayed true self-knowledge. 138
Schumann wrote his last two concertos, indeed, to appeal to a wide audience,
packaging serious features within concise concerto forms that deliver many of the
expected virtuosic and melodic pleasures of popular showpieces. But this mixture of
popular convention, seriousness, and the careers of specific virtuosos only synergized for
a brief moment in Schumanns career. The combination began to unravel after
Schumanns institutionalization and death. What had been a reach for popularity during
one of Schumanns most productive periods as a composer became for later generations
137
Das Werk ist ein Gelegenheitsstck, und zwar durchaus kein glckliches. Denn abgesehen davon da
das Stck als Violinstck wenig geigenmig, als Concertstck wenig dankbar ist...ist auch der innere
musikalische Werth nicht bedeutend genug folglich das Werk nicht geeignet, am Tager einer
Schumannfeier das Programm zu zieren. Richard Pohl, Zur Erinnerung an Robert Schumann, NZfM 45,
no. 19 (October 31, 1856):199.
138
Neu war uns das Schumannsche Concerto-Allegro...mehr ein tchtiges Kraftstck als durch Tonpoesie
fesselnd, die Tutti meistens ganz nach der alten Concertschablone gearbeitet. Gewi hat Schumann in
richtiger Selbsterkenntni mit dessen Verffentlichung gezgert. NZfM 61, no. 15 (April 9, 1875): 149.
Chapter Four 274

the disappointing last words of a suffering artist or, at best, pieces of lesser substance that
could not serve as milestones in the output of a canonized composer.
***
Schumanns concerted works beg to be read not only as innovations in concerto form.
Placed in the context of their early reception and performance history, recognized for
their stylistic heterogeneity, and considered against the backdrop of the postclassical
concerto and the virtuosity discourse, they emerge as vehicles for incorporating the
virtuoso into the community of serious musicians, works that channel bravura display for
self-consciously serious ends. Schumanns proposals for how the virtuoso could enter the
Mount Parnassus temple not only encompassed the real-life performing activities of
virtuoso performers and their commitment to promoting already canonized masterworks,
but also the structures and styles of his own concertos. Each of these showpieces presents
its own strategies for channeling and staging virtuosic display: inflecting it with styles
redolent of inwardness or historicism, suppressing virtuosity in favor of more symphonic
material, pointedly refusing to end concerto discourse with flashy closing displays, and
enacting syntheses of virtuoso brilliance and symphonic apotheoses. Schumann did not
imagine an ultimate triumph of the epic and collective over the virtuosic, but rather an
appealing combination of the lofty and the popular, the collectively serious and the
individually brilliant.
Indeed, Schumann designed all of his concerted works as showpieces for select,
serious virtuosos. Adding to the processes of convergence, transcendence, or suppression
built into these virtuoso vehicles were their associations with Clara Schumann and, in the
Chapter Four 275

case of Opus 131, Joseph Joachim. The concertos nods to these virtuosos artistic
identities and career paths reveals another aspect of their historical situatedness: not their
status as timeless statements on virtuosity, but their roots in both a specifically midnineteenth-century critical preoccupation and in the practices and personae of two iconic
German virtuosos. For all of Robert Schumanns concertos save the Piano Concerto, Op.
54, in fact, this close relationship with the needs and peculiarities of the moment might
have contributed to their eventually non-canonic status. An answer to the question How
can virtuosity be serious music? that proved compelling for audiences and critics in the
1840s and 50s commanded less enthusiasm after the ends of the tours and the passing of
the artists for whom they were writtenand, to an extent, their own composers
healthiest years. Although the late showpieces have not vanished from the repertory, they
went quickly from being regarded as some of Schumanns most appealing works to some
of his least-known compositions.
In the last decade and a half of his life, Schumanns interest in serious virtuosity
turned outward, from the rarefied world of the salon and the soiree to the more public
world of the concert. Yet, some of the same aesthetic preoccupations and metaphors for
transcendence remain. Although neither Schumann nor his contemporaries explicitly
acknowledged it, one can detect intimations of the sublime in the quasi-spiritual coda of
the Concert Allegro, Op. 134 and the fanfare outbursts in the first movement of the
Concerto, Op. 54. And, the concertos showcase signifiers of the poetic, such as in the
evocation of Romantic distance in the Introduction to Opus 92 or the Lied ohne Worte
style in the Concerto. But these late works project musical metaphors for Innigkeit,
historicism, and seriousness onto large, public canvases and incorporate them into
Chapter Four 276

dialogues that negotiate and affirm the proper status of virtuosity among the traditions
and institutions of serious music. Numerous scholars have pointed out that Schumanns
post-1840 works display greater accessibility and clarity of form than his 1830s piano
pieces, a move that Brendels Neue Zeitschrift attributed to Hegelian maturation and that
scholars have linked to Schumanns lack of commercial success with his 1830s
compositions, his need for greater recognition and financial security following his
marriage, and the cooling of his youthful radicalism. In the case of his virtuosic works,
this change in aesthetic suggests neither a retrenchment nor an advance, but a reach for a
wider public. Schumann turned away from the intimate private salon (with its hospitality
to small circles of connoisseurs, literature-influenced music, and works derived from
domestic genres) and instead looked toward the public concert and its demands for broad
appeal and the display of a musical community. It was ironically this turn that won
Schumann the most critical and popular acclaim for his compositional contribution to the
virtuosity discourse and the most consistent recognition that his works were both showy
and elevated. Ironic because, although they garnered good reviews and were favorites of
their intended performers, only the Piano Concerto, Op. 54 became, as Schumann might
have said, a pillar in the temple of the old masters. Considering these concertos and
their reception, though, reveals them as timely statements on the relationship between
virtuosity and serious music, ones that, like so much of the German Romantic musical
discourse, answer both practical exigencies and idealistic aspirations.
Epilogue 277
EPILOGUE
Robert Schumanns engagement with instrumental virtuosity extended across his entire
career, from the Abegg Variations, Op. 1, and Ein Opus II essay of 1831 to the
Phantasie, Op. 131, and the Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134, two fruits of his
last productive year as a composer. This strand of Schumanns output reflects the breadth
and diversity of the nineteenth-century virtuoso scene and repertory. Schumanns
virtuosic compositions range from etudes for at-home practice designed to be sold on the
sheet-music market to structurally enterprising hybrids of concerto and symphony genres
designed specifically for international stars. The settings of his reviews reveal that the
fascination with virtuosity affected not only the virtuoso concert, but also private musicmaking and the public symphonic concert.
All of these musical and critical products, though, shared a cultural and
intellectual background and its associated preoccupations and aspirations: a German
ideology dedicated to establishing music as a self-consciously serious art form and a
concomitant critical discourse that saw the rage for virtuosity as a potential threat. In his
writings and compositions, Schumann attempted to develop and promote approaches to
virtuosity that staged dazzling display as part of the experience of serious, transcendental
music and that answered the imperatives of Romantic aesthetics. As our exploration has
shown, Schumanns own works pursue such abstract aims as the poeticization of popular
genres and the use of virtuosity to create sublime experience but also (particularly after
1840 in the concertos) confront the more concrete relationship between the virtuoso and
the symbols and institutions of the German culture of serious music. In merging
virtuosity with German Romantic notions of seriousness and transcendence, Schumann
Epilogue 278
responded to both a fascination with the aesthetic possibilities of virtuosity and an
understanding that bravura music and virtuoso performers offered a link to the wide
public that proponents of self-consciously serious music were attempting to cultivate.
Schumanns engagement with instrumental virtuosity, perhaps more than any other
aspect of his output, reveals the coexistence, indeed the interdependence, of worldly and
aesthetic concerns and solutions that lay at the heart of the German Romantic project.
Perhaps this should not come as a surprise, sinceas Schumann and other critics either
recognized or lamentedthe early nineteenth century became the Age of Bravura
through a virtually ubiquitous public craze for virtuoso performers and music, and the
virtuosos own career depended on his or her ability to pack them in and appeal to a
wide, contemporary audience.
Schumann was in fact part of a larger movement, a generation of musicians and
critics who sought to adapt virtuosity to German Romantic ideology. Their activities
unfolded at a particularly vibrant time in the history of virtuosity: the years between the
late 1820s and the 1850s saw, for example, Paganinis tours of countries north of Italy,
Liszts equally path-breaking virtuoso years, Clara Wiecks rise as the serious German
virtuoso, the most intense manifestations of the virtuosity debate, diverse innovations in
concerto form, and the ascendency of the repertory recital. Regardless of how nineteenthcentury critics and later historiographical tradition chose to portray the many divergent
approaches to virtuosity that flourished during these years, it would be too simple to
describe a binaristic opposition between Parisian/popular/ephemeral virtuosity and
German/elitist/canonized serious music. Studying Schumanns works, writings, and
context reveals a more complicated picture: that of musicians experimenting with one of
Epilogue 279
the most exciting musical phenomena and popular crazes of their time and customizing it
to serve their own needs and speak to their own audiences. The discourse they formed
was not so much an attempt to suppress or exile virtuosity from the culture of serious
music (even if their writings frequently assumed such a posture) as a conversation about
what virtuosity could or should become and what place it should hold in musical culture.
Though scholarship on some iconic figuresnotably Liszthas begun to explore this
interaction of Romantic ideology and instrumental virtuosity, it remains one of the most
significant and yet under-recognized strands in the discourse that surrounded the
construction of serious music in Germany.
Virtuosity after Schumann

Eduard Hanslicks Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien draws a boundary between the
Age of Virtuosity that stretched from 1830 to 1848 and the Musical Renaissance
characterized by Associations of Artists that took hold afterward, a periodization that
mainly reflects the retirement from active touring of some of the most significant midcentury virtuosos (notably Thalberg and Liszt). 1 But the development of self-consciously
serious virtuosity ended neither in 1848 nor with Schumanns death in 1856. Arguably
the most enduring part of this discourse was the repertory recital itself and the conviction
that the inspired interpretation of canonic repertory was among the serious virtuosos
most significant tasks. 2 One thinks of Clara Schumanns programming practices
Eduard Hanslick, Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumller, 1869), see for
example 325.
2
Even if, as many scholars have shown, nineteenth-century interpretations of canonized works were
significantly freer and allowed for more individualistic approaches than did the latter half of the twentieth
century, during which, as Richard Taruskin has argued, a modernist approach to fidelity took hold. Richard
Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Epilogue 280
following her husbands deathin which she seldom performed new compositions
Hans von Blows complete Beethoven cycles, and Anton Rubinsteins historical recitals.
Even during what we might call the (ongoing) Age of Interpretive Virtuosity,
though, composer-performers continued to contribute to a growing corpus of serious
showpieces and to develop individualistic approaches to high-art virtuosity. 3 Johannes
Brahms (himself a sometime touring pianist) in some ways went even farther that the
Schumanns in his invocations of the German symphonic tradition and historicism in his
virtuosic compositions. When Brahms made his 1861 performing debut in Vienna, he
closed his recital with his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, Op. 24. 4 The
Variations stage a historicist kind of virtuosity not only through their theme but by
incorporating neo-Baroque and canonic writing and by taking as a model Beethovens
Eroica Variations, Op. 35, which also ends with a substantial fugue. 5 Brahmss
concertossuch as the four-movement Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83synthesize the
concertante and symphonic on a more monumental scale than Schumanns. On the other
side of the New German School polemic, Liszt turned his skill as a writer of paraphrases
and transcriptions to historical music (Bach, Mozart, and Renaissance choral works) and
to operatic selections from an anti-Brahmsian claimant to the pinnacle of musical
sublimity, Wagner. Alexander Rehding has described Liszts Wagner transcriptions as
significant for the promotion and dissemination of the operas. He thus recognizes the role
See also Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
3
Although Clara Schumann ceased composing after her husbands death, both Anton Rubinstein and von
Blow composed and published original showpieces alongside their feats of historicist programming.
4
Hanslick noted that the Handel Variations were one of the most crowd-pleasing components of Brahmss
Vienna debut. Michael Musgrave, The Music of Brahms (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), 5254.
5
Brahms suppresses bravura display in favor of learnedness in a way Beethoven did not: whereas the
Eroica Variations extends beyond its fugue and ends with a few last transparent, glittering treatments of
the theme, the Handel Variations concludes with the fugues climactic pedal point.
Epilogue 281
of the paraphrase genre in popularizing larger works as well as the power of the virtuoso
(particularly Liszt, then a living legend) to command a wide public.6
These discoursesthe interpretive and the compositionalcoexisted for much of
the twentieth century. Early and mid-twentieth-century composer-pianists continued the
nineteenth-century practice of imbuing virtuoso works designed for their own use with
self-consciously innovative and serious touches. But at this writing, in 2012, the
evaluation of interpretation and, to a lesser extent, public image dominates the virtuosity
discourse on the classical-music scene. The ideal of the performer merging his own
subjectivity with the recognized masterworka product of Romantic philosophy but
really only one of the strategies the nineteenth-century critical discourse suggested for
elevating virtuosityhas become the reigning model for virtuoso performance.
Composer-performers continue to nourish many musical traditions, but, for the most part,
no longer that of Western classical music. When critics praise pianist Murray Perahias
virtuosity, they generally mean the pristine tone, fluid technique, and attention to nuance
with which he renders canonized classics. Whereas the nineteenth-century writers who
criticized Henri Herz as a shallow virtuoso cited his compositions as evidence, twentiethand twenty-first-century critics who level the same accusation of mere virtuosity
against Lang Lang pass judgment on his interpretations of Beethoven, Liszt, and
Schumann (not to mention the gestures he makes while performing as well as the pop-star
image he has cultivated).
Alexander Rehding, Music and Monumentality: Commemoration and Wonderment in Nineteenth-Century

Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 95-108.
Epilogue 282
Frames for Virtuosity
Schumanns showpieces, essays, and their context invite us to consider virtuosity as a
complex phenomenon that embraced techniques and instrumental idioms, formal
structures, and the cultural significances of repertories, styles, and individual virtuosos.
This phenomenon extended not only to the iconic virtuosos of the nineteenth century but
also to figures whom historiographical tradition has generally not regarded as significant
parts of the story of virtuosity. Understanding Schumanns approach to virtuosityand,
by implication, that of other figuresrequires us to ask how compositions he wrote and
reviewed inflect and package bravura display and to what aesthetic and cultural ideals
they speak. In the end, documents from the Age of Bravura tell us, there was never such a
thing as mere virtuosity or music that pursued virtuosic display as an end in itself,
despite the prevalence of such clichs in that eras critical discourse and the weight they
held for nineteenth-century musicians. There was always an end, a larger framework
for understanding crowd-pleasing or astounding stunts and the display of a virtuosos
achievement, excellence, and prowess. The postclassical virtuosos who often attracted
these complaints staged bravura display according to an aesthetic that valued
accessibility, marketability, and clarity as well as brillianceif critics dismissed their
works as shallow, it was because of these larger concerns. Similarly, the first
movement of Schumanns Piano Concerto, Op. 54 was not really a concerto not for the
virtuoso but a showpiece that mediates between bravura display and Innigkeit in
unconventional ways tailor-made for Clara Schumann, arguably the most selfconsciously serious of nineteenth-century virtuosos.
Epilogue 283
Studying the nineteenth-century virtuosity discourse suggests that, during this
historical period at least, almost every musical subculture, niche, movement, or school of
thought produced, promoted, and, in a sense, needed its virtuosos and warhorses
individuals and musical works that embodied extraordinary performing achievement
according to the aspirations and tastes of their audiencesjust as it sought ways of
understanding the rage for virtuosity and determining its place within a larger musical
culture. Schumann, for his part, composed showpieces, promoted virtuosos, and
attempted to influence the tastes of the German culture of self-consciously serious music,
with all its abstract views on aesthetics, aspirations for music as a profession and art
form, prized musical institutions, and political and cultural viewpoints. His compositional
and critical activities not only represent a significant episode in the history of virtuosity.
They also offer insight into the larger musical culture they addressed by offering a partial
but uncommonly rich glimpse into what its listeners, musicians, and critics found
admirable, challenging, and astonishing.
Bibliography 284
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Bibliothque du Muse Royale de Mariemont, Morlanwelz-Mariemont, Belgium.
_____. Gesammelte Schriften ber Musik und Musiker.1854. Fifth edition. Edited by
Martin Kreisig. Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hrtel, 1914.
_____. Introduction and Allegro appassionato. Concert Piece for Pianoforte and
Orchestra Op. 92; Concert Allegro with Introduction for Piano and Orchestra
Op. 134. Edited by Ute Br. Robert Schumann: Neue Ausgabe smtlicher Werke,
edited by Akio Mayeda and Klaus Wolfgang Niemller, Series 1, group 2, vol. 2.
Mainz: Schott, 2007.
_____. The Musical World of Robert Schumann: A Selection from his Own Writings.
Translated by Henry Pleasants. London: V. Gollanz, 1965.
_____. On Music and Musicians. Translated and edited by Fanny Raymond Ritter. 4th ed.
London: Reeves, 1880.
_____. Piano Concerto A Minor Op. 54. Edited by Bernhard R. Appel. Robert
Schumann: Neue Ausgabe smtlicher Werke, edited by Akio Mayeda and Klaus
Wolfgang Niemller, Series 1, group 2, vol. 1. Mainz: Schott, 2003.
Bibliography 295
_____. Schumann Briefedition. Series III: Verlegerbriefwechsel. Edited by Thomas
Synofzik and Michael Heinemann. 7 vols. Cologne: Christoph Dorr, 2008-9.
_____. Tagebcher. Edited by Georg Eismann. Vol. 1, 1827-1838. Leipzig: Deutscher
Verlag fr Musik, 1971.
Sheehan, James J. German History: 1770-1866. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Siegel, Jerrold. The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the
Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005
Sipe, Thomas. Interpreting Beethoven: History, Aesthetics, and Critical Reception.
PhD. diss, University of Pennsylvania, 1992.
Sisman, Elaine. Learned Style and the Rhetoric of the Sublime in the Jupiter
Symphony. In Wolfgang Amad Mozart: Essays on his Life and his Music, edited
by Stanley Sadie, 213-40. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.
_____. "Variations." In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Second
edition. Edited by Stanly Sadie, vol. 26, 284-326. London: Macmillan and New
York: Grove, 2001.
Spaethling, Robert, trans. and ed. Mozarts Letters, Mozarts Life: Selected Letters. New
York: Norton, 2000.
Struck, Michael. Die umstrittenen spten Instrumentalwerke Schumanns. Hamburg: Karl
Dieter Wagner, 1984.
Suttoni, Charles. Piano and Opera. PhD. diss, New York University, 1973.
Taruskin, Richard. The Oxford History of Western Music. 5 vols. Oxford: Oxford
_____. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995.
_____. Why Do They All Hate Horowitz? In The Danger of Music and Other AntiUtopian Essays, 30-36. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
Todd, R. Larry. Mendelssohn: A Life in Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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Todd, 80-112. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Tovey, Donald Francis. Essays in Musical Analysis. Reprint ed. Vol. 3, Concertos.
London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Bibliography 296
Tunbridge, Laura. Schumanns Late Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007.
Wangerme, Robert. Tradition et innovation dans la virtuosit romantique. Acta
Musicologica 42, fasc. 1/2. (Sept. 1970).
Warburton, Thomas. Some Performance Alternatives for Schumanns Opus 13.
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Rudloph Kunze, 1858.
Watkins, Holly. Metaphors of Depth in German Musical Thought. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Weber, William. The Great Transformation of Musical Taste. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Wiessmann, Sigrid. Vienna: Bastion of Conservativism. In The Early Romantic Era,
edited by Alexander Ringer, 84-108. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991.
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_____. The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann. Translated by
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Virtuosity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Poetic Virtuosity:
Robert Schumann as a Critic and Composer
of Virtuoso Instrumental Music
(Volume Two)
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
CHAPTER 1:
SCHUMANNS CRITIQUE OF POSTCLASSICAL VIRTUOSITY
FIGURES AND EXAMPLES
Chapter One Figures and Examples 299

Example 1.1: Czerny, The School of Practical Composition. Sample variations.
Class 1: In which the theme is strictly preserved in one hand, whilst a new, augmented, or even florid
accompaniment is performed.
Class 2: In which the theme itself is varied by adjunctive notes, without however changing
the melody.
Class 3: Where...passages, skips, or other figures are constructed...so that the leading idea of
the melody is retained.
(Example 1.1 continued)
Class 4: Where, upon the foundation-harmony of the theme, another new simple or embellished
melody is invented, of such a kind that it can either be played together with the theme, or by itself,
instead of it.
Class 5: Where the theme receives other harmony or artificial modulations.
Class 6: In which the time, the degree of movement, or even the key of the theme is changed,
but in which the theme itself must always be clearly visible.

Example 1.2: Henri Herz, Grandes variations sur le Choeur des Grecs du Sige du
Corinthe, Op. 36. Theme, Variation 1.
Figuration outlines theme

(Example 1.2 continued.)
Literal statements of theme
Example 1.3: Herz, Grandes variations. Finale.

Refrain, complete statement of theme

Leading motive of theme
Episode
Figure 1.1: Herz, Grandes variations. Formal outline.

Slow Introduction
Theme (by Rossini)
Variation 1 (triplet-sixteenth scales and arpeggios)
Variation 2 (scherzando triplet-sixteenths, leaping bass)
Variation 3 (rapid scales in right hand, melody in left)
Variation 4 (canon in octaves)
Connecting cadenza
Variation 5 (adagio)
Connecting cadenza
Finale (rondo)
Example 1.4: Herz, Grandes variations. Variations 3 and 4.
Variation 3:
Variation 4:

Example 1.5: Theodore Dhler, Fantaisie et Variations sur la Cavatine Favorite
de Anna Bolena, Op. 17. Variation 1.
Example 1.6: Dhler, Fantaisie et Variations sur Anna Bolena. Two clichs
identified by Schumann. (The figures Schumann printed are shown in boxes.)
.......................................................
Example 1.7: Julius Benedict, Introduction et Variations sur un thme favori

de lOpra La Straniera, Op. 16. Variation 5.
Theme in inner voice, counterpoint in upper voices
Full presentation in octaves, brilliant figuration
Example 1.8: Benedict, Variations sur La Straniera. Introduction.
E-flat major run over the keyboard
Yearning appoggiaturas
Sugary
thirds
Example 1.9: Sigismund Thalberg, Grande Fantaisie et Variations Brillantes sur

un motif favori de lOpra I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Op. 10. Variations 1 and 2.
Variation 1:
Variation 2:
Example 1.10: Thalberg, I Capuleti Variations, Op. 10. Finale.
Transparent, dance-style treatment of theme
Fugato
Sequential episodes
Return to brilliant, transparent idiom
Example 1.11: Frdric Kalkbrenner, Fantaisie et Variations sur un Thme de

La Straniera, Op 123. Theme, Variation 1.
Brief chromatic inner voice
One-measure
chromatic passage
One-measure chromatic passage
Chromaticism dispersed
Example 1.12: Thalberg, Grand Fantaisie et Variations sur des motifs

de lOpra Norma, Op. 12. Introduction.
b: i 6/4
to D
b: V7 prolonged
arrivals on cadential 6/4
arrivals on V7
closely voiced, chromatic approach to V7.
Example 1.13: Thalberg, Norma Fantaisie. Variation 2.

Fugal treatment
Presentation in octaves
Chromatic treatment
Example 1.14: Thalberg, Norma Fantaisie. Finale.
Fugato

Stretto
Stretto
Return to transparent texture
CHAPTER 2:
VIRTUOSITY AND THE SCHUMANNIAN POETIC
Chapter Two Figures and Examples 324

Example 2.1: Frdric Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations, Op. 2. Close of
introduction.
59
61
63
Cadenza: The first measure of the theme with unusual grace notes

Syncopated accents
Left hand supports theme

3
Figuration moves below, above melody

6
12
Modulation to Gb, new melody

11
13
14
Dominant preparation for finale

15
17
17

Example 2.4: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations. Continuation of
second episode in rondo finale.
Sequence
50
52
54
Sequence
g-E
Sequence
56
d-B
58
60
Tonicization of B (flat-II)
62
64
c# (flat-iii)
66
Coda
71
73
Bb: vii o 4/2
c#: vii o 6/5
Figure 2.1: Schumann, Abegg Variations, Op. 1. Sequence of movements and theme.
Schumann, Abegg Variations
Conventional Variation-Set Features
Theme - Animato
Simple, lyrical theme
Variation 1
Five-six variations that mirror formal

structure of theme
Variation 2
Variation 3
Variation 4 - Cantabile
Slow, ornamented variation in contrasting

key (flat-III in this case) precedes finale
(Transitional cadenza ending on the dominant)
Finale alla Fantasia
Connecting cadenza
Extended finale based on theme

Example 2.5: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Variation 1.
Leaps and arpeggios
dim. 7th - V 4/3

Scales
5
Abegg Theme
Arpeggios and repeated notes
9
Blur
14
Blur
18
22
Example 2.6: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Variations 2 and 3.
Variation 2: Harmonies from theme shown in boxes.
V (4/3)
I
8
ii
V (6/5)

Variation 3:
Abegg theme
11
Parallel 6/3 chords

14
Refrain:
V7
V7
F: V (pedal)
V7
Measures
Theme:
22
Section
ii
A:I
31
Figure 2.2: Rondo form of Abegg finale.
V7
ii6
F:V (pedal)
40
47
63
From A:
From A:
B E G
Near-perpetual Modulation
54
(trans)
F: V (pedal)
75
89
B E G
Coda
Example 2.7: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Finale, transition to second episode (C).
37
40
A
43
47
51
55
V7/F#
G G

Pervasive chromaticism, hemiola
58
62
66
70
74
78

Figure 2.3: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Sequence of variations.
Position in 1837 tudes
or 1873 posthumous
variations (PV)
Theme
Theme
Fantasy 1
Etude 1
Fantasy 2
Etude 2
Fantasy 3
PV 1
Fantasy 4
PV 2
Fantasy 5
Etude 5
Fantasy 6
PV 3
Fantasy 7
Etude 10
Fantasy 7
B section or Trio
PV 5
Fantasy 7
da capo
Etude 10

(Figure 2.3 continued.)
Fantasy 8
Unfinished Variation
Fantasy 9
Etude 4
Fantasy 10
PV 4
Finale
Etude 12

Example 2.8: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Theme.

Example 2.9: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasies 2 and 3.
Fantasy 2:
(2)
Fantasy 3:
(2)
12
Fantasy 7:
Scalar ascent
Neighbor-note motion
Sequences
Scales to inner voices
..........................................................
Descending scale
Trio:
Example 2.10: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 7 and Trio.
11
Neighbor-note motion
Scales to inner voices
Scalar ascent
Sequences
..........................................................
Descending scale

V4/2 / iv
3
Arpeggio motive
10
Arpeggio motive
V/III
Four theme-measures compressed into two
IV6

Fantasy 2 quotation
11
12
13
14
Extends via V7/IV

Arpeggio motive
15
(16)
IV

Phrase 1 (16 measures)
Phrase 2 (12 measures)
Example 2.13: Heinrich Marschner, Wer ist der Ritter hochgeehrt,

from Der Templer und die Jdin.
Motive cited by Schumann
Choral refrain
Example 2.14: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Finale refrain.

Marschner motive shown in boxes, brackets
Arrivals on Db,
harmonized with vi

Figure 2.4: Marschner, Wer ist der Ritter. Text (by Wilhelm August Wohlbrck)
and translation.
Wer ist der Ritter hoch geehrt der hin gen

Osten zieht?
Wer ists vor dessen Flammenschwerdt der
Muselmann entflieht?
Wer ists der dort im Sieges Glanz auf
Ptolomais steht?
Wer, dessen Stirn der Lorbeerkranz bei
Askalon umweht?
Who is the highly honored knight

moving toward the East?
Who is it before whose flaming
sword the Muslim flies?
Who is it who stands there in shining
victory at Ptolemais?
Who, upon whose brows wave the
laurels of victory at Askalon?
Refrain:
Refrain:
Du, stolzes England, freue dich,

dein Richard hoch und ritterlich,
dein Knig,
dein Knig,
der Tapfer Lwenherz!
You, proud England, rejoice

your Richard, high and knightly,
your king,
your king,
the valiant Lionheart!
Wer ist es dessen Tapferheit Jerusalmen uns

gab?
Wer bahnte khn der Christenheit den Weg
zum heilgen Grab?
Wer ist des Kreuzes erster Held,
Den selbst der Heide preist?
Wer ists den die erstaunte Welt den besten
Ritter heisst?
Who is it whose valor gave us

Jerusalem?
Who boldly cleaved Christendoms
path to the Holy sepulcher?
Who is the first hero of the cross,
Whom even the heathens praise?
Whom does the astonished world call
the best knight?
(Refrain)
(Refrain)
Example 2.15: Ferdinand Hiller, Etude, Op. 15, no. 2.
Second key area
F: ii 4/3
V7
Bb: ii 4/3
V7
Example 2.16: Johann Baptist Cramer, Studio per il pianoforte, No. 36 and
Hiller, Etude Op. 15, no. 22.
Cramer:
Hiller:
Example 2.17: Hiller, Etude Op. 15, no. 4.
Repeated units
Further repetition

Example 2.18: Hiller and Chopin etudes.
Hiller: Etude Op. 15, no. 7:
Chopin: Etude Op. 10, no. 9:
Hiller: Etude Op. 15, no. 18:
Chopin: Etude Op. 10, no. 12:
Example 2.19: Chopin, Etude Op. 25, no. 1. Excerpts.
.................................................................
Tenor voice emerges
15
18
......................................................................
40
43
Melody fades into arpeggios
Example 2.20: Schumann, Papillons, Op. 2 and Abegg Variations, Op. 1.

Distant sound effects.
Papillons, ending:
Abegg Variations, cadenza:
Example 2.21: Schumann, Exercise. Coda.
Example 2.22: Schumann, Toccata, Op. 7. Coda.
Downbeat
displaced
225
229
233
237
241
245

D
250
255
E
260
265
271
277
CHAPTER 3:
SCHUMANNS 1830S SHOWPIECES

AND THE RHETORIC OF THE SUBLIME
Chapter Three Figures and Examples 359
Example 3.1: Schumann, Kreisleriana, Op. 16. Movements 1 and 7.
Example 3.2: Chopin, Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35. Finale.
Example 3.3. Paganini: Caprice No. 16. Schumann: Etude, Op. 3, no. 6.
Paganini:
12
15
18
Displacement dissonances

Schumann:
12
16
20
24
Example 3.4: Paganini, Caprice No. 16. Schumann, Etude Op. 3, no. 6. Coda.
45
48
50
Chords reinforce
displacement dissonance
43
Added measure
47
Displacement dissonances combine

50
10
13
...................................................................
31
Staggered sforzandi
34
37
Staggered sforzandi
............................................................
66
69
Example 3.7: Paganini, Caprice No. 4.
Beethoven, Eroica Symphony, movement 2:
Paganini:
15
19
23
26
Transition

Second theme group
32
35
38
41
45
Example 3.8: Schumann, Etude Op. 10, no. 4.
Open fifths
6
11
Transition
17
20
23

Return of lyrical material
26
29
Second theme group, added melody

33
36
39
41
44
Example 3.9: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, Op. 14, movement 4. Opening.
15
22
Transition
Displacement Four-against-six
tr1
16
bII
(Gb)
32
B (S?!)
Coda
662
650
348
tr1
Coda
333
R (P?)
bVI
(Db)
363
B (S?!)
Second parallel
R (P?)
First parallel
403
tr2
72
tr2
Starts
IV (Bb)
449
C (S?)
Starts
bVII (Eb)
118
C (S?)
V/F
477
tr3
F/
V/Bb
146
tr3
Figure 3.1: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4.
505
C (S?)
Starts
IV (Bb)
174
C (S?)
Rv1 (Dev?)
533
bVI
(Db)
569
B2
bII
(Gb)
238
620
Rv2
286
Rv2
V/f
641
Retrans
V/f
320
Retrans
R = refrain ... or first theme (P)?

tr = transition
Rv = refrain, varied
Retrans = retransition
= disrupted theme
Rv 1 (Dev?)
202
B2

Example 3.10: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Theme B
(see Figure 1).
B
29
(f: bII)
36
43
50
57
64
Consequent phrase interrupted

71
(V/f)
Transition figuration takes over (t2)
(f:i)
Example 3.11: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Theme

C (see Figure 1).
174
(f: IV)
181
188
Arrivals on D
195
202
(V7/C)
Sequence abandoned (Rv 1)
(C:I)
(vii o7)
Example 3.12: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Retransition

(first and second parallels).
First:
(B)
279
286
Rv2
294
Falling-fifth sequence
301
309
Dominant pedal

Meter change - grouping and displacement dissonance
317
1 2 34 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
326
1 234 5 6 12 3 4 5 6 1 2 3
Second:
641
649
650
4 56 1 2
3 4 56 1
2 3 45 6
Recapitulation, second parallel

Example 3.13: Some early nineteenth-century double-stop piano showpieces.
Czerny, Toccata, Op. 92:
Cramer, No. 29 from Eighty-four Studies for the Pianoforte:
Onslow, Toccata:
Pollini, Toccata:
Schumann, Toccata, Op. 7:
Example 3.14: Ludwig Schuncke, Allegro Passionato, Op. 6. Excerpts.

Opening:
Introduction
Transition - pervasive use of Introduction motive
Transition to second theme group, recapitulation:
Return of Introduction material
Example 3.15: Ludwig Schuncke, Caprice No. 2, Op. 10. Excerpts.
10
12
..................................................................
27
29
31
33
36
38
Example 3.16: Schumann, Exercise and Toccata, Op. 7. Openings.
Exercise:
12
Toccata:
Tutti gesture
11
16
21
Fanfares
Example 3.17: Schumann, Toccata. Three versions of second theme.
Measures 44-48:
Measures 80-84:
Measures 89-95:
Example 3.18: Schumann, Toccata. Transition to closing theme.

One displacement
per measure
64
Two displacements per measure
One per measure
69
Two per measure, preparatory sequence

74
79

Example 3.19: Schumann, Exercise and Toccata. Retransitions.
Exercise:
105
Recapitulation
109
Toccata:
Opening motive
Stretto
129
134
Octave-scale motive
Stretto
Subjects in octaves
139
144
Syncopated, dissonant
chords
Recapitulation
Example 3.20: Beethoven, Symphony No. 3, Eroica, movement 1.

Fugato in development.
Fugato
Syncopated, dissonant chords

(preparation for new theme)
Example 3.21: Schumann, Toccata. Coda.
213
217
221
Displacement of one sixteenth
225
229
233

New displacement
237
241
245
250
Cascading alternation
255
260
Distant close
Figure 3.2: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale (1835) and tudes symphoniques, Op. 13
(1837). Sequence of movements.
Fantaisies et finale
tudes symphoniques
Theme
Theme
II
III
IV
VI

(Figure 3.2 continued.)
VII
Trio
VIII
Fantasy 7 da capo
IX
10
XI
Finale
XII
(Finale)
I (Db)
Etude XII (Finale)
III
FV
Etude VII
Etude VI
V6 --- i
Etude I
c#: i
Theme
i
Etude VIII
Etude II
i
FV
Etude IX
Etude III
III
Etude XI
------ i
Etude V
FV = fantasy variation featuring significant

formal expansion
------------- = variations played attaca
Etude X
Etude IV
Figure 3.3: Schumann, tudes symphoniques, Op. 13. Secondary keys, continuity, and formal expansion.
III
Example 3.22: Schumann, tudes symphoniques. Etude VII.
13
Development of arpeggio
Rounding
18
22
26
Cadential extension
Example 3.23: Schumann, tudes symphoniques. Etude IX.
Five measures
Three
11
23
Return 1
Coda?
34
45
III
Return 2
57
68
Example 3.24: Beethoven, Eroica Symphony, movement 4,

G-minor variation. Excerpts.
.....................................................
Second half based on bass-line motive
CHAPTER 4:
THE VIRTUOSO ON MOUNT PARNASSUS:

SCHUMANN AND THE CONCERTANTE PRINCIPLE
A:I
P theme, orchestra:
33
I
81
P (solo)
P (orchestra)
Solo: Exposition
Tutti I
P theme, solo:
107
A:V
E:I
134
Transitional display:
Transitional display
S theme:
155
Closing display
Figure 4.1: Henri Herz, Concerto No. 1 in A major, Op. 34, movement 1. Exposition form and excerpts.
199
Tutti II
Chapter Four Figures and Examples 397
Example 4.1: Herz, Concerto No. 1, movement 1. Closing display of

exposition (excerpts).
155
159
162
.....................................
Digression to A-flat
174
177
180
.....................................
186
189
Signposting - trills and runs

192
195
197
200

Example 4.2: Frdric Kalkbrenner, Concerto No. 4 in A-flat, Op. 127, movement 1.
Second theme group, closing display.
Second theme group
76
79
N6
83
85
89
Tonic minor
92
96
98
101
104
106
Tonic-minor suspension
Closing display
108
111
Transitional display:
D: I
Tutti I
P theme, orchestra:
118
91
S theme, solo:
transitional display
Exposition
P theme, solo:
Closing display:
D:V
A:I
146
Figure 4.2: Charles Mayer, Concerto, Op. 70. First movement form (complete).
182
Closing display
A:I
243
F:V
segue to mvt. 2
Tutti II
Example 4.3: Clara Wieck, Concerto No. 7 in A minor, Op. 7, movement 1.

Expositional closing display, segue to development.
S theme (F major)
70
Closing display
73
75
77
Continued modulation
79
C
81
Chromatic sequence

83
85
87
89
Development
91
A-flat
93
Example 4.4: Schumann, Piano Concerto, Op. 54, movement 1. Transition

between first and second theme groups (piano and strings only).
Transitional display
17
22
26
30
35
Fanfare tutti
42
Example 4.5: Schumann, Piano Concerto, Op. 54, movement 1. Development.

201
Lied ohne Worte texture
207
Example 4.6: Schumann, Piano Concerto, Op. 54, movement 1.

Closing display of recapitulation.
362
367
Closing display
Triplets to fore
372
V6/5/ii
378
Figuration merges with tutti
V6/5/ii
382

Example 4.7: Adolph Henselt, lyrical showpieces in Clara Wiecks repertoire.
Etude Op. 2, no. 1. Orage, tu ne saurais mabbatre!
No. 3. Exauce mes voeux!
No. 4. Repos damour.
Andante and Allegro Concertante, Op. 3. Allegro.
Example 4.8: Schumann, Piano Concerto, Op. 54, movement 1. Cadenza.

Imitation of short subject
Sequential spinning-out
402
409
416
422
428
Sequences, walking bass

Example 4.9: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 3.
Closing display of exposition (excerpts).
Orchestral
interjection
113
Elaboration of second theme
122
Closing display
Display contines soloistically

134
...............................................................
215
Virtuosic figuration,
grouping dissonance
Orchestra initiates final climb
226
235
Exchange underlies trill
246
Development
Example 4.10: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 3. Beginning of coda (piano only).
663
Repeated module of figuration
671
Further near-repetition
679
687
Repetition of harmonies, then new direction

695
441
Tutti
451
Cadenza?
G:ii
e:iv
300
Recapitulation
43
Exposition
Concerto first-movement
457
Symphonic Coda, Apotheosis of Introduction
Keys tonicized include: F, b, f#, B, eb
188
Development
(Symphonically scaled)
Introduction
342
C (VI)
121
133
False
Closing display
404
True
Closing Display
151
True
Closing Display
R = reminscences of Introduction.
386
False
Closing display
G (III, now I)!
374
Swerves from concerto-sonata discourse

trans (lyrical)
89
Transition (lyrical)
Figure 4.3: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato, Op. 92. Large-scale symphonic and concertante hybrid.
Example 4.11: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato, Op. 92.

Opening of Introduction.
Piano anticipates, follows clarinet theme

4
Horn-call motive
Horn, clarinet complete phrase

Example 4.12: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato.
Transition to Allegro.
Opening theme in strings
34
Flourish evaporates
37
Transition to Allegro
G:ii
e:iv

Second theme group and false closing display. (Piano and winds only.)
119
Horn-call motive
Second theme group
(C)
Horn call
interrupts
125
False closing display

132
Cadentially directed modules

137
141
145
Horn-call motive
Concluding trill?
True Closing display!

Opening of coda.
Cadenza?
451
456
Return of opening duo, horn-call motive

460
464
Opening
theme
Example 4.15: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato. Coda

(piano only after m. 472).
Ends parallel
to Introduction
468
Span of transparently textured bravura

473
478

Elaborated horn-call motive
483
489
494
Example 4.16: Schumann, Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134.

First theme group (piano only after m. 26).
Transition from Introduction to Allegro
23
29
Allegro
32
Slurred figures
35
41
Fortspinnung
Example 4.17: Schumann, Introduction and Concert Allegro. Transition and

second theme.
44
Transition, from Introduction
52
Second theme

Example 4.18. Schumann: Introduction and Concert Allegro. Closing display
of exposition.
Portal to closing display
68
72
75
Closing display
79
82
(Reminiscence of transition to closing display)

85
89
Example 4.19: Schumann, Introduction and Concert Allegro. Cadenza (excerpts).

Second theme, in B
236
241
248
250
.....................................................
264
Piano, winds converge with second theme
266
Trills, tremolos
D: I
Example 4.20: Schumann, Introduction and Concert Allegro. Coda.
271
275
Piano
interjection
Brass chorale
278
281
Winds join
chorale texture

Example 4.21: Schumann, Phantasie, Op. 131. Violin entrance.
12
Melodic figure becomes ornament

16
21
Fr +6

Example 4.22: Schumann, Phantasie. Introduction.
Stress placed on different notes of the motive
Brief imitation

Example 4.23: Schumann, Phantasie. Opening of first theme group.
Example 4.24: Schumann, Phantasie. Closing display of exposition.
93
96
99
102
105
108
Example 4.25. Schumann: Phantasie. Development (excerpts).
121
Hallgat treatment of second theme
...................................................
Reminiscence of Intro.
134
140
144
Fortspinnung
Mendelssohnian retransition
Example 4.26: Schumann, Phantasie. Coda.
257
260
Mendelssohnian retransition
263
Contrapuntal thickening
Introduction theme, major

267
271
274
Convergence

277
280

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Poetic Virtuosity:

Robert Schumann as a Critic and Composer

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

Note to the Reader

Schumanns Critique of Postclassical Virtuosity

Schumann and the Neue Zeitschrifts Critique

Virtuoso Entertainment and Aristocratic Frivolity

Epilogue: Henriette Voigt and the Poetic Salon

Virtuosity and the Schumannian Poetic

A Poetic Virtuoso Makes his Debut:

A Pianistic Sampler and a Poetic Network:

From Chiaroscuro Depth to Poetic Distance:

Schumanns 1830s Showpieces and the Rhetoric of the Sublime

Sublime Virtuosity in Schumanns Critical Writings

Poeticizing and Appropriating Paganini:

A Concerto with an Ocean for a Finale

A Toccata Emblazoned with the Name of Beethoven

From the Poetic to the (Beethovenian?) Sublime:

The Virtuoso on Mount Parnassus: Schumann and the

The Virtuoso Concerto and Schumanns Critique of

Vehicles for Serious Virtuosity

Twin Strategies: Schumanns Piano Concerto, Op. 54

Trajectories of Sublimation and Convergence:

Chapter 2 Figures and Examples

Chapter 3 Figures and Examples

Chapter 4 Figures and Examples

Figure 1.1: Herz, Grandes variations. Formal outline.

Example 1.4: Herz, Grandes Variations. Variations 3 and 4.

Example 1.5: Theodore Dhler, Fantaisie et Variations sur la Cavatine Favorite

Example 1.7: Julius Benedict, Introduction et Variations sur un thme favori de

Example 1.8: Benedict, Variations sur La Straniera. Introduction.

Example 1.9: Sigismund Thalberg, Grande Fantaisie et Variations Brillantes sur

Example 1.10: Thalberg, I Capuletti Variations. Finale.

Example 1.11: Frrric Kalkbrenner, Fantaisie et Variations sur un Thme de

Example 1.13: Thalberg, Norma Fantaisie. Variation 2.

Example 1.14: Thalberg, Norma Fantaisie. Finale.

Example 2.2: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations. Variation 1.

Example 2.3: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations. Variation 5.

Example 2.4: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations. Continuation of second

Figure 2.1: Schumann, Abegg Variations, Op. 1. Sequence of movements and

Example 2.5: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Variation 1.

Example 2.6: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Variations 2 and 3.

Figure 2.2: Rondo form of Abegg finale.

Example 2.7: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Finale, transition to second

Figure 2.3: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Sequence of variations.

Example 2.8: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Theme.

Example 2.9: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasies 2 and 3.

Example 2.10: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 7 and Trio.

Example 2.11: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 4.

Example 2.12: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 10.

Example 2.14: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Finale refrain.

Example 2.15: Ferdinand Hiller, Etude, Op. 15, no. 2.

Example 2.17: Hiller, Etude Op. 15, no. 4.

Example 2.18: Hiller and Chopin etudes.

Example 2.19: Chopin, Etude Op. 25, no. 1. Excerpts.

Example 2.20: Schumann, Papillons, Op. 2 and Abegg Variations, Op. 1.

Example 2.21: Schumann, Exercise. Coda.

Example 2.22: Schumann, Toccata, Op. 7. Coda.

Chapter 3 Figures and Examples

Example 3.7: Paganini, Caprice No. 4.

Example 3.8: Schumann, Etude Op. 10, no. 4.

Figure 3.1: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4.

Example 3.10: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Theme B.

Example 3.11: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Theme C.