Unit XVI The NineteenthCentury Art Song

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Unit XVIThe Nineteenth-Century Art Song

• Chapter 44
• Robert Schumann and the Song Cycle

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Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856)

• Born in Zwickau, in Saxony in 1810.
• Father was a bookseller and instilled a love of
  literature in Robert.
• Studied law in Leipzig and Heidelberg before
  abandoning his studies for music.

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Art Imitates Life

• Composed in bursts in reaction to life events.
  His outpourings in his early twenties resulted in
  the bulk of his piano music.
• Married Clara Wieck, one of the greatest concert
  pianists of his time, who helped spread his fame
  as his piano music's chief interpreter. Schumann
  was so elated over this marriage, which had
  occurred despite the extreme objections of
  Clara's father, that the marriage sparked a fit
  of creative activity which turned 1840 into
  Schumann's "year of song."

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Music Journal

• Schumann founded an important musical journal,
  Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (The New Journal
  for Music) which became one of the most
  influential music journals of the nineteenth
  century.

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A Sad End

• Ultimately succumbed to mental illness.
• Just before his final breakdown to Joachim - "The
  music is silent now - I will close. Already it
  grows dark."
• Attempted suicide - tried to throw himself into
  the Rhine. He was rescued by fishermen and
  committed to a private asylum near Bonn where he
  died two years later at age 46.

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Piano music

• One of the greatest piano composers of the
  century. His miniatures exhibit impassioned
  melody above vigorous rhythms and sensitive
  accompaniments.
• Fantasy Pieces, Romanzen, Scenes from Childhood

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Symphonies

• Wrote 4
• Spring Symphony No. 1 - evokes the call to awaken
  life at spring.

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Lieder

• Favorite theme is love, often from the woman's
  point of view.
• Bulk are written in 1840 in a tremendous
  outpouring.
• Favorite poet is Heinrich Heine.
• Wrote several song cycles, including Dichterliebe
  (Heine) and Frauenliebe und Leben (Chamisso).

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A Poets Love (Dichterliebe)

• Written in 1840 - The Year of Song
• 16 poems by Heinrich Heine
• Not a narrative cycle Like Schuberts Die
  Winterreise, this cycle is a psychological study
  the freshness of a new love to disappointment
  and ultimately to despair

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In the lovely month of May

• First song in the cycle
• The pianos introduction to the first strophe
  sets a wistful feeling rather than a joyous mood!
  This setting evokes the fragility of new love
  with its harmonic meandering between two key
  cetners and its lack of a resolution!
• strophic form
• See Listening Guide 26, p. 247, (CD 2/65-66) for
  text and translation