Legacy of Robert Schumann

As a composer Schumann was first and most naturally a miniaturist. Until after his marriage the great bulk of his work—including that by which he is best known—consisted of short piano pieces and songs, two genres so closely related in his case as to be hardly more than two facets of the same. The song accompaniments are often almost self-sufficient piano pieces, and the piano pieces often seem to have been melodically inspired by lyrical poems. Even when the musical idea did not originate in literature but as a waltz, polonaise, or some other striking harmonic progression found at the piano by his improvising fingers, it was usually given a quasi-literary title or brought into relationship with some literary idea.

Much of Schumann’s most characteristic work is introverted and tends to record precise moments and their moods. But another side of his complex personality is evident in the forthright approach and strongly rhythmic patterns of such works as the Toccata (1829–32) and the Piano Quintet. These two aspects are reflected in the two self-projections—the heroically aspiring Florestan and the dreamily introspective Eusebius—into which Schumann analyzed his own character and which he drew upon in an autobiographical novel, his critical writings, and much of his music.

Schumann’s early music—and much of the later—is full of enigmas, musical quotations (usually in subtle disguises), and veiled allusions. In the field of the piano miniature and the pianistic song, he is a supreme master; in the simpler kind of lyrical inspiration and in the invention of musical aphorisms, he has seldom been surpassed. When Schumann embarked on more ambitious composition, his success was less assured. He was uncertain in writing for the orchestra and relied too often on safe routine procedures; his string writing was pianistic; and his most characteristic musical ideas, which he had hitherto been content to fit together in mosaics or remold plastically by variation, were seldom suited for development on a large scale. Nor in sustained musical thought did he find a satisfaction comparable with the smaller creations of his private dreamworld. Given such innate limitations, it is astonishing that Schumann was able to construct a symphony as firmly welded as the No. 4 in D Minor or a first movement as organic as that of the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major and that he could conceive orchestral music of such gloomy power as the Manfred overture or the penultimate movement of the Symphony No. 3. Some of his large-scale works, such as the Piano Concerto and the Piano Quintet, depend overmuch on the piano for their salvation, but the piano certainly saved them. Schumann did manage to create large musical forms that could communicate his own special brand of intimate poetry and unforced nobility.

It was long customary to detect in the works of Schumann’s last years evidence of his approaching collapse. But he had been mentally unstable all his life, haunted by fears of insanity since the age of 18, and the change of style noticeable in the music of the early 1850s—the increasing angularity of his themes and complication of his harmony—may be attributed to other causes, including the influence of J.S. Bach. Schumann was rightly considered an advanced composer in his day, and he stands in the front rank of German Romantic musical figures. Even his critical writing, which is as fantastic, subjective, and lyrical as his early music, constitutes a valuable document of the trend and period.