The Songs of Clara Schumann 1108834256, 9781108834254

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The Songs of Clara Schumann

Focusing on Clara Schumann’s central contributions to the genre of the Lied (or German art song), this is the first book-length critical study of her songs. Although relatively few in number, they were published and reviewed favorably in the press during her lifetime, and they continue to be programmed regularly in recitals by professional and amateur performers alike. Highlighting the powerful and distinctive features of the songs, this book treats them as a prism, casting light not just on them but also through them to explore questions that foster a deeper understanding of the work of female composers. The author argues for the importance of taking Clara Schumann’s music on its own terms, the intimate relationship between text and musical form, and the vital role of musical analysis in recuperating the contributions of previously understudied composers.

stephen rodgers is Edmund A. Cykler Chair in Music and Professor of Music Theory and Musicianship at the University of Oregon. His book The Songs of Fanny Hensel was published in 2021. Rodgers recently launched a website called Art Song Augmented, devoted to songs by underrepresented composers, and he hosts a podcast about poetry and song called Resounding Verse.

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music i n c ontext General Editor Benedict Taylor, University of Edinburgh

Founding Editor Julian Rushton, University of Leeds Emeritus The aim of Music in Context is to illuminate specific musical works, repertoires, or practices in historical, critical, socio-economic, or other contexts; or to illuminate particular cultural and critical contexts in which music operates through the study of specific musical works, repertoires, or practices. A specific musical focus is essential, while avoiding the decontextualization of traditional aesthetics and music analysis. The series title invites engagement with both its main terms; the aim is to challenge notions of what contexts are appropriate or necessary in studies of music, and to extend the conceptual framework of musicology into other disciplines or into new theoretical directions. Books in the Series Simon P. Keefe, Mozart’s Requiem: Reception, Work, Completion J. P. E. Harper-Scott, The Quilting Points of Musical Modernism: Revolution, Reaction, and William Walton Nancy November, Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74, and 95 Rufus Hallmark, ‘Frauenliebe und Leben’: Chamisso’s Poems and Schumann’s Songs Anna Zayaruznaya, The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach, Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context Emily Kilpatrick, The Operas of Maurice Ravel Roderick Chadwick and Peter Hill, Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux: From Conception to Performance Catherine A. Bradley, Polyphony in Medieval Paris: The Art of Composing with Plainchant Daniel M. Grimley, Delius and the Sound of Place Owen Rees, The Requiem of Tomás Luis de Victoria (1603) Nicole Grimes, Brahms’s Elegies: The Poetics of Loss in Nineteenth-Century German Culture Jane D. Hatter, Composing Community in Late Medieval Music: Self-Reference, Pedagogy, and Practice Daniel Elphick, Music behind the Iron Curtain: Weinberg and His Polish Contemporaries Emily MacGregor, Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity, and the Sound of 1933 Anne M. Hyland, Schubert’s String Quartets: The Teleology of Lyric Form Stephen Rodgers, The Songs of Clara Schumann

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The Songs of Clara Schumann stephen rodgers University of Oregon

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Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108834254 DOI: 10.1017/9781108992541 © Stephen Rodgers 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-108-83425-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

List of Tables [page vi] List of Music Examples [vii] Acknowledgments [ix]

Introduction [1] part i context and style 1 2

Three Assumptions [13] Three Hallmarks [28] part ii analysis

3 4

[11]

[59]

Songs without Opus Numbers [61] Songs with Opus Numbers [133] Epilogue: Clara Schumann and the Depths of Song [177] References [182] Index [190]

v

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Tables

2.1

Clara Schumann’s songs containing compound antecedents

vi

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[page 35]

Music Examples

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15

“Die stille Lotosblume,” opening theme [page 30] “Liebeszauber,” opening theme [34] “An einem lichten Morgen,” opening theme [37] “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” original version, seam between B and A’ [41] “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” revised autograph, seam between B and A’ [42] “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” published version, seam between B and A’ [43] “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” mm. 5–20 [45] “Liebst du um Schönheit,” mm. 3–20 [48] “Er ist gekommen,” piano introduction [51] “Ich stand in dunklen Träumen,” mm. 1–9 [53] “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” postlude [57] “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” postlude [57] “Der Wanderer,” setting of stanza 1 [64] “Der Wanderer,” setting of stanza 2 [66] “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” mm. 1–10 [68] “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” ending [69] “Der Abendstern” [73] “Walzer,” opening theme [75] “Walzer,” opening theme, alternate hypermetrical interpretation [79] “Walzer,” end of middle section leading into final section [80] “Am Strande,” setting of opening stanza [84] “Am Strande,” setting of second stanza [86] “Am Strande,” beginning of final section [91] (a) Robert Schumann, “Volkslied,” opening section [93] (b) Clara Schumann, “Volkslied,” opening section [94] Clara Schumann, “Volkslied,” final section [97] Robert Schumann, “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” melody [99] Clara Schumann, “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” melody, recomposed [100] vii

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viii

List of Music Examples 3.16 Clara Schumann, “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” opening couplet [101] 3.17 Clara Schumann, “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” postlude [103] 3.18 “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat,” mm. 1–8 [112] 3.19 “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat,” mm. 9–18 [113] 3.20 “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat,” mm. 19–27 [116] 3.21 “Mein Stern,” opening strophe [120] 3.22 “Beim Abschied” [123] 3.23 “Das Veilchen,” ending [130] 3.24 “Das Veilchen,” setting of first stanza [131] 4.1 “Sie liebten sich beide,” final phrase of original version [151] 4.2 Similar motives in “Was weinst du, Blümlein” and “Geheimes Flüstern” [171] 4.3 Motive in “Auf einem grünen Hügel” [174]

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Acknowledgments

This book would not exist had I not been fortunate enough to attend a conference in Oxford called “Clara Schumann (née Wieck) and her World.” That was in June of 2019, many months before the COVID-19 pandemic would turn the world on its head and make travel of this sort impossible. It seems like a lifetime ago now, but the memory of the event has stayed with me and has been a guiding force as I have worked toward the completion of this book. I gave my first ever conference presentation on Clara Schumann at that conference, on musical and poetic closure in one of her songs. Parts of that presentation made their way into a chapter that was later published in Clara Schumann Studies, a volume of essays edited by the brilliant Joe Davies, who, along with Susan Wollenberg and Laura Tunbridge, helped to organize the conference; some of the material also appears in this book. More than getting the chance to present at the conference, however, it was getting the chance to hear other presentations that inspired me to continue studying Clara Schumann’s music – presentations by Natasha Loges, Susan Youens, Harald Krebs, Benedict Taylor, Nicole Grimes, and Christopher Parton, not to mention a thrilling performance of Schumann’s songs by soprano Aisling Kenny and pianists Cecily Lock and Cheryl Tan. On the plane ride home, I barely slept, so intoxicated was I with what I heard and experienced over the course of those three days. I opened up the two volumes of Clara Schumann’s songs, published by Breitkopf & Härtel, and reread every page, returning to songs I was familiar with but didn’t know inside and out, savoring every bar. By the time I arrived back in Oregon I was convinced that if we already had books on the songs of Schubert, Wolf, Brahms, and Robert Schumann, why couldn’t we have one on the songs of Clara Schumann? I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the many scholars who have written about Clara Schumann’s life and music, and not just those who shared their ideas at the Oxford conference. Thank you especially to Julie PedneaultDeslauriers, whose ever-sensitive analyses of Schumann’s music have served as a model for my own; I’m grateful that Julie invited me to participate in a daylong symposium on Clara Schumann at the University

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Acknowledgments

of Ottawa a few months after the Oxford conference, where I got the chance to work out my ideas and learn even more about Schumann’s music and the many contexts surrounding it. Thanks also to Susan Wollenberg, who has been unfailingly kind and generous, and whose writing on Schumann and a host of other women composers was always nearby as I worked on this book. Scholarship, I have come to feel, is always collaborative, even when (as is usually the case in music theory and musicology) you’re writing all the words yourself. The words of this book may be my own, but they were shaped by countless conversations with these scholars and others, and by the experience of wrestling with their words and their unique ways of understanding this composer and her extraordinary music. Thanks as well to Kate Brett, Cambridge’s music, drama, and opera editor, who from the very beginning was enthusiastic about my idea to write a book on Clara Schumann’s songs, and who has been a supportive, receptive, and wise guide every step of the way. I’m also grateful to Benedict Taylor, editor of Cambridge’s Music in Context Series, for carefully reviewing the manuscript and improving it immeasurably. Thanks also to Cara Haxo for her superb work engraving the book’s musical examples. This book would not have been possible without the support of a Presidential Fellowship in Humanistic Studies from the University of Oregon and a Faculty Research Grant from the university’s Center for the Study of Women in Society. Thank you to my parents for teaching me the value of openness and curiosity. Finally, and above all, thanks to Lindsey – the rudder in every storm, the voice of reason, the reminder of what matters most, and the single best person to talk to about music.

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Introduction

Clara Schumann, Creator On June 10, 1853, having just finished two songs based on poems from Hermann Rollett’s novel Jucunde, Clara Schumann opened her diary and wrote about the feeling of exhilaration that overwhelmed her. “Composing gives me great pleasure,” she said, adding with astonishment, “I wrote my last song in 1846, seven years ago!”1 Buoyed by that sense of exhilaration, she kept composing. Less than two weeks later she had completed an entire collection of songs on Rollett’s poems. The June 22 entry from her diary reads, “Today I set the sixth song by Rollett, and thus I have collected a volume of songs, which give me pleasure, and have given me many happy hours. . . . There is nothing which surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.”2 These six songs, published two years later as her op. 23, were some of the last she ever composed; fifteen days later, on July 7, 1853, she finished her Goethe setting “Das Veilchen” and never wrote another song. The diary entry describing the composition of op. 23, especially its line about the “joy of creation,” has been quoted often – in scholarly works and in the popular press. Nancy Reich, in her groundbreaking biography of Schumann, highlights the passage in a section dealing with the ambivalence she felt about her creative work.3 The lines are quoted in a 2012 article from The Guardian, about a Google doodle celebrating her 194th birthday (alas, Google did not celebrate her 200th).4 There is even a biography of Schumann for young adults, called The Joy of Creation.5 1

2 3

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5

Berthold Litzmann, Clara Schumann: An Artist’s Life, Based on Material Found in Diaries and Letters, vol. 2, trans. Grace E. Hadow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 36–37. Ibid., 37. Nancy B. Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Women, revised ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 215. Imogen Tilden, “Clara Schumann: Google doodle celebrates life of piano prodigy,” The Guardian (September 13, 2012). Sandra H. Schichtman, The Joy of Creation: The Story of Clara Schumann (Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds, 2010).

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For all the airplay that these words have received, however, and for all that they underscore how much Schumann enjoyed composing and longed to do it more, her activities as a performer and the details of her life are better understood than the music she wrote. The past few decades have seen an outpouring of scholarship on Schumann, but the bulk of it is historical and editorial, not analytical. On the historical side, there are important biographies and studies of her career as a performer.6 On the editorial side, there are valuable editions of her letters, diaries, and compositions.7 Still, despite these strides, her music remains relatively understudied. In 1990, the German musicologist Janina Klassen published a pathbreaking book containing analyses of Schumann’s piano works,8 and since then a number of scholars have written articles on various aspects of her music.9 But to date there is no scholarly monograph devoted to her 6

7

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9

For three important biographical studies, see Reich, Clara Schumann; Janina Klassen, Clara Schumann: Musik und Öffentlichkeit (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2009); and Beatrix Borchard, Clara Schumann: Ihr Leben (Hildesheim: Olms, 2015). For some recent studies of her performance activities, see David Ferris, “Public Performance and Private Understanding: Clara Wieck’s Concerts in Berlin,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 56/2 (2003): 351–408; April Prince, “(Re)Considering the Priestess: Clara Schumann, Historiography, and the Visual,” Women and Music 21 (2017): 107–40; and Alexander Stefaniak, “Clara Schumann’s Interiorities and the Cutting Edge of Popular Pianism,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 70/3 (2017): 697–765, “Clara Schumann and the Imagined Revelation of Musical Works,” Music & Letters 99/2 (2018): 194–223, and Becoming Clara Schumann: Performance Strategies and Aesthetics in the Culture of the Musical Canon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2021). See, for example, Clara and Robert Schumann, The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann, 3 vols., ed. Eva Weissweiler, trans. Hildegard Fritsch and Ronald L. Crawford (New York: Peter Lang, 1994, 1995, 2002); Clara Schumann, Piano Music, selected by Nancy B. Reich (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2000); Clara and Robert Schumann, Robert und Clara Schumann Ehetagebücher 1840– 1844, ed. Gerd Nauhaus and Ingrid Bodsch (Bonn: Stroemfeld, 2007); Clara and Robert Schumann, The Marriage Diaries of Robert & Clara Schumann: From Their Wedding Day through the Russia Trip, ed. Gerd Nauhaus, trans. Peter Ostwald (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1993); Clara Schumann, Tagebücher, ed. Georg Eismann and Gerd Nauhaus, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1971–1982); Elisabeth Schmiedel and Joachim Draheim, Eine Musikerfamilie im 19. Jahrhundert: Mariane Bargiel, Clara Schumann, Woldemar Bargiel in Briefen und Dokumenten (Wiesenfelder: Katzbichler, 2007); Clara Schumann, Das Berliner Blumentagebuch der Clara Schumann, ed. Renate Hoffmann and Harry Schmidt (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2019); and Clara Schumann and Robert Schumann, Schumann Briefedition, ed. Michael Heinemann and Thomas Synofzik, 50 vols. (Cologne: Dohr, 2008–[25]). Janina Klassen, Clara Wieck-Schumann: Die Virtuosin als Komponisten (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1990). Recent analytical studies (of Clara Schumann’s songs and instrumental music) include David Lewin, “Clara Schumann’s Setting of ‘Ich stand,’” in Studies in Music with Text (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 53–60; L. Poundie Burstein, “Their Paths, Her Ways: Comparisons of Text Settings by Clara Schumann and Other Composers,” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 6 (2002): 11–26; Susan Wollenberg, “Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’ and the Integrity of a Composer’s Vision,” in Women and the

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Clara Schumann, Creator

music aside from Klassen’s, and none that focuses on her songs. (Indeed, the number of monographs devoted to music by women composers is fairly small, and most of those books deal with twentieth-century composers.)10 Schumann’s music, in short, is known but not known very well, or at least not well enough. That she was a gifted composer is widely acknowledged. But why she was such a gifted composer, what defined her musical aesthetic, and what made her music uniquely and unmistakably her own – this is less understood. *** Why have studies of Schumann’s life and career as a performer overshadowed studies of her music? One reason is that she spent far more of her life performing than composing. She plainly regarded herself as more of a performer-composer than a composer-performer, so it is no surprise that critics and scholars have done likewise. Nancy Reich has written that Schumann “genuinely believed her primary field of competence was as a performer: an interpretive rather than a creative artist,” citing as evidence

10

Nineteenth-Century Lied, ed. Aisling Kenny and Susan Wollenberg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 123–39; Harald Krebs, “The Influence of Clara Schumann’s Lieder on Declamation in Robert Schumann’s Late Songs,” SMT-V 2/1 (2016); Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Bass-Line Melodies and Form in Four Piano and Chamber Works by Clara Wieck-Schumann,” Music Theory Spectrum 38/2 (2016): 133–54 and “Beyond Vierhebigkeit: Phrase Structure and Poetic Meaning in Three Lieder by Clara Schumann,” Music Theory & Analysis 8/11 (2021): 54–73; Michael Weinstein-Reiman, “‘Inside’ Voices and Coupling Dynamics: An Analysis of Clara Wieck-Schumann’s Notturno from Soirées Musicales, Op. 6 No. 2,” Theory and Practice 42 (2017): 1–28; Michael Baker, “Multiply-Interrupted Structure in Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit,’” in Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Secular & Sacred Music to 1900, ed. Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 210–27; and Benedict Taylor, “Clara Wieck’s A Minor Piano Concerto: Formal Innovation and the Problem of Parametric Disconnect in Early Romantic Music,” Music Theory & Analysis 8/2 (2021): 215–43. The essay collection Clara Schumann Studies, ed. Joe Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), also contains several analytical chapters; see especially those by Susan Youens, Stephen Rodgers, Harald Krebs, Joe Davies, Susan Wollenberg, Nicole Grimes, and Katharina Uhde and R. Larry Todd. For music-analytical books on twentieth-century women composers, see Ellie M. Hisama, Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Joseph N. Straus, The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Judy Lochhead, Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music (New York: Routledge, 2015). Harald Krebs and Sharon Krebs’s Josephine Lang: Her Life and Songs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) is analytical in focus, though it of course weaves its analytical commentary into an account of Lang’s life. Two forthcoming books in Cambridge University Press’s new series of Cambridge Music Handbooks focus on nineteenth-century women composers and promise to include indepth analysis: Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers is working on a handbook about Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 7, and Benedict Taylor is writing a handbook on Fanny Hensel’s String Quartet in E-flat major.

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(among other things) a passage from a letter to the violinist Joseph Joachim, in which she wrote, “Bin ich auch nicht producierend, so doch reproducierend” (I’m not so much a producer as a reproducer).11 Another reason is that she wrote relatively few works of music – precisely because she devoted so much of her time to performing, and also because, as a woman, she faced more impediments to a career as a composer than did her male contemporaries. Her solo piano works number fewer than thirty; so do her songs. She wrote almost all her songs between the year she was married (1840) and the year Robert died (1856),12 and basically stopped composing after his death. (She wrote her Romance in B minor in 1856, a few months after Robert died, and twenty-three years later she wrote a march for piano four hands, in celebration of the wedding anniversary of two friends. But that is it: two works in the forty years separating his death and her own, in 1896.) There is simply less music to analyze than with many other composers. One might even conclude – believing that lower levels of productivity correlate with lower levels of quality – that there is less music worth analyzing. If Schumann had been a man, this might not have been such an obstacle to recognition (Henri Duparc wrote only seventeen mélodies, and they are regarded as pinnacles of the genre). Yet if a female composer has written only a modest number of works, they are more likely to be overlooked. A third factor that has contributed to the neglect of Clara Schumann’s music is that she expressed doubt about it, reflecting the “anxiety of authorship” that plagued so many female creators in the nineteenth century.13 In November 1839, she wrote in her diary, “I once believed that I had creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not wish to compose – there never was one able to do it. Am I intended to be the one? I would be arrogant to believe that.”14 And the dedications on the 11

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Joseph Joachim, Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, vol. 2, ed. Johannes Joachim and Andreas Meyer (Berlin: Julius Bard, 1911–13), 186. Quoted in Reich, Clara Schumann, 354, note 27. Schumann composed four songs before her marriage: “Walzer,” which was published in 1834 in a collection of songs based on poems by Johann Peter Lyser; “Der Abendstern,” which likely dates from around the same time; and “Der Wanderer” and “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” which were published in 1875 under her father’s name but which are now generally believed to be by her. For more on the background and sources of these songs, see Clara Schumann, Sämtliche Lieder für Singstimme und Klavier, vol. 2, ed. Joachim Draheim and Brigitte Höft (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1992), 5, 56–58. See Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979). See also Marcia J. Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 55–78. Quoted and translated in Reich, Clara Schumann, 216.

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Clara Schumann, Creator

pieces she gave to Robert as birthday and Christmas gifts are laced with self-deprecating comments: “Composed and dedicated to her ardently beloved Robert with the deepest modesty,” her own italics emphasizing her hesitancy; “To my beloved husband, . . . this renewed feeble attempt from his old Clara”; and so on. All of this, however, needs to be understood in context. In focusing on performance over composition, in writing relatively few works, and in expressing doubt about the works she wrote, she was abiding by prevailing societal expectations that a woman should be modest and humble and leave the creation of artworks to men.15 (One senses both her acceptance of these expectations and her desire to overcome them – a tug between ambition and resignation – in her words “I once believed that I had creative talent, but I have given up this idea. . . . It would be arrogant to believe that.”) She was also, as Reich notes, in the habit of comparing herself (unfavorably) with her husband, whom she revered as a composer. “Any musician married to such a figure,” Reich writes, “would find his stature intimidating; as the younger of the two, she asked for his criticism, but feared and resented it at the same time. She accepted fully the dictum that the husband was the dominating figure in a marriage.”16 In any case, whatever doubts Clara Schumann may have expressed about her work, they are belied by its quality. One of the most important things we can do, therefore, to celebrate her achievements and reveal the stunning artistry of her compositional craft is to look closely at the music she wrote. *** My book places Clara Schumann’s music front and center, focusing on her small but extraordinary output of songs. One of my goals is to illuminate her underexamined songs, to explore what makes them so distinctive, so affecting, and so lasting. Yet the book is not only about her songs. An equally important goal is to use her songs to raise several broader questions about the analysis of music by women composers and the analysis of nineteenth-century song. The book treats Clara Schumann’s songs as a prism, casting light not just on them but also through them, using this small body of music to make several claims that extend beyond it. I spell out these claims in detail in the pages that follow, but a rough sketch of them here can give a feeling for the various contexts into which I place her music. The first claim has to do with the relationship between Clara Schumann’s and Robert Schumann’s musical styles – and, more broadly, 15

See ibid., 218.

16

Ibid., 217–18.

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with the common tendency to tie female composers to the dominant male figures in their lives. Historically, Clara Schumann’s music has been placed in the shadow of her husband’s and discussed mainly in relation to his. Comparisons of Clara’s music with Robert’s have yielded valuable insights, but they have also tended to treat his music as a center of gravity that exerts a constant influence on hers. Her music has generally been treated as merely more or less like his (and, all too often, as less successful than his); the rules of engagement have been determined by his musical aims and predilections rather than her own. My book is guided by the conviction that Clara Schumann’s music ought to be taken on its own terms, so that we can get a complete and accurate picture of her style and her achievements as a song composer – and also by the belief that this is a useful way to study music by other women composers, particularly those who stand directly in the shadow of a more famous male composer.17 Doing so need not mean removing Robert from the picture entirely, or arguing that Clara’s songs are in no way related to his. This would be as much of a distortion as arguing that their songs are identical. But it should, as a general rule, mean letting her music dictate the kinds of analytical approaches we take to it and the kinds of things we find in it. This brings me to my second broader claim: detailed musical analysis has a crucial role to play in demonstrating Clara Schumann’s importance to the history of the nineteenth-century Lied and, by extension, in developing a deeper understanding of the achievements of women composers, whose music is still woefully under-analyzed compared with the music of their male counterparts. In this I echo Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft, editors of the ongoing four-volume series Analytical Essays on Music by 17

I have made this argument elsewhere, with respect to the songs of Fanny Hensel. In an article about her Lied aesthetic, I write, “My main goal is to characterize her Lied aesthetic as a thing in itself, to turn an eye and an ear to the subtleties and wonders of her unique expressive language. Therefore, I will not undertake an exhaustive comparison of her songs with her brother’s – although I do hope that my article may inspire others to head in that direction. If anything, Hensel will become more credible as an independent artist if we start with her rather than with her brother, and if we take her music on its own terms” (“Fanny Hensel’s Lied Aesthetic,” Journal of Musicological Research 30/3 [2011]: 177–78). In the introduction to his edited volume, Clara Schumann Studies, Joe Davies makes a case for integrating Clara Schumann (and other women composers) into discussions of the life and music of their male counterparts: “In the current climate, with its unprecedented level of exposure to women in music, the time would seem ripe for continuing to move in the direction of an integrated approach, whereby the lives and musical activities of women are studied as part of a larger dialogue with those of their contemporaries” (“Introduction,” Clara Schumann Studies, 7). I see the value in this as well, but at the same time I see the benefit of taking Clara Schumann’s songs on their own terms (at least in the present study), so that we can move forward with a complete understanding of her craft. My hope, then, is that my book can provide a kind of starting point for that move.

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Clara Schumann, Creator

Women Composers. In the introduction to the first volume they note that while the amount of research into music by women has grown enormously in the past twenty years, detailed discussions of that music are still relatively uncommon; music analysis, they argue, can “supply something that has hitherto been lacking in the discourse surrounding music by women composers: evidence from the works themselves.”18 Gathering this kind of evidence, engaging in this kind of close reading, need not mean rejecting traditional analytical tools. Nor, however, should it mean hewing doggedly with tools that place a premium on the very qualities – large-scale “coherence,” structural “unity,” and so on – that are often absent (which is not to say “lacking”) from works, like Clara Schumann’s songs, that are smaller in scale and more modest in their ambitions. The most productive approach, and the best way to reveal the marvels of her songs, is to use the most powerful tools available as sensitively and musically as possible, attuned to the various contexts that gave rise to the music and open to adapting those tools as we encounter new repertoires. My third main claim has to do with the need for more analysis of form in Romantic song. The main tools that I employ in this book are inspired by recent work in the “new Formenlehre,” a subdiscipline of music theory that explores the formal strategies, processes, and types that define commonpractice-era music. Indeed, my book is the first to apply these tools exclusively to texted music.19 In recent years, scholars of the new Formenlehre have turned their sights on Romantic music, in an effort to understand how nineteenth-century composers modified the formal conventions of their eighteenth-century predecessors. (I discuss some of this work in the next chapter.) As they have done this, however, they have focused mainly on instrumental genres. In our ongoing exploration of Romantic form, it is vital that we bring these theories to vocal music as well. Doing so affords us a richer view of Romantic practice as a whole and reveals the many ways that the formal strategies of nineteenth-century song composers are dependent upon their reading strategies. As I have suggested elsewhere, song composers’ decisions about such things as theme-types, phrase lengths, melodic contours, cadences, and key areas are intertwined with their understanding of such things as poetic rhythm and meter, rhyme 18

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Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1960–2000, ed. Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 8. One example of a book that applies these tools to instrumental music and texted song (though more the former than the latter) is Janet Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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Introduction

schemes, punctuation, and syntax, not to mention the images, ideas, and affects conveyed by a poem.20 This is no truer than in Clara Schumann’s songs. For example, as I discuss in the coming chapters, she shows a remarkable sensitivity to the flow of poetic syntax and the effect of different strategies of poetic closure. Her songs exhibit a strange and wonderful mixture of regularity and fluidity – regularity because they tend to move in four-bar chunks, and fluidity because those chunks somehow do not feel like chunks; they feel like undulating arcs of motion, like the crests of a gentle sine wave. This sine wave quality, this longbreathed continuity, is, I believe, a direct result of her keen awareness of the continuity of poetic texts – the way ideas, feelings, word repetitions, and structures of syntax flow across line and stanza breaks, pushing onward toward the poem’s final, decisive full stop. *** As a whole, the book moves from the general to the specific. Part I (“Context and Style”) contains two chapters. Chapter 1 (“Three Assumptions”) spells out the three claims that I outlined earlier, having to do with the importance of treating Clara Schumann as her own song composer, analyzing her songs closely, and bringing the new Formenlehre to Romantic song. Chapter 2 (“Three Hallmarks”) discusses three stylistic fingerprints of Schumann’s songs: a fascination with expansive themes that unfold in long-breathed arcs, a tendency to undermine cadences so that each arc pushes onward to the next and decisive closure arrives only at the end of songs, and an inventive use of piano texture. With this framework in place, I move, in Part II (“Analyses”), to more detailed discussions of Schumann’s songs. This part of the book is divided into two chapters. Chapter 3 (“Songs without Opus Numbers”) explores her songs that were not published in separate opuses, including her earliest songs, composed in the 1830s, before her marriage, as well as several songs from the 1840s. The main goal of this chapter is to highlight some of the stylistic hallmarks that are present even in compositions from her youth, and that become even more pronounced in her later songs. Chapter 4 (“Songs with Opus Numbers”) concentrates on Schumann’s three published song opuses: the three songs from op. 12 (a collaborative song cycle that she produced with Robert), the six songs of her op. 13 collection, and the Sechs Lieder aus Jucunde, op. 23, the songs that filled her with a sense of 20

See Stephen Rodgers, “Sentences with Words: Text and Theme-Type in Die schöne Müllerin,” Music Theory Spectrum 36/1 (2014): 58–85 and “Schubert’s Idyllic Periods,” Music Theory Spectrum 39/2 (2017): 223–46.

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Clara Schumann, Creator

joy and self-forgetfulness when she wrote them in the summer of 1853. As with my discussion of the songs without opus numbers, here, too, I show how the songs of opp. 12, 13, and 23 bear the telltale signs of her songwriting style. At the same time, I make a broader argument about a feature that binds these three opuses together and distinguishes them from Schumann’s other songs: they show a preoccupation with strophic form, deploying this commonplace song form in ways that are at once subtle and novel. I have structured Chapters 3 and 4 in such a way that readers can either dive into individual analyses, turning to a favorite song by Schumann and immersing themselves in its wonders and then flipping to another song and doing the same, or read the analyses in succession, tracing recurring compositional strategies through groups of songs and seeing how Schumann’s style changes over time. Treating each song as its own analytical vignette will also, I hope, make the book more amenable to use in the classroom, where students can use these analyses as models for their own. Finally, in an epilogue, I reflect on what the study of Schumann’s songs reveals about the seemingly fathomless depths of the nineteenth-century Lied and the staggering number of little-known songs by underrepresented composers whose names may be less familiar than Schumann’s but whose music is no less deserving of being published, performed, recorded, analyzed, and celebrated. *** My wife, Lindsey Henriksen Rodgers – a musicologist and keyboardist – recently rediscovered a piano method book for young children, which includes a short exercise called “The Schumanns.”21 Beneath a simple melody, in quarter and half notes, are these words, meant to be sung by children as they play: “Clara played, all day long, all of Robert’s finest songs.” Seeing that the book was originally published in 1955, it is remarkable that it would mention Clara Schumann at all. What is less surprising is that it would present an image of Robert as composer and Clara as interpreter – as someone who, as she herself put it to Joseph Joachim, “reproduces” rather than “produces.” That the 2000 edition of the book is identical to the 1955 edition shows how deeply ingrained this image is. Thanks to the pioneering work of scholars who are finally taking Clara Schumann seriously as a reproducer and a producer, we are in a position to offer a revision: “Clara played, all day long, all of her finest songs.” I hope my book might prompt others to do the same. 21

Frances Clark, Louise Gross, and Sam Holland, The Music Tree Student’s Book: Time to Begin – A Plan for Musical Growth at the Piano (New York: Alfred Music, 2000), 28.

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part i

Context and Style

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Three Assumptions

Jürgen Thym has written that hearing Clara Schumann’s songs “is like visiting a small gallery of well-selected artworks.”1 She composed fewer than thirty of them, but they are of such high quality, Thym suggests, that listening to them in succession, one could be fooled into thinking that they are a carefully curated selection among hundreds – the best of a huge batch rather than the only ones she wrote. In Chapter 2 I offer a bird’s-eye view of the gallery as a whole, highlighting some of the recurring themes that bind the works together. This will set the stage for a sort of guided tour in Chapters 3 and 4, in which I look closely at many songs in their entirety. No discussion of broad themes, however, can be entirely neutral and objective. Which themes one isolates, which hallmarks one underlines, which compositional strategies one decides to pinpoint as definitive of a composer’s musical aesthetic: all of these depend upon the analytical tools one chooses and the way one chooses to use them – the assumptions one brings to the task. Before laying out the hallmarks of Schumann’s songwriting style in the next chapter, then, let me acknowledge three underlying assumptions that have shaped my approach to her songs.

Clara Schumann Is Her Own Song Composer Put in this way, this may sound like a statement that is so self-evidently true as to be meaningless – like the Earth is round or spring follows winter. Of course Clara Schumann is her own composer, just as every composer is his or her own composer, just as every person is unique. Yet as I suggested in the Introduction, she has not been treated that way. She has typically been placed in the shadow of her more famous husband, and not just placed in his shadow but tethered to him, so that her achievements as a composer are not only obscured by his but also measured against his. This is of course a plight suffered by other female composers (Fanny Hensel, Louise 1

Jürgen Thym, “Crosscurrents in Song: Six Distinctive Voices,” in German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Rufus Hallmark (New York: Routledge, 2010), 219.

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Three Assumptions

Reichardt, and Alma Mahler are but three examples). But the situation with Clara Schumann is particularly acute for three reasons: she wrote almost all of her music during the years in which she was married, Robert stressed the similarity of their styles, and scholars continue to echo this view. The claim of stylistic similarity is tied up with the way Clara Schumann’s songs were initially received, and it continues to influence how they are understood today. The clearest declaration of this claim comes from an oft-quoted letter that Robert wrote to Clara on June 13, 1839 (a little over a year before their wedding), in which he predicted, “We will publish many things under both our names; posterity shall see us as one heart and one soul and not learn which is yours and which is mine.”2 His prediction turned out to be true, to a degree. The couple did not publish “many things” under both of their names, but they did produce one joint publication, which listed them both as composers but without any indication of whose songs were whose. The Liebesfrühling song cycle appeared in 1841 as Robert’s op. 37 and her op. 12 (her first published song opus); the cover of the first printed edition reads Zwölf Gedichte aus F. Rückert’s Liebesfrühling für Gesang und Pianoforte von Robert und Clara Schumann. (I explore her songs from this cycle in Chapter 4.) One mid-nineteenth-century critic, reviewing the opus, felt either unable or unwilling to guess who composed which songs; an unsigned review from the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, dated January 19, 1842, notes that the title of the opus indicates joint authorship but goes on to say, “Since no further information about the part played by each is provided, we cannot take this into account, but can only discuss the collection in general terms, keeping our conjecture to ourselves and letting everyone form his or her own opinion.”3 The idea that Clara’s and Robert’s songs are so similar as to be indistinguishable has had real staying power. Jon Finson, in Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs, claims that we would not be able to tell the difference between them if we did not have the composers’ names to go by: he recognizes that the songs of their joint cycle “exhibit the proclivities of their respective composers” (Robert’s declamation is more flexible and his forms more experimental; Clara’s piano writing is more fluid and her vocal lines more wide-ranging) but admits that only “the superiority of 2

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Clara Schumann and Robert Schumann, Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2, ed. Eva Weissweiler (Basel: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern, 1987), 571. Quoted and translated in Reich, Clara Schumann, 238. “Zwölf Gesänge aus Rückerts Liebesfrühling,” Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 44 (January 19, 1842): 61. Quoted and translated in Reich, Clara Schumann, 305.

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Clara Schumann Is Her Own Song Composer

hindsight” (i.e., the awareness of who wrote which song) makes this possible. “Distinguishing one composer from the other without foreknowledge,” he writes, “would take some doing – precisely what Robert had in mind.”4 And James Deaville, writing about Clara Schumann’s songs in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, notes that her songs are more or less identical to Robert’s: “The quality of Clara Schumann’s songs is quite high. . . . Her best Lieder compare favorably with Robert’s, such as her three contributions to op. 12 that for contemporary reviewers were all but indistinguishable from his works in the same set.”5 Elsewhere, Clara Schumann’s songs are mentioned only as a footnote to Robert’s, and the style of her songs is not discussed at all.6 In the latest edition of the Grove entry on the Lied, which is identical to the revised 2001 version, Schumann’s Lieder are mentioned only in a few sentences, and only as an addition to the section on Robert Schumann (and Robert Franz). Nothing is said about the style of her songs or about how they compare with Robert’s. Instead, we get another comparison, and a typically unfavorable one: Clara “is not the equal of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel as a song composer, . . . probably because the lied interested her less than instrumental forms.” We also learn that Robert “acknowledged Clara’s influence [on his songs] by publishing some three of her songs as part of their joint op. 37 (1840 [sic]), a cycle from Rückert’s Liebesfrühling which celebrated nuptial bliss.”7 (Note that Clara’s Liebesfrühling songs are deemed significant not as works in their own right but only as evidence of her influence on Robert.) Treating Clara Schumann as her own composer means setting aside these less-than comparisons. It means examining and evaluating her songs on their own terms rather than according to the terms set by other composers, whose aims, talents, and instincts may have been different from hers. It means remaining open to aspects of her music that either bear no obvious comparison with her husband’s (such as her tendency to write song melodies that unfold in long, expansive arcs, a topic that 4

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Jon W. Finson, Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 46. James Deaville, “The Lied at Mid Century,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, ed. James Parsons and Jonathan Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 156. Thym, “Crosscurrents in Song,” 220. Eric Sams and Graham Johnson, “Lied” (“IV. The Romantic Lied”), Grove Music Online, ed. Deane Root, accessed October 31, 2019, www.oxfordmusiconline.com. Aisling Kenny and Susan Wollenberg offer an insightful discussion of this passage, as well as of other passages on nineteenth-century women composers from various dictionaries, in the introduction to Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied, ed. Aisling Kenny and Susan Wollenberg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 4–5.

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Three Assumptions

I explore in the next chapter) or that, even if they do bear comparison, deserve to be treated without the pejorative terms that often attend them when comparison is the name of the game. And it means letting her music, rather than the music of her husband or her other male contemporaries, dictate the kinds of qualities we celebrate in it. This is not to suggest that there is no value in comparing Clara Schumann’s music with the music of contemporaneous composers, Robert Schumann or otherwise.8 Nor is it to suggest that one ought to deny any similarities between Robert’s style and Clara’s. In this book I do not attempt to disprove any claims of stylistic affinity, but I do maintain a focus on Clara Schumann’s distinctive ways of expressing herself, with the idea that analyzing her songs on their own terms is the best way to do justice to them.9

Music Analysis Can Reveal a Lot About Clara Schumann’s Songs (and Vice Versa) This brings me to assumption number two: music analysis is crucial in enriching our understanding of Schumann’s accomplishments as a song composer. This may also sound like a noncontroversial claim. But some scholars, facing the challenge of doing justice to music by women composers, have argued that traditional music-analytical tools are simply not 8

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For some useful comparisons of Clara Schumann’s Lieder with the Lieder of other contemporaneous composers, see Lewin, “Clara Schumann’s Setting of ‘Ich stand’” (which compares Schumann’s setting with Schubert’s); Burstein, “Their Paths, Her Ways” (which sets four Schumann songs against setting of the same texts by Loewe, Schubert, Wolf, Grieg, Mozart, and Franz); and Krebs, “The Influence of Clara Schumann’s Lieder” (which argues that Clara’s flexible approach to declamation may have influenced the declamation in Robert’s late songs). As I noted in the Introduction, I make a similar argument in an article on Fanny Hensel’s songwriting style: “I will not undertake an exhaustive comparison of her songs with her brother’s – although I do hope that my article may inspire others to head in that direction. If anything, Hensel will become more credible as an independent artist if we start with her rather than with her brother, and if we take her music on its own terms” (“Fanny Hensel’s Lied Aesthetic,” 178). Kenny and Wollenberg, in the introduction to Women and the NineteenthCentury Lied, acknowledge the benefits of “freeing women from the dominance of their male counterparts,” but argue that there is still something to be gained from discussing women’s Lieder in light of the music by their male contemporaries: “From our vantage-point further on in the development of women’s studies in music, we can perhaps feel more comfortable than might have been the case in the earlier phase, if we now choose to respond to the invitation expressed in the first part of the quotation above and invoke the male contemporaries of our female figures, in order better to understand their respective achievements” (6). I do not deny the potential advantages of these kinds of comparisons, but in the case of Clara Schumann especially – whose Lied aesthetic is still not fully understood – I feel even more is to be gained by treating her as much as possible on her own terms.

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Music Analysis Can Reveal a Lot

up to the task.10 Enshrined in these tools, the argument goes, are value systems that elevate those qualities – such as the unconventionality, incisiveness, profundity, and experimentation to which Thym alludes above – that can be found in abundance in the (mostly) large-scale, (mostly) publicly oriented “masterworks” written by (mostly) male, (mostly) Austro-Germanic composers, but are not always as central to the aesthetic and raison d’être of the works that were more often than not the only compositional outlet for women: works in smaller-scale genres that were typically geared toward more private audiences and more amateur musicians.11 Even more than that these tools place a premium on certain kinds of musical works is that they place a premium on musical works at all, and therefore run the risk of reifying the so-called author-function, which (as Marcia Citron describes it) “privileges the written document and the public arena . . . and de-emphasizes process, collaboration, community, the private, and oral transmission, which played a key role in the lives of historical musical women.”12 10

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Several of these arguments appear in important work from the 1990s. See, for example, Fred Everett Maus, “Masculine Discourse in Music Theory,” Perspectives of New Music 31/2 (1993): 264–93; Marion Guck, “A Woman’s (Theoretical) Work,” Perspectives of New Music 32/1 (1994): 28–43; Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, “Of Poetics and Poiesis, Pleasure and Politics – Music Theory and Modes of the Feminine,” Perspectives of New Music 32/1 (1994): 44–67; Suzanne Cusick, “Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body Problem,” Perspectives of New Music 32/1 (1994): 8–27; Susan McClary, “Paradigm Dissonances: Music Theory, Cultural Studies, Feminist Criticism,” Perspectives of New Music 32/1 (1994): 68–85; and Jeffrey Kallberg, “The Harmony of the Tea Table: Gender and Ideology in the Piano Nocturne,” chap. 2 of Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 30–61. For a more recent reflection on the efficacy of traditional music analysis in the exploration of music by women composers, see Sally Macarthur, “Renovating Music Analysis,” Musicology Australia 38/2 (2016): 182–93. For a provocative attempt to extend and adapt existing analytical tools to accommodate recent music by women composers, see Lochhead, Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music. It goes without saying that these arguments apply not just to music by women composers but also to music by composers from other underrepresented groups (music by composers of color, music by non-Western composers, and so on). Furthermore, as Philip Ewell has argued, certain music-theoretical tools (e.g., Schenkerian analysis) operate in what he calls a “white racial frame,” explicitly or implicitly reinforcing the idea that only certain repertoires of music – particularly those of white, male, Austro-Germanic composers from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century – are worthy of study. See in particular “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame,” Music Theory Online 26/2 (2019). Marcia J. Citron, “Women and the Western Canon: Where Are We Now?” Notes 64/2 (2007): 210. In Gender and the Musical Canon, Citron recommended the “decentered author” as a solution to this problem, which places emphasis on social function, process, and community. At the end of “Women and the Western Canon,” however, she acknowledges the potential downsides of the “decentered author” approach: “Decentering history from actual creators, as salutary as it has been, could divert interest from compositions to process and culture. We must be pragmatists as well as cultural historians. Women’s music – scores, recordings, books – must

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Claiming that music analysis can reveal a lot about Schumann’s songs might thus be interpreted as suggesting that music analysis is a one-size-fitsall endeavor, that no matter what music we are dealing with – whether Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Clara Schumann Lieder, John Field nocturnes, or Pauline Viardot mélodies, to name only some nineteenthcentury examples – the traditional tools of music theory can be applied without complication or reflection because those tools are wholly “objective.” It might also be seen as ignoring or disavowing the contributions that feminist theorists have made to music theory and musicology. This is not the claim I am making. Rather, I am suggesting that traditional music-analytical tools (which attend to large-scale form, phrase structure, harmonic progression, tonal design, and so on) can be productively applied to the music of women composers – and, in this case, to the songs of a particular woman composer – so long as we remain aware of the presuppositions that inform them and open to adjusting our analytical tools as we are faced with new and diverse repertoires. In making such a claim, I place myself in line with a number of scholars who have argued that music analysis has a vital role to play in the exploration of music by women composers – and, in fact, that music analysts have a unique perspective to offer that can supplement the many musicological studies of music by women that have appeared over the past quarter century. Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft make this case most forcefully. In the first volume of Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers, they write that in recent decades musicologists and a few music theorists have made outstanding contributions to our knowledge of the lives and careers of female composers and to our understanding of their music within a cultural context; feminist music scholars have also suggested alternative analytical approaches to music by female and male composers alike. However, most pertinent to this collection, mainstream music theory – traditionally the locus of the most detailed and rigorous analysis of individual musical compositions – has not kept pace.13

Their solution: bring to bear on music by women a variety of recent analytical tools, rather than sequestering this music from these tools and developing brand-new tools to address it.

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continue as an important priority” (Gender and the Musical Canon, 215). My aim in this book, in a sense, is to “recenter” Clara Schumann as an author, without neglecting the historical contexts surrounding the works she authored. Parsons and Ravenscroft, Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1960–2000, 3.

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Music Analysis Can Reveal a Lot

Doing this, though, may at times require some recalibration, some selfconsciousness about why we have chosen a particular set of tools and what kinds of musical features they are designed to elucidate. (Hence the “vice versa” to which I refer in the heading to this section.) In a review of the first volume of Parsons and Ravenscroft’s series, Annika Forkert writes that using the newest and most powerful analytical tools to explore the music of women composers not only does a service to the music, it also benefits the tools themselves: “the variety and level of analysis . . . shows that analytical tools can profit from engaging with this other canon.”14 This has certainly been the case with my exploration of Clara Schumann’s songs. The act of wrestling with this music – with the issues it raises, the analytical challenges it poses, the qualities it exhibits, the circumstances under which it was composed, and the ways it has been received – has involved an act of self-reflection, a heightened sensitivity to how I go about doing what I do. This has not meant overhauling my analytical approach; by and large, in this book I approach her songs in the same spirit that I have approached the songs of other nineteenth-century Lied composers. But it has meant slightly reorienting my focus and paying even more attention to things that I might have otherwise overlooked. Above all, analyzing Clara Schumann’s songs has required me to reflect on some received ideas about the value – and the definition – of musical complexity. Music theorists have traditionally prized works that are complex in the sense of being innovative, complicated, and difficult to comprehend – works that pose analytical problems that need to be “solved,” works that push boundaries, deform conventions, boldly usher in new modes of thinking. Even as the discipline has expanded its reach to encompass an ever-growing variety of repertoire – from rock and pop to world music to video-game music – this kind of complexity is still often regarded as a marker of value, both when it comes to the music we analyze and the analyses we create.15 Certain works of music, however, pose challenges to that value system. Lieder, for example, have typically been valued for their subtlety and nuance, and for an unaffected simplicity and interiority that, as Jennifer Ronyak has shown, remained vital to the genre even as performance, an 14

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Annika Forkert, “Review of Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1960–2000,” Music & Letters 98/3 (2017): 497. The recent surge of analyses of rhythmic and metric complexity in the music of the heavy metal band Meshuggah is a case in point. See Jonathan Pieslak, “Re-casting Metal: Rhythm and Meter in the Music of Meshuggah,” Music Theory Spectrum 29/2 (2007): 219–45; Guy Capuzzo, “Rhythmic Deviance in the Music of Meshuggah,” Music Theory Spectrum 40/1 (2018): 121–37; and Olivia R. Lucas, “‘So Complete in Beautiful Deformity’: Unexpected Beginnings and Rotated Riffs in Meshuggah’s obZen,” Music Theory Online 24/3 (2018).

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inherently outward-facing act, put pressure on this sense of interiority.16 And, as Marcia Citron has suggested, music by nineteenth-century women composers in general – which of course tends to be confined to smaller genres like the Lied and the piano miniature – likewise raises questions about the premium that music theorists and musicologists have placed on complexity. Complexity and quality, she argues, are often treated as synonymous since complexity is a sign of great skill and ingenuity, and since these are the qualities that we tend to prize in “good” music. Yet the view that complexity equals quality, she points out, is historically contingent, and it is an adage that applies more neatly to music by men than music by women. The respect accorded stylistic complexity after 1800 may result from a sociopolitical fabric that was itself becoming increasingly complex. In this postaristocratic era there was greater personal opportunity, but the potential was much more relevant to men than women. This difference could partly explain the interest of nineteenth-century women in musical simplicity and their frequent avoidance of complex musical structures like symphony and opera. Many female composers and listeners seemed to prefer musical simplicity, at least as gauged by the many tuneful songs and piano works composed by women.17

As a song composer, Schumann appears to have cultivated just the kind of “simplicity” that Citron describes – assuming, again, that we define a “simple” musical aesthetic as one that shows relatively little interest in radically upending conventions; challenging listeners’ preconceptions; or showcasing that which is abstruse, complicated, or perplexing. Obviously, because the early nineteenth-century Lied was in many ways characterized by its simplicity and interiority, this claim could be made of other Lied composers as well, and not just female ones.18 My point is not that this is only true of Clara Schumann’s songs, but that it is especially true of them. In 16

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Jennifer Ronyak, Intimacy, Performance, and the Lied in the Early Nineteenth Century (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018). Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 132. Of course, not all women composers avoid complexity – quite the contrary. Volume 1 of Parsons and Ravenscroft’s Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers (focusing on composers such as avant-garde composers: Ursula Mamlok, Joan Tower, and Sofia Gubaidulina) suggests as much. So do Hisama’s Gendering Musical Modernism, Straus’s The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Lochhead’s Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music. My point is that when it comes to Lieder composed by women in the early nineteenth century, a lack of overt difficulty and complexity was generally the norm. In an article on “idyllic periods” in late Schubert songs, for example, I argue that his pristinely beautiful, outwardly simple themes “seem to shun the things that music analysts so often prize – departure from convention, deformation of norms, obvious innovation, adventurousness – but they are no less worthy of detailed analysis” (“Schubert’s Idyllic Periods,” 244).

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Music Analysis Can Reveal a Lot

analyzing her songs, I have had to make a special effort to look beyond that which is deformational, radical, and difficult – and doing so has helped me to get closer to what feels like the heart of her music, the features that give it life and meaning. As I show in the next chapter, for example, the piano accompaniments to her songs, for all their subtlety and richness, are generally not virtuosic or knottily difficult; their textures may be detailed and even at times multilayered, but they are normally within the reach of amateur players (even if playing them with nuance and sophistication requires an expert’s skill). They do not make strenuous demands on the performer or the listener. The same could be said of her melodic and tonal structures. In Chapter 2 I also discuss the fact that her songs tend to move in naturally singable four-bar phrases, even though she strings those phrases together in such a way as to create a strong sense of fluidity and continuity. And in Chapter 4, I show how Schumann deploys relatively straightforward strophic forms in her songs with opus numbers, with subtle and deeply moving effects. As for her tonal language, her songs feature occasional chromatic modulations, but in general they do not stray too far from the tonic, and even though she often undermines expected cadences to create the feeling of musical continuity I just described, she does so in ways that I would be hard-pressed to call radical – artful, wonderfully expressive, even surprising, yes; but not revolutionary, not “ahead of their time.”19 Citron’s comments help us to appreciate the extent to which this stylistic “simplicity” was a product of Schumann’s personal circumstances. She may have had more opportunities to compose and showcase her compositions to the public than did other nineteenth-century female composers of her era.20 But she labored under the same sorts of pressures and expectations 19

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This is not to say, of course, that all female composers from this time period embraced the kind of simplicity that Citron describes. Fanny Hensel, for example, is a composer whom I would describe as experimental and ahead of her time. Her songs, as I have shown in several articles and book chapters, adopt an adventurous approach to phrase rhythm, harmonic progression, tonality, and closure. The reasons why Hensel’s songs are generally more experimental than Schumann’s are complex – and they may stem in part from their natural predilections as composers. But their individual circumstances likely played a role. For one thing, Hensel composed many, many more songs than Schumann did – 249 to Schumann’s 27. She composed almost all of her songs without publication in mind, whereas Schumann (who was a published composer at the age of twelve and who, when she wrote the bulk of her songs, was married to a well-known composer and journal editor) undoubtedly imagined that her songs might appear in print. With even more experience as a song composer and with the knowledge that she did not have to cater to public tastes, she may therefore have felt “freer” to try out unorthodox ideas. As Nancy Reich has noted, because Clara Schumann was of lower social standing, she faced fewer barriers in her pursuit of public musical activities (“The Power of Class: Fanny Hensel,” in Mendelssohn and His World, ed. R. Larry Todd [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991],

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Three Assumptions

that weighed upon women composers – principally in that certain genres were seen as more acceptable for them, and also in that she was bound to be compared (unfavorably) with male composers who, critics felt, possessed more natural compositional “strength.”21 Alexander Stefaniak has even argued that in her Lieder from the 1840s (which form the majority of her contributions to the genre – sixteen of her twenty-seven songs) Schumann deliberately “engaged in a performance of wifely femininity.”22 During this time, Stefaniak suggests, she was refining her public image so as to “cultivate authority and ownership as a performer of the canonic tradition,” and part of that act of cultivation involved moving into an appropriately feminine compositional sphere. One result of this act of cultivation is that her songs from this time “eschewed virtuosic extravagance in favor of inwardness and poetic sensitivity.”23 What interests me even more than the causes of Schumann’s relatively straightforward songwriting style, however, are its effects, and the most productive ways to explain them – and it is here where I think Citron’s comments are particularly helpful. Schumann’s songs may appear to eschew some of the obvious difficulty and complexity that one associates with other genres (e.g., symphony or opera) or even with other Lied composers (such as Schubert, whose radical tonal experiments upended Classical conventions, or Robert Schumann, whose lengthy postludes gave the piano more “voice” than ever before). Yet that does not mean they are of any less quality, or that they are any less worthy of sustained analytical engagement, for, as we will see in the chapters to come, her songs are full of subtlety and expressivity. Indeed, one of Clara Schumann’s singular achievements as a song composer – which I return to at different points and in different ways throughout this book – is her rare ability to blend accessibility and artfulness, simplicity and sophistication, a sense of restraint and a depth of emotion. Attending to this blend of simplicity and sophistication has required me to resist the urge to look only for pathbreaking innovation in her songs – to avoid zeroing in on only those songs that radically distort conventions and test boundaries. It has required me, instead, to pay careful attention to nuances (rather than only bold

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86–99). See also Marcia J. Citron, “Gender, Professionalism, and the Musical Canon,” Journal of Musicology 8/1 (1990): 102–17 and Harald Krebs, “‘The Power of Class’ in a New Perspective: A Comparison of the Compositional Careers of Fanny Hensel and Josephine Lang,” NineteenthCentury Music Review 4/2 (2007): 37–48. Reich has suggested that these critiques, and the societal attitudes they represented, contributed to Clara Schumann’s doubts about her skills as a composer (Clara Schumann, 218). Stefaniak, Becoming Clara Schumann, 156. 23 Ibid., 158.

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Song Form Depends upon Poetic Form (and Meaning)

maneuvers), to surface features (rather than only underlying structures),24 to subtleties of perception (rather than merely complexities of construction) – in short, to notice those features of any given song that might look fairly straightforward on the page but that take on richer meaning when we listen to them closely. In a sense, I am talking about a different kind of complexity – not so much a complexity of content as a complexity of expressive effect. And expressive effect, of course, depends upon context. Listening to Schumann’s songs, for me, is like marveling at the subtle shadings of a black-and-white charcoal drawing. From one perspective, the color palette might seem the furthest thing from complex – only whites, grays, and blacks. But in the context of the drawing itself, in the world of the artwork, a heavy streak of black or an untouched patch of white can be breathtaking.

Song Form Depends upon Poetic Form (and Meaning) As I noted in the Introduction, the main (though hardly only) analytical tools that I use to make sense of Schumann’s songs – to account for their various gradations of intensity and feeling – are drawn from recent work in the new Formenlehre, especially William Caplin’s theory of formal functions. I choose these tools for many reasons. First, I have found that they are particularly adept at explaining musical processes and techniques that are audible and visceral, that they shape how I experience the music in real time (both as a listener and as a performer). Particularly because, as I explained earlier, Schumann’s music tends to eschew that which is esoteric, an analytical approach that attends to such things as the shaping of phrases, the drive toward or away from expected moments of closure, the 24

I am reminded of a comment from Susan McClary’s chapter on Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (from the second volume of Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers): “my finicky attention to detail reveals a crucial quality in the sarabandes: namely the way this music operates on the basis of moment-by-moment events. . . . An Italian aria of this time would unfold through sweeping gestures, delaying and heightening desire for the next implied point of arrival. To be sure, Jacquet’s pieces proceed through standard background progressions as well, and they even construct affect through postponed expectations. These occur, however, at a very low level of activity. Jacquet de La Guerre’s music draws the ear into the surface” (“In the Realm of All the Senses: Two Sarabandes by Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre,” in Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Secular & Sacred Music to 1900, ed. Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft [New York: Oxford University Press, 2018], 126–27). Clara Schumann’s songs arguably “delay and heighten desire for the next implied point of arrival,” even more than Jacquet de la Guerre’s sarabandes do, but they nonetheless are a similar kind of deceptive simplicity, where the details of the surface matter as much as deeper patterns.

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formal and expressive function of phrases and their constituent parts – all of which fall under the purview of form-functional analysis – is particularly powerful. A second, even more important reason why I choose the tools of the new Formenlehre is that they lend themselves to considering how musical form relates to poetry, which brings me to the third assumption that underlies my analytical approach to Schumann’s Lieder: in art song from this time period there is an intimate connection between the musical forms a song composer chooses and the structural and semantic aspects of the poems a composer sets. I have made this point in some of my own Formenlehrebased analyses of songs by Schubert and Hensel. For example, in two Music Theory Spectrum articles about Schubert’s songs, I show that he often coordinates the repetition of a sentence’s basic idea with poetic rhymes; that he uses sentences with so-called statement–response and sequential repetitions to express poetic ideas such as aggression, anger, and forward motion, and those with “exact” repetitions to express stasis, monotony, and reluctance;25 and that his late songs feature “idyllic periods” marked by symmetry, diatonicism, simple piano textures, and expressions of nostalgia and hopefulness.26 And in a 2020 article, Tyler Osborne and I argue that Hensel’s songs are pathbreaking in their avoidance of final cadential closure, and that the lack of musical closure in her songs often highlights a lack of emotional closure in the accompanying poems.27 A number of other scholars – including Harald Krebs, Julie PedneaultDeslauriers, and Nathan Martin – have likewise begun to reckon with the challenges, and the rewards, of looking at texted music from a new Formenlehre perspective, and my own work has benefited enormously from the work of these three scholars.28 (I explore PedneaultDeslauriers’s analyses of Schumann songs in the next chapter.) More work along these lines is needed. In the past decade there has been 25

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For a discussion of these repetition types, see William E. Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 37–39. See Rodgers, “Sentences with Words” and “Schubert’s Idyllic Periods.” Stephen Rodgers and Tyler Osborne, “Prolongational Closure in the Lieder of Fanny Hensel,” Music Theory Online 26/3 (2020). Harald Krebs, “Sentences in the Lieder of Robert Schumann: The Relation to the Text,” in Formal Functions in Perspective: Essays on Musical Form from Haydn to Adorno, ed. Steven Vande Moortele, Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers, and Nathan John Martin (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015), 225–51; Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Beyond Vierhebigkeit”; and Nathan John Martin, “Formenlehre Goes to the Opera: Examples from Armida and Elsewhere,” Studia musicologica 51/3–4 (2010): 387–404 and “Schumann’s Fragment,” Indiana Theory Review 28/1–2 (2010): 85–109.

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a surge of interest in Romantic form, inspired in large part by an effort to determine how well the analytical tools of the new Formenlehre apply to Romantic music. We have learned a great deal about the many ways that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century formal practices differ, even as they also overlap. Sentences and periods abound in nineteenth-century music, for example, and Romantic composers continue to employ cadences in “Classical” ways, even as they also begin to experiment with new closing strategies, but at the same time new techniques begin to emerge, such as more processual approaches to form; a “weakening” of closure at the ends of phrases, sections, and pieces; an expansion of themes; and a greater interest in eliding and overlapping formal boundaries.29 Almost all of this research on Romantic form, however, has concentrated on instrumental music. Thinking about form in Romantic vocal music means reckoning with an inescapable fact: the way song composers shape musical phrases and sections is inseparable from the way they read poetic lines and stanzas. Recognizing this not only helps us to understand the idiosyncratic formal practices of individual song composers – the extent to which their formal strategies are products of their reading strategies. It also enriches our understanding of Romantic song as a whole, and the way it interfaces with all manner of poetic parameters. Bringing the new Formenlehre to Schumann’s songs, in other words, teaches us about more 29

The body of scholarship on Romantic Formenlehre is extensive. Some representative studies include William E. Caplin, “Beyond the Classical Cadence: Thematic Closure in Early Romantic Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 40/1 (2018): 1–26; Andrew Davis, Sonata Fragments: Romantic Narratives in Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2017); Ann M. Hyland, “Rhetorical Closure in the First Movement of Schubert’s Quartet in C major, D. 46: A Dialogue with Deformation,” Music Analysis 28/1 (2009): 111–42; Julian Horton, “Syntax and Process in the First Movement of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio Op. 66,” in Rethinking Mendelssohn, ed. Benedict Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 236–62 and “Criteria for a Theory of Nineteenth-Century Sonata Form,” Music Theory and Analysis 4/2 (2017): 147–91; Seth Monahan, Mahler’s Symphonic Sonatas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Carissa Reddick, “Becoming at a Deeper Level: Divisional Overlap in Sonata Forms from the Late Nineteenth Century,” Music Theory Online 16/2 (2010); Stephen Rodgers, Form, Program, and Metaphor in the Music of Berlioz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming; Peter H. Smith, “The Type 2 Sonata in the Nineteenth Century: Two Case Studies from Mendelssohn and Dvořák,” Journal of Music Theory 63/1 (2019): 103–38; Benedict Taylor, Mendelssohn, Time and Memory: The Romantic Conception of Cyclic Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), “Clara Wieck’s A Minor Piano Concerto,” and “Mendelssohn and Sonata Form: The Case of Op. 44 No. 2,” in Rethinking Mendelssohn, ed. Benedict Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 185–209; and Steven Vande Moortele, The Romantic Overture and Musical Form from Rossini to Wagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) and “Romantic Forms,” in The Cambridge Companion to Music and Romanticism, ed. Benedict Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 258–76.

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than her songs; it forces us to grapple with important questions about how musical form interacts with poetic form, syntax, and meaning in Romantic song as a whole. To choose one example, which I return to in the next chapter: in analyzing her songs, I have discovered that she tends to align cadences with so-called terminal punctuation (i.e., periods, exclamation points, and question marks – the punctuation marks that denote the end of a sentence).30 Recognizing that aligning cadences and punctuation marks is a norm for her has made me all the more aware of where she does not do this, where she departs from that norm. The many moments where she smudges or even erases linguistic punctuation marks by undermining the cadences that we expect to go with them now stand out to me, whereas before they were operating on me only in a subliminal way. My analysis of her songs – after being recalibrated to listen for these moments of erasure, which, for all their expressivity, do not call attention to themselves as radically, complexly deformational – reveals something that I sensed but was unable to articulate fully. It shows me that the striking fluidity of her songs results in part from the way she avoids cadences where I most expect them: the ends of poetic stanzas and musical sections, precisely where the majority of song composers will place a clear cadence so as to provide an obvious demarcation between adjacent stanzas.31 Yet thinking about the intimate relationship between cadence and punctuation in her songs has also taught me something about song closure more broadly: namely, that the parallel between cadence and punctuation is more than an abstraction or a flawed heuristic. In a well-known article about cadences in Classical-era music, William Caplin questions this heuristic – the idea that musical cadences are analogous to punctuation marks.32 His main complaint about the analogy, in essence, is that while punctuation may make the syntactical units of language more obvious, it is not the source of those syntactical units. “A phrase or sentence achieves 30

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For useful definitions of “terminal” and “internal” punctuation, see Jane R. Walpole, Understanding Written Grammar (Garland, TX: Telemachos, 2000), 94. Here is a case where a brief comparison with the Lieder of Robert Schumann is instructive. Robert is justifiably famous for the novel closing strategies that he uses in his songs. One thinks of course of the dominant-seventh ending to “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,” but also of the many songs where the vocal melody halts before the final PAC arrives. For all his inventiveness with endings, however, he generally tends to end stanzas with cadences. Clara, on the other hand, is much more willing to avoid cadences at the ends of stanzas, and even to avoid piano interludes and melodic breaks – anything that would prevent two adjacent stanzas from seeming like one continuous thought. William E. Caplin, “The Classical Cadence: Conceptions and Misconceptions,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 57/1 (2004): 103–6.

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Song Form Depends upon Poetic Form (and Meaning)

a degree of syntactical closure not by ending with any given punctuation mark,” he writes, “but by word meanings, inflections, and ordering. Cadence, too, is an element of syntax, more specifically, an element that generates formal closure at specific levels of musical organization.”33 A punctuation mark, one might say, is more akin to a cadence label in a score than to a cadence per se. This may well be true in instrumental music, but in Schumann’s songs the parallel between cadence and punctuation is more reality than abstraction, more fact than fiction, and evidence that she was thinking deeply about the connection between the cadential progressions in the score and the punctuation marks on the page. This sensitivity to musical closure is one of the hallmarks of her Lied aesthetic – and, like the other hallmarks of her songwriting style, it is a direct byproduct of her sensitivity to poetic syntax, form, flow, and feeling. Clara may have insisted repeatedly to Robert that she lacked the necessary poetic insight to compose a great song.34 But, as we will see in the coming chapters, her music tells a different story. 33 34

Ibid., 104. See Schumann and Robert Schumann, Briefwechsel, vol. 3, 983–84, 1020–21, 1031, 1035.

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Three Hallmarks

What does a Clara Schumann song sound like? What stylistic markers signal to us that we are hearing one of her Lieder? What are the common compositional maneuvers, the habits of mind, the ways of thinking that define her Lied aesthetic? Three hallmarks stand out. The first, and arguably most important, has to do with how her song melodies flow. Her melodies tend to be structured in four-bar units, but she strings these units together in such a way as to create themes that unfold in long-breathed arcs; they may tend to move in fours, but at the same time they seem to float above these four-bar spans. The second hallmark, also vital to her Lied aesthetic, is related to the first: a tendency to undermine cadences so that each expansive arc pushes onward to the next and decisive closure arrives only at the end of songs. Third, there is her inventive use of the piano. Her songs feature a wide variety of piano textures – and not just virtuosic textures stemming from her skills as a pianist but, even more, subtler textures involving the inventive use of simple patterns (such as repeated block chords) and echo effects in which the voice repeats and ruminates on piano melodies just heard. She also frequently writes chromatic piano postludes that comment upon everything that has happened before. These hallmarks are more than just abstract compositional devices – “facts” of her music that we can check off a list by spotting them in a score or hearing them in a recording. They are essential not just to what the songs do but also to what they mean; they are intimately tied to the feelings the songs express, the sensations they create, and the poetic ideas they animate. The three hallmarks do not appear in every one of her songs, and even where they do appear they do not always appear as a full trio. Still, enough of them appear enough of the time that they deserve to be viewed as building blocks of her musical vocabulary. This chapter explores each hallmark in turn, providing brief analyses of representative songs. 28

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Expansive Themes

Expansive Themes A Thematic Norm: The Compound Antecedent (“Die stille Lotosblume” and “Liebeszauber”) The first Clara Schumann song I ever got to know was “Die stille Lotosblume,” op. 13, no. 6 (1843), the last song of her op. 13 collection. What struck me upon first hearing it was the expansiveness of its melody: the feeling that the vocal line floats above the bar, even above the song’s individual phrases. That melodic expansiveness, I have discovered, is not just a result of the slow tempo, the comparatively long note values in the vocal melody (which contrast with the fastermoving triplets and eighths in the piano accompaniment), or the linearity of the melodic gestures. I know plenty of other song melodies that possess these features but do not create this strong sense of fluidity and continuity. No: there is something else at work here, something having to do with the way the song’s smaller melodic units are strung together. Schumann’s songs often move in four-bar phrases, yet her four-bar phrases typically fit within larger eight-bar spans; they function less as self-contained units than as components of much broader gestures. What is more, because of how those eight-bar spans are constructed, they often sound even longer than they are. The clearest way to explain how she manages to create this floating sensation in “Die stille Lotosblume” is to offer a processual, in-time analysis of the song’s opening (see Example 2.1). After a two-bar introduction, the vocal melody begins with a four-bar phrase comprised of a pair of two-bar ideas and leading to a half cadence – which, as Janet Schmalfeldt notes in her analysis of the song, brings back the progression from the song’s introduction, what she calls “a kind of matrix, a referential source for the song.”1 Borrowing from William Caplin, we would call these two ideas a basic idea and a contrasting idea, respectively – in other words, an archetypal antecedent phrase.2 What follows the antecedent, however, is not a consequent that leads to a perfect authentic cadence (PAC) but a continuation that leads to another half cadence – more specifically, a so-called nineteenth-century half cadence, since the phrase ends with a dominant seventh.3 The opening of the song is

1 3

Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming, 242. 2 See Caplin, Classical Form, 49–50. On the concept of the nineteenth-century half cadence, see Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming, 202–3.

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Three Hallmarks Example 2.1 “Die stille Lotosblume,” opening theme

what Caplin would call a hybrid (in this case a hybrid 1, antecedent +continuation), which, as a whole, forms a compound antecedent.4 But we only realize this in retrospect. The opening four bars of the theme sound at first like a self-contained antecedent leading to a half cadence – a 4

Caplin, Classical Form, 55–58. Steven Vande Moortele notes this as well in his brief analysis of the song, writing that the opening of the song’s vocal portion “takes the form of an antecedent of a compound period” (“Romantic Forms,” 267).

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Expansive Themes

single arc, a thing in itself. Imagine if this antecedent had been followed by a consequent, or by a continuation that ended with a PAC. In each of these cases, the eight-bar theme cannot function as a larger antecedent because it ends too conclusively. In the actual song, however, we hear a continuation that leads to another half cadence, and thus our perspective suddenly shifts. The seemingly self-contained antecedent becomes an antecedent within an antecedent – not a single arc but only half an arc, not a thing in itself but only part of a bigger thing that is still unfolding. Borrowing Janet Schmalfeldt’s now-famous coinage, an antecedent phrase “becomes” merely one idea in a larger antecedent phrase.5 Whole becomes part. The effect is like running a race that you mistakenly think is half as long as it really is: you run one lap and think you are done, only to discover there is another lap to go. The song’s long-breathed theme conjoins beautifully with the structure of Emanuel Geibel’s poem. Here is the opening stanza. Die stille Lotosblume Steigt aus dem blauen See, Die Blätter flimmern und blitzen, Der Kelch ist weiß wie Schnee.

The silent lotus flower Rises out of the blue lake, Its leaves glimmer and sparkle, Its cup is as white as snow.

Notice that the couplet expresses a complete thought, yet the two thoughts are separated not by a period but by a comma, implying a continuation of the first couplet into the second: the first two lines tell us what the lotus flower does, and the next two lines tell us what its constituent parts do (i.e., its leaves and its cup). In an essay from The Songs of Fanny Hensel, Yonatan Malin explores how Hensel responds musically to different types of poetic couplets; Geibel’s poem presents an example of what Malin would call two independent couplets (since each presents a complete statement) that are nonetheless logically connected (since the second couplet continues to describe the lotus flower).6 The effect of this particular continuation is like a camera zooming in on the details of a scene – and doing so gradually, beginning with the entire flower, then focusing on its outer 5

6

Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming, passim. A note on terminology: Caplin would describe this kind of compound antecedent not as a phrase but as a theme composed of two phrases, the reason being that for him phrases do not generally fit within other phrases. This is why he describes an eight-bar sentence as a theme, not a phrase. However, I think it is best to describe these compound antecedents as phrases – if also as themes – because their function is analogous to that of non-compound antecedents, which are obviously phrases. Yonatan Malin, “Modulating Couplets in Fanny Hensel’s Songs,” in The Songs of Fanny Hensel, ed. Stephen Rodgers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 171–92.

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extremities, and then zeroing in on what lies at its center. Schumann’s thematic design highlights this gradual motion, tracing one broad shape and saving the most structural cadence (the half cadence in m. 10) for the end of the stanza. Yet that this cadence is not authentic means this eightmeasure theme looks ahead to the next strophe (a repetition of the theme that likewise closes with a half cadence). The continuity across the theme’s phrases is matched by a continuity across the song’s strophes. Its first three stanzas end with a period, but they too flow from one to the next, introducing the main characters – the lotus flower, the moon, and the swan – and setting up the swan’s crucial encounter with the flower later in the poem. Even the smaller details of syntax and punctuation find expression in her setting. Consider the rising melodic line that spans across mm. 4–5 and reflects the enjambment between lines 1 and 2, and the lack of a continuous melodic motion in mm. 8–9, where the rest between “blitzen” and “der” emphasizes the comma that separates lines 3 and 4. I am not the only person to have commented on the fluidity of Schumann’s melodies. Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers has written about the subtle ways that Schumann complicates the outward four-bar regularity of her phrase structures. “Scholars have long recognized a certain Vierhebigkeit or squareness in Schumann’s music,” she writes, adding that her goal “is not to refute this claim” but rather “to peer behind their apparent regularity in order to expose deeper complexities both at the intra- and inter-phrase level.”7 Pedneault-Deslauriers does so in a series of perceptive analytical vignettes, which consider how Schumann disturbs that apparent “squareness” in subtle ways – by (for example) making it hard to determine if we are hearing one theme-type or another, misaligning phrase structures in voice and piano, and inserting parenthetical detours that momentarily disturb the four-bar regularity. My own approach to analyzing Schumann’s melodies is indebted to Pedneault-Deslauriers’s, and also similar to hers, in that I am likewise interested in the mixture of melodic flexibility and regularity in Schumann’s songs – and in the ways the seemingly simple phrase structures of Clara Schumann’s songs nonetheless create surprising effects. The main difference is that I focus on one particular by-product of that mixture: the strange sensation that Clara Schumann’s song melodies float above the bar, flowing in one sustained wave of motion all the while that four-bar phrase rhythms pulse steadily beneath them. Furthermore, I focus on how she creates this effect with two of her favorite thematic designs. 7

Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Beyond Vierhebigkeit,” 54.

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Expansive Themes

One of those designs is what we saw in “Die stille Lotosblume”: a compound antecedent structured as an antecedent followed by a continuation. Another is a variant of this thematic shape: a compound antecedent composed of a compound basic idea followed by a continuation (what Caplin calls a hybrid 3).8 A compound basic idea, as Caplin defines it, is essentially an antecedent phrase that does not close with a cadence – think of it as an “antecedent” phrase, an antecedent in spirit if not in name.9 “Liebeszauber,” op. 13, no. 3 (1842), is a case in point (Example 2.2). To some extent, the whole-becomes-part effect applies here as well, since songs like this begin with four-bar phrases that behave like small antecedents, despite their non-cadential endings. When I listen to “Liebeszauber,” I feel a shift in perspective similar to what I experience in “Die stille Lotosblume,” even if the effect is not quite as pronounced. Measures 1–4, with their two contrasting ideas, sound at first like a self-contained phrase that comes to a point of rest – a quasi-antecedent. (One could easily imagine mm. 5–8 as a bona fide consequent or as a continuation capped with a PAC.) It is only in retrospect – only when m. 8 ends with a half cadence – that I realize mm. 1–4 are part of an even larger phrase with two larger contrasting ideas.10 As with “Die stille Lotosblume,” the continuity of this theme likewise relates to the structure and sense of the poem (also, it turns out, by Geibel). Here, too, the opening couplets are syntactically dependent but logically continuous: the first couplet describes the nightingale singing, and the second describes the path of its sound. Die Liebe saß als Nachtigall Im Rosenbusch und sang; Es flog der wundersüße Schall Den grünen Wald entlang.

Love sat as a nightingale, On a rosebush and sang; The wondrously sweet sound floated Along the green forest.

The half cadence at the end of this compound antecedent also has an effect comparable to what we saw in “Die stille Lotosblume.” Geibel’s second stanza begins with a conjunction – “Und wie er klang . . . ” (And as it

8 10

9 Caplin, Classical Form, 61. Ibid. Sentential antecedents, incidentally, do not create this kind of shift in perspective, because the first half of a sentence (the presentation) would never be equivalent in function to larger theme of which it is part: no sentence, in other words, would ever function like a large-scale presentation in an even bigger sentence. This is precisely what I am claiming happens in compound antecedents structured as antecedent+continuation or compound basic idea+continuation: the first half of the theme, whether a proper antecedent or a compound basic idea, is a gesture that functions like the larger antecedent that subsumes it.

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Three Hallmarks Example 2.2 “Liebeszauber,” opening theme

sounded) – and Schumann musicalizes this syntactical linkage with an openended phrase that casts our minds and ears forward. I dwell on the technical details of these hybrid compound antecedents, as well as their text-expressive significance, because these types of themes appear often in Schumann’s songs. (Pedneault-Deslauriers rightly notes that most of her melodies do not conform to the sentence and period

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Expansive Themes

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Table 2.1 Clara Schumann’s songs containing compound antecedents

Song Title

Opus Number

Date

Measures

Thematic Structure

Cadence at End of Theme

12, no. 4

1841

3–10

ant+cont

vi:HC

12, no. 11

1841

5–12

cbi+cont

none: theme ends with V6/5

13, no. 1

1842

6–13

cbi+cont

13, no. 3 13, no. 4

1842 1843

1–8 2–9

cbi+cont cbi+cont

V:PAC (functioning as largescale I:HC) I:HC I:HC

13, no. 6 23, no. 1

1843 1853

3–10 1–21

ant+cont cbi+cont

I:HC I:PAC

23, no. 2

1853

9–19

cbi+cont

23, no. 3

1853

9–24

cbi+cont

V:PAC (functioning as largescale I:HC) III:PAC (functioning as largescale vi:HC) i:HC i:HC

Liebst du um Schönheit Warum willst du and’re fragen Ich stand in dunklen Träumen Liebeszauber Der Mond kommt still gegangen Die stille Lotosblume Was weinst du, Blümlein An einem lichten Morgen Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort Der Wanderer Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle Am Strande Die Lorelei Mein Stern

none none

1831 1831

3–8 3–10

cbi+cont ant+cont

none none none

1840 1843 1846

5–12 1–12 2–15

cbi+cont ant+cont cbi+cont

Beim Abschied

none

1846

2–9

ant+cont

Das Veilchen

none

1853

1–8

ant+cont

i:HC i:HC none: theme ends with V6/5–I V:IAC (functioning as large-scale I:HC) I:HC

theme-types.11 Hybrid themes leading to half cadences or PACs in V, however, are quite common.) Table 2.1 lists all of her songs that start with compound antecedents structured either as antecedent+continuation or compound basic idea+continuation – sixteen in total, or almost 62 percent of her songs. Not all of these songs follow a compound antecedent with a compound consequent. In some cases, instead of a proper consequent we hear a consequent that refuses to end with a PAC (later in the chapter I explore one such example: “Warum willst du and’re fragen”). In other cases, we hear a new theme altogether. Still, each of these songs opens with an eight-bar theme that imparts antecedent function, since each song begins with a unit that closes with a relatively weak cadence, and thus sets up the expectation of a repetition that will provide a stronger 11

Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Beyond Vierhebigkeit.”

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Three Hallmarks

one.12 I can think of no other Lied composer who shows such a predilection for this kind of theme. Indeed, these long-breathed antecedents are a calling card for Clara Schumann, a distinctive approach to melodic writing that at once obeys four-bar norms and supersedes them, and creates a palpable melodic flow that responds to the flow of poetic syntax and meaning. To be sure, not all of her songs feature these two thematic designs, but recognizing this type of expansive theme as a norm for her allows us to recognize when she modifies it, and why.

A Departure from This Norm (“An einem lichten Morgen”) A particularly expressive deviation from this thematic model appears in “An einem lichten Morgen,” the second song from her 1853 song cycle Sechs Lieder aus Jucunde, op. 23. (As I noted in the Introduction, op. 23 is the work she had just finished when she wrote in her diary, “There is nothing which surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.”) The song opens with a compound antecedent – structured as a compound basic idea+continuation – but there is a curious parenthesis in the middle of it, and its final phrase is expanded. These distortions to the eight-bar model show how Schumann adapts one of her trademark phrase structures to the expressive situation at hand. The theme begins normatively enough (Example 2.3). After an energetic piano introduction (not shown here) full of rapid upward arpeggios that evoke the joy and abundance of a bright spring morning, we hear a four-bar compound basic idea (mm. 9–12). The upward arpeggios are matched by an upward-striving vocal melody, which traces a stepwise ascent from A to B♮ to C (with the D on the downbeat of m. 10 as an expressive appoggiatura) and then reaches even more emphatically upward, outlining the notes of a B♭major triad in mm. 11–12. Steps give way to leaps, and the tune bursts with pent-up energy. At this point, however, rather than continuing onward, the vocal melody suddenly halts, interrupted by a two-bar piano interlude. The vocal melody then echoes the piano’s melodic gesture. This is the beginning of the continuation proper, a phrase that leads to a PAC in the dominant (which has the effect of a large-scale half cadence). The second half of the continuation returns to the upward stepwise motion of the theme’s first phrase, and now the climb is even more dramatic because it extends all the way up to E, and because the phrase is expanded. The drawn-out notes on “bin der Sonnenstrahl” (mm. 17–19) could well have been quarter notes, matching the rhythm from two 12

On antecedent function, see Caplin, Classical Form, 12, 49.

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Expansive Themes Example 2.3 “An einem lichten Morgen,” opening theme

measures earlier, and the phrase could well have been four bars long. But Schumann stretches it to five bars by giving extra time to the sun’s declaration, “Ich bin der Sonnenstrahl!” The declaration is especially intense because the most important syllable in the most important word (“Son-nenstrahl”) is not just an elongated apex but also a dissonance – an E above a G7 chord, an unresolved non-chord tone that pierces through the texture, just as the sun pierces through the clouds.

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Example 2.3 (cont.)

Even though the piano interrupts the vocal melody and disrupts the four-bar regularity, the entire theme still manages to sound continuous, like one massive arc of motion. In large part, this is because of what Schumann does harmonically. The vocal melody may stop when the piano interlude appears, but the harmony keeps going. The voice halts on a I6/4 chord, a mere passing chord between IV6 and IV, a non-structural

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Undermined Cadences

tone in a bass line that is entirely stepwise – until the leap from G to C into the last measure of the theme. (This is a perfect example of the kind of descending bass line that Pedneault-Deslauriers describes as a hallmark of Schumann’s instrumental music.)13 One of the marvels of this theme – which stretches across eleven measures – is that although it is built of small segments, and although it rises and falls, ebbs and flows, it feels like one long breath. No one, of course, would – or could – ever sing it that way, not only because the vocal melody stops for two measures midway through but also because even its second half alone is too long to manage without a breath. But listening to it, and performing it, it is hard not to feel a sustained stream of energy, like a brilliant ray of sunlight that stretches across a valley.

Undermined Cadences As “An einem lichten Morgen” suggests, the expansiveness of Schumann’s themes does not just have to do with how long they are; it also has to do with the harmonies that underlie them. The chords create a feeling of forward momentum that works hand in hand with the gently undulating arcs of melody that seem to move in one unceasing motion. Another way of saying this is that there is a strong syntactical continuity across Schumann’s songs. As I suggested at the end of the previous chapter, the phrases and themes in her songs typically flow easily from one to the next, pushing beyond or altogether avoiding expected moments of cadential closure. The specific techniques that she uses to undermine cadences seem so fitting for each text, so perfect for each context, that it is easy to be fooled into thinking they have never been used anywhere else, that each is one of a kind. But perfect does not always mean unique. As much as she tailors her phrase endings to each poetic situation, she also relies on a common stock of closing strategies that appear throughout her songs.

Strategy #1: Substituting Non-cadential Closure for Cadential Closure (“Ich hab’ in deinem Auge”) On June 8, 1843, Clara surprised Robert with a birthday gift of three songs, bound together into one book. The second of the songs was her Friedrich

13

See Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Bass-Line Melodies.”

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Rückert setting “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” later published as her op. 13, no. 5.14 The poem is about someone who continues to see youth and beauty in his beloved’s face, despite the fact that she has grown old and pale. (I refer to the poetic speaker as a man, the main reason being that the image of roses on the lover’s cheeks [“Ich sah auf deinen Wangen einmal / Die Rosen des Himmels stehn”] has clear gender implications: this is in all likelihood an old man speaking to his wife.) Notice that the poem moves from past to present to future. Ich hab’ in deinem Auge den Strahl Der ewigen Liebe gesehen, Ich sah auf deinen Wangen einmal Die Rosen des Himmels stehn.

I have seen in your eyes The ray of eternal love, I once saw on your cheeks The roses of heaven.

Und wie der Strahl im Aug’ erlischt Und wie die Rosen zerstieben, Ihr Abglanz ewig neu erfrischt, Ist mir im Herzen geblieben.

And as the ray dies in your eyes, And as the roses scatter, Their reflection, ever newly refreshed, Has remained in my heart.

Und niemals werd’ ich die Wangen sehn Und nie in’s Auge dir blicken, So werden sie mir in Rosen stehn Und es den Strahl mir schicken.

And never will I see your cheeks, And never look into your eyes, And not see the glow of roses, And the ray of love.

Schumann sets the poem in ternary form, with one section for each stanza. The passage that interests me is the seam between stanzas 2 and 3, between B and A’, between the present and the future. As you can see in Example 2.4, Schumann originally included a short piano interlude between her setting of these two stanzas, a brief passage that closes with an imperfect authentic cadence (IAC) in the tonic, A♭ major, and prepares the return of the opening material; this is the song as it looked in the book she gave to Robert on his birthday in June 1843. Later that same year, however, after copying the song into a Liederbuch that she intended to keep for posterity, she made a change: she crossed out the interlude, suturing together the measures surrounding it, and removing the cadence (see Example 2.5 for the manuscript). Rather than ending with a V7–I progression, in the revised version the middle section of the song ends with a V6/5

14

My analysis is drawn from my chapter “Softened, Smudged, Erased: Punctuation and Continuity in Clara Schumann’s Lieder,” in Clara Schumann Studies, ed. Joe Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 57–74.

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Undermined Cadences Example 2.4 “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” original version, seam between B and A’

chord – not an IAC and not even a half cadence since the V chord appears in inversion and, more to the point, since it connects seamlessly with the I chord that follows it.15 This is the version of the song that Schumann used in her op. 13 collection, published in 1844 (Example 2.6 shows the passage in the published score). What was cadential becomes non-cadential. The change is hardly radical. In the revised version, the moment when V6/5 resolves to I is anything but jarring; indeed, the moment is characterized by its lack of disruption. But the subtlety of the passage belies its oddity. In characteristic fashion, Schumann makes a move that is understated but powerfully expressive: in fusing together these two stanzas, she overrides Rückert’s period – and, in fact, the text to the 1844 published version of the song removes this punctuation mark altogether. Seeing that she was 15

In general, I tend to regard half cadences as progressions that end with root-position V or V7 chords (as opposed to inverted V or V7 chords), the reason being that in Classical and early Romantic music so many half cadences feature root-position dominants. For an articulation of this viewpoint, see Caplin, Classical Form, 29.

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Three Hallmarks Example 2.5 “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” revised autograph, seam between B and A’

famously fastidious about correcting proofs of her published works, this seems to be as she wanted it. What was she picking up on in the poem that prompted her to read it in such a novel way? In part, she appears to have been responding to the structure of the poem. The first line of the last stanza begins with the word “und” (and), as do the second and fourth lines. This stanza furthers and heightens a syntactical momentum – an increasing drumbeat of “und’s” that started in the first two lines of the second stanza. (This may help to explain why she does not fuse together stanzas 1 and 2; the momentum has not built up yet.) Notice also that the first line of stanza 2 and the last line of the poem are remarkably similar (“Und wie der Strahl . . . ” and “Und es den Strahl . . . ”). In combining

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Undermined Cadences Example 2.6 “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” published version, seam between B and A’

stanzas 2 and 3, she effectively creates one big stanza framed by these similar lines. Her fusion of these two stanzas responds even more to the meaning of the poem. In the original version of the song, the beginning of the third stanza sounds to some extent like a new idea, a shift in tone, the poetic persona’s sudden realization that even though he holds the “reflection” of his beloved’s youthful face in his heart, he will never actually see that youthful face in real life. Here are the last two stanzas recast in prose form, with the stanza break shown as a paragraph break. And as the ray dies in your eyes, and as the roses scatter, their reflection, ever newly refreshed, has remained in my heart. And never will I see your cheeks, and never look into your eyes, and not see the glow of roses and the ray of love. And here they are as we are encouraged to read them in her revised version, again cast as prose. In this reading, there is no new paragraph, no shift in tone, no sudden realization, just one ongoing thought, sustained by the certainty that her youth and beauty will never fade. “And as the ray dies in your eyes, and as the roses scatter, their reflection, ever newly refreshed, has remained in my heart and never will I see your cheeks, and never look into your eyes, and not see the glow of roses and the ray of love.”

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Three Hallmarks

This reading is certainly unorthodox – admittedly, the paragraph reads a little like a run-on sentence. But perhaps that is the point. By smoothing over the seam between stanzas 2 and 3, treating them as though they are one continuous thought, Schumann makes youth and old age, past, present, and future seem to run together as well. Imagine an old man saying to his wife, “You look just the same as the day we were married!” For that matter, imagine Clara imagining Robert saying this to her in her old age, transporting herself fifty years into the future when she hopes he will continue to see light and beauty in her face. (This thought exercise is all the more heartbreaking when one thinks about Robert’s early death.) In this context, the syntactical continuity of Schumann’s music – and its imposition of a syntactical continuity on Rückert’s poem – is more than just a technical aspect of the song; it is a key to unlocking the expressivity, and the originality, of her setting.

Strategy #2: Substituting a Weaker Cadence for a Stronger One (“Warum willst du and’re fragen”) Following a short piano introduction, “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” op. 12, no. 11 (1841), proceeds with a compound antecedent – structured as a compound basic idea+continuation, just like what we saw in “Liebeszauber” (Example 2.7). Yet the antecedent ends not with a rootposition V but instead with a less stable V6/5. What might have been a clear half cadence becomes a weakened half cadence, or, one might argue, not a cadence at all since, in this time period, half cadences at the end of antecedent phrases tend to involve root-position dominants. This could, then, be seen either as an example of strategy #1 (substituting non-cadential closure for cadential closure), if we hear the phrase as ending without a cadence, or as an example of strategy #2 (substituting a weaker cadence for a stronger one), if we hear the phrase as ending with a weakened half cadence. What follows this non-cadence is unequivocally an example of strategy #2, and an even more unorthodox instance of undermined closure. The consequent ends, surprisingly, with a half cadence rather than a PAC, and a half cadence in the subdominant; this cadence is syntactically weaker than the expected PAC.16 If the antecedent falters, we might say, the consequent “fails.”17 As a result of this weaker-than-expected cadence,

16 17

For a useful discussion of cadential syntax, see Caplin, “The Classical Cadence,” 106–12. On the notion of the failed consequent, see Caplin, Classical Form, 89.

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Undermined Cadences Example 2.7 “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” mm. 5–20

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the phrase ends but also pushes onward, aided by a crescendo, a rising stepwise melody, a gradual widening of the space between melody and bass, and the presence of a chordal seventh in the dominant harmony (creating a nineteenth-century half cadence). For comparison, imagine if Schumann had written a more conventional period with a half cadence at its midpoint and a tonic PAC; this version would have none of the forward drive of Schumann’s actual composition. How do Schumann’s cadential deviations relate to the text? Here are the lines that go with the music in question, which come from Friedrich Rückert’s poem of the same title. Warum willst du and’re fragen, Die’s nicht meinen treu mit dir? Glaube nicht, als was dir sagen Diese beiden Augen hier!

Why ask others, Who are not faithful to you? Only believe what these two eyes Here tell you!

Glaube nicht den fremden Leuten, Glaube nicht dem eignen Wahn; Nicht mein Tun auch sollst du deuten, Sondern sieh die Augen an!

Do not believe other people, Do not believe strange fancies; Nor should you interpret my actions, But instead look at my eyes!

These two stanzas have a strong sense of forward momentum – a through-line, a continuity that is made all the more apparent by the continuity of the two musical phrases associated with them. The poetic continuity is a function of the structure and the meaning of the stanzas. First, let us deal with structure. In a classic book titled Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End, the literary theorist Barbara Hernnstein Smith writes that “systematic repetition of formal elements is fundamentally a force for continuation, and closure is, of course, always weakened by the expectation of continuation.”18 Her words nicely describe the effect of reading Rückert’s two stanzas, with their repeated phrases – “Glaube nicht” at the beginning of the third line and the first and second lines of stanza 2; “Augen” in the final line of both stanzas – that mitigate the line- and stanzabreaks. These repetitions connect stanzas 1 and 2, carrying us forward across the stanza division. (The effect here is somewhat similar to the joining of stanzas in “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” though, of course, it is not as pronounced because of the piano interlude; still, as in that song, here,

18

Barbara Hernnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 56.

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Undermined Cadences

too, we see her endeavoring to reach across stanza divisions. I explore further examples of this kind of fusion of stanzas in Chapter 3.) As for poetic meaning, notice that the first stanza opens with a question (“Why ask others, who are not faithful to you?”), whereas the second is full of more direct and urgent imperatives (“Do not believe other people, do not believe strange fancies; . . . look at my eyes!”). The shift in diction heightens the intensity, and Clara Schumann responds to this change in tone with a change in tonality – and a change that, in this particular musical realization, feels like a surge of emotion, a wave that spills over the boundary separating this phrase from the next. As much as this subdominant half cadence looks forward, it also looks backward: the melodic line at the end of the failed consequent is a diatonicized version of what appeared at the end of the antecedent; even the bass line is similar in that it moves down by step. The musical similarity of these measures reinforces the linguistic similarity of the lines associated with them: “Diese beide Augen hier!” and “Sondern sieh die Augen an!”

Strategy #3: Equivocating between Two Different Kinds of Closure (“Liebst du um Schönheit”) After a short introduction, “Liebst du um Schönheit,” op. 12, no. 2 (1841), continues with a compound antecedent constructed just like that of “Die still Lotosblume”: a four-bar antecedent followed by a four-bar continuation, which in this case settles on a half cadence in the submediant, B♭ minor (see the first half of Example 2.8). The slippage onto an F-major chord in m. 9 – which is all the more apparent because of the way the chord spills over the bar line – is yet another example of strategy #2 (substituting a weaker cadence for a stronger one). Had the four beats of F major been replaced by a V7–I progression in D♭, the phrase could easily have ended with an IAC and reached the tonic; in Schumann’s version, it hesitates and misses its target. What interests me even more than the weakened closure at the end of the antecedent, though, is the ambiguous closure at the end of the consequent (see the second half of Example 2.8). At first glance, the cadence in m. 18 would seem to be the very IAC that was promised but denied eight bars earlier – a stronger cadence to compensate for the earlier weaker one. Yet a closer look shows that things are not quite so clear. The left hand’s eighth-note motion in m. 18 weakens the authentic cadence and leads to a root-position V7 chord halfway through this measure, suggesting a half cadence; note also the slur in the left hand, which connects this dominant

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Three Hallmarks Example 2.8 “Liebst du um Schönheit,” mm. 3–20

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Undermined Cadences

Example 2.8 (cont.)

with the dominant in the previous measure. Hearing an IAC means hearing this as a successful consequent phrase, one that produces an authentic cadence; hearing a half cadence means hearing this as a “failed” consequent, one that remains open-ended. That two different analysts interpret this cadence differently underlines the point. Susan Wollenberg writes that the move to V/vi is “corrected” when the next phrase ends with an IAC.19 Michael Baker, on the other hand, treats this cadence as a half cadence, and ^ hence an interruption on 2/V.20 The phrase ending is equivocal, leaving us with a feeling of resolution and continuation, closure and continuity – which is fitting for this poetic moment. Rückert’s poem unfolds in four stanzas. In the first three stanzas the speaker tells her beloved to set his sights elsewhere: on the sun, if he loves for beauty; on the spring, if he loves for youth; and on the mermaid, if he loves for riches. In the final stanza, she 19 20

Wollenberg, “Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit,’” 134. Baker, “Multiply-Interrupted Structure,” 219–20.

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tells him that if he seeks love, he should love her, and she will love him in return. (I follow Rufus Hallmark and Melinda Boyd in hearing the poetic speaker as a woman.)21 The altered and ambiguous cadences in the song are signs of her uncertainty – and not just that but also her efforts to seem certain even though she does not feel that way. “Love the spring, which is young each year!” (Liebe den Frühling, / Der jung ist jedes Jahr!), she commands her beloved, with all the outward indications of confidence (a leap to a high E♭, a crescendo, an arrival on the tonic), but with no less inward doubt.

Expressive Accompaniments The first of Schumann’s songs that appeared in the joint opus she completed with her husband – “Er ist gekommen,” op. 12, no. 2 (1841) – is a workout for the pianist (Example 2.9 shows the piano introduction). The piano texture features rapid sixteenth notes – played at a Sehr schnell tempo – but those sixteenths are just one piece of the puzzle. Above them, the pianist plays a dotted figure, a fragment of melody that must be heard above the din – the musical equivalent, perhaps, of a flash of lightning in the middle of a raging storm, or a sudden palpitation of the poetic persona’s anxious heart. And beneath them, the pianist must bring out two and at times three additional voices in a chorale-like texture that undergirds the furious righthand activity. It should hardly come as a surprise that Schumann would write such an elaborate and demanding accompaniment. She was a worldrenowned pianist, after all, and, as I noted in the Introduction, in many ways she saw herself more as a performer than as a composer, as did the public. No wonder, then, that she would know how to compose piano parts that brimmed with virtuosity.22 21

22

Rufus Hallmark, “The Rückert Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann,” 19th-Century Music 14/ 1 (1990): 21; Melinda Boyd, “Gendered Voices: The ‘Liebesfrühling’ Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann,” 19th-Century Music 23/2 (1999): 151–52. This brimming virtuosity did not always please the critics. The accompaniment of “Er ist gekommen” was simply too much for a reviewer in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, who wrote in an 1842 review of the Liebesfrühling Lieder that the accompaniment of “Er ist gekommen” was “bombastic and difficult,” and that it dwelled “more on the painting of a storm than on the portrayal of the maiden’s feelings” (“Zwölf Gesänge aus Rückerts Liebesfrühling,” 61). Quoted and translated in Reich, Clara Schumann, 305. Rufus Hallmark defends the pictorialism of her accompaniment, arguing that it has as much to do with depicting the scene as with conveying the speaker’s emotions: “On closer inspection, we realize, of course, that the storm is not merely an atmospheric circumstance of the poem, but a metaphor of the young woman’s agitated emotions. It is the essence of the poem, and Clara has hit upon an apt conception. And as

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Expressive Accompaniments Example 2.9 “Er ist gekommen,” piano introduction

What is surprising, however, is that more of her piano accompaniments are not like this. “Er ist gekommen” is hardly a one-off. (“An einem lichten Morgen,” discussed earlier, also has a challenging accompaniment, as does a song such as “Lorelei,” which I discuss later in the chapter.) Yet many more of her accompaniments are surprisingly dialed-down, reserved, unvirtuosic, devoid of outward, immediately noticeable complexity. Not surprisingly, though, they are nuanced and powerfully expressive, featuring that unmistakable blend of simplicity and sophistication that I spoke of in Chapter 1, and that will emerge as a running thread throughout this book. Schumann crafts each piano accompaniment in such a way that the smallest details speak volumes, so that what might seem like a pedestrian pianistic pattern in the hands of a less skillful composer is transformed into something that exceeds the sum of its parts.23 And she does so with

23

the ‘maiden’ warms to the ‘Spring’s blessing,’ the tempestuous F minor subsides into a calmer A♭ major” (“The Rückert Lieder,” 19). Alexander Stefaniak makes a similar point in his book about Schumann’s performance strategies. Many of her Lieder strike an “understated tone,” conveying the nuances of the poetry “with subtle transformations of piano textures” – transformations that, he notes, would have appealed to those who heard her perform these pieces in concert and those who played and sang these understated pieces at home (Becoming Clara Schumann, 158–59).

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specific, identifiable strategies – recurring techniques that make everyday accompaniments seem extraordinary.

Repeated Block Chords (“Ich stand in dunklen Träumen”) The opening of Schumann’s Heine setting “Ich stand in dunklen Träumen,” op. 13, no. 1 (1840), features one of her favorite accompanimental textures: repeated block chords. Flip through her songs and you will see this texture again and again (“Liebeszauber,” “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” “Die stille Lotosblume,” and “Der Abendstern” are just a few examples among many). There is nothing particularly novel about writing block-chord accompaniments; German Lieder are full of such textures. It is what Schumann does with this ordinary texture that shows her creativity and originality. The subtleties of this piano accompaniment and its relationship to the vocal melody are too numerous to cover in detail here, but even a glance at the first nine measures of the song can show how she gets the most out of minimal materials (see Example 2.10). Stefaniak has noted, for example, how a right-hand melody emerges over the course of mm. 1–3.24 In their book Poetry into Song, Deborah Stein and Ronald Spillman identify three basic accompanimental textures: “melody and accompaniment,” where the right hand of the piano has a dominant melody; “homophony,” where the accompaniment provides little more than a harmonic foundation for the vocal melody; and “contrapuntal,” where the piano accompaniment has several interlocking lines.25 This piano introduction begins with one texture – homophony – and shifts to another – melody and accompaniment. But it does so gradually, almost imperceptibly. One its own, m. 1 looks like nothing extraordinary – a series of block chords over a tonic pedal. It is only in retrospect, after we hear the singing melody in mm. 2–3, that we realize that m. 1 was not so commonplace after all – that a melody was beginning to sing, gradually finding its voice, at the end of the opening measure, as the repeated Gs began to climb upward to A♭ and then A♮. This melody, emerging tentatively from the opening block chords and then reaching upward to E♭ in m. 3, finally pours out in mm. 4–5. The techniques here are simple, but the effect is anything

24 25

Ibid., 159. Deborah Stein and Roland Spillman, Poetry into Song: Performance and Analysis of Lieder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 62–63.

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Expressive Accompaniments Example 2.10 “Ich stand in dunklen Träumen,” mm. 1–9

but. The piano introduction enacts the very thing the song describes: the gradual springing-to-life of the beloved’s portrait. All of this prepares the way for the entry of the vocal melody, which of course now really sings the tune that emerged over the course of the first few measures. And notice one other simple but striking detail: the falling sixth from E♭ in mm. 8–9, which (as Stefaniak also points out) reaches above the vocal melody, repeating the same melody that we heard in mm. 2–3. This, too, has enormous significance. Words are later attached to this melodic gesture at the end of the song (mm. 28–29): “Ah, I can’t believe that I have lost you!” (Ach, ich kann’s nicht glauben, dass ich dich verloren hab!). The Stimmungsbrechung of Heine’s poem – the “break in the mood,” or turn of the knife – does not perhaps cut quite as deeply in Schumann’s songs as in, say, Schubert’s setting of the same text.26 Indeed, David Lewin, in his analysis of the song, argues that Schumann, unlike Schubert, “enacts a joyous reading” of the text – a reading that he feels has biographical 26

The first version of the song, which she gave to Robert on Christmas of 1840, cuts a little deeper than the revised version published in 1844, since the vocal melody on the last word of the poem (“hab”) crashes onto a raised tonic pitch, supported by a jarring diminished-seventh chord.

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resonances, since she wrote the song after her marriage to Robert; in her setting, Lewin claims, Clara remembers the period of forced separation before their wedding from a state of present joy.27 Personally, I hear a true realization of loss in Schumann’s setting, if not the shattering realization of Schubert’s – in the chromaticism that precedes this line (the vii°4/2/vi that resolves improperly in m. 27) and in the leap to E♭ on “Ach,” preceded by a crescendo.28 But, to me, what is even more important than the particular expressive quality of this declaration is that Schumann hints at the declaration from the very beginning, setting the falling-sixth motive as a kind of song without words (or a song without words yet) in the piano introduction. The poetic speaker, her music implies, knows from the beginning what is to come – and the piano accompaniment, seeming to express the speaker’s inner thoughts, knows it as well.

Vocal Echoes (“Die Lorelei”) The next accompanimental strategy has to do not so much with how Schumann structures her piano parts as with how she interweaves piano and voice. She routinely has the pianist state a melody, which is then repeated by the singer. These kinds of voice/piano echoes are of course commonplace in nineteenth-century Lieder. One thinks of the “delayed doublings” that Yonatan Malin has discussed in Robert Schumann’s songs, where the piano plays the same tune as the vocal melody offset by a very short duration,29 or of the many moments in Schubert’s songs where the piano repeats the final couple measures of a phrase, echoing the voice over a longer span (the two-bar piano echoes in “Ständchen,” from Schwanengesang, come readily to mind). The first of these techniques – slightly offset doublings – is rare to non-existent in Clara Schumann’s songs.30 And the second – piano echoes of vocal melodies – happens

27 28

29

30

Lewin, “Clara Schumann’s Setting of ‘Ich stand,’” 154. This is a song, like “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” in which non-cadential closure replaces cadential closure at the end of a section and stanza – the stanza about the portrait’s tears (stanza 2) and about the speaker’s tears (stanza 3) are fused, thus joining the speaker and the woman. Poundie Burstein makes a similar point in his analysis of the song: “in Schumann’s song the second stanza moves into the third without a pause. . . . Schumann’s song forges past the stanza division. . . . As a result, she breaks down the barriers that divide the woman of the portrait from the narrator” (“Their Paths, Her Ways,” 17–18). Yonatan Malin, “Schumann: Doubling and Reverberation,” chap. 5 of Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 123–44. One example is “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” op. 23, no. 3, where the vocal melody moves in alternating quarters and eighths (projecting 3/8) and the piano melody uses the same pitches

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Expressive Accompaniments

only occasionally.31 Far more common is for her to have the voice echo the piano, thus giving even more agency to the piano, treating it more as an actor than as a reactor. Here again the technique may be straightforward in the abstract, but in the context of individual songs it takes on added meaning. Perhaps the most powerful example of this technique in her song output can be found in her incomparable setting of Heine’s “Die Lorelei” (1843). The song, like “Ich stand in dunklen Träumen,” features pulsating chords but in the context of a much more demanding piano accompaniment, hurtling along at a fast tempo with rapid repeated notes in both hands. At two crucial moments, however, the pulsations recede, giving way to a melody sounded in parallel thirds and doubled in both hands (mm. 5–8 and 37–40; the score can be found at the International Music Score Library Project [imslp.org]). In each case, the piano’s melody precedes an identical repetition of the melody in the voice. The effect – to make an anachronistic analogy – is rather like having someone suddenly turn on the stereo in a nearby room. It jars you out of your present state; it suddenly consumes all of your attention. That such a jarring moment would happen only five measures into Schumann’s song makes it all the more shocking. (Once more, she uses a simple technique in a radical way – like swapping a non-cadential progression for a cadential one but doing so at the end of a stanza.) The piano’s melody intrudes suddenly upon the scene – a scene that, in Janina Klassen’s words, sounds not so much “alluring” (verfüherisch) in Schumann’s setting as “threatening” (bedrohend).32 The violent intrusion of the piano’s melody is the musical representation of the tale that the poetic speaker cannot get out of her head. We know this because the words that go with the repetition of the melody tell us so: “Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten, / Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn” (There is a tale from olden times I cannot get out of my mind). Later, when the melody returns, it represents not a story but a song; the melody, we learn, is the very melody that the Lorelei sings, the siren song that lures the boatman to his death. The text immediately before the piano’s melodic intrusion is “Sie kämmt es

31

32

but moves in dotted eighths (projecting 6/16); as a result, the second half of each measure is misaligned slightly, with the piano preceding the voice. Two examples include mm. 17–18 of “Liebeszauber,” op. 13, no. 3, where in mm. 17–18 the piano provides a two-bar echo of the vocal melody from the immediately preceding half cadence in C minor, and “Volkslied,” where in mm. 7–8 the piano provides a varied repetition of the vocal melody from mm. 6–7. Klassen, Clara Schumann, 229.

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mit goldenem Kamme und singt ein Lied dabei” (She combs her hair with a golden comb and sings a song the while) and then, right afterward, “Das hat eine wundersame, gewalt’ge Melodei” (It has a wondrous, forceful melody). It makes perfect sense, then, that the piano would precede the voice, rather than the reverse, since it is this very melody that drives the boatman into the rocks, and the poetic speaker into a state of despair.

Chromatic Postludes (“Der Mond kommt still gegangen” and “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort”) Any mention of postludes in art song of course brings to mind the “other” Schumann – and so here is a place where comparison between husband and wife is certainly warranted. Robert Schumann is justifiably famous for treating the piano accompaniment not as a supporting player but an equal partner with the voice, and one of the most striking ways he does this is to give space for the piano to express itself in long postludes – and often to express things that go unexpressed in the “body” of the song. (One thinks naturally of “Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen,” from Dichterliebe, where the postlude expresses the “overwhelming grief” [übergrosses Weh’] that the vocal melody cannot.) Clara Schumann’s piano postludes are never quite this lengthy, and as such, they are not quite as “complex” and groundbreaking. But they, too, often add new layers of meaning – and, notably, new levels of chromaticism – and cast a light on everything we have heard thus far. Consider, as representative examples, two songs composed ten years apart but with remarkably similar expressive qualities and chromatically tinged postludes (not to mention identical keys): “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” op. 13, no. 4 (1843), and “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” op. 23, no. 3 (1853). (The two postludes appear in Examples 2.11 and 2.12; ^ I analyze the entire songs in Chapter 4.) Each postlude spotlights B♭♭ (♭ 6 in the context of the D♭-major tonic), and in each case this is a pitch that has not appeared in the song thus far. The postlude to “Geheimes Flüstern” is obviously the more chromatic of the two, yet its additional chromatic pitches – G♮, D♮, and C♭ – have been a part of the song’s sound world since the piano introduction: only B♭♭ is new. It is this borrowed tone that in part gives the postludes a darker hue – altogether fitting considering these two nocturnal poems. But it does far more than that; it at once echoes and transforms a chromatic pitch that appeared prominently at climactic points of each song: B♭♭’s enharmonic equivalent, A♮. At the high point of “Der Mond,” the poetic speaker, alone on a moonlit night, looks down into

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Expressive Accompaniments Example 2.11 “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” postlude

Example 2.12 “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” postlude

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the valley and sees the gleaming windows of her beloved’s house; the key word, “Liebchens,” is elongated and harmonized with a V7/vi, a forte F dominant seventh; as Schumann sets the line, it is as if the speaker suddenly sees her beloved in the window and experiences a pang of longing. The feeling lingers into the piano postlude, with its poignant B♭♭s: she gazes again into the still night, but it no longer provides the beauty and comfort it did at the start of the poem. The B♭♭s in the postlude of “Geheimes Flüstern” have a comparable effect. The night scene is just as calm, the “secret whisperings” (Geheimes Flüstern) and “hidden, murmuring springs” (verborg’nes Quellenrauschen) as mysteriously beautiful as the moon’s glow and gentle breezes of the earlier poem. But the final stanza of Rollett’s poem likewise suggests that there is disturbance within: the last lines of the poem (set to the same music as the last lines of the previous two stanzas) read, “And all that deeply presses upon my heart, / Elated by the spirit of love, / I want to reveal in song!” (Und was mir tief zum Herzen dringt, / Will ich, vom Geist der Lieb’ beschwingt, / In Liedern offenbaren!). The words “Herzen dringt” (literally, “press the heart”) are stretched, as was the word “Liebchens” in “Der Mond,” and the word “dringt” is likewise harmonized with an emphatic F-major chord (mm. 21–24). (Here F major is a new tonal center; in the previous song it was a secondary dominant. But the emphasis on III♯ is similar.)33 As with “Der Mond,” the B♭s in the postlude to this song signals that the night-time scene is now tinged with pain – that the poetic speaker’s inner world is not quite in tune with the serenity of the outer world. That these two songs were written almost a decade apart and use such a similar strategy shows how consistent Schumann’s songwriting style is, and how persistently all three hallmarks appear throughout her song oeuvre. But it is not just the presence of these hallmarks that matters; it is the ingenious ways that they are used in individual songs, in different musical contexts, and in response to a variety of poetic features. And that is where we turn next. 33

There are hardly the only two pieces by Schumann that feature a prominent III♯ chord. As Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers has noted, this is one of her favorite chromatic tonal maneuvers, “a signature chromatic sonority across her output that she tends to use at key dramatic or formal junctures” (“Beyond Vierhebigkeit,” 70). For some other examples, see the moves to III♯ in mm. 10 and 26 of “Liebst du um Schönheit,” op. 12, no. 4; m. 16 of “Liebeszauber,” op. 13, no. 3; the first movement of her Piano Trio, op. 17, where, as Pedneault-Deslauriers points out, III♯ “acts as a tonal detour within the subordinate theme” (70, note 19); and mm. 37ff. of the first of her Drei Romanzen, op. 22 (this latter example even uses the same exact harmonic relationship as “Der Mond” and “Geheimes Flüstern”: D♭ major and F major). On the role of III♯ in Robert Schumann’s music, see Martin, “Schumann’s Fragment.”

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part ii

Analysis

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3

Songs without Opus Numbers

I began Chapter 1 with the idea, drawn from Jürgen Thym, that surveying Clara Schumann’s songs is like walking through an art gallery – a large enough gallery that one experiences a stunning variety of techniques, colors, patterns, and subject matter, but not so large that one loses sight of recurring trends and ideas. If Chapter 2 offered a quick pass through that gallery, this chapter dwells in one room, and Chapter 4 does the same. The difference between this room and the rooms I explore in the next chapter is that it spans her entire output, covering the twelve songs that never appeared in published opuses. Five of the twelve were in fact published in her lifetime, just not with opus numbers.1 The other seven were not published until almost a hundred years after her death, first appearing in print in 1992, in the second volume of her Sämtliche Lieder, edited by Joachim Draheim and Brigitte Höft.2 Among these twelve songs are four that she composed in the early 1830s, when she was only a teenager; seven songs from the 1840s, written during her most productive compositional period; and also the last song she ever wrote (“Das Veilchen”), dated July 7, 1853. Because these songs extend across her entire output, studying them in succession can give us a feeling for the threads that bind together her diverse songs and the trajectory of her style as it developed over her all-tooshort compositional career. Above all, a survey of these songs without opus numbers reveals that two of the three hallmarks of Schumann’s Lied aesthetic are present from her earliest songs to her last songs, and one hallmark emerges only fully in the 1840s and beyond. The two hallmarks that bind together all of these songs are her fascination with expansive themes and expressive accompaniments. Again and again, in early songs and late, in short songs and long, one finds 1

2

“Der Wanderer” and “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” both dating from 1831, were published in 1875 under the name of Clara Schumann’s father but are now generally believed to be hers. “Walzer” was published in 1834 as a supplement to Johann Peter Lyser’s novella “Lieder eines wandernden Malers.” “Am Strande” likewise appeared in a musical supplement, in this case to the July 1841 issue of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. And in May 1848, she published “Mein Stern,” in a version with German and English text, in order to raise funds for a German hospital in London. Schumann, Sämtliche Lieder, vol. 2.

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broad themes that stretch across the normative four-bar musical “chunks” so common in music from this time period, and piano accompaniments whose details are finely calibrated to the images, ideas, and emotions of the text. Beginning in the 1840s, however, Schumann shows an even greater interest in the third hallmark of her songwriting style: she begins to play with phrase endings, smoothing over and sometimes altogether erasing expected cadences. Indeed, one senses a growing interest in deliberate “misreading” of poetic texts – in, on the one hand, fusing together adjacent stanzas by allowing phrases to flow across stanzaic divisions and, on the other hand, rending apart stanzas by placing cadences where we do not expect them. Fused and separated stanzas become, in her mature songs, a kind of hallmark of their own, a byproduct of her interest in the mechanics of musical and poetic closure – and, in fact, a technique that defines her songs without opus numbers far more than her songs with opus numbers.

Two Songs of Disputed Authorship: “Der Wanderer” and “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle” These two songs, both settings of poems by Justinus Kerner, have an ambiguous origin. They were published in 1875 under the name of Schumann’s father, Friedrich Wieck, but two pieces of documentary evidence suggest that they were written decades earlier by a young Clara, perhaps with her father’s assistance. First, Clara gave a concert on December 13, 1831 (when she was twelve), whose program lists “two songs by Just. Kerner: ‘Alte Heimat’ and ‘Der Wanderer,’ composed by Clara.” Second, on July 8, 1832, she gave the first eleven measures of “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle” as a gift to her composition teacher Heinrich Dorn as an album leaf, inscribing “Ihre dankbare Schülerin/Clara Wieck” (Your thankful student/Clara Wieck). Based on this evidence, Joachim Draheim and Brigitte Höft conclude that the songs were composed by Schumann, perhaps with help from her father, and they include them in an appendix to the second volume of her collected songs.3 The music provides additional evidence that these songs are the product of Clara Schumann’s hand. They may lack the expressive richness and

3

Ibid., 5.

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Two Songs of Disputed Authorship

sophistication of her songs from the 1840s and 1850s, but they nevertheless bear telltale signs of her compositional language that will appear in more fully developed form later on.

“Der Wanderer”: Irregular Phrases, Non-cadential Closure, and the Subtleties of Punctuation The first of those signs, seen in both of these songs, is the appearance of Schumann’s favorite thematic design: the compound antecedent. “Der Wanderer” (ca. 1832) contains a pair of thirteen-measure hybrid themes, each one built of an irregular six-measure compound antecedent and an even more irregular seven-measure continuation, and these irregular phrase structures respond directly to an irregular poetic structure, and even to the finer details of poetic punctuation. The poem, by the German poet and physician Justinus Kerner, is about a wanderer who roams foreign streets, far from home and seeking a place to rest. It contains two six-line stanzas, each divided in half by a punctuation mark that creates a moment of rest – the period at the end of line 3 (“Sie bleiben fremd doch mir”) and the semi-colon at the end of line 9 (“Die Burgen stumm und tot”). 1 2 3 4 5 6

Die Straßen, die ich gehe, So oft ich um mich sehe, Sie bleiben fremd doch mir. Herberg’, wo ich möcht weilen, Ich kann sie nicht ereilen, Weit, weit ist sie von hier.

The streets that I wander – So often I look around me – They remain strange to me. The inn, where I would like to stay, I cannot reach it, Far, far is it from here.

7 8 9 10 11 12

So fremd mir anzuschauen Sind diese Städt’ und Auen, Die Burgen stumm und tot; Doch fern Gebirge ragen, Die meine Heimat tragen, Ein ewig Morgenrot.

So alien they seem to me, These cities and plains, The castles silent and dead; Yet far away mountains loom Where my homeland lies, An eternal dawn.

Schumann shapes each strophe so that the phrases align with these threeline groupings. She subsumes the first three lines of the poem under a sixmeasure compound antecedent, with each line equally distributed into two-measure units. (Example 3.1 shows the first strophe of the song.) The second half of the stanza is then expressed in a longer seven-measure continuation, so that the entire strophe becomes a thirteen-measure

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.1 “Der Wanderer,” setting of stanza 1

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Two Songs of Disputed Authorship

compound hybrid theme.4 The one-bar expansion happens at the start of the continuation; the first words of line 4, “Herberg’, wo ich möcht” could well have been contained within a single measure – as was the case with the first words of line 1, “Die Straßen, die ich” – but Schumann places a rest before and after “Herberg’,” so that the first words of this line fill two measures. Already this shows her attentiveness to the subtleties of the text. The separation of “Herberg’” from what surrounds it, as well as the placement of this word halfway through the measure rather than at the beginning, underlines the word, emphasizing that this is what the wanderer seeks; this is the thing he dwells on: the place where he can finally rest his head. It also creates a brief moment of reflection at the end of the previous line, “Sie bleiben fremd doch mir” (They remain strange to me), as the wanderer ponders the unfamiliar surroundings. Yet it is in Schumann’s setting of the second stanza (shown in Example 3.2) that her sensitivity to the text is most evident. She sets this stanza to essentially the same musical material, but there are some notable differences. Perhaps most striking are the leap to a dramatic high A♮ on “Morgenrot” in m. 28; the intensified repetition of the last two lines of the poem, which extends the continuation phrase so that it alone is as long as the first strophe’s hybrid theme (thirteen measures); and the melisma leading to the tonic pitch in m. 34. What really stands out to me, however, is that this strophe contains a hint of a compositional strategy that Schumann will use even more expressively a decade later: she ends this compound antecedent differently from the previous one, avoiding the half cadence that we heard earlier – and, in fact, avoiding a cadence altogether. The augmented sixth chord in m. 20 leads not to a V chord (as it did in m. 8) but instead to a iv chord (preceded by a passing 6/4). This is a clear example of one of the three strategies for 4

Caplin writes (in a footnote in Classical Form), “Compound hybrid themes appear seldom in the literature and thus require no special treatment here. See Beethoven, Piano Sonata in G, Op. 79, i, 1–12, for a compound sentential hybrid (8-m. compound basic idea + 4-m. continuation)” (Classical Form, 267, n. 13). The form, however, has been discussed elsewhere. For example, Gabriel Navia and Gabriel Ferraro discuss two different types of compound hybrid in Latin American popular music (“compound presentation+compound consequent” and “compound antecedent+eight-measure continuation”) (“Latin American Popular Music in the Study of Musical Form,” in The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, ed. Leigh VanHandel [New York: Routledge, 2020], 298–300). And Margaret Elizabeth Fox identifies a compound presentation+compound consequent in the refrain from the finale of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto, Op. 7 (“Formal Relationships in Clara Wieck’s Piano Concerto Op. 7,” unpublished MA thesis, University of Ottawa, 2015, 31–32). See also Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Beyond Vierhebigkeit,” where she describes the form of “Beim Abschied” as a “compound hybrid 3,” that is, a compound antecedent followed by a large continuation (71). I turn to this piece, and her analysis of it, in the next chapter.

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.2 “Der Wanderer,” setting of stanza 2

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Two Songs of Disputed Authorship

undermining cadential closure that I explored in the previous chapter: substituting non-cadential closure for cadential closure. The musical effect of the undermined cadence is similar to what we heard in “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge”: the tempo may slow, but the music does not come to rest. In “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” what was an IAC (in an earlier version of the song) becomes a V6/5, which resolves smoothly to I as the phrase flows onward; in “Der Wanderer,” what was a half cadence (in an earlier part of the song) becomes an expansion of pre-dominant harmony (Gr+6–i6/4–iv). The relationship between the undermined cadence and the text, however, is different in this song. Here is the second stanza of Kerner’s poem. The undermined cadence falls at the end of the third line. So fremd mir anzuschauen Sind diese Städt’ und Auen, Die Burgen stumm und tot; Doch fern Gebirge ragen, Die meine Heimat tragen, Ein ewig Morgenrot.

So alien they seem to me, These cities and plains, The castles silent and dead; (undermined cadence) Yet far away mountains loom Where my homeland lies, An eternal dawn.

Recall from Chapter 2 that in “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” Schumann overrode linguistic punctuation; by avoiding a cadence, she effectively erased the period at the end of the stanza (and she actually erased it in the published version of the song). In “Der Wanderer,” on the other hand, she obeys linguistic punctuation, scrupulously so; she treats the period at the end of stanza 1’s opening tercet (“Sie bleiben fremd doch mir.”) as a half cadence, and she treats the semi-colon at the end of stanza 2’s opening tercet (“Die Burgen stumm und tot;”) as a non-cadence. Weaker linguistic closure begets weaker musical closure. Graham Johnson has complained that in this song “one can sense how the piece of music has developed almost independently of the text.”5 This may be a valid point if we are talking about the meaning of the text; Johnson is right that the music moves a little “too relentlessly” considering the “introspection” of this poem about a wanderer, in need of shelter, who feels lost and out of place in a strange town and longs for home.6 Yet if we consider the structure of the text – especially the overall form of the stanzas and the subtleties of the 5

6

Graham Johnson, liner notes to Christopher Maltman (baritone), Jonathan Lemalu (baritone), Mark Padmore (tenor), and Graham Johnson (piano), The Songs of Robert Schumann, vol. 8, Hyperion CDJ33108, 2003, compact disc. Ibid.

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.3 “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” mm. 1–10

punctuation within them – this song by a young teenager shows a preternatural awareness of the interdependence of music and poetry in song.

“Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle”: Turning Wheels and Open Endings If the compound antecedent of “Der Wanderer” was peculiar because of its length, the compound antecedent at the beginning of “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle” (ca. 1832) is peculiar because of its harmonic underpinning. The eight-bar phrase (and indeed the entire song) begins on a dominant, and this harmony is essentially prolonged throughout it. (Example 3.3 shows the opening ten bars of the song.) As a result, the phrase seems not so much to move forward as to go in a circle – which is only fitting, seeing as the poem (also by Justinus Kerner) is about a sawmill and its turning wheels.7 The following is the opening stanza, which corresponds with the passage just described.

7

But not just a sawmill: Graham Johnson suggests that it is also “a sign of the relentless progress of the Industrial Revolution which is impervious to the beauties and truths of nature” (Ibid.).

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Two Songs of Disputed Authorship Example 3.4 “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” ending

Dort unten in der Mühle Saß ich in guter Ruh Und sah dem Räderspiele Und sah dem Wasser zu.

Down there at the mill I sat in peace And saw the play of the wheels And looked at the water.

This broad antecedent is followed by a varied repetition, another eightbar phrase that leads to another half cadence. This is fairly normative, so far as it goes, especially considering that “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle” is in modified strophic form. (Example 3.3 represents the first strophe of six.) As I will show in Chapter 4, it is common for Schumann to end each strophe of a modified strophic form on something other than the tonic – until the final strophe, which closes with a PAC. In other words, in “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle” it makes perfect sense that the second strophe would end without an authentic cadence, and that the third, fourth, and fifth would too. Not so with the final strophe, though: here, the tonal norms of early nineteenth-century music and the tonal norms of Schumann’s music dictate that the piece should end with tonic harmony even if its earlier sections did not. But she hedges; she undermines an expected cadence, even if that cadence ultimately arrives at the very end of the song. Like each of the previous five strophes, the last strophe ends with ^ the vocal melody on 5 and the piano on a dominant-seventh chord – until a mere two-bar piano postlude tacks on a PAC almost as an afterthought (Example 3.4). Structurally, the PAC may get the job done, but rhetorically, it is woefully insufficient to counterbalance the fifty-three measures of dominant harmony that precede it.8

8

On the difference between cadential syntax and rhetoric, see Caplin, “The Classical Cadence,” 106–12.

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In a recent conference paper, Michael Baker discusses this song as well as “Die stille Lotosblume,” showing how each represents a different type of “strategic incompletion”: “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle” uses an expanded auxiliary cadence to delay the arrival of the tonic harmony until the very end, and “Die stille Lotosblume” employs what Baker calls a “permanent interruption,” stating the tonic at the beginning but ending on a dominant. Ultimately, Baker links these two strategies to Leonard Meyer’s two types of musical incompletion, proposed in his classic 1956 book Emotion and Meaning in Music.9 “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” according to Baker, exemplifies Meyer’s first type of incompleteness, where (in Meyer’s words) “something was left out or skipped over”; “Die stille Lotosblume” is an example of Meyer’s second type, where the music, “though complete so far as it goes, simply is not felt to have reached a satisfactory conclusion.”10 I see Baker’s point that “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle” omits an initial tonic, and if I were to do a Schenkerian sketch of it, I would do it just as Baker does, showing a broad motion from V to I, supporting a back^ ^ ground structural melody that moves from 2 to 1 – from a Schenkerian perspective, this is an archetypal example of an “incomplete transference” (unvollständig Übertragen) of the fundamental structure.11 But in my experience, Schenkerian perspectives and experiential perspectives do not always coincide. What looks complete, coherent, logical, or resolved in a sketch may sound quite the opposite in the act of listening or performing. (This need not be seen as a flaw of the system; in many ways I see it as a feature, where an apparent tension between what we see in a sketch and what we hear in a recording or a performance allows us to understand how the particular elaboration of a contrapuntal structure – even one that obscures aspects of that structure – contributes to its expressive meaning.) When I listen to this song, I hear something more like Meyer’s second type of incompleteness – a song that is “complete so far as it goes” but does not feel as though it reaches “a satisfactory conclusion.” I hear a final cadence that is paradoxically both achieved and undermined, just the kind of “open ending” that David Ferris has described in Robert Schumann’s songs, in which “there is closure at the end of the song, but its conclusiveness is

9

10 11

Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1956). Ibid., 130. Henrich Schenker, Free Composition (Der freie Satz), vol. 1, trans. and ed. Ernst Oster (New York: Longman, 1979), 88–89.

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Two Other Early Songs: “Der Abendstern” and “Walzer”

compromised in some way.”12 Notice, for instance, that the piano’s righthand melody in the penultimate measure duplicates the melody that happens halfway through the first four strophes (mm. 6, 15, 24, and 33). What was a gesture that led onward to a new phrase is repurposed as a gesture that leads to the final chord of the song, and thus the final V7–i progression retains something of the continuing quality that this progression has accrued over the previous fifty measures. This is a simple but powerful maneuver, all the more remarkable for being used by a young girl just developing her craft: the song (and the saw mill that it describes) may stop, but Schumann’s music suggests that the wanderer’s memory of its violent turning continues on.

Two Other Early Songs: “Der Abendstern” and “Walzer” Unlike “Der Wanderer” and “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” “Der Abendstern” and “Walzer” can be unmistakably attributed to Schumann. “Walzer” was published under her name in 1834; “Der Abendstern” was not published in her lifetime, but it exists in an autograph in her hand.13 Schumann decided not to include these two songs in the Liederbuch that she began to copy out in 1843, and Nancy Reich has suggested that this may be because she did not think they were on par with her other songs – of “Der Abendstern” Reich writes that “neither Clara nor Robert took it very seriously or copied it into the Liederbuch.”14 As much as Clara Schumann may have doubted the quality of these songs, however, we have no reason to doubt their authorship. Indeed, we also need not question their quality as much as Schumann seems to have done; they are unmistakably early works, but they merit careful analysis, not just for their historical interest, as some of the first efforts of a well-known composer – but also for their musical interest, as works of surprising sensitivity and beauty. Outwardly, the two songs could hardly seem more different. “Der Abendstern” is thirteen measures long; “Walzer” is 168. “Der Abendstern” is reserved and inward; “Walzer” is ebullient and showy. “Der Abendstern” could be played by the most amateur of pianists; “Walzer” could only be managed by a pianist with great skill. Still, the songs are united by the two hallmarks that appear most frequently in Schumann’s songs without opus numbers: expansive themes and expressive accompaniments. 12

13 14

David Ferris, Schumann’s Eichendorff Liederkreis and the Genre of the Romantic Cycle (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 106. The autograph manuscript is housed in the Robert-Schumann-Haus Zwickau, Sign. 11–A1. Reich, Clara Schumann, 239.

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“Der Abendstern”: Thematic Stasis, Block Chords, and the Power of Simplicity It may seem strange to speak of expansive themes in a piece that contains three unvaried strophes, each only thirteen measures long. (The score to the song, composed around 1834, appears in Example 3.5.) But the song feels longer than it really is. In part, this has to do with its piano accompaniment, which seems initially to stand still rather than move forward, with no fewer than nine successive statements of the same F-major triad. Even when the harmonies begin to change, the bass F pedal continues pulsing gently for more than two and a half beats, and the soprano F pedal continues all the way until the end of m. 6. Here is yet another example of a repeated block chord accompaniment (one of the three accompanimental strategies I explored in Chapter 2) that does more than merely provide a backdrop to the vocal melody. It also serves an expressive function: the slowly repeating Fs at once create a sense of spaciousness, even timelessness, which suits this poem (by an anonymous author) about a tranquil, starlit night that the speaker hopes will last forever. In their gentle insistence, the repeated Fs also bring to mind the insistence of the gaze of the speaker, who looks longingly at the distant star. Bist du denn wirklich so fern, Lieblicher, glänzender Stern? Sehne mich stündlich von hier, Wandelnder, heimlich zu dir.

Are you really then so far away, Lovely shining star? Each hour I long to set out, Wanderer, secretly towards you.

Blickest so hell durch die Nacht, Still, bis die Sorge erwacht, Schimmerst am Morgen noch spät, Matt, wenn die Sonne ersteht.

You gaze so brightly through the night, Quietly, till troubles awake, You shimmer late into the morning, Then dimly when the sun rises.

Winket dein freundliches Licht Frieden und Ruhe mir nicht? Schau ich dich, blinkenden Stern, Möcht’ ich ja sterben so gern.

Will your friendly light shine Peace and rest upon me? When I look at you, shimmering star, I long to die.

Nancy Reich describes this song as “less sophisticated” than Schumann’s other songs;15 while it certainly is restrained and economical, and the furthest thing from experimental or pathbreaking, it betrays an astonishing

15

Nancy B. Reich, liner notes to Susan Gritton (soprano), Stephan Loges (baritone), and Eugene Asti (piano), The Songs of Clara Schumann, Helios CDA67249, 2002, compact disc.

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Two Other Early Songs: “Der Abendstern” and “Walzer” Example 3.5 “Der Abendstern”

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level of musical and poetic sensitivity. To return to one of the themes of this book, first broached in Chapter 1, it is not just music of overt complexity and difficulty that is deeply expressive and demanding of sustained scrutiny; simple music can also be subtle and affecting, and that adage is no truer than that of this song, which says a lot with very little. The particular structure of the theme in “Der Abendstern” also contributes to the song’s static quality. In an article on the sentence theme-type in Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin I used the term “static sentences” to describe sentences with exact repetitions of their basic ideas, arguing that in Schubert’s cycle these sorts of sentences “tend to suggest stasis, monotony, and an inability or reluctance to move on.”16 “Der Abendstern” is just such a “static sentence,” and not only because its basic idea is repeated exactly. Notice also that the basic ideas themselves are static, starting and ending on the same note (A). True, the continuation begins to move somewhat, thanks to a slightly faster harmonic rhythm and a leap to the highest note in the song, but its two-bar melodic units still hover around the recurring anchor note A. And although the postlude moves even more, with a falling-fifth sequence that plunges downward, the intensity is so short-lived that it cannot counterbalance the prevailing stillness in the “body” of the song. The sequence lasts only two measures, giving way to the same gently pulsating F-major chords from the beginning. This song, and the moment in time that it represents, seems as though it could repeat in an endless loop. If the speaker in “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle” cannot stop thinking about a scene of destruction, the speaker in “Der Abendstern” does not want to stop thinking about a scene of tranquility.

“Walzer”: Dancing and Flying, Listening and Speaking “Der Abendstern” may sound expansive because its single theme seems long, but “Walzer” (1834) sounds expansive because its many themes actually are long. Consider, for example, that its vocal melody opens with an expanded theme that stretches to about twenty-five measures. (Example 3.6 shows the opening theme.) I say “about” twenty-five measures not because I am rounding to the nearest multiple of five, but because, as we will see, it is unclear where the theme actually begins. One of the most remarkable features of this early song is that its hypermeter is ambiguous: at times it is difficult to determine which is the first measure of a theme, and as a result, the themes do not feel fully grounded, fully anchored to a larger 16

Rodgers, “Sentences with Words,” 68.

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Two Other Early Songs: “Der Abendstern” and “Walzer” Example 3.6 “Walzer,” opening theme

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Example 3.6 (cont.)

pattern of pulses. This ambiguity of phrase beginnings, combined with the sheer length of the themes, is what makes the song sound so light-footed and fluid. Think of it as a waltz in which one of the dance partners seems to take flight even before her feet have hit the floor. The ambiguity begins even before the singer enters. The numbers above the score in Example 3.6 show one way of interpreting the hypermeter across the first thirty-five measures of this 168-measure song. (My analysis focuses on the opening section, with brief references to the final section.) According to this hearing, the first hyperbeat of the introduction – that is, the strong downbeat that launches the theme – is m. 1. There may be no actual piano melody in this measure, but the force of the three eighth-note tonic triads is powerful enough to set the theme in motion; furthermore, the accents in mm. 3, 5, and 7 continue the strong–weak, 1–2 pattern established in m. 1. Borrowing terms from David Temperley, we could say that the song begins with “odd-strong” hypermeter, because it is the odd-numbered measures that get the most weight.17 (Another way of saying this is that if the song were

17

David Temperley, “Hypermetrical Transitions,” Music Theory Spectrum 30/2 (2008): 305–25.

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Two Other Early Songs: “Der Abendstern” and “Walzer”

notated in 6/8 rather than 3/8, it would start with a downbeat not a halfmeasure upbeat.) The odd-strong hypermeter continues through the first half of the hybrid theme that begins in m. 11. The theme is structured as a compound antecedent (mm. 11–20) that leads to a half cadence; after a brief transition (mm. 21–23), the antecedent is followed by a continuation (mm. 24–35) that leads to a PAC.18 The strong accent in the piano in m. 11, not to mention the first appearance of a low-register tonic triad in the song, marks the hypermetric downbeat that launches the compound antecedent. In this interpretation, it is the piano that starts the theme, not the first emphatic note of the vocal melody (“Horch!” [Hark!]). In Johann Peter Lyser’s poem of springtime love, the speaker of the poem hears the sweet and joyous sounds of nature and entreats his lover to surrender to “blissful delusion” (seligsten Täuschung), embrace him, and (as the title of the song suggests) dance. (The poetic persona is clearly gendered male.) Here is the opening stanza. Horch! Welch ein süßes harmonisches Klingen, Flüstern erhebt sich zum jubelnden Laut. Laß mich dich, reizendes Mädchen, umschlingen, Wie ein Geliebter die liebende Braut.

Hark! What a sweet, harmonious sound, Whisperings rise to jubilant tones. Let me embrace you, charming girl, Like a lover embraces his loving bride.

Hearing the piano in m. 11, not the voice in m. 10, as the “1,” as the strong pulse, means (at least initially) hearing nature as the driving force and the speaker as a participant in the drama, one who listens to the pulsating sounds of the natural world, and is swept along by their powerful force. But soon enough, the singer takes the lead – fittingly, just when the poetic speaker utters his wish, when he turns from listening to speaking: “Laß mich dich, reizendes Mädchen, umschlingen” (Let me embrace you, charming girl). After three measures of what Temperley would call a “hypermetrical transition,” where it is not clear whether we are hearing odd-strong or even-strong hypermeter (mm. 21–23), the hypermeter changes in m. 24 to even-strong and stays there until the PAC in m. 35. It is as if the singer comes in one measure too early – indeed, as if the poetic speaker, overcome with desire, cannot wait to issue his plea. Where earlier he listened, now he demands 18

Here is yet another example of a compound hybrid theme in Schumann’s song output (for another, see “Der Wanderer,” discussed earlier in this chapter).

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to be heard. Once more, even in a youthful song that seems light and unassuming – a song that has been described as “an occasional work conceived primarily for the piano”19 – the musical details are handled with such care. Notice, for example, that the hypermetrical disruption in m. 24 is reinforced by a phrase-structural disruption, as the half cadence at the end of the antecedent is transformed into a deceptive cadence, and the bass rises chromatically from E to F♯. The music refuses to take a breath; the dancer refuses to rest. To get a sense for this fluidity, as well as for the shift from pianist-as-driver to singer-as-driver, I encourage readers to listen to Example 3.6 and count along with the 1s and 2s. As I wrote up this analysis, I was drawn especially to the recording of the song by Stephan Loges, baritone, and Eugene Asti, piano. Loges sings “Horch!” in m. 10 in a hushed tone, and Asti gives full weight to the A-major triad on the downbeat of m. 11.20 I find the odd-strong–>even-strong interpretation satisfying, and this is how I initially heard the song, in part perhaps because the first recording I ever got to know was the one by Asti and Loges – proof, if we needed any more, that analysis and performance exist in a kind of feedback loop, with performance shaping analysis as much as the other way around. Indeed, it was listening to another recording of the song that made me realize what was potentially lacking in my initial interpretation. The piano’s sixteenthnote gesture in m. 2 does sound a little like the beginning of something, like nature’s “sweet, harmonious sound” (süßes, harmonisches Klingen) suddenly ringing out, and so does the singer’s “Horch!” in m. 10 – if we imagine him saying it not to himself but to his beloved, it begins to sound less like a note that should be sung in a hushed tone (like a catch of breath) and more like one that should be sung fully (like a proclamation). This is how soprano Dorothea Craxton performs it – at a forte dynamic, with a strongly aspirated “h” at the start of the word, like a true exclamation.21 Couple this with the way pianist Hedayet Djeddikar plays the first measures of the song – starting m. 1 at a slower tempo than what follows, only really getting going in m. 2 – and an even-strong hearing begins to sound much more convincing. According to this hearing, there is not one hypermetrical shift in the opening section; there are two shifts: the song begins with evenstrong hypermeter, transitions to odd-strong hypermeter by m. 15, and then transitions back to even-strong hypermeter by m. 24. (Example 3.7 19

20 21

See Schumann, Sämtliche Lieder, vol. 2, 5 (“Walzer ist ein eher vom Klavier her konzipiertes reizendes Gelegenheitswek, ein Salonstück vom unaufdringlicher Eleganz and Stilsicherheit”). Gritton, Loges, and Asti, The Songs of Clara Schumann. Dorothea Craxton (soprano) and Hedayet Djeddikar (piano), Clara Schumann: Complete Songs, Naxos 8570747, 2009, compact disc.

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Two Other Early Songs: “Der Abendstern” and “Walzer” Example 3.7 “Walzer,” opening theme, alternate hypermetrical interpretation

shows the melody of the opening theme with numbers corresponding to this interpretation.) Readers can likewise test out this hearing by counting along with Craxton and Djeddikar’s recording. The song ends as it began. Schumann repeats the opening stanza of the poem, and with it the material of the opening section. But the repetition is not exact, and one result of the changes Schumann makes is that the hypermetrical ambiguity disappears. Indeed, only the opening part of the song is hypermetrically ambiguous: in the final part and the intervening parts, there is little doubt where the strong hyperbeats are. In the case of the final section, Schumann seems to decide in favor of an odd-strong interpretation, where the strong A-major chord at the start of the theme is the “1,” the strong hyperbeat. I say this because in the final section the word “Horch,” which previously sounded a measure before this strong “1” and complicated matters, now sounds two times, and both times on measures that are congruent with an odd-strong hearing. (Example 3.8 shows the lead-in to the final section and the first ten bars of the section, with the 1s

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.8 “Walzer,” end of middle section leading into final section

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Three Songs From 1840–1841

and 2s marked in the score.) Singer and piano, in short, are the drivers in this section. Having entreated the woman throughout the song, the poetic persona entreats her once more, and with an even greater sense of assurance.

Three Songs from 1840–1841: “Am Strande,” “Volkslied,” and “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage” I turn now to songs that Clara wrote after marrying Robert in September of 1840. Indeed, all of her remaining songs, not just those without opus numbers, come from the years between the couple’s wedding and Robert’s death in 1856. (Her last song, discussed later in the chapter, was “Das Veilchen,” written in 1853.) The post-1839 songs are thus intertwined with Robert. Many were given as gifts to him. Some were inspired by joint studies with him, mutual projects that the embarked on, or suggestions that he gave her about texts to set. It is thus impossible to fully separate Clara and Robert when discussing her songs from this time period. But it is possible to take her music on its own terms – to acknowledge how Robert influenced Clara’s compositional output during these years (just as she influenced his), while at the same time resisting the urge to use his style as a measuring stick for hers. In Chapter 1, I explained that one of the guiding principles of this book is that we should avoid the knee-jerk tendency to compare a woman’s work with the work of a more prominent man in her circle of influence. When overused, I suggested, this approach runs the risk of minimizing the woman’s individual merits as an artist and measuring her achievements against standards that are not always appropriate. This principle applies to the second half of this chapter as much as to the first. Robert appears frequently in the pages that follow – and, in fact, two of his songs are treated to detailed analysis – but I have endeavored to keep Clara’s music and her unique musical style at the forefront. In this, I have used Nancy Reich’s words as a guide: “After her marriage, Clara Schumann’s composing efforts followed closely the patterns set by her husband in respect to the genres she chose, though the voice was distinctly her own.”22 Stylistically, the compositional voice that emerges from these songs is strikingly similar to the voice in the four songs discussed previously.

22

Reich, Clara Schumann, 214.

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The post-1840 songs sound like the works of the same composer, in other words, in large part because they exhibit two of the hallmarks that we have seen all along: expansive themes and expressive accompaniments. That said, these three songs also sound more assured than their predecessors, and also more experimental. Schumann takes even more risks and captures the intricacies and peculiarities of poetic texts in even more novel ways. One of the main ways she does that is by exploiting the other hallmark that I spotlighted in the previous chapter: undermined cadences. In each of these three songs – and in almost all of the songs discussed in the remainder of this chapter – she softens, blurs, sidesteps, or erases expected moments of musical closure. And in two of these songs – “Am Strande” and “Volkslied” – she uses those undermined cadences to do something even more surprising: she fuses poetic stanzas together and breaks stanzas apart, so that the structural divisions of the music are at odds with the structural divisions of the poetry, and so that we experience the flow of the words in surprising and radical ways. Indeed, fused and separated stanzas become a kind of go-to maneuver in Schumann’s mature Lieder – a strategy that appears in four of the remaining songs in this chapter (“Am Strande,” “Volkslied,” “Die Lorelei,” and “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat”), and a distinguishing feature that shows us these songs could have been written by no one else.

“Am Strande”: Dream and Reality, Separation and Fusion The source for this song, composed in 1840, is a poem by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, entitled “Musing on the roaring ocean.” In the poem, a woman lies in bed and looks fearfully at the raging sea, awaiting the return of her beloved. (The beloved in the poem is described with masculine pronouns.) Schumann bases her song on a German translation of Burns’s poem by the dramaturge and poet Wilhelm Gerhard. Below is the entire text; on the left is Gerard’s translation and on the right is an English translation of his translation, which more closely matches Gerhard’s lines than Burns’s original poem does. Traurig schau ich von der Klippe Auf die Flut, die uns getrennt, Und mit Inbrunst fleht die Lippe, Schone seiner, Element!

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Sadly I look down from the cliff On the flood that separate us, And with fervor I pray: Spare him, elements!

Three Songs From 1840–1841

Furcht ist meiner Seele Meister, Ach, und Hoffnung schwindet schier; Nur im Traume bringen Geister Vom Geliebten Kunde mir. Die ihr, fröhliche Genossen Gold’ner Tag’ in Lust und Schmerz,

Fear is the master of my soul, Ah, and hope is almost gone; Only in my dreams do spirits bring Tidings of my beloved.

Kummertränen nie vergossen, Ach, ihr kennt nicht meinen Schmerz!

You cheerful companions Of golden days, who from joy and pain Have never shed tears of grief, Ah, you do not know my sorrow!

Sei mir mild, o nächt’ge Stunde, Auf das Auge senke Ruh, Holde Geister, flüstert Kunde Vom Geliebten dann mir zu.

Be gentle with me, oh nightly hour Rest your peace upon my eyes, Blessed spirits, whisper tidings Of my beloved to me.

What stands out upon first listening to this song is the sheer variety and inventiveness of its piano accompaniment. (Example 3.9 shows her setting of the opening stanza.) The rippling arpeggios that depict the crashing of waves on the shoreline; the right-hand melody (heard first in the piano introduction and later in the final section and the piano postlude) that floats above the torrent of the sixteenth notes, like the speaker of the poem who looks down on the waves from atop a cliff; and the rhythmic variations to these rippling accompanimental patterns that evoke different images and feelings (first the surging waters, then the whispered messages of the spirits, later the waves of pain that she experiences and, still later, the rush of joy that comes with hearing news of her beloved). As inventive as the song’s accompaniment is, however, its approach to closure is even more so. Schumann not only fuses together two adjacent stanzas, as she did in “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge” (which is rare enough in nineteenth-century Lieder). She also severs some stanzas in two. She ignores some of the poem’s structural divisions and creates others, regrouping its lines in surprising ways. (She does the same thing in two other songs discussed later in this chapter: “Volkslied” and “Die Lorelei.”) The “chunks” of the poetry and the music, in short, are out of alignment – musical sections end while poetic stanzas continue, and vice versa. Yet the misalignment is purposeful and powerful. Schumann responds to the ebb and flow of the poem’s feelings and forms and creates a progressive musical structure (ABC) where another composer might have chosen a circular one (ABA), thus fundamentally reshaping our understanding of the text.

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.9 “Am Strande,” setting of opening stanza

Schumann sets the first stanza of the poem as a single eight-bar theme that leads to a half cadence, a theme structured (it should come as no surprise by now) as a broad compound antecedent, formed as a compound

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Three Songs From 1840–1841

Example 3.9 (cont.)

basic idea+continuation. The internal structure of this antecedent seems specially calibrated to the shifting emotions of the stanza. The compound basic idea traces a broad harmonic progression that tonicizes the subdominant, A♭ minor; the harmonies move toward this new key on the word “getrennt” (separate), pulling the music partly, though not fully, away from the E♭-minor tonic, like the woman’s thoughts that only partly bridge the immense distance that separates her from her beloved. Then, in the continuation, comes a pair of parallel diminished-seventh chords (F°7 in m. 9 and G°7 in m. 10), rising stepwise as her panic increases (“Und mit Inbrunst fleht die Lippe” [And full of fervor beg my lips]). Schumann’s setting of the second stanza begins with the same musical material (Example 3.10). A compound basic idea (mm. 13–16: “Furcht ist meiner Seele Meister, ach, und Hoffnung schwindet schier”) sets up the expectation that these eight bars will be a varied repetition of the previous eight bars, perhaps a compound consequent leading to a PAC. But it is not to be. After the second line of this stanza and the same turn toward A♭ minor from the antecedent, the vocal melody unexpectedly stops in m. 17; the consequent fails, not just by avoiding a PAC but by avoiding a cadence

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.10 “Am Strande,” setting of second stanza

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Three Songs From 1840–1841

Example 3.10 (cont.)

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altogether. One need not be aware of how the poem is structured to find this moment surprising; the music stalls after tonicizing the subdominant; it gets stuck, withholding the E♭-minor cadential progression that we expect to follow. Listening to this passage with the poem in front of you, however, is an even more jarring experience, for the simple reason that at the moment that the progression stops, a stanza is cut in two. The piano’s three-measure interlude abruptly halts the flow of the lines, preventing the first couplet of the stanza (“Fear is the master of my soul, / Ah, and hope is almost gone”) from connecting with the second (“Only in my dreams do spirits bring / Tidings of my beloved”). And as if this were not enough, Schumann then sutures the second couplet of this stanza to the following stanza. There is no decisive musical break where one stanza ends and another begins. If the A♭-minor chord after “schwindet schier” (m. 16) lost its way, creating a gap in the middle of the stanza, the A♭-minor chord after “Kunde mir” (m. 23) rushes onward, smoothly connecting two adjacent phrases and two adjacent stanzas. Melodically, the phrases and stanzas are also connected. The motive in mm. 24–25 (on “Die ihr, fröhliche Genossen”) is a varied repetition of the motive in mm. 22–23 (on “vom Geliebten Kunde mir”). Even the bass line across these phrases acts as a kind of glue that joins them together, continuing a long descending motion that encompasses this entire section of the song (see the circled notes in the example). Start with the G♭ in m. 21, after “bringen Geister,” and you can trace a stepwise descent to the A♭ in m. 23. After being prolonged for a measure, A♭ then falls to G♭ in m. 24, which is itself prolonged for four measures, before descending to F in m. 28, E♭ in m. 29, and on down to B♭ at the half cadence in m. 31 (on “Schmerz”). (Yet again, this is an example of the descending bass line that Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers has explored in Schumann’s instrumental music.)23 In sum, whereas the poem reads like this Fear is the master of my soul, Ah, and hope is almost gone; Only in my dreams do spirits bring Tidings of my beloved. You cheerful companions Of golden days, who from joy and pain

23

Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Bass-Line Melodies.”

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Three Songs From 1840–1841

Have never shed tears of grief, Ah, you do not know my sorrow!

Schumann’s setting of it reads like this. Fear is the master of my soul, Ah, and hope is almost gone; Only in my dreams do spirits bring Tidings of my beloved. You cheerful companions Of golden days, who from joy and pain Have never shed tears of grief, Ah, you do not know my sorrow!

Why would she do such a thing? Why would she choose to undermine the structural divisions in the poem? As with the fusion of two stanzas in “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” she intentionally disregards the poem’s punctuation to highlight an aspect of its meaning – and, more specifically, to create a shift in tone (by breaking a stanza in half) and then to avoid a shift in tone (by fusing two stanzas together). The intrusion of three bars of piano interlude in mm. 17–19 signals the shift to a dream world, and the arrival of the “spirits” that whisper tidings of her beloved. Jürgen Thym notes this as well, in a perceptive discussion of this song. Grouping the lines as 2+6 instead of 4+4, he writes, allows her to reflect musically the turn of thought (or “volta,” if a term used to describe sonnet structures is permitted here) that occurs in the middle of the second stanza. After sadness, fear and hopelessness grip the lyric subject contemplating the sea, the poet turns to dreams as a bearer of positive news about her lover (“only in my dreams to spirits bring tidings of my beloved”).24

Think of Schumann as a stage director, who has the actor say, “all hope is but gone,” and then suddenly stop and look into the distance as faint sounds emerge and the stage lighting subtly changes. And imagine her, two lines later, instructing the actor not to pause after speaking of these whispering spirits, not to change her tone, her gaze, or her position on the stage when going on to describe the “merry companions” of her past. As Schumann reads the poem, the “Geister” that bring her news of her beloved while she is dreaming are like these “fröhliche Genossen” who (like her, we are meant to assume) never shed “Kummertränen” (tears of grief). 24

Thym, “Crosscurrents in Song,” 220.

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The spirits and the companions, after all, are both products of her imagination, so it makes sense that they would exist in the same musical and poetic dream world. As much as Schumann’s grouping of these eight lines as 2+6 instead of 4+4 seems mainly driven by an attention to poetic meaning and tone, it also highlights a structural feature of the poem, however subtly. The final lines of her couplet and sestet begin with an interjection: “Ach, und Hoffnung schwindet schier” and “Ach, ihr kennt nicht meinen Schmerz”; these are in fact the only such lines in the poem. In each case she separates the interjection line from the lines that follow it, and she does so with a couple measures of accompanimental interlude, in which the piano speaks while the voice is silent. As Schumann sets the lines, they represent moments in which the speaker is so overcome by emotion that she can no longer speak. In the first case, she retreats into the world of dreams, and in the second case she is drawn forcibly back into the real world where her pain is too vivid to be held at bay. Yet it is held at bay – and this is yet another marvel of this remarkable and underappreciated song: everything up to this moment foretells a return to E♭ minor, a return of the A section, and a return of the opening turbulence, but Schumann says no. Rather than return, she resists. In Janina Klassen’s words, in Schumann’s song “the comfort provided by the dream is given more weight than the loss experienced in the real world.”25 Schumann sets the last stanza in the tonic major and with largely new material whose tone is more hopeful than distressed. (Example 3.11 shows the first six measures of this section.) The plea of the last stanza – “Sei mir mild, o nächt’ge Stunde” (Be gentle with me, oh nightly hour) – therefore sounds not like a request made in vain but a wish granted. The “Holde Geister” do as she asks, bringing her the comfort she desires. The spirits appear first in the piano, making this moment all the more astonishing and moving. The main motif of this section – a falling fourth from E♭ to B♭ – emerges out of the chromatic and turbulent piano interlude that links these two sections of the song, and it is then heard more prominently in the vocal melody. This is just the kind of “vocal echo” that I described in Chapter 2, where Schumann has the voice respond to the accompaniment, “thus giving even more agency to the piano, treating it more as an actor than as a reactor.” Here, the poetic persona, and the vocal melody that embodies it, is the reactor, and what she reacts to is the miraculous

25

Klassen, Clara Schumann, 216.

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Three Songs From 1840–1841 Example 3.11 “Am Strande,” beginning of final section

appearance of the spirits of night that soothe her anxieties and rescue the song from a minor-mode conclusion.

“Volkslied”: Separation and Fusion Once More, Clara and Robert In Chapter 1, I explained that one of the guiding principles of this book is that we should avoid the knee-jerk tendency to compare a woman’s work with the work of a more prominent man in her circle of influence. When overused, I suggested, this approach runs the risk of minimizing the woman’s individual merits as an artist and measuring her achievements

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against standards that are not always appropriate. “Volkslied” (1840), however, is a special situation. This is one of only two texts that both Clara and Robert set to music. (The other, it turns out, is the next poem that I will discuss, Rückert’s “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage.”) In both instances, then, comparing their works does not so much mean assessing the degree to which her style is related to or inspired by his; rather, it means highlighting how the two composers interpret the same poem in different ways, and if anything, it reinforces the fact that her approach to text setting is distinctively her own. The most striking difference between their settings has to do with the way they group the lines of Heine’s poem, which proceeds in a trio of threelined stanzas. Es fiel ein Reif in der Frühlingsnacht, Er26 fiel auf die zarten Blaublümelein: Sie sind verwelket, verdorrt.27

There fell a frost on a spring night, It fell on the tender forget-me-nots; They are now blighted, withered.

Ein Jüngling hatte ein Mädchen lieb; Sie flohen heimlich von Hause fort, Es wußt’ weder Vater noch Mutter.

A boy loved a girl; They eloped secretly together; Neither father nor mother knew.

Sie sind gewandert hin und her, Sie haben gehabt weder Glück noch Stern, Sie sind gestorben, verdorben.

They wandered to and fro; They had neither luck nor guiding star; They died, perished.

This kind of poetic construction can sometimes pose challenges for composers. How do you maintain four-bar hypermeter with three-line stanzas? Some composers will opt to forgo four-bar hypermeter, as Schumann did in “Der Wanderer,” setting the first three lines of a sixline stanza to a six-bar phrase, with one line happening every two measures.28 Others will find creative ways to fit three lines into four measures – by repeating line three, stretching it, or adding a short piano interlude after it. The challenge is particularly great with this poem because not only are there three lines in each stanza, but also the third line has fewer poetic feet: lines 1 and 2 have four main stresses, and line 3 has three. Robert’s solution, in his setting of this text from the fourth volume of his

26 27 28

Schumann changes Heine’s original “Es” to “Er.” Schumann changes Heine’s original “verdorret” to “verdorrt.” For a discussion of text setting and triple hypermeter, see Stephen Rodgers, “Thinking (and Singing) in Threes: Triple Hypermeter and the Songs of Fanny Hensel,” Music Theory Online 17/1 (2011).

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Three Songs From 1840–1841 Example 3.12a Robert Schumann, “Volkslied,” opening section

Romanzen und Balladen (op. 64), is to add a couple of measures of piano accompaniment after line 3 has sounded, so that the entire stanza feels musically rounded off. (Example 3.12a shows the opening of his song, composed in late October and early November 1841, and Example 3.12b shows the opening of Clara’s, composed in December 1840.) Notice the regularity of the declamation in Robert’s setting: the four poetic stresses of lines 1 and 2 are spread evenly across two measures, with two stresses per measure; the only real disruption comes in his setting of line three, where the three stresses are more unevenly distributed: the verb “sind” is appropriately treated as an upbeat, and the all-important words “ver-wel-ket”

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.12b Clara Schumann, “Volkslied,” opening section

(blighted) and “ver-dorrt” (withered) are placed in a single measure each.29 Despite this irregularity, everything feels steady and balanced. In an essay about declamation in Clara Schumann’s Lieder, Harald Krebs compares her setting with Robert’s and notes that the poetic stresses “occur in a predictable, regular fashion” and that Robert “sets the song in a folklike

29

Borrowing terms from Yonatan Malin, we could say that Robert Schumann sets the first and second line of the poem with a “two plus two” “tetrameter schema” ([1,2 / 1,2]) – that is, the tetrameter lines are set with two stresses in each of two measures. See Malin, Songs in Motion, 24 (Table 1.2). The third line adopts a more irregular [2 / 1 – / 1 -] schema.

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Three Songs From 1840–1841

manner.”30 The phrase structure of Robert’s song is also predictable and regular: the song unfolds in a nine-bar hybrid (antecedent+continuation), the only real phrase-structural oddity (granted, a slight one) being the extension of the final tonic by one measure, and he sets the other two stanzas in exactly the same way. Compare Robert’s opening with Clara’s setting of the same lines. What stands out first is that she casts these lines in 9/8 meter. As a result, the four stresses of lines 1 and 2, which in his setting were evenly distributed across two measures, are spaced unevenly – three stresses in one measure (“Es fiel ein Reif in der Früh-lings-”) and a single stress in the next (“-nacht”). Krebs notes this as well, writing that in compound triple meter “the poetic rhythm lodges much less comfortably than within compound duple meter,” and his discussion explores the numerous ways that Clara exploits the expressive tensions between the poetic rhythm and the musical meter.31 The lengthening of this final syllable is all the more striking because the piano accompaniment and the vocal melody are motionless, hovering on a V chord, as still as the springtime night that the poem describes. The next line (“Er fiel auf die zarten Blaublümelein”) is set similarly (three stresses in one bar and one in the next), only now the phrase is extended to three measures, as a gently undulating unison melody in the piano settles on another V chord in m. 8. If you did not know the poem and did not know that it was structured in three-line stanzas, the first eight measures of the song would not sound out of the ordinary: the opening couplet forms a complete poetic thought, and it would be entirely natural for a composer to set it as a complete musical phrase. But if you have the poem in front of you, you sense a disruption. Musically speaking, the final line stands apart from the rest of the stanza: it falls after a measure of piano interlude; it is set in a recitative-like style with initially no piano accompaniment, which contrasts with the more flowing style of the previous measures; and it is cleaved from what precedes it by the half cadence in m. 8. Then, having detached line three from the first stanza, she links it with the next stanza. Though there is a gap in the vocal line in m. 9 (between “verdorrt” and “Ein Jüngling”), there is a smooth melodic line in the right hand of the piano. And though there is a clear textural and rhythmic change halfway through the same measure, with the appearance of eighth-note block chords, there is no cadence. The technique is simple enough – place a cadence in the middle of the stanza 30

31

Harald Krebs, “A Way with Words: Expressive Declamation in Clara Schumann’s Songs,” in Clara Schumann Studies, ed. Joe Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 79. Ibid., 80. Drawing from Yonatan Malin, we could describe this declamatory schema as “three plus one”: [1,2,3 / 1 – -]. See Malin, Songs in Motion, 24.

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and avoid a cadence at the end of the stanza – but its expressive impact is profound. The image of the young man and his beloved seems, presented in line 1 of the second stanza (“A young man loved a maiden”), to intervene upon the image of the frost-covered flowers; the lovers appear unexpectedly, without warning, as though oblivious to the dangers that surround them. Here again it is instructive to compare Clara’s setting with Robert’s, where the second stanza is separated clearly from the first by an authentic cadence and set to the same musical material. For him, the ominous mood of the opening persists as the lovers enter the scene; the perspective remains that of an outside observer, Heine’s narrator who describes the action. For her, the mood is interrupted by the appearance of the lovers who are naïve to the situation they face; although they never speak in Heine’s poem, Clara Schumann gives voice to them and shows them entering unexpectedly and blissfully onto a scene whose dangers they do not yet comprehend. Those dangers are of course revealed in the final stanza, when the lovers perish, succumbing to the elements like the forget-me-nots that withered under the weight of the frost. Clara underlines the connection between the flowers and the lovers by setting the last stanza to essentially the same music as the first. (Example 3.13 shows the final section of the song.) But there are some key differences, the most striking of which is that the vocal melody stops on a dramatic half cadence, with the PAC coming only at the end of the piano postlude. In Chapter 2, I noted her fascination with writing postludes that “add new layers of meaning” and “cast a light on everything we have heard thus far.” The postlude to “Volkslied” – which Janina Klassen aptly calls an “epitaph” for the lovers – may lack some of the chromaticism of the postludes to “Der Mond kommt still gegangen” and “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” discussed in that chapter, but it is every bit as revelatory.32 It brings back material from earlier in the song but transfigures it. We hear a gently falling melody from high F, harking back to the interlude that separated the second and third lines of the first stanza (mm. 7–8; see Example 3.12b). And the extensive parallel motion in the postlude (tenths in the first measure and cascading thirds thereafter) brings to mind the parallel motion of the introduction and the interlude between the song’s two main sections; the rising and falling sixths between the outer voices in these passages – suggesting the movement of the two lovers, joined hand in hand as treble and bass voices are joined in parallel motion – are inverted into thirds. 32

Klassen, Clara Schumann, 229.

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Three Songs From 1840–1841 Example 3.13 Clara Schumann, “Volkslied,” final section

And not just inverted but also extended: what were short, tentative gestures in the introduction, as tentative as the lovers who elope in secret without a destination, become gestures with more direction, a

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continuous melodic descent over a falling-fifths sequence. There may have been no star to guide the lovers on their journey from home, but Schumann’s postlude seems to guide them to a more distant home.

“Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage”: Clara and Robert Once More, Space and Distance This poem, by Friedrich Rückert, is the one other text that both Clara and Robert set to music, and a comparison of these settings also shows her gift for writing expansive melodies and expressive piano postludes. In the poem, the lovers communicate with each other from afar. The poetic speaker says good night to her beloved, the message borne by an angel to him. (I refer to the poetic speaker as a woman since I think it is safe to assume that this is Clara speaking to Robert.) The angel then bears a message to her in return: namely, the beloved’s songs that bid her good night as well. Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage, Freund, hörest du; Ein Engel, der die Botschaft trage Geht ab und zu.

The good night that I say to you, Friend, may you hear it; An angel that bears the message Goes to and fro.

Er bringt sie dir, und hat mir wieder Den Gruß gebracht: Dir sagen auch des Freundes Lieder Jetzt gute Nacht.

He brings it to you and has brought back This greeting to me: A friend’s songs also say to you, Now good night.

Robert’s setting of this poem comes from a set of four-part songs for mixed chorus, op. 59, which was published five years after Clara composed her song in 1841. Like his setting of Heine’s “Volkslied,” this piece moves in regular four-bar phrases with a clear phrase structure (Example 3.14; I show only the melody). The entire song is built as a sixteen-measure sentence, in which each couplet lasts four measures. A pair of four-bar compound basic ideas leads to a slightly more chromatic eight-bar continuation that tonicizes B♭ minor and F minor before closing with a PAC in the tonic, A♭ major. Clara’s setting of the poem is also structured as a sentence, but her sentence is much looser, freer, and more expansive. One way to understand how she creates that effect is to imagine how her song would have sounded if it had moved with the steady regularity of Robert’s. Example 3.15 recasts the song’s melody as a sentence with thirty-two notated measures of 3/4. I use 3/4 meter rather than 6/4 meter because, as we will see, that is the meter that she uses in her actual setting; listeners, however, will likely experience this example as moving in sixteen measures of 6/4. Borrowing terminology from

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Three Songs From 1840–1841 Example 3.14 Robert Schumann, “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” melody

William Caplin, we could say that Example 3.15 has thirty-two “notated” measures but sixteen “real” measures.33 This hypothetical version is a lot like Robert’s actual version: it features a pair of compound basic ideas, the second a nearly exact repetition of the first, and it follows this with a continuation that is more chromatic (in this case, much more chromatic, since it modulates to a distant key, ♭VI). That said, the declamatory rhythms in the examples differ. He repeats the poem’s shorter even-numbered lines so that they fill two measures of music, like the longer lines that precede them; he also spaces the poetic stresses somewhat unevenly: the first three stresses of line 1 (“Die gu-te Nacht, die ich dir sa-ge”) fall in a single measure and the final stress gets a measure of its own, and the first stress of the next line (“Freund, hö-rest du”) comes in a beat early. In Clara’s hypothetical setting, by contrast, the stresses in each line are evenly distributed. A poetic stress appears in every measure, the only exception being the end of the shorter even-numbered lines, where the final stress lasts two measures, to account for the fact that there are only three stresses in the line. In short, in Example 3.14, the poetic lines come at regular intervals but the stresses within them do not, whereas in Example 3.15 both the poetic lines and the words within them come at regular intervals.

33

On the concept of “notated” and “real” measures, see Caplin, Classical Form, 35.

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.15 Clara Schumann, “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” melody, recomposed

In Clara’s actual setting, all of that regularity is disrupted, mostly because she adds extra measures in the middle of lines, at the end of lines, and even at the beginning of lines. Take, for example, her handling of the opening couplet, shown in Example 3.16. (Readers can find the score to the entire song at imslp.org.) Notice how many measures are added in comparison with my more four-square recomposition. The piano comes in a bar earlier than in the hypothetical example, preparing the entrance of the vocal melody. (In a beautiful analysis of the song, Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers calls the entrance of the piano, which strikes a chord and then waits for the voice to enter, as a “deliciously disorienting moment” that makes it “impossible to infer any meter.”)34 The word “Nacht” is extended by a bar in m. 4. An extra bar falls between the two halves of this line (m. 5), again setting up the vocal melody. The F-major chord in m. 7 is extended by a measure. And most striking, four bars of piano separate this stanza from the next. All in all, what might have been an eight-measure phrase instead lasts twice as long.35 These extra measures engender a sense of spaciousness and reverberation. The phrases take their time; 34 35

Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Beyond Vierhebigkeit,” 61. Pedneault-Deslauriers offers a different, but no less productive, analysis of the song’s phrase structure. She hears mm. 1–16 as a compound basic idea+continuation and mm. 17–24 as the same thematic type, now compressed down from sixteen measure to eight. According to this view, the

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Three Songs From 1840–1841 Example 3.16 Clara Schumann, “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” opening couplet

the singer pauses; the piano does not double the vocal melody but envelops it in sound, sometimes previewing what is about to be sung, other times echoing what has just been sung. In comparison with the hypothetical version, which is contained within a well-defined space, the actual version floats through a cavernous space; if the hypothetical version is a medium-sized room, we might say, the actual version is a cathedral. In her analysis of this song, Pedneault-Deslauriers also comments on the feeling of timelessness created by the song’s overall form of the song is a large AA’BA” form (Ibid., 63–64). She does, however, acknowledge a possible large-scale sentential reading, and diagrams such a reading in her Ex. 9 (65).

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opening, which, she notes, also results from the ambiguity of the meter and hypermeter; she writes of the song’s “temporal haze” and the “sense of time suspended, of ethereality – a sense that anticipates the figure of the angel in the next verse.”36 Amazingly, even in Clara’s actual setting the music moves in four-bar units, but those units do not project a clear alternation of strong and weak measures. (My point, in comparing her actual version with a normalized hypothetical version, is to suggest that the song would have projected a clear hypermeter, if it were not for all the added space.) The metaphor of reverberating, ethereal space is appropriate because this is a poem about sound that travels to a distant recipient and echoes back to its sender. It is also a poem about listening, and listening requires stopping, reflecting, attending. Clara sets Rückert’s poem in such a way as to suggest that the poetic speaker listens to the sounds in her environment – indeed, even to the sound of her own voice; we can hear her hearing herself in the piano interlude in mm. 13–16 (after “Freund, hörest du!”). She also of course listens to more magical sounds, such as the voice of the angel who carries her message to her beloved and carries his message back to her. Clara Schumann gives voice to the angel in an even longer interlude between the first and second stanzas – cascading parallel thirds that follow a plagal cadence in F (mm. 21–23, “geht ab und zu”) and draw us gently into the distant realm of D♭ major for the middle section of the song – and then a similar interlude before the final two lines of the poem (mm. 34–38, after “wieder den Gruß gebracht”), which return us just as easily to F. All of these sounds and sensations fill the resonant space of her song. This is no truer than in the piano postlude (shown in Example 3.17), which is just as expressive and multilayered as what we heard in the previous song, “Volkslied.” The poem ends with the lyric speaker receiving her beloved’s message in return – “A friend’s songs also say to you, now good night” – and, following the completion of this line is a twelve-bar piano postlude. The postlude is essential to the song; it is not an afterthought but a central component of the song’s overall expressive and musical trajectory – not least because it provides the authentic cadence that is absent from the end of the vocal melody: mm. 43–45 (“jetzt gute Nacht”) articulate a plagal cadence, which sounds less like the end of something than the continuation of something. The piano’s left hand rises in eighth notes, and those eighths themselves continue, as the cascading thirds from the interlude in mm. 23ff. return, emerging from the plagal cadence in m. 45, just as they 36

Ibid., 61.

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Three Songs From 1840–1841 Example 3.17 Clara Schumann, “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” postlude

did from the plagal cadence at the end of the first stanza. The angels bear this message as well, only now we hear it moving toward the speaker, not away from her – it travels “home,” to the authentic cadence that arrives in the last four measures of the song, yet it seems to take an eternity to get there. The dominant pitch arrives in the bass seven measures before the end, but it supports a V7/V, which is sustained for two measures while a searching melodic line floats above it. Then, two measures later, we hear a dominant ninth, such that a true V7 chord does not appear until a bar before the

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resolution to tonic – and that resolution is clouded with dissonance, covered by a haze of suspensions that resolve in stages, settling onto a pure F-major triad only in the second half of the penultimate measure. The final measures do not so much assert an authentic cadence as dissolve one; the message, as it is presented to us in the final bars of Schumann’s song, seems to dissipate as it travels from the beloved to the speaker, fading into the expanse of night.

Two Songs from 1843: “Die Lorelei” and “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat” These two songs, like the three just discussed, were also given as gifts to Robert, in this case for his thirty-second birthday in June of 1843. (A third song, “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” was also included, and later published as part of Clara’s op. 13 song collection; I discussed this song briefly in the previous chapter in the context of undermined cadences.) As with “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” it is difficult to know why “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge” was deemed appropriate for inclusion in a published opus, but these two songs were not. Both songs are enormously effective: “Die Lorelei” remains one of her most famous works, a song of immense force, drama, and invention, and “Oh weh des Scheidens,” though less popular, is vivid and searing, for all its seeming restraint. Yet it could be that the very qualities that make these songs so singular are those that made them unsuitable for a song collection, especially the first solo-authored song opus that Clara Schumann ever wrote. Alexander Stefaniak has argued that in a number of works that Schumann wrote in the 1840s, she was deliberately engaging in a “performance of wifely femininity.”37 She was eschewing the kind of bravura virtuosity that she had been known for in the 1830s (both in her performances and in her compositions) and turning instead to a style of “inwardness and poetic sensitivity.” Notably, it is these very features that critics praised in her op. 13 song collection. Oswald Lorenz, writing in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, described the op. 13 songs as “quiet and without pomp, but as warmly and truly felt as they are simple, clear, and modestly expressed.”38 Another reviewer, writing in the Repertorium, noted that compared with the Lieder of Franz Liszt, Schumann’s showed “a better taste for beautiful simplicity.”39 37 38 39

Stefaniak, Becoming Clara Schumann, 156. Oswald Lorenz, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 20/25 (March 25, 1844): 97. Repertorium 1/1 (January 1840): 80.

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Two Songs from 1843

Whether one agrees that these words – “simple, clear, and modestly expressed,” “beautiful simplicity” – perfectly describe the songs of op. 13, they clearly do not describe a song like “Die Lorelei,” with its propulsive accompaniment and its high drama. Nor, I would argue, are they altogether appropriate for “Oh weh des Scheidens,” which is simple only in the sense that its notes are not hard to play and sing. For so many other reasons – its tonal experimentation; its harsh dissonance; its shifts between introspection and agony; and its tone, which Graham Johnson has aptly described as “raw and direct”40 – the song is challenging and norm-defying. Both songs, in different but also related ways, push boundaries.

“Die Lorelei”: Separation and Fusion Yet Again, Siren Songs and Surging Waves Schumann’s 1843 setting of Heinrich Heine’s poem about the legend of the Lorelei, a supernatural creature who lures sailors to their deaths, is one of her most justifiably famous songs.41 Much of what gives the song its visceral force, as with a song like “Am Strande,” is its piano accompaniment, with constantly pulsating eighth notes played at a “schnell” (fast) tempo. (The score to this song can be accessed via imslp.org.) For all that the accompanimental textures change throughout the song – sometimes with repeated block chords, other times with arpeggios; sometimes with a strongly melodic right hand, other times without – the eighth notes continue through to the final measure, ever-moving, ever-churning, like the waves that engulf the sailor. In a chapter from Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied, Caitlin Miller highlights one particularly striking effect of that accompaniment: it gives voice to the Lorelei, lending her even more agency in the song than she has in Heine’s poem. Early in the song we hear a singing theme in the piano, just before the speaker mentions the “tale from olden times that I cannot get out of my mind.” Later, however, that theme returns immediately after the Lorelei makes her most decisive action: singing her powerful song. Miller contrasts Schumann’s setting with Franz Liszt’s, where a Lorelei theme appears only when Heine describes her physical appearance, but not when he describes her actions. Schumann’s recurring melody, Miller argues, “is more than a ‘Lorelei

40 41

Graham Johnson, liner notes to The Songs of Robert Schumann, vol. 8. My discussion of the song is derived in part from my video blog post “Clara Schumann: Reading against the Grain,” Women’s Song Forum (November 3, 2020).

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theme’ as we encountered in Liszt’s setting; rather, it is the Lorelei’s song itself.”42 Yet Schumann’s Lorelei melody does something else as well, and something no less remarkable: it fundamentally changes the pace of the poem’s lines and stanzas; it affects, in radical ways, how we read the poem. I use the word “read” in a quite literal sense to refer to the rate at which we read. Heine’s poem is distributed into six four-line stanzas, with a period at the end of each stanza and a “weaker” form of punctuation (a comma or a semi-colon) halfway through each stanza. Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten, Daß ich so traurig bin; Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

I do not know what it means That I am so sad; A tale from olden times, I cannot get it out of my mind.

Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt, Und ruhig fließt der Rhein; Der Gipfel der Berge funkelt Im Abendsonnenschein.

The air is cool and it grows dark, And the Rhine flows quietly; The summit of the mountains glitters In the evening sun.

Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet Dort oben wunderbar, Ihr goldnes Geschmeide blitzet, Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar.

The most beautiful maiden sits In wondrous beauty up there, Her golden jewels sparkle, She combs her golden hair.

Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme Und singt ein Lied dabei, Das hat eine wundersame, Gewalt’ge Melodei.

She combs it with a golden comb And sings a song at the same time, It has a wondrous, Forceful melody.

Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe Ergreift es mit wilden Weh; Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe, Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh’.

It seizes the boatman in his boat With wild pain; He does not see the rocky reefs, He only looks up to the heights.

Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn; Und das hat mit ihrem Singen Die Lorelei getan.

I think the waves swallow At last boatman and boat; And that, with her singing, The Lorelei has done.

Now, of course, no one would read these stanzas in a rigid, metronomic way, declaiming each line at the same pace, taking the same 42

Caitlin Miller, “‘Und das hat mit ihrem Singen, Die Lore-Ley gethan’: Subjectivity and Objectification in Two Heine Settings,” in Women and the Nineteenth-Century Lied, ed. Aisling Kenny and Susan Wollenberg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 247.

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Two Songs from 1843

amount of time between each stanza, and so on. Poems are flexible things, and poets use all manner of strategies to encourage readers to speak texts (whether aloud or in their inner ears) in ways that respond to the natural ebb and flow of syntax, sound, and sense. (To take but one example in this poem: the internal caesura in line 1 – the comma after “Ich weiß nicht” – requires a moment’s pause, a hesitation that matches the meaning of the words. But the lack of any caesura in line 2 – “Daß ich so traurig bin” – not to mention the fact that this line expresses its three poetic feet in far fewer syllables, encourages us to read it faster. The uncertainty of line 1 is reflected both in its meaning and its structure, as is the almost matter-of-fact declarativeness of line 2.) Still, the grouping of the lines into stanzas, and the grouping of stanzas into couplets separated by punctuation marks, creates a kind of consistency, a “chunking” of the text into regularly recurring units. Schumann radically disrupts that regularity, and she does so not by altering the pace with which individual lines are declaimed – the vocal melody moves almost entirely in four-bar phrases; only the final vocal phrase is extended by one measure – but instead by dividing individual stanzas in half and fusing adjacent stanzas together, just as she did in “Am Strande” and “Volkslied.” The most jarring separations appear in the first and fourth stanzas of the poem, where the Lorelei theme interrupts the proceedings. Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten, Daß ich so traurig bin;

I do not know what it means That I am so sad;

(four-measure piano interlude) Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten, Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn. ...

A tale from olden times, I cannot get it out of my mind.

Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme Und singt ein Lied dabei,

She combs it with a golden comb And sings a song at the same time,

(four-measure piano interlude) Das hat eine wundersame, Gewalt’ge Melodei.

It has a wondrous, Forceful melody.

The music associated with these stanzas is similar in that it consists of Schumann’s favorite thematic design: a compound antecedent, in which a four-bar piano interlude severs the antecedent and continuation, and also previews the melodic material of the continuation. (Lines 1–2 are a smaller

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antecedent and lines 3–4 are a continuation, and likewise with lines 5–6 and lines 7–8.) In both stanzas, the interlude is an intrusion. It upsets the flow of the theme. It catches the speaker – and the listener – off-guard. Indeed, because the continuation portion of each theme repeats the Lorelei melody (using Schumann’s patented strategy of the “vocal echo,” which I discussed in Chapter 2), we might even say that it not only interrupts the theme but also changes its course. Imagine a version of the opening theme, for example, in which the first four bars are followed with a different continuation – with a more disjunct melody, or more directed harmonic motion rather than a prolongation of the dominant, or an accompanimental texture that more closely resembles that of mm. 1–4. As it is, this continuation (mm. 9–12, “ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten . . . ”) is radically different from the antecedent: its melody falls where the melody of mm. 1–4 ascended; it emphasizes the dominant where the antecedent largely emphasized the tonic; and it shifts to a simpler, more chorale-like texture in the upper voices, at first with nothing more than parallel thirds doubled at the octave (Susan Youens calls it a “multiply doubled” voice, “sirens plural, singing in mellifluous chorus”).43 Crucially, the change is triggered by the interlude itself: this “instrumental realization of siren song,” as Youens calls it, has such elemental force that, when it appears in stanzas 1 and 4, it redirects the course of the music. The narrator does more than just think of the “tale from olden times” (in stanza 1) and just hear the Lorelei’s song (in stanza 4); he is pulled into the story, suddenly and forcibly, and, as I will suggest below, practically pulled into the waves that dash the sailor and his ship against the rocks. If these are two of the moments when Schumann puts on the brakes, using the piano to pause and even redirect the flow of the music, they are counterbalanced by moments when she accelerates, fusing together adjacent stanzas and allowing the music to flow freely across the formal divisions of the poem. In one instance, the fusion happens because Schumann ends one stanza and begins the next with similar melodic motives. Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet Dort oben wunderbar, Ihr goldnes Geschmeide blitzet, Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar. Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme Und singt ein Lied dabei, 43

Ibid., 254.

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The most beautiful maiden sits In wondrous beauty up there, Her golden jewels sparkle, She combs her golden hair. (melody stated) She combs it with a golden comb (melody repeated) And sings a song at the same time;

Two Songs from 1843

Das hat eine wundersame, Gewalt’ge Melodei.

It has a wondrous, Forceful melody.

“Sie kämmt ihr gold’nes Harr” (She combs her golden hair), the persona says in mm. 31–32, with a rising stepwise motive (F–F♯–G–A on “kämmt ihr gold’nes”) and then, after a brief half cadence in G minor, we hear “Sie kämmt es mit gold’nem Kamme” (She combs it with a gold comb), set to a melodic motive that likewise rises by step (E♮–F♯–G–A on “kämmt es mit gold’nem”); only the first note is different. The bass line also participates in the motivic linkage: the rising stepwise motion in mm. 32–33 (F♯–G–A) echoes the same pitches heard in the melody in m. 29. Susan Youens also notes this conjoining of stanzas in her perceptive analysis of the song. “Until this point,” she writes, “Clara matches complete stanzas with defined sections of music, but here, she fast-forwards from the third to the fourth stanza and breaks the fourth stanza in two” (referring of course to the severed stanza that I discussed earlier).44 The musical similarity obviously responds to a poetic similarity: the last line of stanza 3 and the first of stanza 4 are practically identical, and so are the melodies associated with them. But Youens hits on something else having to do with the effect of the fused stanzas – Schumann “fast-forwards” across the stanza division. To some extent, Heine does the same. In Chapter 2, in the context of an analysis of “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” I quoted the literary scholar Barbara Hernnstein, who writes that “systematic repetition of formal elements is fundamentally a force for continuation, and closure is, of course, always weakened by the expectation of continuation”: when poets repeat words, in short, they encourage us to read with greater continuity, even with greater speed. This is just what Heine does between stanzas 3 and 4. He uses poetic repetition to push the poem ahead, to link these two stanzas (the only two stanzas, in fact) that describe the appearance of the Lorelei. Reading the poem aloud, or even silently to oneself, one might be inclined to take less time between these stanzas, continuing onward with only a small breath while twice describing how the Lorelei brushes her hair. Schumann – ever the attentive reader, despite her professed doubts about her ability to grasp the subtleties of poetry – picks up on the slight poetic acceleration and captures it in musical form. She moves even more rapidly across the break between the final two stanzas of the poem – not just by repeating a melodic motive but by avoiding a cadence altogether. 44

Ibid., 256.

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Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe Ergreift es mit wilden Weh; Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe, Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh’. Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn; Und das hat mit ihrem Singen Die Lorelei getan.

It seizes the boatman in his boat With wild pain; He does not see the rocky reefs, He only looks up to the heights. (no cadence) I think the waves swallow At last boatman and boat; And that, with her singing, The Lorelei has done.

Measure 54 (“Höh’”) is a V6 chord, not a V chord; what is more, the two phrases are joined by the D that persists in the vocal melody and also by the pulsating Ds in the piano’s left hand. Harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically, there is no gap; the music hurtles onward, erasing any structural division in the poem. And why? Because as Schumann reads it, everything leads to the tragic end. The waves, once whipped up by the Lorelei’s magical and menacing song, cannot be stopped. They are so powerful that they seem almost to engulf the narrator, too. In Heine’s poem, the speaker seems to stand far apart from the action, observing it from a safe distance – even perhaps from some temporal distance, recounting “a tale from olden times” that happened long ago. (Notice, for instance, that the word “I” appears only in the first and last stanzas: the narrator is outside the story, not within it.) In Schumann’s reading of the poem, however, the narrator is a part of the action. And this is not only because, as several writers have noted, Schumann drops us right into the action at the start, forgoing a piano introduction.45 It is also because the waves consume the narrator’s final stanza. The Lorelei’s powerful melody and the tempests it stirs consume the last stanza, threatening to consume the speaker with it.

“Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat”: Separation and Suppressed Pain This song, composed in 1843, inhabits a different expressive world from “Die Lorelei” – reserved rather than effusive, recitative-like rather than almost operatic, contained within twenty-seven measures rather than flowing across seventy-two, inward rather than outward. But it is clearly the

45

See, for example, Susan Youens, who comments on the song’s “utter lack of piano introduction,” in which “a palpably panic-stricken persona blurts out, ‘I don’t know what it means that I am so sad’ with no instrumental preamble whatsoever”; the listeners, she writes, are “catapulted into the experience of this ballad in state of unknowing” (Heinrich Heine and the Lied [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 253).

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Two Songs from 1843

product of the same creative imagination. Like the previous song, it features an inventive piano accompaniment that gives voice to a character in the poem, echoes the vocal melody, and divides a stanza in two. Furthermore, in one version of the song Schumann also undermines cadential closure – in this case, not in the middle of the song but at the very end. The opening of the song is just as arresting as that of “Die Lorelei,” even if it expresses a different emotion (a sharp sting of pain rather than a rush of anxiety). Here, too, Schumann drops us suddenly into the middle of a scene, with no piano introduction to ease us into the world of the song – and without even a tonic chord to establish the key. The first bars of the song (shown in Example 3.18), with their tritone melodic leap (C–F♯) and their crash onto a subito-forte B dominant-ninth chord, sound like the aftershock of a traumatic event, and the opening lines of the poem, by Friedrich Rückert, tell us what that event is – a painful separation. Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat, Da er mich liess im Sehnen! Oh weh des Bittens, wie er bat, Des Weinens seiner Tränen!

O pain of parting that he caused, When he left me in a state of longing, O pain of pleading, how he begged, The shedding of his tears!

The pain intensifies in the following measures, with the repetition of the opening phrase at a higher pitch level – a melodic repetition and variation that perfectly matches the poetic repetition and variation of Rückert’s second couplet – and also with the continued prolongation of dominant harmony, leading to the climactic arrival on another dominant-ninth in m. 8 (“Tränen”), its most piercing dissonance (B/C) extended via a fermata. The overall effect is that of unyielding, escalating pain, an ever-tightening grip that refuses to let go.46 The release of that grip finally comes in the next section (mm. 9ff., shown in Example 3.19), a passage that is as diatonic and consonant as the previous passage was chromatic and dissonant. But the phrase following the fermata sounds less like a resolution of the tension than like a turn away from it. True, the quarter-note Bs at the end of m. 8 technically resolve the dissonant Cs from ^ the previous beat, and the Es on the downbeat of m. 9 finally give us 1 in the

46

In his brief analysis of the song, Jürgen Thym calls Schumann’s setting of the first stanza an “‘introduction’ over a dominant pedal,” and the description is apt, since we are left in a state of continual tension over the course of the first eight measures of the song (“Crosscurrents in Song,” 220).

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.18 “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat,” mm. 1–8

bass, and the first tonic chord of the song, even if the chord is only implied. Performed in a certain way – without waiting too long on the third beat of m. 8 and without taking too much time between it and the following beat – the phrase starting in m. 9 might sound at once like the beginning of a new arc of motion and the tapered end of the broad arc that began eight measures earlier. But I prefer a performance, and an analysis, that emphasizes the separation of these two sections, the division and difference between them. (The recording by mezzo-soprano Mojka Vedernjak and pianist Stefka Perifanova tends toward the first of these

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Two Songs from 1843 Example 3.19 “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat,” mm. 9–18

interpretations, barely acknowledging the fermata, whereas the recording by soprano Katie Bray and pianist Sholto Kynoch lingers on the fermata, giving the dissonant ninth plenty of time to ring before beginning the next phrase.)47 Notice, after all, what changes across mm. 8 and 9: a subito-forte dynamic is followed by a piano dynamic; a homophonic texture is followed by a monophonic texture, not to mention a texture 47

See Mojca Vedernjak (mezzo-soprano) and Stefka Perifanova (piano), Intoxication, Pianoversal, 2020, compact disc; and Mary Bevan (soprano), Katie Bray (mezzo-soprano), Sholto Kynoch (piano), Robert Murray (tenor), and Roderick Williams (baritone), Rückert Lieder: Robert & Clara Schumann, Stone Records, 5060192780642, 2016, compact disc.

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with piano sounding alone; and a passage of extreme chromaticism and dissonance is followed by a passage of pure diatonicism and consonance. Syntactically, we might say, the passages on either side of the fermata are related, but rhetorically, they are different worlds. The shift to that different world signals not just a shift to a different expressive realm but also a shift to a different narrative voice: the piano in mm. 9ff. represents the voice not of the narrator but the voice of her beloved, whose words she quotes in the next lines of the poem: “Er sprach zu mir: Dein Trauern lass!” (He said to me: mourn no more!). One of the many marvels of this song is that Schumann, with the simplest of means, suggests that the protagonist is not just recounting what her beloved said but ruminating on it, replaying his words in her mind. The vocal melody, rather than duplicating the piano melody exactly, sounds only a skeletal version of it – an upward leap from E to G. (In the original manuscript of the song, his melody is heard once in the piano alone, making it even clearer that she is listening to it; in the version that Schumann copied into the Liederbuch that she assembled for posterity, she crossed out the first statement of his melody.)48 Schumann could well have set the words “Er sprach zu mir” to the same notes that sounds beneath them in the piano, using just the kind of exact “vocal echoes” that we have seen in other songs. Instead, she sets them to a kind of reduction of that melody, an approximate rather than identical echo. The upshot is that the piano is the driving force through these measures, not the vocal melody; his voice is in the foreground, not hers (especially so in the original version of the song). In short, she speaks and listens at the same time – which is precisely what would happen if you were not just recalling what someone said to you but reliving the moment, not just remembering their words but hearing them again in your mind. That she hears his words in purely diatonic form suggests that he utters them in a calm, dispassionate tone, with seeming equanimity. I say “seeming” equanimity because the following measures underline the difference between what he says (“mourn no more”) and what he feels. The next line of the poem, “Und schied doch selbst in Schmerzen” (And himself parted in pain), describes his actions, not his words, and Schumann sets this line not to music of diatonic and dynamic equanimity, but to music of despair, with a thicker piano texture, swelling dynamics, a profusion of chromaticism, a more rapidly rising and falling melody, and a stinging arrival upon an F♯ dominant (on the word “Schmerzen” in m. 18) that echoes the end of 48

For an account of these changes, see Schumann, Sämtliche Lieder, vol. 1, 58.

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Two Songs from 1843

the opening section (the equally stinging arrival upon a B dominant on the word “Tränen” in m. 8). This is the music of grief, not calm, and the contrast makes the previous phrase sound not so much relaxed as restrained, like an effort to suppress emotions that lie just beneath the surface – like saying one thing but feeling the opposite. And it is at this point, when the beloved’s pain breaks through, that the stanza breaks apart. On the printed page, Rückert’s final stanza looks like this. He said to me: mourn no more! And himself parted in pain. I was dampened by his tears, They made my heart grow cool.

But Schumann reads it like this. He said to me: mourn no more! And himself parted in pain. I was dampened by his tears, They made my heart grow cool.

She inserts a piano interlude after the opening couplet of this stanza, thus dividing the stanza in two (see Example 3.20 for the interlude and her setting of the final couplet). There are many ways to make sense of this separation, many ways to explain why Schumann made this decision and how it shapes our understanding of the poem. Perhaps most obviously, the separation of the stanza enacts the separation of the lovers; we feel his departure – and then his absence – all the more forcefully because the lines describing his departure are torn from the lines describing her experience after his departure. The piano interlude could also be explained as an example of word painting, where the descending arpeggios suggest the very thing mentioned in the line that comes directly after them: his tears. But as much as I hear these things, I also hear something richer, more complex, and even more affecting. I hear in this interlude, in this space within a single stanza, a blending of her music and his, and thus a moment when the narrator and her beloved do something that they are unable to do in the poem: namely, commiserate with one another, express their pain to one another, outwardly and authentically. Notice that the interlude returns to material reminiscent of the opening phrase: it begins with F♯–C in the melody, inverting the C–F♯ from the beginning of the song and placing an accent on the downbeat; it hovers on a dominant pedal; it begins and ends with a dominant-ninth chord, prolonging that chord with similar passing

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Songs without Opus Numbers Example 3.20 “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat,” mm. 19–27

sonorities; and it even includes the same G–E–C downward arpeggio in the same metrical context (see the right hand at the end of mm. 2 and 20, the bar when the B pedal point arrives). In bringing us back to the opening music, the interlude brings us back to the “pain of parting” (weh des Scheidens) that the speaker experienced just after her beloved left – and, in doing so, it links his sorrow with hers. The interlude not only evokes his tears, it also expresses her pain. It opens up an imagined space where the two can express their pain fully to one another, rather than hide it in each other’s presence, and thus only grieve alone and apart. In this light, it is all the more heartrending that the song ends with the same quiet, diatonic placidness that we heard in the passage where her beloved said his final words “mourn no more.” Although she feels pain, as he does, she obeys his command and suppresses that pain, as he does. The song ends with her adopting the same equanimity and coolness, mimicking his “mourn-nomore” music. Yet in another stroke of brilliance, Schumann suggests that this, too, is a mask. The song may seem to finish in a different emotional state from where it began (suppressed pain rather than expressed pain, we might say), but it circles back to the same harmony from m. 1. In the original autograph of the song, Schumann avoids a tonic cadence at the

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Two Songs for Friends from 1846

end, closing instead on a B-major chord – an unresolved half cadence – and suggesting that the pain will linger, that the resolution may never come.

Two Songs for Friends from 1846: “Mein Stern” and “Beim Abschied” These two songs – two of Schumann’s most underappreciated songs, each a marvel of subtlety and beauty in its own right – grew out of a trip that Clara and Robert took, in the summer of 1846, to the tranquil surroundings of Maxen, south of Dresden. Two friends – Friedrich Anton Serre, a former military major, and Friederike Serre, his wife – lived in Dresden but acquired a castle and manor in Maxen, and Clara and Robert found refuge there when Robert was suffering from physical and emotional exhaustion. To thank Friederike Serre for being such a gracious hostess, Clara set two of Friederike’s poems to music and gave them to her as a gift. Joachim Draheim and Brigitte Höft write rather dismissively of Serre’s verses, noting that Schumann’s music makes “die hilflosen Reimereien” (awkward rhymes) of the poems more bearable.49 (Nancy Reich offers a lukewarm assessment of the music as well, writing that the songs “have charm but are more predictable and regular than other songs by Clara Schumann.”)50 But one can see why Schumann was drawn to these texts, not only because they were written by a dear friend but also because they express fitting sentiments (“Mein Stern” is about a star that shines above the speaker and her distant beloved, and “Beim Abschied” is about the sadness of parting), and they do so with poetry that is full of musical possibilities. The three stanzas of “Mein Stern” each begin with the same line (“O you my star”) and end with nearly identical lines that describe where the star shines (“in my night,” “in fearful night,” and “in his night”); Schumann capitalizes on this poetic structure with a modified strophic form that has only one authentic cadence at the very end, and that thus seems to reach ever outward toward a distant goal like the star that shines on the distant beloved. “Beim Abschied” has a similarly repetitive poetic structure, with four stanzas that end with the line “no farewell, no departure”; in her simple strophic setting Schumann interprets this line not as a painful cry but as a hopeful wish, treating them as a joyous declaration, the center of attention toward which each strophe is directed.

49

Ibid., vol. 2, 7.

50

Reich, Clara Schumann, 239–40.

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“Mein Stern”: Flowing Phrases, Undermined Cadences, and Wings of Light If I had to choose one word to describe the overall effect of this song – the main musical quality that gives it life and meaning – it would be flow (a term I used in the previous chapter to describe the expansiveness of Schumann’s melodies). Everything about the song rushes forward: its rippling accompaniment of constant sixteenth notes; its long-breathed melody that unfolds in broad arcs; its harmonies that push ever onward, tying together adjacent phrases; and its undermined moments of cadential closure that tie together adjacent sections, creating the sensation that one enormous arc – one long and unbroken shape – extends across the entire piece. In this sense, “Mein Stern” might be seen as the epitome of Schumannian expansiveness. The flow of the song, the sense that it reaches ever outward, reveals something important about Schumann’s distinctive reading of Serre’s poem. On its own, the poem – about someone who longs for a star to appear in the sky, believing it will bring her tidings of her beloved and bring him sweet dreams – does not automatically suggest an unbridled outpouring of emotion. O du mein Stern, Schau dich so gern, Wenn still im Meere die Sonne sinket, Dein gold’nes Auge so tröstend winket In meiner Nacht!

Oh you my star, I long to look at you, When the sun sinks quietly into the ocean And your golden gaze beckons so consolingly In my night!

O du mein Stern, Aus weiter Fern’, Bist du ein Bote mit Liebesgrüßen, Laß deine Strahlen mich durstig küssen In banger Nacht.

Oh you my star, From far away You bring me tidings of love, Let me passionately kiss your rays In fearful night.

O du mein Stern, Verweile gern, Und lächelnd führ’ auf des Lichts Gefieder Der Träume Engel dem Freunde wieder In seine Nacht.

Oh you my star, Linger gladly, And smilingly on the wings of light

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Guide again the angel of dreams to your friend In his night.

Two Songs for Friends from 1846

One could easily imagine a setting of the opening stanza that is still, inward, reflective, a setting that evokes the image of the sun sinking quietly into the sea – with a slow harmonic rhythm, for example, or quiet dynamics. (The music of “Der Abendstern” comes readily to mind.) But Schumann takes another tack. In her mellifluous, almost exuberant setting of these words, she seems to pick up not on words and phrases like “still” (quiet), “sinket” (sinks), “bange Nacht” (fearful night), and “Träume” (dreams), but instead “tröstend” (consolingly), “durstig” (passionately), and “lächelnd” (smilingly). Her setting overflows with optimism and hope. One senses this overflowing hopefulness in the perpetuum mobile accompaniment, which pushes the music ahead not just because of its constant rhythmic motion but also because of its harmonic direction (Example 3.21 shows the song’s opening strophe). The first two measures prolong the tonic with a I–V4/2–I6–V7–I progression, and the vocal melody begins halfway through this progression, above the first-inversion tonic. In other words, not just the accompanimental rhythm but also the accompanimental harmonic progression is already in motion when the voice begins, as though the poetic speaker were being swept along by the surging harmonies. The accompaniment also gains its forward momentum and continuity from the way the bass line moves in stepwise motion, and often does so across adjacent phrases. A bass-line thread, for example, connects the first and second phrases of the song (mm. 2–5 and 6–9), falling stepwise from the A♭ in m. 3 to the C in m. 6. The same thing happens across the second and third phrases (mm. 6–9 and 10–15), with a stepwise descent from the F in m. 7 to the B♭ in m. 13, at which point the direction changes and the bass line rises stepwise from B♭ to E♭. It is these bass-line threads, in part, that make the overall phrase structure of this strophe seem so expansive, and so characteristically Schumannian. Coupled with the expanded melodic shapes, they create a fifteen-measure section that feels almost like one long breath: an eight-bar compound antecedent (structured as a compound basic idea+continuation) followed by a six-bar consequent (structured as a single phrase). Yet even to call the strophe a large-scale period is not quite right since its already broad antecedent and consequent end without proper cadences – and here, yet again, we see the effect of Schumann’s fascination with undermining cadential closure. The antecedent could well have ended with a half cadence and been followed by a parallel consequent, but Schumann opts instead for an antecedent that ends on an inverted secondary dominant (V4/2/vi), substituting non-cadential closure for cadential

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closure, and a consequent whose melody begins C–D–E♭ rather than B♭– D–E♭. Formally and harmonically, everything flows onward, and syntactically and sonically, the stanza does the same. The five-line stanza expresses a complete thought, capped by an exclamation point, and its third and fourth lines – “Wenn still im Meere die Sonne sinket, / Dein gold’nes Auge so tröstend winket,” the lines that end the antecedent and begin the consequent – are fused together because line 4 continues the

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Two Songs for Friends from 1846

Example 3.21 (cont.)

dependent clause of line 3 (“When the sun sinks quietly into the ocean / And your golden gaze beckons so consolingly”) and because the two lines rhyme. Even more striking, the period itself finishes without strong closure; the bass line climbs stepwise, mirroring the stepwise descent of the melody, and the theme ends not with a PAC and not even technically with an IAC but with a V6/5–I progression – not a cadence at all but what William Caplin would call “prolongational closure.”51 If the non-cadence at the end of the antecedent faithfully reflects the syntax of the poem, the non-cadence at the end of the consequent undermines it, reaching outward toward the next stanza as the speaker utters another plea to the star that looks down on her and her beloved. The long-awaited cadential closure – and, in fact, the only authentic cadence in the entire song – comes at the end of the third strophe. If the 51

See Caplin, “Beyond the Classical Cadence,” 14–16, and Rodgers and Osborne, “Prolongational Closure in the Lieder of Fanny Hensel.” Tyler Osborne and I would describe this as the dominant-substitution type of prolongational closure.

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first strophe describes the star’s rays that console the speaker and the second describes the “tidings of love” (Liebesgrüßen) that they bring to her, the third describes the dreams that they bring to her beloved. It is precisely at the moment when this shift from him to her happens – at the appearance of the final line, “in seiner Nacht” (in his night) – that the music shifts as well. Up to this point, the final strophe has faithfully followed in the steps of the previous two, but now it changes. Schumann repeats the final line, outlining an expanded cadential progression (I6–ii6–V7–I) and allowing the vocal melody to finally fall to the tonic. The result is a phrase that finally reaches its goal, just as the speaker hopes the star’s “wings of light” (Lichts Gefieder) will finally reach their goal, bringing dreams to her beloved.

“Beim Abschied”: Optimistic Declarations and Expanded Phrases Schumann’s other Serre setting has a similar sense of expansiveness and fluidity, if not the same level of exuberance, thanks in large part to its longbreathed, expansive melodic lines, which are so characteristic of Schumann’s songs. The fluidity of this song results less from undermined cadences than from phrase expansions and harmonic progressions that stretch across phrase boundaries. It also results – not surprisingly – from a theme-type that we will have encountered a total of seven times in the twelve songs discussed in this chapter, and which again and again has been the basis for themes that subsume four-bar units into broader, longer-breathed eight-bar arcs: the compound antecedent. The opening theme of “Beim Abschied” unfolds in an eight-bar compound antecedent built of a smaller antecedent (mm. 2–5) followed by a continuation (mm. 6–9).52 (Example 3.22 shows the score to the entire song.) This passage corresponds with the first half of the opening eight-line stanza of Serre’s poem, about the pain of departing from those one loves and the promise of seeing them again – a fitting choice for Schumann, since she offered this song and “Mein Stern” as gratitude to Serre for hosting her and Robert. Yet again Schumann stretches a single theme across a single linguistic sentence, saving the strongest musical punctuation for the strongest poetic punctuation. Notice also the beautiful instance of word painting, with the bass line in mm. 6–9 sinking and the

52

Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers describes the phrase structure of the opening in similar terms, noting that mm. 2–9 form an antecedent+continuation. See Ex. 12 in “Beyond Vierhebigkeit,” 71.

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Two Songs for Friends from 1846 Example 3.22 “Beim Abschied”

melodic line rising, a chromatic wedge that evokes the sinking of the day and the awakening of the stars. Purpurgluten leuchten ferne, Golden sinkt der lichte Tag,

A purple glow shines from the distance, Golden sinks the bright day,

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Example 3.22 (cont.)

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Two Songs for Friends from 1846

Einzeln werden Silbersterne An dem Himmelsbogen wach. Und des Tages Königin Trägt ihr Haupt zum Schlummer hin; Noch ein Gruß, auf Wiedersehn, ’S ist kein Abschied, kein Vergehn.

One by one the silver stars Awaken in the heavens. And the Queen of the Day Bows her head and goes to sleep; Another greeting, goodbye, It’s no farewell, no departure.

After a two-measure interlude that stands on the dominant comes an expanded ten-measure phrase ending with a PAC in the tonic, a strong moment of musical closure to match the strong moment of poetic closure that ends the entire stanza.53 (The ending of the stanza sounds particularly final because the rhyme scheme changes: after using alternating rhymes for the first quatrain – “ferne,” “Tag,” “Silbersterne,” “wach” – Serre uses successive rhymes for the final quatrain – “Königin,” “hin,” “Wiedersehn,” “Vergehn.” This is an example of what the literary theorist Barbara Hernnstein Smith would call “terminal modification.”)54 Where in the hands of another composer the final line (“It’s no farewell, no departure”) might have sounded like a vain hope – as in “please, say that this is no farewell, no departure” – in Schumann’s hands it sounds confident, certain, like a statement of fact rather than a wish. Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers makes a similar point about the song, writing that “the final words, ‘’s ist kein Abschied,’ in the context of the poem alone, might have been wishful thinking, but Schumann’s music makes them real.”55 Her reason for saying this, however, is different from mine, having to do less with the way these words are handled than with the way the chromaticism in the first half of the song is handled. She shows how the chromatic wedge in mm. 6–9 at once “drives the harmony to the point of furthest chromatic remove, thereby evoking separation, distance, and the narrator’s sense that their ‘heart is breaking apart.’”56 At the same time, she notes, the wedge brings the music back to the dominant of m. 5, “as though to indicate that despite the narrator’s fears, the lovers will not ultimately be parted.”57 The hopefulness of the music is obviously appropriate in light of the biographical context surrounding the song; Clara and Robert had been to the Serres’ manor many times, and her setting seems to say, “We’ll see you 53

54 56

Pedneault-Deslauriers hears mm. 10–21 as an extended continuation, and thus hears the entire song as a “compound hybrid 3” (a compound antecedent composed of a smaller antecedent+continuation, followed by long continuation) (see Ex. 12 from “Beyond Vierhebigkeit,” 71). Smith, Poetic Closure, 56. 55 Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Beyond Vierhebigkeit,” 72. Ibid., 70. 57 Ibid.

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again.” Yet there is nothing in the poem that preordains this kind of positive tone. The third of the poem’s four stanzas, for example, speaks of “painful, fearful longing,” and the last stanza describes “all the pain that I have endured,” lines that another composer might have chosen to underline with painful-sounding music. In choosing a simple strophic form for her song, however, and in reading the refrain at the end of each stanza (“’s ist kein Abschied, kein Vergehn” [it’s no farewell, no departure]) as a statement of certainty, Schumann fills the entire song, and the entire poem, with a sense of joy and optimism. One senses this joyfulness partly in the repetition of the key words in the poetic refrain (“’s ist kein Abschied, ’s ist kein Abschied, kein Vergehn”), sounding above the propulsive dotted-eighth–sixteenth–eighth rhythms in the piano. But one also senses it in the arrival of these words. The downbeat on “Ab-schied” (m. 18) sounds like a moment of surety, a stable launching point for the progression that leads assuredly and unhesitatingly to the PAC. The final four bars of the theme start on the tonic – the first tonic chord, in fact, since m. 3, a point of stability that launches the cadential progression–and they resolve the pent-up tension that stretches all the way back to m. 9, when Schumann cadenced on the dominant; this dominant is effectively prolonged across mm. 9–17 by a typically Schumannian descending bass line, whose notes I have circled in Example 3.22 (C–B♭–A–G–F–E♮).58 For this reason, m. 18 becomes a focal point in Schumann’s setting. These lines – “’s ist kein Abschied” – are the place to which all our attention is directed, the goal of all that has come before – and the message that Schumann’s song delivers, to us and to the woman who penned these words.

Schumann’s Last Song: “Das Veilchen” Most of the songs discussed in this chapter have received scant attention from music analysts. “Die Lorelei” – explored, as we saw, by Caitlin Miller and Susan Youens – is of course something of an exception. So is the last song Schumann ever wrote, her 1853 setting of Goethe’s famous poem “Das Veilchen” (1785) about a flower that longs to be picked up by a beautiful shepherdess but instead gets crushed beneath her feet. Ein Veilchen auf der Wiese stand, Gebückt in sich und unbekannt;

58

A violet stod in the meadow, With bowed head and unnoticed;

For more on Schumann’s fascination with descending bass lines, see Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Bass-Line Melodies.”

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Two Songs for Friends from 1846

Es war ein herzigs Veilchen. Da kam ein’ junge Schäferin Mit leichtem Schritt und muntrem Sinn Daher, daher, Die Wiese her, und sang.

It was a sweet violet. Along came a young shepherdess, With light step and happy heart,

Ach! denkt das Veilchen, wär ich nur Die schönste Blume der Natur, Ach, nur ein kleines Weilchen, Bis mich das Liebchen abgepflückt Und an dem Busen matt gedrückt! Ach nur, ach nur Ein Viertelstündchen lang! Ach! aber ach! das Mädchen kam Und nicht in Acht das Veilchen nahm, Ertrat das arme Veilchen. Es sank und starb und freut’ sich noch: Und sterb’ ich denn, so sterb’ ich doch Durch sie, durch sie, Zu ihren Füßen doch.

Ah! thinks the violet, if I were only The most beautiful flower in nature, Ah! for only a little while, Till my sweetheart plucked me And pressed me against her bosom! Ah only, ah only A quarter hour long! Alas, but alas, the girl came And paid no heed to the violet, Trampled the poor violet. It sank and died and yet rejoiced: And if I die, at least I die Through her, through her, At her feet.

Along, along Through the meadow, and sang.

Schumann’s “Das Veilchen” has been explored in depth by two authors. Poundie Burstein, in a 2002 article from the journal Women and Music, compares Schumann’s setting of the text with Mozart’s celebrated setting, and Christopher Parton, in an article from a forthcoming special issue of Nineteenth-Century Music Review on “Clara Schumann’s Legacies,” edited by Joe Davies and Nicole Grimes, discusses Schumann’s song as it relates to “floral representations” in Schumann’s songs.59 Both writers, it turns out, make a similar point about the song: namely, that while Mozart treats the death of the flower dramatically, as a moment of real pathos, Schumann treats it more matter-of-factly.60 59

60

See Burstein, “Their Paths, Her Ways,” 18–21, and Christopher Parton, “Speech and Silence: Encountering Flowers in the Lieder of Clara Schumann,” Nineteenth-Century Music Review, forthcoming. Despite clear similarities between the settings, there has been some doubt about the extent to which Schumann knew of the Mozart, largely because Berthold Litzmann, in his biography of Schumann based on her letters and diaries, writes that she did not know of Mozart’s setting (without, however, quoting from a source) (Clara Schumann, vol. 2, 37). But her marriage diary – in addition the remarkable similarities between the two songs – seems to prove Litzmann wrong. In an entry from early February 1841, Schumann writes that she heard Mozart’s “Das Veilchen” performed at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig (The Marriage Diaries of Robert & Clara Schumann, ed. Gerd Nauhaus, 57).

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Burstein argues that Schumann sets the crucial lines “ertrat das arme Veilchen” (trampled the poor violet) in a lighthearted tone, as though from the perspective of the oblivious maiden. Mozart’s song . . . reaches its emotional apex at the beginning of the third stanza, climaxing on the words “ertrat das arme Veilchen.” Schumann, on the other hand, drastically decreases the tension at this point by bringing back the music of the opening. . . . Ironically, Schumann lightheartedly sets the words “ertrat das arme Veilchen” with the same music that had formerly set “es war ein herzig’s Vielchen” in the first stanza. . . . Mozart followed the plight of the [passive violet] in his bitter portrayal of these lines [“ertrat das arme Veilchen”]. . . . Schumann’s setting of these lines, on the other hand, portrays the active maiden as she merrily prances about the field [my italics].61

Parton points out that Schumann sets the violet’s words “Und sterb’ ich denn, so sterb’ ich doch durch sie, durch sie zu ihren Füßen doch” (And if I die, at least I die through her, through her, at her feet) with similarly untroubled music; instead of saying these lines in the voice of the flower, as Mozart’s narrator does, Schumann’s narrator says them dispassionately. Rather than a return to the tonic (G major), Mozart veers suddenly to E-flat major at the beginning of the next stanza as the poem describes the ultimate fate of the flower. The sudden nakedness of the voice from the line “das Mädchen kam,” echoed by the piano accompaniment, transforms this passage into a quasirecitative. . . . The speaker becomes a sympathetic storyteller, describing the death of the flower. . . . Schumann’s setting employs a strikingly similar harmonic outline to Mozart’s. But where Mozart launches into a recitative-style passage at the beginning of the final stanza, Schumann decides to recapitulate the opening of her song in the tonic major. . . . In Schumann’s setting the last words of the flower, “Und sterb’ ich denn,” in effect become quoted speech, audible to the speaker but not necessarily twinned with the emotions of the speaker [my italics].62

Taken together, Burstein’s and Parton’s analyses suggest that in Schumann’s setting of the final stanza she sidelines the voice of the violet. In Mozart’s setting, we feel what the flower feels; in Schumann’s, we feel what the shepherdess feels, and then we hear the speaker recount the death of the flower as an outside observer rather than as someone who identifies with it. In their view, to listen to the final section of Schumann’s song is to hear two different voices in succession: first the maiden’s and then the narrator’s – but not the violet’s, despite the fact that we hear the flower’s words in the final three lines of Goethe’s poem. 61

Burstein, “Their Paths, Her Ways,” 20.

62

Parton, “Speech and Silence.”

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Two Songs for Friends from 1846

Burstein and Parton highlight a crucial difference between Schumann’s and Mozart’s songs – the difference between observing the pain of another and experiencing it – and when I listen to Schumann’s song, I get the same feeling that in the final stanza the music is conveying the maiden’s carefree obliviousness, backing away from a vivid expression of the violet’s state of mind. (See Example 3.23 for Schumann’s setting of the last five lines of the poem.) If this song were a film, the camera would show us what the girl sees, and it would barely dwell on the flower that gets trampled underfoot. (To extend the metaphor, if Mozart’s song were a film, the camera would be low to the ground, showing what the flower sees, and perhaps even showing its death in slow motion.) Yet there is one way that my hearing differs from theirs: I hear more of the flower’s voice in the final measures – not just “quoted speech,” as Parton says, but actual speech, and the emotions behind it. True, those emotions are not as dramatic as they are in Mozart’s song. Nor are they as dramatic as they are earlier in Schumann’s song; she sets the second stanza, in which the violet expresses its desire to be picked by the shepherdess, in the tonic minor, with heightened chromaticism and greater dynamic extremes. Still, when I listen to Schumann’s setting of the last lines of the poem, I do not hear a dispassionate description of the flower’s death and a mere quotation of its words; I hear a muted echo of the flower’s music from the previous section of the song. The music to “Es sank und starb und freut’ sich noch” (mm. 41–44) features parallel sixths between the outer voices (shown in Example 3.23 with the 6s between the staves); the melody outlines G–A– B♭–C on the downbeats of these measures, and the bass outlines B♭–C♯–D– E♭. This upward-striving linear intervallic pattern mirrors the many downward-drooping 10–10–10 linear intervallic patterns in the middle section of the song. (Notice the descending tenths between the outer voices on the words “Na-tur, ach, nur ein klei-nes” in mm. 24–25 and “bis mich das Liebchen,” as well as the descending tenths on “an dem Bu-sen matt ge-drückt” and “Ach nur, ach nur ein Vier-tel-stünd-chen lang.”) Then, as if to make the connection explicit, the song ends with a brief passage of descending tenths (see the outer voices on “durch sie, zu ih-ren” in mm. 48–49 of Example 3.23). These may seem like small connections, not so much meaningful relationships meant to be pondered as accidental similarities. But I hear these connections as deliberate, and as central to Schumann’s interpretation of Goethe’s poem. The violet’s words in the final stanza remind us of its words in the previous stanza, but they have been transformed so that they flow seamlessly from the shepherdess’s music. In the opening section of the

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song, shown in Example 3.24, Schumann places a half cadence at the end of line 3, corresponding with the period at the end of the line “Es war ein herzig’s Veilchen.” (This half cadence marks the end of – yet again – a compound antecedent, constructed of a smaller antecedent [mm. 1–4] followed by a continuation [mm. 5–8].) In the final section of the song, by contrast, she glides over the period at the end of the comparable line “Ertrat das arme Veilchen” (see the first measures of Example 3.23). This phrase ends on a I6 chord, and only an eighth rest (rather than a two-bar interlude) separates it from the phrase that follows. (Mozart also avoids a proper cadence at this point in his song, ending the phrase on a B diminishedseventh, but a fermata separates this phrase from the next one.) The continuity across the next two phrases is even stronger. Where Goethe sets off the violet’s words with a colon, Schumann uses no musical punctuation whatsoever (see mm. 44–45 of Example 3.23). One phrase ends with a V6/5 chord and the next begins with the same chord, the only difference being the addition of a dissonant D upper neighbor on “sterb’.” All throughout this chapter we have seen examples of Schumann creating continuity across successive phrases and sections of her songs with great expressive effect: blurring, undermining, and erasing cadences; constructing her themes out of multiple phrases that remain open-ended;

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Two Songs for Friends from 1846 Example 3.24 “Das Veilchen,” setting of first stanza

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responding to the flow of poetic syntax and thought as she thinks in broad musical arcs that subsume smaller arcs, just as poetic stanzas and subsume couplets and individual lines. “Das Veilchen” is no different. The fluidity and consistency of the final section of the song; the smoothness with which Schumann moves from a depiction of the carefree maiden to a depiction of the dying flower to a quotation of its words; the relative lack of tonal, textural, and dynamic contrast in her setting of the final stanza; the dimming (but not, I think, silencing) of the violet’s pain so that it is present but only faintly so, all of this has a powerful expressive effect. It allows the girl and the flower to merge into one, just as they do in the fateful act of Goethe’s poem.

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4

Songs with Opus Numbers

The three songs of the Liebesfrühling cycle that Clara Schumann created with Robert (her op. 12 and his op. 37), as well as the six songs of her op. 13 song collection, were the first song opuses she ever published. (Technically, the publication of her song “Am Strande” predates the publication of op. 12/37 – “Am Strande” appeared in July 1841 as a musical supplement to the Neue Zeitschfrift für Musik, and op. 12/37 was published in September of that year – but the former was not part of a song opus.) They thus occupy an important place in her compositional output. The Sechs Lieder aus Jucunde, op. 23, completed in 1853 and published three years later, are equally central to her oeuvre since they are her only other (and her last) public efforts in the genre. Together, these fifteen songs – the three of op. 12, the six of op. 13, and the six of op. 23 – represent the outward-facing side of Clara Schumann’s contributions to art song. These are the songs that were reviewed in the press;1 among them are the songs that she performed in her own concerts, as well as the songs that her fellow pianist-composer Franz Liszt transcribed for performance in his own concerts;2 and, not surprisingly, her songs with opus numbers are the ones that are most often performed, recorded, and written about today. Scholars have approached opp. 12, 13, and 23 from a variety of perspectives, considering how the songs of op. 12 came to be and how the entire Liebesfrühling cycle coheres,3 how opp. 12 and 23 engage with gendered ideas,4 how opp. 12 and 13 show Schumann renovating her compositional portfolio,5 and how individual songs from all three opuses reflect different aspects of her Lied aesthetic.6 My aims in this chapter are different. To be 1

2

3 4 5 6

Op. 12/37 was reviewed in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 44 (January 19, 1842): 61–62. Op. 13 was reviewed in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 17 (April 1844): 254–55, and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 20 (March 25, 1844): 97. Op. 23 appears never to have been reviewed. Liszt did piano transcriptions of three Clara Schumann songs: “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” op. 12, no. 3, “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” op. 13, no. 5, and “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” op. 23, no. 3. Liszt published the transcriptions in 1874 (S. 569). See Hallmark, “The Rückert Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann.” See Boyd, “Gendered Voices,” and Parton, “Speech and Silence.” See Stefaniak, Becoming Clara Schumann, 155–64. See Baker, “Multiply-Interrupted Structure”; Burstein, “Their Paths, Her Ways”; Wollenberg, “Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’”; Krebs, “A Way with Words”; Lewin, “Clara Schumann’s Setting of ‘Ich stand’”; Alexander Martin, “Dreamlike Ambiguities in Clara

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sure, I will consider how these songs showcase the three hallmarks of Schumann’s songwriting style that I outlined in Chapter 3 and engage with the work of the scholars who have written about this repertoire. Yet I am less interested in looking at each opus individually than in viewing the three opuses as a whole, hence my placing them in a single chapter. To put it simply, I am interested in what makes them sound different from the songs in the previous chapter. For all that Schumann’s published and unpublished songs sound like products of the same creative imagination, I have long felt that her published songs are less abstruse than her unpublished ones, slightly more conventional – in a word, more accessible. (Recall that the nineteenth-century reviews of op. 13, which I cited in Chapter 3, commented on this very accessibility, praising the clarity and “beautiful simplicity” of the songs. These reviewers viewed the outward simplicity of these songs as a virtue, not a shortcoming; I do, too, and I view the songs of opp. 12 and 23 similarly.) Throughout this book I have argued that Schumann’s songs eschew the kind of overt compositional complexity that, Marcia Citron reminds us, has too often been equated with quality, that rather than advertising their difficulty, their abstruseness, their oddity, and their distortion of norms, they strike a perfect balance between simplicity and subtlety. This is true of her songs as a whole, but it is especially true of the songs with opus numbers, and it is no truer than in their approach to large-scale form. Of the fifteen songs in opp. 12, 13, and 23, twelve are in strophic form, or a full 80 percent. Compare this with the twelve songs without opus numbers, only five of which (or a little over 40 percent) are in strophic form. My survey of these songs in Chapter 3 revealed a wider variety of forms, including some forms that are difficult to classify, forms that could well be called through-composed but that bear little similarities with each other aside from the fact that they are as novel as the poetic contexts they serve. A survey of the songs in this chapter, by contrast, reveals an overwhelming preference for the most straightforward of song forms. None of this is to suggest that the songs in this chapter are any less artful and sophisticated than the songs from the previous chapter. Quite the contrary, one of the arguments I will make about these songs with opus numbers is that though they use a commonplace form, they use it in novel ways; the ingenuity of these songs lies less in their overall plans than in the ways those plans are Schumann’s ‘Ihr Bildnis,’” presentation at the annual conference of the Society for Music Theory (November 6, 2021); Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Beyond Vierhebigkeit”; and Rodgers, “Softened, Smudged, Erased.”

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Strophic Forms

carried out. Experiencing these forms is like going on a journey that is at once predictable – simply laid out and easy to follow, like a well-marked hiking path – and also magical – with stunning scenery, images, and sounds so strikingly beautiful that they stop us in our tracks and make us marvel at each step along the way. This blend of the straightforward and the striking, the expected and the enchanted, is in part what makes Schumann’s published songs so satisfying to listen to and perform. And it may help to explain why she chose these songs, among the many she composed, to present to the world.

Strophic Forms What, then, are the specific strategies that Schumann uses to realize strophic form in these songs with opus numbers? Song form has not been theorized nearly as much as instrumental form, so we lack the rich terminology to account for the many ways that composers employ strophic form and the many text-expressive contexts in which they do so.7 Explorations of strophic song typically distinguish between two main types – simple and modified – but because many of those explorations remain at the level of the individual song rather than a larger body of songs from which generalizations may be made, the categorizing does not go much further.8 I have no ambition to offer anything like a theory of strophic song, an exhaustive series of categories and types that account

7

8

For a recent attempt to theorize strophic form, see Victoria Malawey’s article “Strophic Modification in Songs by Amy Beach,” Music Theory Online 20/4 (2014), which offers a model for analyzing song forms that resist easy classification, falling somewhere between strophic and through-composed. James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s concept of “rotational form” of course bears similarities with strophic song form, in that both involve the varied repetition of an initial formal section (see especially Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late Eighteenth-Century Sonata [New York: Oxford University Press, 2006], 611–14). And the theory of rotational form has been productively applied to the analysis of song form; see, for instance, Seth Monahan, “Negative Catharsis as Rotational Telos in Mahler’s First Kindertotenlied,” Intégral 28/29 (2014–15): 13–51. I do not engage with rotational form here, mainly because I have found that the concept is especially useful when looking at large-scale forms where an initial ordered succession of materials (say, a series of thematic modules) is reorganized, with new modules substituting for old modules, modules being reordered or removed, and so on. None of this kind of reorganization of modules tends to happen in Schumann’s strophic forms, which are on a smaller scale than the works typically approached from a rotational perspective. For a useful discussion of simple and modified strophic forms, see Stein and Spillman, Poetry into Song.

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for the variety of strategies nineteenth-century song composers use to realize this form. But I do hope that even by looking at Schumann’s small corpus of strophic songs, and by generalizing about her strategies, I can offer some heuristics that might be useful to others in their exploration of related repertoire. I have found it helpful to categorize Schumann’s strophic songs according to two criteria. First is the overall tonal scheme of the song. In half of the strophic songs from opp. 12, 13, and 23, each strophe ends on the tonic, in almost all cases with an authentic cadence. In these tonally closed strophic forms, as I will call them, each strophe feels rounded off. In the other half of the strophic forms from these opuses, each strophe but the last ends on something other than the tonic. In these tonally open strophic forms, each strophe opens outward to the next, sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly.9 The second criterion has to do with the presence and placement of strophic variation. In simple strophic forms – and there are four of these among the twelve strophic songs in this chapter – there is no meaningful variation whatsoever. But in modified strophic forms the variation can appear in different parts of the form. “Modified strophic form,” in other words, is a useful category but a broad one; dividing this category into smaller categories can help us gauge the expressive effects of different patterns of strophic variation. Where strophic modifications occur, they take one of two forms: terminal modification, in which only the final strophe is modified, or progressive modification, in which each strophe after the first is modified and the modifications become more elaborate as the song goes. All in all, of the twelve strophic songs in opp. 12, 13, and 23, four feature no modification (i.e., they are in simple strophic form), three feature terminal modification, and five feature progressive modification – the three types of modification are fairly evenly distributed across the three opuses. So are the two types of tonal schemes, since half of the songs use tonally open strophes and half use tonally closed strophes. Still, certain types cluster around certain opuses: in general, Schumann may not strongly prefer one type over another, but in specific song collections, she does, and the reasons appear to have everything to do with the nature of the texts she sets. 9

As we will see, the opening up of strophes sometimes results from the same sorts of undermined cadences I explored in Chapter 2. In two of the songs in these opuses – “Er ist gekommen im Sturm und Regen,” the first song of op. 12; and “Die stille Lotosblume,” the last song of op. 13 – even the final strophe ends on something other than the tonic. “Er ist gekommen” ends in a different key – on a tonic, in other words, but not the opening tonic – and “Die stille Lotosblume,” though it ends in the same key, closes on a dominant-seventh chord.

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Strophic Forms

Zwölf Gedichte aus F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling, op. 12 The three songs of Clara Schumann’s op. 12 have their origin in a joint compositional project that she undertook with her husband.10 Since as early as 1839, Robert had been taken with the idea of composing alongside Clara. The plans for a collaborative project began to crystallize when, in a single week in December of 1840, Robert set 9 poems from among the 400 poems in Friedrich Rückert’s Liebesfrühling (1844). Robert urged Clara to set some poems from the Liebesfrühling, so that they could create their own joint cycle, and he even went so far as to write out several poems that she might set to music. At the beginning of June 1841, she wrote in their marriage diary, “Composing just won’t work – I sometimes just want to hit myself on my silly head!” But we learn in the same entry that she has succeeded in composing four songs based on Rückert’s poems, which she plans to give to Robert. “I just hope that they please him a little,” she writes.11 Three of those four songs appeared in the couple’s collaborative op. 12/op. 37 song cycle, a copy of which Robert gave to Clara on her twenty-second birthday in September of 1841; they were the first three songs by Clara Schumann to appear in print. (The remaining song, “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” which I discussed in the previous chapter, did not appear in the cycle and was not published until 1992.) Clara Schumann’s three songs from op. 12/op. 37 cycle are all tonally open strophic forms, yet each song realizes that form in strikingly different ways. “Er ist gekommen” features terminal strophic modification. Its first two strophes are identical; each begins turbulently in the minor mode and then pivots to a more subdued passage in the relative major, before finding its way (via an emphatic half cadence) back to the tonic, and back to the opening turbulence. Its third strophe begins just like the first two, but the second half settles into an even more reflective major-mode realm, and never leaves. “Liebst du um Schönheit” and “Warum willst du and’re fragen” feature progressive modification, through varying degrees and types of modification. The four strophes of “Liebst du um Schönheit” alternate between different kinds of closure (strophes 1 and 3 end identically, and in a non-tonic key; strophe 2 ends with a weak and ambiguous cadence in the tonic, and strophe 4 ends with a PAC in the tonic), but that feeling of vacillation is counterbalanced by melodic and dynamic changes 10

11

For a summary of the context surrounding the origin and composition of this collaborative opus, see Hallmark, “The Rückert Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann.” Robert Schumann and Clara Schumann, Tagebücher, vol. 2, 67; translated by Draheim and Hoft in Schumann, Sämtliche Lieder, vol. 1, 60.

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that seem to pull back and push forward at the same time, as though the song were trying, only at first successfully, to keep its emotions in check. “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” on the other hand, bursts forth with emotion earlier than expected; it cannot keep its emotions in check. Two of its strophes end with emphatic cadences in the subdominant, as though spilling out of their expected tonal frame, and emotional and tonal equilibrium is restored only in the final phrase of the song. These songs may all be in modified strophic form, but their musical and emotional trajectories could hardly be more different – which is to say that the three songs of op. 12, like all of the strophic songs discussed in this chapter, are at once of a piece and one of a kind.

“Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen”: Terminal Modification and Directional Tonality This song, the second of the collaborative op. 12/37, is one of Schumann’s best-known and frequently recorded, not just because of its pride of place (being the first of her songs in her first song opus) but also because of its expressive power and heightened virtuosity. In Chapter 2, I wrote about Schumann’s piano accompaniments that are “surprisingly dialed-down, reserved, unvirtuosic, devoid of outward, immediately noticeable complexity,” and cited this song as an exception: its accompaniment is as technically difficult as the most virtuosic pieces from her youth. (Example 2.9, in Chapter 2, shows the piano introduction. The entire score to the song can be accessed via imslp.org.) The virtuosity has a text-expressive rationale: the torrent of pianistic activity vividly captures the torrent of storm and rain that surrounds the lovers, and the torrent of emotion that they experience. The song’s form, for all its outward simplicity, is equally expressive and carefully coordinated with the text. A bird’s-eye view suggests an AB–AB– AC structure, where each strophe is divided into two contrasting sections, the first in F minor and the second in A♭ major, and where the latter half of the final strophe varies what came before it.12 Already this description of the form – AB–AB–AC rather than merely A–A–A’ – adds a layer of detail,

12

James Deaville describes the form similarly: “The overall form reveals an inventive type of modified strophic form with a scheme A B A B A C, C being a distant version of B” (“The Lied at Mid Century,” 157). Melinda Boyd describes the form as a “bar form (AAB), framed by an introduction and postlude,” where what I am calling AB is a large A section and what I am calling AC is a large B section (“Gendered Voices,” 150).

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Strophic Forms

a special aspect of this particular realization of modified strophic form that is not found in all forms of this type: each strophe is split in two. It is easy enough to see why Schumann would have done this, not to mention why she would have chosen a modified strophic form in the first place. Rückert’s poem is highly repetitive, each stanza beginning with the same two lines, so a strophic form seems only natural. The division of each strophe in two also makes sense considering that each stanza contains two complete thoughts, separated by a period (four lines followed by three). So, too, does the change to the second half of the final strophe; at roughly the same moment in the final stanza (“My friend journeys on . . . ” [Der Freund zieht weiter . . .]) the poem shifts gears, moving from past tense to present and from questions to declarations. Er ist gekommen In Sturm und Regen, Ihm schlug beklommen Mein Herz entgegen. Wie konnt’ ich ahnen, Dass seine Bahnen Sich einen sollten meinen Wegen?

He came In storm and rain; My anxious heart Beat against his. How could I have known That his path Would be united with mine?

Er ist gekommen In Sturm und Regen, Er hat genommen Mein Herz verwegen. Nahm er das meine? Nahm ich das seine? Die beiden kamen sich entgegen.

He came In storm and rain; Boldly He took my heart. Did he take mine? Did I take his? Both drew nearer to each other.

Er ist gekommen In Sturm und Regen, Nun ist gekommen Des Frühlings Segen. Der Freund zieht weiter, Ich seh’ es heiter, Denn er bleibt mein auf allen Wegen.

He came In storm and rain; Now spring’s blessing Has come. My friend moves on, I watch cheerfully, For he will be mine wherever he goes.

But why use this degree of separation within each strophe? Why insert a two-bar interlude between the two halves of each strophe, modulate to the relative major, change from a forte to a piano dynamic, and shift to a legato e dolce piano texture? And why place the second half of each strophe in the relative major and, moreover, end the song in this key, so that it is not

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monotonal but directionally tonal.13 Melinda Boyd, in her perceptive discussion of the song and the cycle’s gendered dynamics, claims that the two keys suggest, respectively, the man’s action (as she notes, he generates all of the action in the poem and she is mainly an onlooker) and the woman’s reflection on the action; Boyd calls her reflection a “fantasy” and elsewhere an “illusion of reciprocity,” a belief “that the union of the two lovers may have been a mutual act.”14 The words “fantasy” and “illusion” are particularly apt. Listening to the song with these words in mind, I am struck by how the second half of strophes 1 and 2 feels not just more inward and reflective than the first half but also more ephemeral and immaterial, partly because it ends without a true cadence in A♭ major, substituting non-cadential closure for cadential closure.15 On the word “Wegen” in m. 15 we hear a V6/5–I progression, what William Caplin would call an instance of prolongational closure rather than cadential closure.16 Despite the differences in section C (mm. 24ff.), this noncadence in A♭ major returns at the comparable moment in the last strophe (m. 31, “denn er bleibt mein auf allen Wegen” [for he will be mine wherever he goes, or, literally, for he shall be mine on all paths]). The musical repetition is of course prompted by a poetic repetition: stanzas 1 and 3 end with the same word (“Wegen”), so Schumann ends strophes 1 and 3 with the same cadence. No matter the reason for the cadential repetition, however, its effect is equally important. The “reciprocity” that seemed illusory earlier in the song, in keeping with the questioning text, also seems illusory at this point in the final strophe. The words may sound more assured (“For he will be mine wherever he goes”), but the music does not – at least not initially. Schumann repeats the poem’s final line, transposing the entire mass 13

14

15

16

On the concept of directional tonality, see Harald Krebs, “Third Relation and Dominant in Late 18th- and Early 19th-Century Music,” unpublished PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1980, and “Alternatives to Monotonality in Early Nineteenth-Century Music,” Journal of Music Theory 25/1 (1981): 1–16; Deborah Stein, Hugo Wolf’s Lieder and Extensions of Tonality (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985); and Benjamin Wadsworth, “Directional Tonality in Schumann’s Early Works,” Music Theory Online 18/4 (2012). For James Deaville the two keys of F minor and A♭ major suggest (respectively) “the literal depiction of the storm to the emotional states of the man and woman” (“The Lied at Mid Century,” 157). In this sense, the modulation underlines the shift in each stanza between outward events and inward emotions (his emotions as well as hers). Harald Krebs notes that the declamation in the two sections also differs. “In bars 11–12,” he writes, “the elimination of the dotted rhythm rendres the vocal line less jagged. . . . The smoothing-out has a purely expressive purpose: it responds to the same emotional features of the tercet that inspired the changes in dynamics and key” (“A Way with Words,” 85). See Caplin, “Beyond the Classical Cadence,” 14–16.

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Strophic Forms

upward into D♭ major (mm. 32–33). Poundie Burstein rightly notes that this moment is the emotional climax of the song. For Burstein, it is significant that this high point occurs when the poetic speaker makes a declarative statement about her emotions (“he will be mine wherever he goes”), instead of “when the relationship is questioned” or “when the beloved is [first] mentioned”;17 this suggests that Schumann is highlighting the woman’s emotions above all, that (unlike settings of this poem by composers such as Robert Franz and Ferdinand Heller, which Burstein compares with Schumann’s setting) her song is about “a woman’s passion for a man” rather than “a woman’s passion for a man.”18 Schumann’s repetition of the last five lines of the poem makes the woman’s declaration seem even more assured. The repeated lines lead to the only PAC in the song, but it is a PAC in A♭ major, not F minor. A return to F minor – and to the storminess of the fateful encounter, with all its ambiguity – would make the promise of “reciprocity” seem especially illusory. But Schumann resists this return; instead, she fully realizes the previously illusory key of A♭ major and, in the process, suggests that the promise may likewise be realized. The last section of the song ends not by looping back to the past but by looking ahead to the future, with the surety born of tonal closure.

“Liebst du um Schönheit”: Successive Modification, Wavering, and Welling Up The fourth song of the op. 12/37 cycle – also one of Schumann’s most famous and oft-recorded – strikes a different tone from “Er ist gekommen”: subdued where the earlier song was turbulent. It also uses a different type of modified strophic form. Instead of concentrating the modifications in a final strophe, Schumann presents them successively. Yet here, too, it is the particularities and subtleties of this formal design that carry the most weight and show the depth of Schumann’s interpretation of the text. In Chapter 2 I discussed the first two phrases of this song, using them as an example of Schumann’s tendency to undermine musical closure: the first phrase (mm. 3–10) is a compound antecedent that substitutes a half cadence in the submediant for what might have been an IAC in the tonic; the second phrase (mm. 11–18) leads to a tonic IAC, finding the cadence that failed to materialize at the end of the antecedent, but follows this tonic chord with a dominant, thus equivocating between an IAC and a half 17

Burstein, “Their Paths, Her Ways,” 24.

18

Ibid.

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cadence. The first phrase swaps an expected cadence for an unexpected one; the second effectively sounds two different cadences at the same time. These two phrases function as two strophes in a modified strophic form. (Readers can access the score to the song at imslp.org.) As with “Er ist gekommen,” Schumann’s choice of strophic form makes perfect sense considering the structure of Rückert’s poem, which repeats and varies linguistic phrases just as the song repeats and varies musical ones. Susan Wollenberg puts it best when, in her rich analysis of the song, she writes that “this is absolutely the music for this poetic text, seemingly utterly wedded to it. . . . It seems as though it has been grafted on to this poem with total appropriateness and has thereby become united with it.”19 The first lines of each stanza begin with the words “Liebst du um,” and the second lines of stanzas 1, 2, and 3 are “O nicht mich liebe!” The third line of each stanza is likewise similar: each begins with the word “Liebe.” Liebst du um Schönheit, O nicht mich liebe! Liebe die Sonne, Sie trägt ein goldnes Haar.

If you love for beauty, Oh, do love not me! Love the sun, She has golden hair.

Liebst du um Jugend, O nicht mich liebe! Liebe den Frühling, Der jung ist jedes Jahr.

If you love for youth, Oh, do not love me! Love the spring That is young each year.

Liebst du um Schätze, O nicht mich liebe! Liebe die Meerfrau, Sie hat viel Perlen klar.

If you love for riches, Oh, do not love not me! Love the mermaid, She has many bright pearls.

Liebst du um Liebe, O ja, mich liebe! Liebe mich immer, Dich lieb’ ich immerdar.

If you love for love, Ah, yes, love me! Love me always, I will love you forever more.

Another composer might have chosen to vary only the final strophe, using a musical form that closely mirrors the poetic form, but Schumann

19

Wollenberg, “Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit,’” 125. Michael Baker also notes the appropriateness of strophic form: “Of particular significance is the repeated opening refrain of each stanza, which practically demands a strophic or modified strophic musical setting. Indeed, except for the proposed reason for love, the first two lines in each stanza are identical” (“Multiply-Interrupted Structure,” 216–17).

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Strophic Forms

introduces variations throughout the song. Tonally, the strophes alternate between different types of cadential endings: strophes 1 and 3 closing with a half cadence in the submediant, strophe 2 closing with the ambiguous tonic IAC/half cadence, and strophe 4 finally closing with a tonic PAC. This creates a feeling of vacillation.20 On the face of it, the poetic speaker’s words may sound declarative and assured (“Love the sun . . . Love the spring . . . Love the mermaid . . . ”), but Schumann’s music suggests that she does not really mean what she says. (Rufus Hallmark hears the speaker of this song as a woman who “sets ephemeral qualities – beauty, youth, wealth – against her pure, reciprocal love.”21 Melinda Boyd feels that the speaker’s gender is much more ambiguous, but ultimately concludes that Schumann “appears to transform the ‘implicit’ female of Rückert’s text into an explicit one.”22 I follow them both in viewing the speaker as female.) One can sense the speaker wavering momentarily after she utters her first declaration at the end of the first strophe (“Love the sun, / She has golden hair!” [Liebe die Sonne / Sie trägt ein goldnes Haar]), before regaining her composure and pressing onward to strophe 2; notice the ritardando in the last measure of this strophe, and the way the V/vi holds over the bar line leading into its final measure.23 Then, at the end of strophe 2, one can sense her trying to mask her hesitancy, and allowing it to peek through yet again; the melody leaps confidently to a high E♭, marked by a hairpin crescendo, but the IAC is immediately undercut by the half cadence that follows it. All of this vacillation and hesitancy makes the unwavering exuberance of the final cadence particularly powerful, and so unlike anything that precedes it. The final strophe is expanded to ten bars via text repetition, it ends at a forte dynamic, and its melody closes in a higher register, with no fewer than five repeated tonic notes – what Wollenberg calls “the most luxuriant prolongation, aptly enough on ‘immerdar!’,” a passage that “dispels the insecure mood” of the previous strophes.24 In an analysis of the song’s voice-leading structure, Michael Baker also comments on the dramatic changes in the 20

21 22 23

24

Susan Wollenberg proposes another possible reason for this alternation of cadences, and for the pairing of strophes 1 and 3, and 2 and 4: “Verses 1 and 3 refer to predominantly visual symbols of splendour (the golden sun, and the mermaid’s bright pearls) while the reference in verses 2 and 4 is to potentially human attributes (youth, albeit manifested recurrently in the case of the spring; and the human ability to love with constancy over time)” (“Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit,’” 134, n. 24). Hallmark, “The Rückert Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann,” 24. Boyd, “Gendered Voices,” 152. Wollenberg hears this slide onto V/vi as creating a moment of “inconstancy,” noting as well that how the non-tonic cadence is “corrected” in strophes 2 and 4 (“Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit,’” 134). Ibid., 135, 131.

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final strophe that underline the poetic speaker’s “emphatic acceptance of this fourth proposed reason for love,” not least that the song’s structural ^ melodic line finally descends to 1, albeit buried in the right hand of the piano.25 The fact that the “real” structural descent occurs in an inner voice is no accident. The singer’s “covering” voice overwhelms that descent; ornament trumps structure, making the cadence sound even more emphatic. Still, to say that this modified strophic song seesaws uncertainly before bursting forth excitedly is not quite right. Cadentially, this is true, but Schumann varies more than just the phrase endings; she also incorporates other modifications that counteract this seesawing tonal effect with a feeling of inexorable forward momentum. I am thinking above all of the slight but significant melodic changes to the line “O nicht mich liebe!,” where the pitch D♭ (the very D♭ of the final cadence) becomes ever more important, first appearing only on the word “o,” then as an eighth-note embellishment on the word “nicht,” and then as a quarter-note embellishment, before sounding at a forte dynamic on the climactic “O ja, mich liebe!” Wollenberg notes that these melodic changes “have psychological resonance” and are “made for more than merely variety or decoration.”26 This is true of other small variations as well, such as the long crescendo leading into the end of strophe 3 (mm. 24–26), which is absent from the comparable spot in strophe 1 (mm. 8–10), and the rising dynamics (piano throughout strophe 1, piano to mezzo forte in strophe 2, mezzo forte to the long crescendo in strophe 3, and forte in strophe 4).27 Together, these modifications to melody and dynamics give this novel realization of a commonplace form a powerful and paradoxical feeling of doing two different things at the same time: gradually revealing its true emotions even as it seeks to hide them, welling up even as it wavers.

“Warum willst du and’re fragen”: Successive Modification, Exuberance, and Tenderness If the poetic speaker in “Liebst du um Schönheit” only gradually reveals her innermost feelings, in the most complex strophic form of this cycle, 25 26 27

Baker, “Multiply-Interrupted Structure,” 221. Wollenberg, “Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit,’” 131. Harald Krebs also notes the gradual changes in declamation across the song, “a progression from regular to irregular declamation, combined with an acceleration of the declamatory pace” (“A Way with Words,” 82). These changes, he notes, “contribute significantly to the build-up to the climax” (83).

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Strophic Forms

“Warum willst du and’re fragen” (op. 12, no. 11), she reveals her feelings early and exuberantly. This poem is a plea from the speaker to her beloved to look only to her eyes for proof of her love, not to her actions, her words, or the words of other people. (As with the previous song, I follow both Hallmark and Boyd in hearing the speaker of this poem as implicitly female, in large part because, as Hallmark argues, the solo-voice songs in the cycle suggest a dialogue between the male speakers of Robert’s songs and the female speakers of Clara’s.28) The poem is structured similarly to “Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen” and “Liebst du um Schönheit”: it contains several repetitive stanzas (in this case, three), the last of which makes a sudden turn. In “Er ist gekommen” the turn is from the past to the present and from questions to declarations. In “Liebst du um Schönheit” it is from external objects of the beloved’s affection (the sun, the spring, the mermaid) to the poetic persona herself as an object of affection, and to another declaration (“Love me always, / I shall love you ever more!”). The turn in “Warum willst du and’re fragen” is similarly declarative. Having told her beloved to look into her eyes, in the final stanza she reveals what her eyes say. Warum willst du and’re fragen, Die’s nicht meinen treu mit dir? Glaube nicht, als was dir sagen Diese beiden Augen hier!

Why ask others, Who are not faithful to you? Only believe what these two eyes Here tell you!

Glaube nicht den fremden Leuten, Glaube nicht dem eignen Wahn; Nicht mein Tun auch sollst du deuten, Sondern sieh die Augen an!

Do not believe other people, Do not believe strange fancies; Nor should you interpret my actions, But instead look at my eyes!

Schweigt die Lippe deine Fragen, Oder zeugt sie gegen mich? Was auch meine Lippen sagen, Sieh mein Aug’, ich liebe dich!

Are my lips silent to your questions Or do they testify against me? Whatever my lips may say, Look into my eyes, I love you!

Yet again, Schumann’s choice of a modified strophic form seems only logical in light of the poem’s structure, not only because of the change in the final stanza but also because of the repetition of elements across all three stanzas (such as the phrase “Glaube nicht,” which appears at the start

28

See Hallmark, “The Rückert Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann,” 21; and Boyd, “Gendered Voices,” 154.

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of lines 3, 5, and 6, and the many references to eyes). But this particular manifestation of modified strophic form pushes even more against aspects of the poetic structure, and the result is a form that offers even more surprises. The crux of Schumann’s interpretation of the poem is her treatment of the final revelatory line: “ich liebe dich!” Instead of setting it emphatically, as an outburst of emotion, or tenderly, as a hushed confession, she does both: she states the final couplet twice, first as an impassioned plea that leads to an IAC in the “wrong” key (the subdominant) and then as a quiet expression of love that leads to a PAC in the tonic, but a PAC that is more hesitant than any other cadence in the song. (See imslp.org for the score to the song.) In setting the final lines twice, and in two different ways, Schumann composes an ending that is more ambivalent than Rückert’s. Her song ends with a proper cadence in the tonic, but because that cadence is so subdued, we are left with the sound of the subdominant cadence lingering in our ears. The song sounds finished but not fully resolved. What better way to suggest that the real resolution – the reciprocation of the speaker’s feelings – lies in the future, outside of the context of the song. Understanding how this final cadence works, and what it reveals about Schumann’s reading of the poem, requires placing it in the context of the entire song form. As I noted in Chapter 2, where I discussed the cadential logic of the song’s opening phrases, in the first eight measures of the vocal melody a compound antecedent ends on a non-cadential V6/5 chord (m. 12), and in the next eight measures a “failed” consequent ends on a half cadence in IV, where one would expect a PAC in I (m. 20). As with “Liebst du um Schönheit,” these eight-measure themes correspond with strophes, and there is one theme/ strophe for each stanza in the poem. In Chapter 3, I wrote that this subdominant half cadence, with its added seventh, its dynamic swell, and its stepwise rising melody, “feels like a surge of emotion.” The next cadence – a IAC in the subdominant in m. 32 – feels like an even greater surge. The rising melodic shape is similar to what we heard at the end of the previous strophes, yet there are some crucial differences. First, unlike in the subdominant half cadence, the piano’s melody and the singer’s melody climb upward to F. Second, we reach the loudest dynamic of the song, forte, followed by a crescendo, no less. Third, this is the first phrase since the piano introduction in which the left hand of the piano leaps at the moment of closure rather than moving by step, which gives even more weight to the cadential arrival.29 29

Alexander Stefaniak interprets this moment somewhat differently: “Each time the speaker asks the beloved to look into their eyes, Schumann moves the accompaniment into a higher, thinner

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Strophic Forms

This is of course the speaker’s declaration, so it makes sense that Schumann would give it rhetorical weight. But why not give it equal syntactical weight, with a tonic PAC?30 And why also place syntax and rhetoric out of alignment in the next phrase, a “correction” of sorts that closes with a syntactically strong PAC in A♭ major but one that is so rhetorically weakened? These bars repeat the declaration but with all the signs of energy loss, not the energy gain of the previous cadence: the melody descends by step where earlier it ascended; the dynamic decreases where it previously increased; and the piano accompaniment is full of non-chord tones and borrowed tones, signs of tentativeness, not forcefulness. It may help to imagine a counterfactual, to think about how the ending might have sounded in the hands of another composer. Picture a setting that ends with a rhetorically forceful tonic PAC, one that takes the place of the emphatic IAC in D♭ major; such a setting might sound too resolute. Or picture a setting that ends only with a subdued tonic PAC, and without the “wrong”key emotional outpouring in D♭; such a setting might sound too hesitant. By reading the line in two contrasting ways – first as a wellspring of desire that breaks beyond the home key, then as a gentle repetition that naturally finds its way home but does not quite dispel the D♭ reverberation – Schumann strikes a perfect balance between desire and fulfillment. Nominally, the form is resolved, but experientially, it seems to await a more complete resolution, a fully reciprocated “I love you” that lies just beyond the double bar.

Sechs Lieder, op. 13 As with so many of her pieces, the six songs of op. 13 – Clara Schumann’s first independently published opus of songs – originated as gifts she gave to Robert. No. 1 (“Ich stand in dunklen Träumen”) was a Christmas gift to him in 1840; nos. 2 and 3 (“Sie liebten sich beide” and “Liebeszauber”) were birthday presents in 1843; and nos. 5 and 6 (“Ich hab’ in deinem Auge” and “Die stille Lotosblume”) were birthday presents a year later. Among these six songs are four strophic songs. (The exceptions are “Ich stand in dunklen Träumen,” a three-part through-composed form, ABC, whose piano accompaniment I discussed in Chapter 2, and “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” a ternary form with an inventive handling of closure, which I also explored in Chapter 2.)

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tessitura, and she stalls the eighth-note arpeggios so that the piano’s rhythms shadow the vocalist’s. The lightening and sense of arrested motion lends each request a tone of intimacy and vulnerability” (Becoming Clara Schumann, 164). I draw this distinction between cadential syntax and rhetoric from Caplin, “The Classical Cadence,” 103–6.

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Like the strophic songs in op. 12, the strophic songs in this opus feature all three types of strophic modification – no modification, terminal modification, and successive modification – and they feature both closed and openended strophes (including one song, “Die stille Lotosblume,” which finishes with an open-ended strophe). For all the variety of these four strophic forms, however, they are united by some common maneuvers – or at least three of the four are. “Liebeszauber,” “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” and “Die stille Lotosblume” are each profoundly goal-directed. “Liebeszauber” caps off a successively modified strophic form with weighty coda that encompasses the entire final stanza and stands musically apart from the song just as the poetic speaker stands temporally apart from a beautiful scene he can only remember faintly. “Der Mond kommt still gegangen” concentrates its strophic modifications in a third and final strophe, introducing a note of pain when, in the last stanza, the speaker mentions the glowing windows of his beloved’s house, which he can only observe from afar. And the strophes of “Die stille Lotosblume” are successively varied in such a way, and to such a degree, that by the end the final strophe seems at once entirely new and vaguely familiar.

“Sie liebten sich beide”: Radical Simplicity “Sie liebten sich beide,” op. 13, no. 2, is the first of four simple strophic songs among Schumann’s songs with opus numbers; the others are “An einem lichten Morgen,” “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” and “O Lust, o Lust,” from op. 23. As such, “Sie liebten sich beide” features no modification in its second and final strophe, save some slightly different dynamic and expression markings. And because the second strophe ends with a PAC in the tonic, so does the first strophe – this is thus a tonally closed strophic form. (The score is accessible via imslp.org.) None of this is to suggest, however, that the form of this song is elementary, simplistic, or unresponsive to the nuances of the Heine poem on which it is based. “Simple” is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, the form is straightforward in its broadest outlines, in that the second half duplicates the first (even the piano introduction returns as an interlude between the strophes; thus, the only truly new material in the second half of the song is the piano postlude). But Schumann is clearly alive to the nuances of this poem about two people who refuse to admit their love to one another.31 31

Susan Youens interprets the poem metaphorically, interpreting the two lovers as “the Romantic Muse and the post-Romantic poet, who loved one another passionately but refused to admit it,

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Strophic Forms

Sie liebten sich beide, doch keiner Wollt’ es dem andern gestehn; Sie sahen sich an so feindlich, Und wollten vor Liebe vergehn. Sie trennten sich endlich und sah’n sich Nur noch zuweilen im Traum; Sie waren längst gestorben Und wußten es selber kaum.

They loved one another, but neither Wanted to admit it to the other; They looked at each other with such enmity, Yet nearly died of love. Finally they parted and saw Each other only rarely in dreams; They died long ago And hardly knew it themselves.

The music responds in subtle ways to the details of both stanzas, not just the first. Harald Krebs has pointed out that the vocal rhythm expressively distorts the poetic rhythm: the quarter-note rest before “doch keiner,” for example, makes the setting of the opening line sound hesitant, and responds to the comma in the middle of the line.32 There is no comma in the first line of the second stanza, but here, too, the rest in the middle of the phrase is significant: it falls right after the words “sie trennten sich endlich” (finally they parted), so that the melody is as “getrennt” (separated) as the lovers themselves. The fact that the melody so often hovers around a low D–E♭ and a high D–E♭ is also expressive; Poundie Burstein writes that “the drone-like repetition” of these pitches “helps to create an almost claustrophobic sense of despair.”33 Finally, Schumann’s elongation of the second syllable of “ge-stehn” (at the end of line 2) is also a brilliant touch; of this moment Youens writes, “The way in which Clara hangs the final syllable of the phrase . . . in mid-air and sustains it, while the piano completes the descent to a cadence establishing the tragic dearth of understanding, is so economical, so devoid of the sentimentality prevalent in other settings of this poem, that one marvels.”34 The elongation does double duty: it appears in the second strophe on the word “Traum,” dwelling on this note just as the lovers dwell upon each other’s dream images.

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and hence were condemned to death of the soul and separation.” “To make a poem out of this central problem in Heine’s existence,” she continues, “he concocted a tiny scenario in which two people who love one another passionately nevertheless deny their love, for unknowable reasons” (Heinrich Heine and the Lied, 267). Krebs, “The Influence of Clara Schumann’s Lieder on Declamation in Robert Schumann’s Late Songs,” SMT-V: Videocast Journal of the Society for Music Theory 2.1 (2016). Burstein, “Their Paths, Her Ways,” 13. 34 Youens, Heinrich Heine and the Lied, 268.

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Clara Schumann aficionados may know that the simple strophic version of this song is not the only version she wrote. On June 8, 1842, Clara gave Robert two songs as a thirty-second birthday present, and one of those songs was a modified-strophic version of this song.35 (The other song she gave him was “Liebeszauber,” which I discuss in the next section.) In the original setting of “Sie liebten sich beide,” the last phrase of the second strophe differs from the last phrase of the first: rather than duplicating the upward soaring melody from the comparable moment earlier in the song, ^ Schumann writes a melody that remains anchored to 1, and anchored to the piano’s right hand. (Example 4.1 shows the final phrase of the original version.) To those familiar with the published version of the song, the original ending may sound unorthodox, but in many ways, it is actually a more intuitive setting of the poem than the revision. The final couplet of the poem is a typically Heine-esque Stimmungsbrechung (or “break in the mood”): the poem could have ended with love confessed, but instead it ends with love extinguished – indeed, with lovers extinguished. Its final lines are surprising but also deflating, a whimper where one expects a bang. The original version of the song captures this sense of deflation with a melody that lacks the energy to move above the tonic pitch, with a tune that flatlines like the lovers themselves.36 On further inspection, it is the more familiar ending of the published version that seems counterintuitive, for it sings where the poem sputters. Yet I see this music-text dissonance as a strength, not a weakness, a sign of Schumann’s powerful interpretive voice, her willingness to read against the grain of a poem for expressive purposes. The upward-arcing melody at the end of the first strophe, reaching up to a high E♭ where the melody of the previous two measures hovered, drone-like, an octave lower, underlined the contrast between how the lovers act and how they feel – outward hostility gave way to inner ardor; retrained, speech-like melody gave way to song. But the musical shift from speech-like austerity to songful passion in the second strophe does not line up so neatly with a comparable poetic shift. The tone of the last two lines – “Sie waren längst gestorben / Und wußten es selber kaum” (They died long ago / And hardly knew it themselves) – is uniformly dour, the ideas uniformly negative (death/loss of life in the penultimate line, lack of understanding in the last line). 35 36

This version is published in Schumann, Sämtliche Lieder, vol. 2, 32–33. Poundie Burstein has described the melody of the published version as “bitterly static” because it keeps returning to an E♭–D motive at the top of the staff (“Their Paths, Her Ways,” 13). The original version may not return to this motive, but in many ways it is even more static because it hovers for so long on the tonic pitch.

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Strophic Forms Example 4.1 “Sie liebten sich beide,” final phrase of original version

This makes the re-emergence of song, in the measures before the PAC, sound dissonant with the last lines of the poem. How this music-text dissonance shapes one’s understanding of the final couplet is open to debate. Sometimes I hear the restatement of the arcing cadential melody as an indication that each lover must have sensed what the other was feeling, that their inner songs could not have gone completely unnoticed. More often, though, I hear this melody as a symbol of the very love that did go unnoticed and that perished with them; in this sense, the measures leading into the cadence do not so much resist the reality of the situation as remind us of it – they are like an afterimage. What is much clearer is how

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the exact repetition of the cadential melody shapes one’s understanding of the entire poem. This is a text about a lack of development, a static situation. The sting of Heine’s poem is that the lovers never know, and die without knowing. The marvel of Schumann’s musically “simple” but emotionally complex strophic form is that she finds the perfect musical metaphor for that tragically unchanging state.

“Liebeszauber”: Successive Modification and a Pivotal “Coda” The third song of op. 13 – which happens to be the other song that Clara gave Robert for his thirty-third birthday – is far more expansive than “Sie liebten sich beide,” with four progressively varied strophes, the first three of which are tonally open-ended. (The score can be accessed via imslp.org.) If there is a song that is the formal twin to “Liebeszauber,” it is not the previous song in the cycle, nor, indeed, any song in this cycle, but rather a song from another cycle: op. 12. “Liebst du um Schönheit” has the same number of progressively modified, tonally open strophes, and even features the same “wrong”-key half cadence at the end of strophe 2 (V/vi). Even here, though, the formal differences are just as striking – proof, yet again, that what really defines each song is not its membership in a larger category (ternary form, strophic form, through-composed) but the novel way Schumann treats that form. What makes “Liebeszauber” stand formally apart from “Liebst du um Schönheit” and from any other song in this chapter is that Schumann sets the poem’s final stanza as a separate, contrasting section. From a formfunctional perspective, this final section acts as a kind of coda, in that it comes after the structural tonic cadence in m. 39 – a cadence that, as Alexaner Stefaniak has noted, is so emphatic that “a listener unfamiliar with Geibel’s text might assume that the song has concluded.” But the term “coda” – if we think of coda as a section that frames a piece and reinforces the home key, a section that comes “after the end,” so to speak – does not fully capture the effect of the part of the song. This “coda” does not really feel like a section that frames the song and lies at its outer extremity; it feels like a section that shapes what the entire song means. Though it comes at the end, it seems, paradoxically, to lie at its heart. From a strictly numerical point of view, it lasts as many measures as the previous strophe (thirteen); from an experiential point of view, it lasts even longer since the tempo marking at the start of the final strophe is langsamer (slower). In the “coda,” the vocal melody also descends by step to the PAC, rather than ascending,

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Strophic Forms

as it did at the end of the third strophe; the PAC at the end of the song therefore feels more grounded, more truly final, than the earlier PAC. The “coda” is, of course, texted, and the effect of the poem’s final stanza is similar to the effect of the song’s final section. In Emanuel Geibel’s poem, a song of love, sung by a nightingale, floats over a forest, suffusing the entire scene with its magical sound. Die Liebe saß als Nachtigall Im Rosenbusch und sang; Es flog der wundersüße Schall Den grünen Wald entlang.

Love sat as a nightingale In the rosebush and sang; The wonderfully sweet sound floated Along the green forest.

Und wie er klang, da stieg im Kreis Aus tausend Kelchen Duft, Und alle Wipfel rauschten leis’, Und leiser ging die Luft;

And as it sounded, there arose a perfume From a thousand blossoms, And all the treetops rustled quietly, And the breeze moved quieter still;

Die Bäche schwiegen, die noch kaum Geplätschert von den Höh’n, Die Rehlein standen wie im Traum Und lauschten dem Getön.

The brooks fell silent, which had only Just been splashing from the heights, The deer stood as if in a dream And listened to the sound.

Und hell und immer heller floß Der Sonne Glanz herein, Um Blumen, Wald und Schlucht ergoß Sich goldig roter Schein.

And bright and ever brighter The sunshine streamed down On the flowers, forest, and ravine Its golden red glow.

Ich aber zog den Wald entlang Und hörte auch den Schall. Ach! was seit jener Stund’ ich sang, War nur sein Widerhall.

But I walked along the path And also heard the sound. Ah! all that I have sung since that hour Was only its echo.

The last stanza stands apart from the rest of the poem, just as the poetic speaker stands apart from the scene. The previous four stanzas describe the scene itself and the many things that give it life: the crooning nightingale, the thousand flowers whose scent wafts through the air, the rustling tree, the quiet brooks, the fawns that listen expectantly to the nightingale’s song, and the sun that bathes the entire scene in a warm glow. These stanzas feel conjoined, flowing from one to the next and accumulating energy as the “Blumen, Wald und Schlucht” (flowers, forest, and ravine) seem to turn their ears to the nightingale’s amorous song. Stanzas 2 and 4 begin with the conjunction “und,” as though the sounds and images were flowing so fast that the language can barely keep up. (“Und,” in fact, appears at the start of

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six lines in the poem, not just the first lines of stanzas.) Stanza 3 starts differently (“Die Bäche schweigen”), but it comes after a stanza that ends not with a period but with a semi-colon, and with two “und” lines to boot (“Und alle Wipfel rauschten leis’, / Und leiser ging die Luft;”). In Chapter 2, I briefly discussed the phrase structure of the song’s opening strophe (a compound antecedent structured as a compound basic idea + continuation) and noted that by ending each strophe with a half cadence, Schumann finds a musical metaphor for the syntactical continuity of the poem’s stanzas. The first four strophes, like the four stanzas they set, are a cascade. The cascade, however, comes to a halt in stanza 5. The “lyric I” appears for the first time, followed, notably, by “but” not “and,” a negation not a continuation – and the perspective suddenly shifts. The poetic speaker, rather than the elements of the natural world around him, becomes the actor – after three stanzas in which nightingales sing, scents rise, treetops rustle, brooks grow quiet, fawns listen, and the sun shines, we hear a stanza where he walks, he hears, he sings. Yet the final stanza, for all that it stands apart, is no mere appendage; it is the emotional core of the poem, for it encapsulates the poem’s central predicament, the characteristically Romantic state of existing within nature but also apart from it, like Goethe’s wanderer who, in “Wandrers Nachtlied II,” longs to experience the peace that he senses in the natural world, with its trees that rustle with “barely a breath” as sleeping birds nestle within them. Schumann’s particular realization of modified strophic form mirrors the expressive arc of the poem so perfectly that it is hard to imagine the text could be set in another way. But other composers have taken different tacks, and their approaches set in relief the simplicity and novelty of Schumann’s approach. Take Richard Strauss’s youthful setting of the poem, entitled “Waldesgesang,” which he wrote in 1879, when he was only fifteen. It has five sections, like Schumann’s song, but in this case only the final section duplicates earlier material, returning to the music of the first strophe. The last word of Geibel’s poem is “Widerhall,” which means echo or reverberation. “All that I’ve sung since that hour,” the poetic speaker says, “was only its echo” (Ach! was seit jener Stund’ ich sang, / War nur sein Widerhall). Technically, the final section is not really an echo of the first section because there is no distortion of the initial music, no sense that the earlier material is reverberating across a distance; the fidelity of the repetition is too high for it to be considered a true Widerhall.37 In Schumann’s setting, however, only 37

Another setting by the little-known composer Marie von Kehler, who published nine opuses of Lieder in the 1880s and 1890s, treats the final strophe of Geibel’s poem to music that differs

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Strophic Forms

a fragment of the music from the opening section returns in veiled form. On the crucial words “Ach! was seit jener Stund’ ich sang” the vocalist sings the notes G–C–B♮, and the piano slides onto a G-major chord, echoing the same melodic and tonal maneuver from the end of strophe 2 (on the words “und leiser ging die Luft,” in mm. 15–16). Geibel’s poem reminds us that memories can be triggered and contained by sounds as much as by sights. Anyone who has heard or sung a song and been transported immediately back to a particular place and time will know the power of sound to trigger memories, and Geibel’s poem makes this connection between sound and memory, between resonance and recollection, powerfully clear. So does Schumann’s song, with this recollection that is like a sound that has traveled across a wide expanse, ricocheted off a distant surface, and come back as a ghost of its former self.

“Der Mond kommt still gegangen”: Terminal Modification and Submilated Tension The structure of “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” also by Geibel, is remarkably similar to that of “Liebeszauber.” The poem begins with descriptions of the outer world – in this case, of the moon that rises in the sky and casts its glow upon those who sleep, while breezes flow gently above them – and turns toward the painful thoughts of the poetic persona at the end. (Klassen also notes the connection between these two poems, with their “contrast between whispering idylls and world weariness.”)38 The last stanza of “Der Mond kommt still gegangen” narrows the focus to a particular sleeper, the poetic speaker’s beloved who rests in a house in the valley, and then contrasts her coziness with the speaker’s isolation. Der Mond kommt still gegangen Mit seinem gold’nen Schein. Da schläft in holdem Prangen Die müde Erde ein.

The moon rises quietly With its golden glow. There in beautiful splendor The weary earth falls asleep.

Und auf den Lüften schwanken Aus manchem treuen Sinn Viel tausend Liebesgedanken Über die Schläfer hin.

And upon the breezes waft From many faithful minds Many thousand thoughts of love Over those who sleep.

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from earlier sections of the song, but because Kehler sets each strophe to different musical material, the music to the final strophe does not sound any different from anything else. Klassen, Clara Schumann, 225.

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Und drunten im Tale, da funkeln Die Fenster von Liebchens Haus; Ich aber blicke im Dunklen Still in die Welt hinaus.

And down in the valley, there glisten The windows my beloved’s house; But I in darkness gaze Quietly out into the world.

The difference, however, is that the turn toward the “lyric I” happens not in the final stanza that is separated, emotionally, syntactically, and spatially from the rest of the poem, but instead in the final couplet that belongs to the poem’s final stanza. The turn in “Liebeszauber” is more drastic than in “Der Mond kommt still gegangen.” The previous poem veers unexpectedly onto a different road, after having seemingly come to a stop; this poem merely slows and then takes a slight left turn. This song, the fourth of op. 13, does likewise. (Readers can find the score on imslp.org.) Instead of separating the crucial final lines from what precedes them – for example, placing a PAC after the second line of the last stanza and appending a “coda,” like the kind we saw in “Liebeszauber” – Schumann merely varies them and heightens their intensity. The first two strophes are identical, but the last is modified, and the modification comes precisely when we hear reference to the beloved. On the words “Liebchens Haus” (beloved’s house) the melody leaps to its high point (F5). The dynamic also swells to forte, and, as Harald Krebs notes, the declamation changes: the first syllables of “drunten,” “Liebchen,” and “aber” are elongated, the most noticeable of these being the stress on “Lieb-chen,” where for the first time in the song a single stressed syllable occupies a full measure.39 Finally, we hear a tonicized submediant chord; this happened earlier in the song (on “da schläft in holdem Prangen” in the first strophe and “viel tausend Liebesgedanken” in the second strophe), but now it happens a measure earlier and with greater force. In a wonderful analysis of the formal ambiguities of this song, Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers notes how truly surprising this moment of heightened intensity is, for it appears on words that “could well have portended happiness.”40 The word “aber” (but), she points out, is the “verbal clue” that “negates” this happiness, but it comes a line after Schumann’s intensified high point. By twisting the knife on the word “Liebchens,” Schumann “sounds the protagonist’s plight before it is worded”;41 the sight of the beloved causes a sharp sting of pain that he only verbalizes later. Even more surprising, when he finally verbalizes it – in the line “ich aber blicke im Dunkeln still in die Welt hinaus” (But I in 39 41

Krebs, “A Way with Words,” 87. Ibid.

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Pedneault-Deslauriers, “Beyond Vierhebigkeit,” 59.

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darkness gaze quietly out into the world) – the music relaxes: the tempo slows, the dynamics decrease, and the melody falls in stepwise fashion. On first hearing, it may seem strange that Schumann dials down the tension here, precisely when the poetic speaker expresses his feelings of separation and loneliness; it may even seem that Schumann responds more to the formal demands of the song than to the expressive demands of the poem. Yet the lowering of the temperature has a deliberate expressive effect: as Schumann reads the poem, in these final lines the speaker is trying to calm down. This is how Harald Krebs interprets the song’s ending. He writes that the narrator “attempts to restore his inner equilibrium,”42 a change reflected in the return to a normative declamatory pattern after the elongated syllables in the previous lines (“drun-ten” and, crucially, “Lieb-chens”). The word “attempts” is key, for the final measures leading into the cadence do not so much release tension as dampen it. Release implies letting go, sending something away from you – think of an exhalation of breath. This passage sounds more like a sublimation of the tension, a transformation of it into something quieter but no less present. First of all, the measures leading into the cadence do not dispel the chromaticism of the high point; they just turn from sharp side chromaticism (the A♮s in the climactic V7/vi in m. 23) to flat side chromaticism (the C♭s in mm. 25–26). Moreover, they add embellishing tones that disturb otherwise triadic sonorities – like the G♭/C tritone between the bass note and the melody on the word “a-ber” on the downbeat of m. 25, all the more striking for being so exposed; or the clash on the next eighth note, where the thumb of the left and right hands play a poignant C/D♭ semitone. These dissonances do not rend the song apart and radically distort formal and tonal conventions. But their subtlety is the true source of their expressive power, for they create the impression of someone whose feelings fold inward, retreating into a private, hidden space but not vanishing entirely. This makes the touches of chromaticism in the song’s postlude all the more poignant. The B♭♭s, in light of everything that precedes them, are not just darker hues that conjure an image of twilight; they are reminders of the poetic persona’s pain, which persists even as he tries to dispel it; enharmonic equivalents of the A♮ in the climactic V/vi, which dissipate but do not disappear.

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Krebs, “A Way with Words,” 88.

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“Die stille Lotosblume”: Successive Modification and Formal Transformation Thus far we’ve seen that individual strophic songs can differ radically not only in the type but also the degree of strophic modification they employ. The final song of op. 13, the remarkable “Die stille Lotosblume,” takes modification to the extreme. (See imslp.org for the score to the song.) Schumann varies the music to the poem’s last two stanzas to such a degree that the second half of the song sounds less like a variation and more like a transformation, a turn in an entirely new direction. This transformation happens gradually, unfolding in stages, as the strophes flow from one to the next with the kind of “longbreathed continuity” that I described in my brief analysis of the song’s opening theme in Chapter 2. Yet, as much as the song seems to head into a different realm, it also ends as it began: the prolongation of V7 in mm. 1–2 appears in the final two measures, so that the song closes in a state of suspended animation. The result is a form that seems to veer into unfamiliar territory and also to return to where it started.43 My understanding of the song’s large-scale form owes a great debt to Janet Schmalfeldt’s lovely analysis in her book In the Process of Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music.44 Schmalfeldt discusses the song in the context of early Romantic pieces that evoke, and at times complicate, the idea of “coming home.” Schmalfeldt sees the song’s dominant-seventh ending as the musical equivalent of the ambiguity of the poem’s final lines. Emanuel Geibel’s text describes a lotus flower that blooms in the middle of a lake and is filled with the moon’s glow. A swan enters the scene and longs to commune with the flower as the moon does; the swan swims around the flower, singing to it, but we are left wondering whether the flower grasps the meaning of the song. Indeed, it is not even clear who is speaking in the final couplet – “Oh flower, white flower, can you fathom the song?” Are these the words of the flower, speaking to itself, or are they words of an outside narrator? Die stille Lotosblume Steigt aus dem blauen See,

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44

The quiet lotus flower Rises out of the blue lake,

In his essay on Romantic form The Cambridge Companion to Music and Romanticism, Steven Vande Moortele relates the open-endedness of the song’s ending to the open-endedness of its strophes (and, further, to the concept of the Romantic fragment): “In the same way that the dominant at the end never resolves to a tonic chord, the entire song consists of a series of antecedents that are never answered by a parallel consequent – or even a concluding authentic cadence” (“Romantic Forms,” 268). Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming, 240–44.

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Strophic Forms Die Blätter flimmern und blitzen, Der Kelch ist weiß wie Schnee.

Its leaves glitter and glisten, Its cup is as white as snow.

Da gießt der Mond vom Himmel All seinen gold’nen Schein, Gießt alle seine Strahlen In ihren Schoß hinein.

The moon pours from heaven All its golden light, Pours all its rays Into the flower’s bosom.

Im Wasser um die Blume Kreiset ein weißer Schwan, Er singt so süß, so leise Und schaut die Blume an.

In the water, around the flower, A white swan circles, It sings so sweetly, so quietly, And looks at the flower.

Er singt so süß, so leise Und will im Singen vergehn. O Blume, weiße Blume, Kannst du das Lied verstehn?

It sings so sweetly, so quietly, And wants to die as it sings. Oh flower, white flower, Can you understand the song?

Schmalfeldt writes about the poem’s final lines and the song’s final bars in a way that beautifully captures their feeling of return without resolution: Like the swan who circles round and round the flower, singing for all his life but going nowhere, Clara’s song ends by coming full circle, by floating back to where it began. There can be no homecoming here, no resolution, because the poem itself ends midstream: we will never know whether the lotus blossom succumbs to the swan or remains indifferent to him.45

Yet it is actually another one of her claims that I find most insightful, and most indicative of the originality of Schumann’s setting: the song starts as a strophic form and “becomes” something else, a kind of bar form (A–A’–B).46 According to her reading, Schumann sets each stanza as a strophe, but the third strophe (starting in m. 22) changes so much as to become a large B section, which stretches all the way to the end of the song. Schmalfeldt mentions some of the musical details that contribute to this feeling of “becoming,” this sensation that the last part of the song is transformed into something wholly different from the first half: there is the insertion of a piano interlude between the second and third strophes (mm. 18–21), the turn toward C♭ major for the swan’s song (mm. 30–33), and the fusion of the last two stanzas into one large section. She also points out that the material of the crucial interlude, 45

46

Ibid., 244. Klassen makes a similar claim about the open-ended conclusion of her song, writing that the song ends on a “quiet, unsettling echo of an impossible communication of love” (Clara Schumann, 226). Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming, 241.

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the music that first suggests that something other than a modified strophic form may be afoot, “becomes pervasive” from the moment the swan starts singing (in m. 30) until the end of the song; the interlude – which is based upon the two-bar piano introduction – is the glue that holds together the final measures of the song.47 Still, I hear the form somewhat differently, albeit with the same idea that it gradually transforms into something “new.” I hear three strophes that are similar enough to be given the same letter name (A–A’–A’’). The swan’s section (mm. 22ff., section A’’) may plunge into a distant key, but it starts exactly like the previous strophes, and it ends with a measure of piano that is identical to the first measure of the interlude between strophes 1 and 2 (compare mm. 18 and 35). If any section of the song warrants a different letter name, it is the last section (mm. 36ff.), Schumann’s setting of the final couplet of the poem: “O Blume, weiße Blume, / Kannst du das Lied verstehn?” (Oh flower, white flower, / Can you understand the song?). Here, once more, is an example of Schumann reading against the grain of a poem’s stanzaic divisions. Musically speaking, the first two lines of the final stanza – “Er singt so süß, so leise / Und will im Singen vergehn” – belong more to the previous stanza, which ends with similar lines – “Er singt so süß, so leise / Und schaut die Blume an.” Schumann conjoins these two couplets by repeating the C♭ major harmony across the stanza division, and she divides the final stanza in half with a two-bar piano interlude. The result is that the two related couplets, starting with “Er singt so süß, so leise,” are conceptually joined, and the final couplet, stating the swan’s all-important question, is conceptually separate. The melodic contour of the final section differs from that of the previous sections, as does the underlying harmonic progression, which essentially prolongs a dominant that never resolves. Even here, though, several elements in this final section are reminiscent of what precedes them, and not just the presence of the interlude material at the very end of the song. Notice, for example, that the rising melodic gesture at the end of the interlude – E♭–F–G–A♭–(C)–B♭, in mm. 20–21, with a leap up to a C appoggiatura – is echoed in the vocal melody on the words “du das Lied verstehn” in mm. 38–39: the notes are nearly the same, except that the rising motion stalls on an emphatic chromatic B♭♭. The B♭♭. is itself reminiscent of the opening of strophes 1, 2, and 3, where the pitch appears in the piano only two measures into each strophe. Finally, the chords on “er singt so süß, so leise und schaut die Blume an” (it sings so 47

Steven Vande Moortele also comments on the fact that the song begins as a strophic form but then “completely abandons the strophic plan” (“Romantic Forms,” 267).

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Strophic Forms

sweetly, so quietly, and looks at the flower) are sequential, and they outline a descending stepwise pattern in the bass (E♭–G♭–D♭–F♭–C♭ across mm. 26–29). The last four bars of the vocal melody also use a descending sequence; the sequence may be different (with the bass moving by falling fifth instead of by ascending third and then falling fourth), but a stepwise bass descent is present all the same (A♭–D♭–G–C–F–B♭–E♭ across mm. 40–43). Both passages occur with lines about the swan’s singing: “It sings so sweetly, so quietly, and looks at the flower” and “Oh flower, white flower, can you understand the song?” Schumann’s decision to set these lines to similar music makes it clear that in the final lines it is the swan who is speaking, rather than an omniscient narrator – the swan’s music is attached not just to its song but also to its words: “O flower, white flower, can you understand the song?” Even more, for me at least, the strange combination of sameness and difference in this final section makes the swan’s song sound enchanting and mysterious – I recognize it as something familiar, but it also is hard to place. It is both alluring and unfathomable – which is perhaps how it sounds to the silent lotus flower as well.

Sechs Lieder aus Jucunde, op. 23 I turn now to Schumann’s final song opus – the opus that filled her with such joy when she had the rare opportunity to immerse herself again (and for one of the last times) into composition in 1853. The six songs of op. 23 have received less scholarly attention than the songs from her other opuses. I suspect that part of the reason is that many of these songs give an overall impression of being simpler and lighter than the songs of opp. 12 and 13. Formally, the songs are certainly simpler than the songs of Schumann’s two previous opuses. Five of the six songs are in strophic form; three of those five are in simple strophic form; and of the two modified strophic forms in the set, one of them makes only minor changes at the end of the final strophe. (The only non-strophic song in the cycle song 5, “Da ist ein Tag, der klingen mag,” is in through-composed form.) The simplicity of the song forms has a text-expressive rationale. Schumann’s decisions about where and whether to include any strophic modification in the op. 23 songs has to do with a unique feature of Rollett’s poems – namely, that although the sounds of the natural world are present throughout, in only two of the six poems does nature utter words: song 1, “Was weinst du, Blümlein,” where the poetic speaker actually has a conversation with a little flower and the morning sun, and song 4, “Auf einem grünen Hügel,” where the poetic speaker imagines that a little bird is

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not only singing a melody but also uttering words. To put it plainly, the moments when strophes are varied correspond to the moments when nature speaks. I would not have noticed this connection had I not read a wonderful article by Christopher Parton, in which he discusses Schumann’s floralthemed songs.48 Writing not just about songs from op. 23 but also about “Die stille Lotosblume” and “Das Veilchen,” Parton makes a useful distinction between those Schumann songs in which flowers are silent and those in which they “break their silences to speak directly to their observers.” There are plenty of other songs from the collection in which nature makes sounds that the poetic persona hears: in song 2, “An einem lichten Morgen,” “the valley resounds brightly”; in song 3, “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” the poetic persona listens to the “secret whisperings” of nature; in song 5, “Da ist ein Tag, der klingen mag,” several birds sing: a quail, a lark, and a nightingale; and in song 6, “O Lust, o Lust,” only the poetic persona sings, bellowing his song from the mountains to the valleys. But only in “Was weinst du, Blümlein” and “Auf einem grünen Hügel” is nature given words. Put another way, in all of the other songs from the cycle, there is unity of poetic utterance; in these poems, the only speaker is the poetic speaker. They are monologues, but “Was weinst du, Blümlein” and “Auf einem grünen Hügel” are, at least in part, dialogues, and Schumann’s modified strophic forms bring those conversations to life.49

“Was weinst du, Blümlein”: Successive Modification and the (Misheard) Voices of Nature In the first stanza of this poem, Jucunde asks a flower why it is weeping, and the flower speaks in response, saying that its tears are not tears of sorrow but tears of joy. In the second and third stanzas, two other elements from the natural world speak: first, the little brook, who says it flows not with 48 49

Parton, “Speech and Silence.” It is not entirely clear why Schumann chose not to set “Das ist ein Tag, der klingen mag” in strophic form. It makes sense that she would have avoided a modified strophic form, for the reasons I already explained (nature may make sounds in this song, but it does not speak, as it does in the two varied strophic settings, “Was weinst du, Blümlein” and “Auf einem grünen Hügel”). It may be that she felt a through-composed form was more appropriate for this poem that contains fewer repetitive elements than other poems in the cycle, and that seems to unfold as one continuous thought, despite being broken into two stanzas: “This is the sound of day rejoicing,” Brunold says in line 1, and then, over the course of the rest of the poem, he proceeds to enumerate what those sounds are: the quail singing, the lark rejoicing, the hunter blowing his horn, the nightingale singing, and the trees whispering.

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Strophic Forms

tears but with joy, and then, the red morning sky, who says its color resembles not blood but roses.50 Was weinst du, Blümlein, im Morgenschein? Das Blümlein lachte: Was fällt dir ein! Ich bin ja fröhlich, ich weine nicht – Die Freudenträne durch’s Aug’ mir bricht. Du Morgenhimmel, bist blutig rot, Als läge deine Sonne im Meere tot? Da lacht der Himmel und ruft mich an: Ich streue ja Rosen auf ihre Bahn! Und strahlend flammte die Sonn’ hervor, Die Blumen blühten freudig empor. Des Baches Wellen jauchzten auf, Und die Sonne lachte freundlich darauf.

Why are you crying, little flower? The little flower laughed: “What do you mean! I am happy, I’m not crying – Tears of joy well up my eyes.”

O morning sky, you are blood red, As if your sun lay dead in the sea. Then heaven laughs and calls out to me: “I scatter roses on its path!” And with blazing beams the sun arose, Flowers blossomed joyously. The waves of the brook rejoiced, And the sun laughed pleasantly upon all.

Schumann’s song, the first of op. 23, has three successively varied strophes. (She omits the second stanza of Rollett’s poem.)51 The first strophe is structured as a broad compound period, where mm. 1–8 are a compound antecedent and mm. 9–21 are an expanded compound consequent. (The score to the song is available via imslp.org.) The expansion of the consequent is certainly a striking feature of the strophe, brought about by the repetition of the last line of the opening stanza, “Tears of joy well up in my eyes” (Die Freudenträne durch’s Aug’ mir bricht), but in many ways it is the antecedent that is most striking. It may be eight bars long, rather than thirteen, but its two poetic lines proceed at radically different paces. The four stresses of the opening line are distributed evenly, one per measure 50

51

Harald Krebs – in addition to providing a nuanced analysis of the declamation in this song – makes an astute observation about the contrast between what Jucunde thinks she perceives in the sounds of the natural world and what those sounds actually signify: “In the poem, the actions of various natural phenomena, consistently interpreted in a negative way by the unnamed human speaker, are explained in a positive light by the persona themselves. The poem suggests a struggle between Jucunde’s optimistic personality and the sadness prompted by Brunold’s unresponsiveness” (“A Way with Words,” 89). Parton discusses the omitted strophe in “Speech and Silence” and provides a transcription of its opening measures (see his Ex. 4).

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(“Was weinst du, Blüm-lein, in Mor-gen-schein?”). But the four stresses of line 2 are compressed into two measures (“Das Blüm-lein lach-te: Was fällt dir ein!”), and they are preceded by a two-measure interjection in the piano – resulting in another characteristically Schumannian “vocal echo,” where the vocal melody repeats a gesture first heard in the piano alone. (Harald Krebs notes the irregularity of these lines as well, commenting especially on the short duration of the word “Blümlein” and the surprise of the piano interlude. Krebs even provides a hypothetical setting of the opening phrase that spaces the poetic stresses evenly.)52 The overall feeling of this first phrase is one of steadiness followed by breathlessness, and these two modes of declamation represent the two different speakers in the opening stanza: Jucunde, who asks her question calmly, and the little flower that responds with brusque laughter. That the flower’s melody appears in the piano and then in the vocal melody suggests that Jucunde first hears the flower’s voice and only afterward recognizes what the flower says. The vocal echo, in other words, subtly highlights the failure to communicate – the fact that Jucunde takes time to understand what she hears. In the second strophe, Schumann varies the antecedent phrase but leaves the consequent unchanged. The music turns toward the tonic minor after only two measures. Parton points out that this minor-mode turn happens just when Jucunde says that the sun looks as though it “lay dead in the sea.” “This minor-mode passage,” he writes, “makes the sky’s response back in the tonic major seem all the more joyous as it explains that the red is not blood but the roses that it spreads along its path.”53 Jucunde and the sky, in other words, are modally differentiated, and the shift into minor mode allows Schumann to emphasize that it is only in line 3 that we learn anything about the sun’s response. Unlike in stanza 1, where Jucunde’s words to the flower last for only one line, in this stanza she speaks to the sun for a full two lines. This helps to explain why Schumann does not separate lines 1 and 2 in this stanza (“O morning sky, you are blood red, / As if your sun lay dead in the sea”), as she did in the first stanza: this time the vocalist sings over the piano’s interjection (in mm. 29–30) rather than stopping to listen to it. The first half of the final strophe looks exactly like the first half of the opening strophe. The piano interjects, now back in the major mode, and Jucunde listens, waiting to utter her second line until the piano has finished its gesture (“And with blazing beams the sun arose, [stop and listen] / 52

Krebs, “A Way with Words,” 89–90.

53

Parton, “Speech and Silence.”

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Strophic Forms

Flowers blossomed joyously”). Neither the flowers nor the sun speaks in this stanza: the words are Jucunde’s alone, directed not at these characters from nature but at the reader of the poem. Instead, they do the very things they talked to her about: the flowers blossom joyously and the sun laughs joyously, and we can imagine her listening to their voices in the piano’s interlude, which once again sounds without the vocal melody above it (mm. 53–54). Where Schumann changes this final strophe is in its second half. She modifies the melody and the harmony in her setting of lines 3 and 4 (“The waves of the brook rejoiced, / And the sun laughed pleasantly upon all”) so that the song reaches its high point on the word “Sonne,” leaping from a low A to a high A as if to mimic Jucunde’s upward glance. Krebs notes that in spite of these changes to melody and harmony, the declamation here is entirely regular – one poetic stress per line. But when Schumann repeats the final line, she “pulls one more rhythmic card from her sleeve,” as Krebs puts it. She radically accelerates the rhythm so that the first words of the final line (“und die Sonne”) race by in a series of sixteenths and eighths.54 For Krebs, this sudden acceleration “contributes significantly to the actualization of the cheerful, optimistic mood that Rollett ascribes to Jucunde’s performance in the novel.”55 It also evokes the sound of the sun’s laughter. Yet, for me, it is equally significant that the quicker vocal melody doubles the piano’s melody – a melody that, in the first strophe, represented the voice of the flower. Where earlier Jucunde heard the sounds of nature (in the piano alone) and then grasped their meaning (in the words of the echoing vocal melody), now sound and meaning are fused into one.

“An einem lichten Morgen”: Reciprocity, Vocal Echoes, and the Hidden Melodies of Flowers In the context of Rollett’s novel, “An einem lichten Morgen” is the song that Brunold hears Jucunde singing, to the accompaniment of a harp, when he first encounters her in the forest. An einem lichten Morgen, Da klingt es hell im Tal: Wach’ auf, du liebe Blume, Ich bin der Sonnenstrahl!

54

Krebs, “A Way with Words,” 91.

On a sunlit morning The valley resounds brightly: Wake up, you dear flower, I am the ray of the sun!

55

Ibid.

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Erschließe mit Vertrauen Dein Blütenkämmerlein Und laß die heiße Liebe In’s Heiligtum hinein.

Trust me, open up Your little flower chamber And let burning love Penetrate your sanctuary.

Ich will ja nichts verlangen Als liegen dir im Schoß Und deine Blüte küssen, Eh’ sie verwelkt im Moos.

I only wish To lie on your lap And kiss your blossoms, Before they wither in the moss.

Ich will ja nichts begehren Als ruh’n an deiner Brust Und dich dafür verklären Mit sonnenheller Lust.

I only desire To rest on your bosom And transfigure you With sun-bright joy.

It may seem strange, on first glance, that Jucunde is the poetic speaker since this is a poem about a sun who longs to casts its rays on a flower. Yet, as Parton points out, Jucunde “innocently ventriloquizes the male sun’s lust for the flower”; she sings his words guilelessly.56 (Rollett uses explicit sexual imagery – the sun expresses his desire to penetrate the little flower chamber, and to lie on the flower’s bosom and kiss her blossoms – making it clear that the sun represents a male lover who wants to make love to the female flower.) Unlike “Was weinst du, Blümlein,” then, this is a poem with a single unified voice, even if it is Jucunde mimicking someone else’s voice. It is hardly surprising therefore that Schumann’s setting of the poem, the second song of the cycle, would include no strophic variations since, as I’ve suggested, in this cycle she tends to treat poems with unchanging voices to poems with unchanging strophes. But this is not to say that the passive flower has no role in Schumann’s song. She may not use different modes of declamation for different speaking characters, as she did in the previous song, but she does grant the wordless flower agency by letting its voice sound in the piano accompaniment. (Readers can find the score to the song on imslp.org.) Parton makes precisely this point in his analysis of the song. The piano accompaniment, he says, is “anything but passive”; it churns with energy and expresses the “inner desires of the singing persona.”57 In Rollett’s poem, in other words, Jucunde may be just a vessel for the sun’s words, but in Schumann’s song, her own feelings, and the feelings of the objectified flower that represents her, shine through. Parton calls attention to the 56

Parton, “Speech and Silence.”

57

Ibid.

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Strophic Forms

texture of the piano part, with its undulating apreggiations that at once mimic the sound of Jucunde’s harp and also her “simmering passion,” which “threatens at times even to overpower the voice” and “runs contrary to Rollett’s floral and sexual fantasy of Jucunde’s passivity.”58 But Jucunde and the flower are also given voice in the piano’s melodic line, and here is where the subtlety and inventiveness of Schumann’s “simple” strophic form is most evident. The sun’s words are conveyed by the vocal melody, a melody that remains unchanged throughout the song, just as the tone of the sun’s imperatives remains unchanged. But the flower’s – and, by extension, Jucunde’s – unspoken feelings are conveyed by the moments where the piano sings its own melody, where quieter, wordless melodies emerge from the texture. Notice the descending melodic gesture, F–D–C–B♭–A, that breaks up the opening theme with a two-bar interlude (mm 13–14). The sun declares, “On a sunlit morning the valley resounds brightly.” Then, before addressing the flower (“Wake up, you dear flower, I am the ray of the sun!”), he hears her voice and also mimics it: the notes to the words “wake up, you dear flower” are the same notes we just heard – F–D–C–B♭–A. Once more Schumann uses the technique of the “vocal echo” to give the impression that the singer is responding to the piano, and that the speaker of the poem – here, the sun – is reacting to something in the surrounding environment – here, Jucunde, who, in Schumann’s setting, is transformed from a mere object into an actant. To put it plainly, with this brief interlude and its repetition in the vocal line, Schumann turns the monologue into a dialogue. (The effect is similar to what we saw in “Die Lorelei,” where the Lorelei, who does not speak in the poem but is nonetheless its most important agent, is given voice in the piano accompaniment.) She may not modify the strophes of her song to project different characters, as she did in “Was weinst du, Blümlein,” but she still injects another voice into the drama. That she does this subtly rather than boldly – with a tune that emerges from the piano rather than with contrasting modes of declamation, as in the previous song – is part of the point. The sun still dominates the proceedings, but we sense the flower’s and Jucunde’s voices all the same; to borrow Parton’s words, we hear a form of “sexual reciprocity” rather than mere “sexual passivity.”59 In fact, her voice is present from the very beginning of the song. Amidst the rolling arpeggios of the piano introduction is a faint upper-voice melody that outlines a stepwise descent D down to A, previewing the last four notes of the more overt melody that emerges in the two-part interlude 58

Ibid.

59

Ibid.

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(D–C–B♭–A). In the first four bars, we not only hear the sound of Jucunde’s harp, we also hear her voice from a distance. Once we direct our attention to this voice, we see how it shapes the course of the song. It sounds faintly in the introduction, sings out more fully in the short interlude, and is then taken up by the vocal melody – and not just in the bars immediately following the interlude. The ending of the vocal melody also bears signs of the influence of her voice. Notice how the melody leading into the final cadence – on “Heiligtum hinein” (or “into your sanctuary”) in the first strophe and “sonnenheller Lust” (or “sun-bright joy”) in the second – retraces the basic outline of Jucunde’s characteristic descending motive: F–D–C–A. What on the face of it seems a dominating, one-sided action becomes a more “reciprocal” one, to borrow from Parton’s language. The sun expresses his desire to make love to the flower – “And let burning love penetrate your sanctuary” (Und laß die heiße Liebe in’s Heiligtum hinein) – but, in Schumann’s hands, these words involve a fusion of his voice with hers.

“Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort”: Secret Murmurings and Wordless Feminine Voices In the third song of the cycle – one of Schumann’s most exquisite and affecting – it is not Jucunde who sings but Brunold. (See imslp.org for the score.) This is the first time in Schumann’s cycle that we hear his voice rather than Jucunde’s (or her voice parroting the voice of the sun, as in “An einem lichten Morgen”). Brunold’s voice will in fact dominate the rest of the cycle: he is the poetic speaker in all of the remaining songs. Considering the formal logic of the cycle, where modified strophic forms are reserved for songs with multiple speakers and simple strophic songs are reserved for songs with single speakers, it is only to be expected that “Geheimes Flüstern” would unfold in three identical strophes. What is surprising, however, is that even with this single-voiced poem Schumann once again gives voice to Jucunde, and she does so in the piano. This song thus forms a kind of pair with “An einem lichten Morgen”: both songs mingle the words of a male protagonist with the wordless sound of a female voice. And in doing so, they elevate the role of the piano and, with it, the role of the feminine voice. The means by which Schumann does this in “Geheimes Flüstern” are subtler than what we heard in “An einem lichten Morgen” but, in a way, even more radical. Jucunde’s voice is literally audible in the previous poem because she is singing the words, even if they are the words of the

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Strophic Forms

sun. With the piano interludes and the vocal echoes, Schumann thus amplifies something that is already present in the text. In “Geheimes Flüstern,” by contrast, we are given no indication of Jucunde’s voice. In fact, in the context of Rollett’s novel, Brunold has just declined Jucunde’s invitation to visit her house; while wandering, he happens upon her home, where he hears her singing “An einem lichten Morgen,” and she asks him in, but he tells her he wants to continue his trek into the forest beyond her garden. He leaves the place where she was singing and ventures into more distant realms, where he marvels at other voices – the murmuring of springs, the sound of a storm rustling the trees, the sound of “life’s purest word in each twig and leaf” – and vows to sing of their mysteries with his own voice. Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort, Verborg’nes Quellenrauschen, O Wald, o Wald, geweihter Ort, Laß mich des Liebens reinstes Wort, In Zweig und Blatt belauschen! Und schreit’ ich in den Wald hinaus, Da grüßen mich die Bäume, Du liebes, freies Gotteshaus, Du schließest mich mit Sturmgebraus In deine kühlen Räume! Was leise mich umschwebt, umklingt, Ich will es treu bewahren, Und was mir tief zum Herzen dringt, Will ich, vom Geist der Lieb’ beschwingt, In Liedern offenbaren!

Secret whisperings here and there, Hidden murmuring of springs, Oh forest, oh forest, holy place, Let me listen in your branches and leaves To life’s purest word! And when stepping into the forest, I am greeted by the trees, You dear, free house of God, You envelop me with your howling storm In your cool spaces! What softly floats and sings around me I want to faithfully preserve, And all that deeply presses upon my heart, Elated by the spirit of love, I want to reveal in song!

In a wonderful analysis of the song, Susan Youens writes that its introduction “creates a subtly stylized form of rustling.”60 We hear this in the arpeggios that create a kind of dialogue between the right and left hands – “as if rustling leaves were responding to one another,” says 60

Susan Youens, “Disillusionment and Patriotism: Clara and Robert in the Wake of the 1848– 1849 Revolutions,” in Clara Schumann Studies, ed. Joe Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 52.

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Youens – and also in the gentle metrical dissonances: the time signature says 3/8, but the arpeggios, beamed as two sets of three sixteenth notes, suggest 6/16, and the piano’s right-hand melody alternates between two dotted eighths and a quarter note followed by an eighth note. The music murmurs and whispers, like the forest that seems to hum with quiet magic. Yet the piano introduction does more than this; it also sounds a right-hand melody that references the flower’s melody from the first song, “Was weinst du, Blümlein.” Example 4.2 places the melodies side by side, showing two different versions of the motive in song 1 and the introductory motive of song 3. Notice the similar contour: descending third–descending fourth– ascending second. And notice that the minor-mode motive in “Was weinst du, Blümlein” features the same diminished fourth interval as the “Geheimes” motive (C to G♯ in the earlier song, D♭ to A♮ in the later song). Normally I might not make so much of a melodic similarity, but in this case both melodies are so exposed, both appear in the piano alone, and both show Schumann giving the piano a voice in the song – first, using it to present the flower’s voice before we hear the flower’s actual words, and second, using it to recall that voice in the context of a magical forest scene. That in the intervening song – “An einem grünen Hügel” – Jucunde herself was equated with a flower leaves open the possibility that the melodic reminiscence in “Geheimes Flüstern” brings to mind not just any flower, but Jucundeas-flower. As if to underline the point, just before Brunold says, “Let me listen in your branches and leaves to life’s purest word,” the music turns suddenly to F major, the key of the previous song, the song that was suffused with the sound of Jucunde’s singing voice. (This is just the kind of stanzaic separation that I described in the previous chapter. The PAC in F major divides the stanza in two at a moment when, syntactically, the stanza moves ahead: “Secret whisperings here and there, / Hidden murmuring of springs, / Oh forest, Oh forest, holy place, [PAC in F] / Let me listen in your branches and leaves / To life’s purest word!” The separation emphasizes the sense of rupture created by the brief moment of ecstasy.) Youens calls this moment “a welling-up of reverence from the heart for Germany’s Nature-temple,” and it is certainly that.61 But I also hear the moment as a welling-up of reverence for Jucunde, a passage that crests on the same high F that dominated so much of the previous song, and that is even followed, in 61

Ibid.

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Strophic Forms Example 4.2 Similar motives in “Was weinst du, Blümlein” and “Geheimes Flüstern”

the piano, by a downward arpeggiation of the tonic triad, the notes F– C–A–F landing every half-measure and vaguely echoing the downward motion from high F to low F at the vocal cadence in “An einem lichten Morgen” (F–D–C–A–F on “Heiligtum hinein”). In this sacred space, as Schumann’s song seems to suggest, Brunold hears not only the whispers and murmurs of the natural world but also the voice of Jucunde herself.

“Auf einem grünen Hügel”: Terminal Modification and the Vagueness of Bird Song Parton writes that this song, in which Brunold is again the poetic speaker, dramatizes his “inability to commune with the flowers.”62 Jucunde was able to communicate with the flower and the sun in “Was weinst du, Blümlein.” They spoke directly to her of their happiness; the flower’s tears were tears of joy. Here, the red rose and little blue flowers are silent, and they prompt from Brunold tears of true sadness. Auf einem grünen Hügel, Da steht ein Röslein hell, Und wenn ich rot, rot Röslein seh’, So rot wie lauter Liebe, Möcht’ weinen ich zur Stell’!

62

On a green hill Stands a bright little rose, And when I see the little red rose, As red as pure love, I immediately want to cry!

Parton, “Speech and Silence.”

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Auf einem grünen Hügel, Da stehn zwei Blümlein blau, Und wenn ich blau, blau Blümlein seh’, So blau, wie blaue Äuglein, Durch Tränen ich sie schau’!

On a green hill Stand two little blue flowers, And when I see the little blue flowers, As blue as blue little eyes, I see them through tears!

Auf einem grünen Hügel, Da singt ein Vögelein; Mir ist’s, als säng’s: Wer niemals Leid, Recht großes Leid erfahren, Wird nie recht glücklich sein.

On a green hill Sings a little bird; It seems to sing: he who has never Suffered great pain Will never be truly happy.

For Parton, this difference – in song 1, a woman communes joyfully with flowers, and in song 4, a man only watches them from a distance and weeps – is in keeping with the nineteenth century’s sentimental discourse of flowers, where “women imagine themselves as uniquely able to understand the ‘language of flowers’ to which men are deaf.”63 Yet however much Brunold may be unable to hear the voices of the flowers, he is not deaf to the voice of the bird: in the final stanza Brunold says that the bird “seems to sing: he who has never suffered great pain will never be truly happy.” The qualification is crucial: it seems to sing; the German is not “er singt” (it sings) but “mir ist’s, als säng’s” (literally, it seems to me as if it sings). Brunold is unsure of the meaning of the song, but he senses some meaning. He thinks he hears a message in its warbling, even though he is unsure if he fully understands the message. The difference between the human–natural interaction in songs 1 and 5, then, may be more a difference in degree than a difference in kind: in both songs the protagonists hear nature’s voices speaking, but only in “Was weinst du, Blümlein” is the protagonist certain what nature’s voices say – and only then because they correct her. The forms that Schumann chooses for these two songs likewise differ in degree, not kind – and the differences in degree relate to the poetic differences I just described. Song 1, you will recall, is a modified strophic form with successive modifications. Song 5 is a modified strophic form with only terminal modification; strophes 1 and 2 are identical, but in strophe 3 the melody changes somewhat, as do the chords in the final four measures. (See imslp. org for the score.) In both songs the modifications happen when nature speaks, or seems to speak, and in both songs it is not just the presence of strophic variation that matters, but also the manner in which the variation is done. In

63

Ibid.

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“Auf einem grünen Hügel,” the most significant difference between the first two strophes and third strophe has to do with the pace of declamation. A two-bar piano interlude separates the fourth and fifth lines of stanzas 1 and 2 (mm. 11– 12). The first four lines tell us what Brunold sees (the “bright little rose” in the first stanza and the “two little flowers” in the second stanza), and the final line reveals the effect that this has on him (tears in each case). As she does in so many of the op. 23 songs, Schumann allows the piano to give voice to the wordless elements of the natural world – they “speak” not in words but in tones. The piano’s interlude motive is strikingly reminiscent of the flower motives from “Was weinst du, Blümlein” and “Geheimes Flüstern.” (See Example 4.3, which can be compared with the motives in Example 4.2. Notice the descending fourth–rising second pattern, reminiscent of the motives in the earlier songs, and also the appearance of the same diminished fourth – and the same exact pitches, C–G♯ – that appeared in “Was weinst du, Blümlein.”) In the last strophe, however, the declamation changes so that there is no longer a separation between the penultimate and the final line, and so that the vocal melody sounds atop a portion of the two-bar piano interlude and doubles its first three notes (on the word “erfahren”). Schumann could just as well have set these lines to the same rhythms found in strophes 1 and 2, but instead she allows the bird’s words to conjoin with the flower’s melody that previously sounded only in the piano accompaniment.64 This is a small change but a significant one. Schumann allows the vocalist to sing along with the piano’s flower melody; she puts words to what was previously wordless, and in the process dramatizes the poem’s transformation of sound into speech.

“O Lust, o Lust”: Simplicity, Melodic Elasticity, and All-Consuming Song The final song of op. 23 is a song about singing, if there ever was one. Brunold sings his heart out and announces his joy from the mountaintop down to the valley. His song suffuses everything, and whether born of grief or happiness, or made with the faintest whisper or the loudest proclamation, “becomes a song, unwittingly sung for all the world” (wird zum Klange, unbewußt für alle Welt gesungen). 64

Harald Krebs notes that, unlike in her setting of previous stanza, Schumann avoids any acceleration in the third line of the final stanza, “Mir ist’s, als säng’s: Wer niemals Leid,” the very line when the bird begins to speak. For Krebs, this lack of acceleration makes sense because “to recite this line rapidly would be counter-intuitive, not only because of its sorrowful emotional content, but also because rapid recitation of the moral of the story would undermine rather than underpin its significance” (“A Way with Words,” 93).

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O Lust, o Lust, vom Berg ein Lied In’s Land hinab zu singen! Der kleinste Ton hinunter zieht, So wie auf Riesenschwingen!

Oh joy, oh joy, to sing a song From the mountain down to the valley! The smallest sound echoes down As if on giant wings!

Der stillste Hauch aus lauter Brust, In Leid und Lust entrungen, Er wird zum Klange, unbewußt Für alle Welt gesungen.

The softest breath from a full heart, Wrought in pain and joy, It becomes a song, unwittingly Sung for all the world.

Es schwingt sich erd- und himmelwärts Earthward and heavenward it soars, Der Seele klingend Sehnen, The ringing longing of the soul, Und fällt der ganzen Welt an’s Herz – And falls upon the heart of the entire world – Ob freudig, ob in Tränen. Whether happily or in tears. Was still sonst nur die Brust durchzieht, Fliegt aus auf lauten Schwingen, O Lust, o Lust, vom Berg ein Lied In’s Land hinab zu singen!

What quietly moves though the breast Soars away on resonant wings, Oh joy, oh joy, to sing a song From the mountain down to the valley!

Schumann’s song brims with energy – marked Sehr lebhaft (very lively), with the piano playing a flood of sixteenth notes – and unfolds in two identical strophes, one for each half of Rollett’s poem. The simple strophic form should come as no surprise in light of what has preceded it. Brunold is the single voice in this piece; his song dominates. Though he fills all of nature with his sound, he does not converse with nature or even really listen to its voices. It seems only fitting, then, that Schumann would avoid varying the strophes but instead let the song unfold as a unified utterance, as she does with the other songs of the cycle that are more monologues than dialogues. As we have seen again and again throughout this book, however, simple does not mean simplistic. The outer form of the song may be straightforward, but its inner form, the internal make-up of its unchanging strophes, is finely tuned to the poem’s fluctuations of form and meaning.65

65

Krebs hints at this quality of the song as well, though commenting more on the finer details of declamation than on the changing phrase lengths: “The unconstrained quality of the

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Strophic Forms

The length of the melodic gestures varies over the course of the strophe; the melodies are elastic, and they contract and expand in response to the shifting emotions and ideas of Rollett’s poem. The vocal melody begins with a classic, long-breathed Schumannian theme, an eight-bar phrase (mm. 5–12) that arcs upward to a high G and then gradually falls. (The voice sings for seven measures, and the piano finishes the phrase in m. 12, extending the B♭ major chord of m. 11.) “Oh joy, oh joy, to sing a song / From the mountain down to the valley!” (O Lust, o Lust, vom Berg ein Lied / In’s Land hinab zu singen!), sings Brunold, his melody mirroring the trajectory of his sonic outpouring as it reaches the highest and lowest points in the landscape. Schumann sets the next two lines – “The smallest sound echoes down / As if on giant wings!” (Der kleinste Ton hinunter zieht, / So wie auf Riesenschwingen!) – to two shorter gestures. Where lines 1 and 2 stretched over seven measures, lines 3 and 4 are compressed into only four measures (mm. 13–16); the phrase becomes smaller when Brunold talks about the tiniest sounds that echo in the valley, and it sounds all that much smaller because it is broken into a pair of two-bar chunks, where the previous phrase unfolded in one unbroken arc. The basic melodic shape on “Der kleinste Ton hinunter zieht” – a B♭ leaping up a fourth to an E♭ appoggiatura, which resolves down by step to D – is transposed a third upward on “So wie auf Reisenschwingen,” where we hear D–G–F. (The harmony, incidentally, is also sequential. The first gesture occurs above a pre-dominant–dominant progression in G minor, and the second above a pre-dominant–dominant progression in B♭ major, except that the progression in B♭ ends on a first-inversion dominant – yet another example of an undermined cadence at the end of a poetic stanza.) Schumann’s setting of the first half of the next stanza – “The softest breath from a full heart / Wrought in pain and joy” (Der stillste Hauch aus lauter Brust, / In Leid und Lust entrungen) – re-enacts this pattern of melodic compression. Here, the first line is expressed in four bars (mm. 19–22) and the second is expressed in two bars (mm. 23–24); the second gesture is even broken into two, as before. Listening to this passage, I cannot help but imagine Brunold’s breath quickening and his heart racing. This feeling is palpable in the rest of the strophe, too, where Schumann continues to oscillate between longer and shorter melodic

declamation conveys the ecstatic mood of the poem much more successfully than would the predictable alternation of quavers and crotchets that the poetic rhythm suggests” (“A Way with Words,” 89).

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gestures. “Es wird zum Klange” (It becomes a song) lasts two measures (mm. 26–27), and although the next words (“unbewußt für alle Welt gesungen” [unwittingly sung for all the world]) last three measures, they are broken into even more breathless one-bar gestures that mimic and condense the up-a-fourth, down-a-second melodic shapes from earlier in the song (G–C–B♭ on “unbewußt für” and A–D–C on “alle Welt ge-”). The same pattern of statement and compression holds for the repetition of these lines, leading to the clinching tonic PAC in m. 36. “Es wird zum Klange” is repeated, spanning two measures (mm. 31–32), and then we hear the entire final couplet once more, but fragmented into half-bar gestures that invert the characteristic motive of the song (notice the down-a-fourth, up-a-second chain on “wird zum Klange, unbewußt” in mm. 33–34: G–D–E♭–B–C–G–A♭). The melodic gestures accelerate as the cadence approaches, and as Brunold repeats the lines with ever-morebreathless joy, until the moment just before the cadence arrives, that is: the vocal melody ends with a last-minute expansion on “alle Welt gesungen” (mm. 35–37). The melody retraces the shape of the opening phrase, climbing up to a high G and then falling, in an unbroken, three-bar arc; the accompaniment also changes, for the first time in over twenty measures, to a less active texture, abandoning the right-hand sixteenths that have dominated so much of the piece. After so much breathless repetition, this more continuous melodic line feels like a long exhalation, and like the perfect expression of a melody that, as Rollett’s poem tells us, “becomes a song.” That Clara Schumann manages to create this sensation of compressing and expanding, accelerating and decelerating, in the context of a song that nonetheless moves almost exclusively in two-bar hypermeter is a feat in itself. And it reveals once more how often her songs are more than meets the eye and ear.

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Epilogue Clara Schumann and the Depths of Song

In a 2021 essay from VAN Magazine, Sarah Fritz takes stock of the strides that have been made in the performance of Clara Schumann’s music and the work that remains to be done.1 She sees signs for optimism but also acknowledges that we have a long way to go in pushing back against the patriarchal forces that have kept Clara Schumann’s music out of the concert hall, the private studio, and the catalogues of the most prestigious recording labels. “For all her infamous name recognition,” writes Fritz, “performances of Clara Wieck Schumann’s works are still puzzlingly rare. . . . [But] a select minority of performers have pulled back the curtain of gender clichés to revel in the works of this masterful composer.” Fritz cites, among other examples, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton’s new recording Album für die Frau, Scenes from the Schumanns’ Lieder, which features songs by both Clara and Robert;2 Sharon Su’s 2019 EP recording of Clara Schumann’s Piano Sonata in G minor;3 Isata KannehMason’s CD Romance: The Piano Music of Clara Schumann, which includes her Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 7, her G-minor piano sonata, as well as her two sets of romances (opp. 11 and 22) and her Deuxième Scherzo, op. 14.4 Another recent example is the Nash Ensemble’s stunning 2020 CD of Schumann’s Piano Trio in G major, op. 17, which also includes Fanny Hensel’s piano trio and string quartet.5 I would describe the state of affairs in the analysis of Clara Schumann’s music similarly. Throughout this book I have engaged with some of the best analytical writing on Clara Schumann’s songs by scholars such as Joe Davies, Susan Wollenberg, Harald Krebs, Susan Youens, Julie PedneaultDeslauriers, Michael Baker, Jürgen Thym, Christopher Parton, and 1

2

3 4

5

Sarah Fritz, “Wieck Spot: Advocating for the Music of Clara Schumann,” VAN Magazine (November 11, 2021). Carolyn Sampson (soprano) and Joseph Middleton (piano), Album für die Frau, Scenes from the Schumanns’ Lieder, BIS BIS2473, 2021, compact disc. Sharon Su (piano), Clara Schumann: Piano Sonata in G Minor, self-published EP, 2019. Isata Kanneh-Mason (piano), Romance: The Piano Music of Clara Schumann, Decca 4850020, 2019, compact disc. The Nash Ensemble, Clara Schumann, Piano Trio; Fanny Hensel, Piano Trio, String Quartet, Hyperion CDA68307, 2020, compact disc.

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Poundie Burstein, not to mention the equally trenchant analytical work on Schumann’s instrumental music by Joe Davies, Nicole Grimes, Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers, Janina Klassen, Benedict Taylor, and others.6 One of my main goals in writing this book has been to contribute to this conversation, building upon the indispensable work of these scholars in order to offer a fuller picture of Clara Schumann’s Lied aesthetic and her achievements as a songwriter. Another goal has been to use her songs to explore a few broader questions that extend beyond it, having to do with the importance of taking Clara Schumann’s music (and the music of other women composers) on its own terms, the need to be mindful of adapting our analytical tools to new repertoire, and the value of extending the tools of the new Formenlehre to vocal music. But in reflecting now on the previous chapters, I realize that another impulse has shaped my book, even if only subconsciously. Another goal has been operating under the radar: I wanted to show that Clara Schumann deserves the same kind of exhaustive treatment that has been accorded to her male contemporaries. As a scholar of art song, I have benefited enormously from the book-length studies of nineteenth-century song composers such as Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, and Gabriel Fauré. I think especially of Susan Youens’s Cambridge handbook on Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin;7 her pathbreaking book on Schubert’s Winterreise, which teaches me something new about these songs every time I return to it, even though I have read it more times that I can count;8 Graham Johnson’s Gabriel Fauré: The Songs and Their Poets, which has done more to enhance my appreciation of Fauré’s songs than any other book;9 and Johnson’s inexhaustibly brilliant three-volume collection of essays on each of Schubert’s songs, which is the first place I turn to if I want to understand one of the more than 600 songs that is new to me.10 These books are so dog-eared, creased, and underlined that I can now spot 6

7 8

9 10

See Davies’s and Grimes’s chapters from Clara Schumann Studies; Pedneault-Deslauriers’s article “Bass-Line Melodies”; Klassen’s book Clara Wieck-Schumann; and Taylor’s article “Clara Wieck’s A Minor Piano Concerto.” Pedneault-Deslauriers is also currently writing a handbook on Schumann’s Piano Concerto, op. 7 for Cambridge University Press. Susan Youens, Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Susan Youens, Retracing a Winter’s Journey: Schubert’s Winterreise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Graham Johnson, Gabriel Fauré: The Songs and Their Poets (New York: Routledge, 2009). Graham Johnson, Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, 3 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). For some other book-length studies of male Lied composers, see Eric Sams, The Songs of Hugo Wolf, 2nd ed. (London: Eulenberg, 1983), The Songs of Robert Schumann, 3rd ed. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), and The Songs of Johannes Brahms (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000); and Finson, Robert Schumann.

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Epilogue

them immediately on my shelves because they stand out against the many books that I have purchased but not devoured as intensely, books that may be part of my collection but are not part of my view of an entire genre. What I appreciate most about these books is that they lavish such attention on the music. They take the music of these composers seriously enough to plumb its depths; they give me the chance to savor individual songs and hear them anew. In my own book I have tried to plumb the depths of Clara Schumann’s songs with a similar spirit, and with a similar desire to relish their wonders and invite readers to do the same. No matter how successful I have been in that endeavor, I firmly believe it was an endeavor worth undertaking because it accords the songs of this extraordinary composer the same level of attention that has been devoted to the canonical composers that have long overshadowed her. It puts her and her music in the limelight. Clara Schumann is obviously not the only overshadowed composer who deserves this kind of attention. As much as her music has been marginalized, other far lesser-known composers have suffered far worse fates. Clara Schumann’s star may still be dimmer than those of the composers I mentioned earlier, but it is clearly on the rise. Not so, however, with a host of other composers from this era whose music still lies in obscurity. Scholars of nineteenth-century music (and of nineteenth-century history and culture more generally) often use the term “long nineteenth century” to refer to the 125-year period between the beginnings of the French Revolution (1789) and the First World War (1914). If, from a musical perspective, the nineteenth century was long, in that the years 1789–1914 roughly cover the so-called Classical and Romantic era, it was also deep. Pick any genre and time span from that period and you will find vast bodies of musical scores – often scores by underrepresented composers – that extend well beyond the canonical works that have long predominated in the concert hall and the classroom. This is particularly true when it comes to the nineteenth-century Lied, a genre that was a more viable option for a wider range of composers. We might make an analogy with deep-sea exploration. As I have learned from my ten-year-old son Sam, who went through a serious obsession with sea creatures, the ocean is unimaginably deep, and there is far more life down there than one might realize. Scientists estimate that more than 80 percent of the ocean’s depths are unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored – and most of the unexplored species are in its deepest regions.11 Imagine that the creatures 11

“Ocean” (Resource Library/Encyclopedic Entry), National Geographic Society, accessed March 9, 2022, www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/ocean/#:~:text=Despite%20its% 20size%20and%20impact,of%20our%20own%20ocean%20floor.

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in the ocean are nineteenth-century song composers, with the more obscure composers lying further beneath the surface. The so-called sunlit zone, which extends only ten feet down, might be said to include the incredibly well-known Lieder of Schubert, Robert Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf. The twilight zone, extending down to 660 feet, might include the increasingly well-known songs by the likes of Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Hensel, Carl Loewe, Josephine Lang, and – yes – Clara Schumann. But that is to say nothing of the dark zone, going down 6,500 feet, the “abyssal plain,” descending to 13,000 feet, or the deepest part of the Mariana Trench – the Challenger Deep – which drops to almost 36,000 feet, or nearly 7 miles. These regions of the Lied genre include huge numbers of virtually unknown songs by composers – many of them women composers – whose names do not appear on course syllabi, in Grove Music Online, in modern score editions, and on recordings. One of Sam’s favorite books, just as dog-eared as my books on Lieder, is a children’s book by the late Steve Jenkins, called Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea.12 The page on the Mariana Trench shows a deep-sea submersible, set against a pitch-black background and casting a triangle of light on a rocky ravine. On the ocean floor we see an image of a shrimp, a worm, and a flatfish. “The pressure here,” writes Jenkins, “is 1,000 times greater than at the surface, and the temperature is a constant 32°F (2°C).” Despite this, creatures thrive. As Jenkins puts it, “Even here life can be found.”13 The same could be said of the Lied’s most remote regions. I am happy to count The Songs of Clara Schumann among the growing body of analytical writing on Lieder by women composers from what we might call the middle depths of the genre, but troves of nineteenth-century Lieder by women, not to mention by other underrepresented composers, lie in the genre’s dark zone, abyssal plain, and Mariana Trench. As much as I hope that my book will inspire scholars to continue to analyze Schumann’s music, I hope even more that it will inspire them to lavish attention on songs by composers from the more obscure regions of song – even if that means taking up the task of descending all the way down to the genre’s Challenger Deep. I am thinking of composers such as Marie Franz (née Hinrichs), who published only one opus of songs before marrying the composer Robert Franz but continued to compose extraordinarily inventive songs that have never been published; Mary Wurm, an English-born 12

13

Steve Jenkins, Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea (New York: Harper Collins, 2016). Ibid.

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Epilogue

pianist, composer, and poet of German parentage, who studied piano with Clara Schumann and published several opuses of deeply affecting songs, and also founded and conducted the first ever women’s orchestra in 1898; and Marie Vespermann, a pianist, singer, composer, poet, and dramatist, who published songs throughout her life (some under the names Maria Görres and Maria Arndts), and whose songs are available in digital form via the Austrian State Library but have received no attention from scholars and performers.14 These are but three composers among the hundreds that lie waiting to be explored. They deserve their own books, too, as well as their own recordings, editions, and biographies. May Clara Schumann, then, be only the beginning. 14

I recently launched a website, Art Song Augmented, that provides high-quality video recordings of songs by these three composers and others, as well as commentary and access to scores (artsongaugmented.org).

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Baker, Michael. “Multiply-Interrupted Structure in Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit.’” In Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Secular & Sacred Music to 1900, edited by Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft, 210–27. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Borchard, Beatrix. Clara Schumann: Ihr Leben. Hildesheim: Olms, 2015. Boyd, Melinda. “Gendered Voices: The ‘Liebesfrühling’ Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann.” 19th-Century Music 23/2 (1999): 145–62. Burstein, L. Poundie. “Their Paths, Her Ways: Comparisons of Text Settings by Clara Schumann and Other Composers.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 6 (2002): 11–26. Caplin, William E. Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. “The Classical Cadence: Conceptions and Misconceptions.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 57/1 (2004): 51–118. “Beyond the Classical Cadence: Thematic Closure in Early Romantic Music.” Music Theory Spectrum 40/1 (2018): 1–26. Capuzzo, Guy. “Rhythmic Deviance in the Music of Meshuggah.” Music Theory Spectrum 40/1 (2018): 121–37. Citron, Marcia J. “Gender, Professionalism, and the Musical Canon.” Journal of Musicology 8/1 (1990): 102–17. Gender and the Musical Canon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. “Women and the Western Canon: Where Are We Now?” Notes 64/2 (2007): 209–15. Clark, Frances, Louise Gross, and Sam Holland. The Music Tree Student’s Book: Time to Begin – A Plan for Musical Growth at the Piano. New York: Alfred Music, 2000. Cusick, Suzanne. “Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body Problem.” Perspectives of New Music 32/1 (1994): 8–27. Davies, Joe, ed. Clara Schumann Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Davis, Andrew. Sonata Fragments: Romantic Narratives in Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2017. Deaville, James. “The Lied at Mid Century.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, edited by James Parsons and Jonathan Cross, 142–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

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References Ewell, Philip. “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame.” Music Theory Online 26/2 (2019). Ferris, David. Schumann’s Eichendorff Liederkreis and the Genre of the Romantic Cycle. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. “Public Performance and Private Understanding: Clara Wieck’s Concerts in Berlin.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 56/2 (2003): 351–408. Finson, Jon W. Robert Schumann: The Book of Songs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Forkert, Annika. “Review of Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1960–2000.” Music & Letters 98/3 (2017): 493–96. Fox, Mary Elizabeth. “Formal Relationships in Clara Wieck’s Piano Concerto Op. 7.” Unpublished MA Thesis, University of Ottawa, 2015. Fritz, Sarah. “Wieck Spot: Advocating for the Music of Clara Schumann.” VAN Magazine, November 11, 2021. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979. Guck, Marion. “A Woman’s (Theoretical) Work.” Perspectives of New Music 32/1 (1994): 28–43. Hallmark, Rufus. “The Rückert Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann.” 19th-Century Music 14/1 (1990): 3–30. Hepokoski, James, and Warren Darcy. Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late Eighteenth-Century Sonata. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Hisama, Ellie M. Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Horton, Julian. “Criteria for a Theory of Nineteenth-Century Sonata Form.” Music Theory and Analysis 4/2 (2017): 147–91. “Syntax and Process in the First Movement of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio Op. 66.” In Rethinking Mendelssohn, edited by Benedict Taylor, 236–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Hyland, Ann M. “Rhetorical Closure in the First Movement of Schubert’s Quartet in C major, D. 46: A Dialogue with Deformation.” Music Analysis 28/1 (2009): 111–42. Jenkins, Steve. Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea. New York: Harper Collins, 2016. Joachim, Joseph. Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, 3 vols. Edited by Johannes Joachim and Andreas Meyer. Berlin: Julius Bard, 1911–13. Johnson, Graham. Liner notes The Songs of Robert Schumann, vol. 8. Christopher Maltman (baritone), Jonathan Lemalu (baritone), Mark Padmore (tenor), and Graham Johnson (piano). Hyperion CDJ33108, 2003, compact disc. Gabriel Fauré: The Songs and Their Poets. New York: Routledge, 2009.

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The abbreviation CS is used in places to refer to Clara Schumann. analysis of music by women composers, 6–7, 16–23 Baker, Michael, 49, 70, 142n19, 143, 177 Boyd, Melinda, 50, 138n12, 140, 143, 145 Brahms, Johannes, 178, 180 Burns, Robert “Musing on the roaring ocean” (in German translation), 82–91 Burstein, L. Poundie, 141, 149, 150n36, 178 on CS’s “Das Veilchen,” 127–29 cadence. See Clara Schumann (née Wieck): undermined cadences Caplin, William, 23, 29, 31n5, 33, 65n4, 99 on musical cadences and linguistic punctuation, 26 on prolongational closure, 121, 140 Citron, Marcia, 17, 17n12, 20, 21, 22, 134 closure. See Clara Schumann (née Wieck): undermined cadences complexity, as an overvalued musical feature, 19–20 Davies, Joe, 6n17, 177 Deaville, James, 15, 138n12, 140n14 Draheim, Joachim, 61, 62, 117 Duparc, Henri, 4 Ewell, Philip, 17n11 Fauré, Gabriel, 178 Ferris, David, 70 Finson, Jon, 14 Forkert, Annika, 19 Fox, Margaret Elizabeth, 65n4 Franz, Marie (née Hinrichs), 180 Franz, Robert, 141, 180 Fritz, Sarah, 177

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Geibel, Emanuel “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” 155–57 “Die stille Lotosblume,” 31–32, 158–61 “Liebeszauber,” 152–55 Gerhard, Wilhelm “Am Strande” (translation of Robert Burns’s “Musing on the roaring ocean”), 82–91 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1 “Das Veilchen,” 126–32 “Wandrers Nachtlied II,” 154 Grimes, Nicole, 178 Hallmark, Rufus, 50, 50n22, 143, 145 Heine, Heinrich “Die Lorelei,” 105–10 “Sie liebten sich beide,” 148–52 “Volkslied,” 92–98 Heller, Ferdinand, 141 Hensel, Fanny (née Mendelssohn), 13, 15, 180 avoidance of final cadences in her songs, 24 comparisons with Felix Mendelssohn, 6n17, 16n9 experimental musical style, 21n19 Hisama, Ellie, 20n17 Höft, Brigitte, 61, 62, 117 Jacquet de la Guerre, Élisabeth-Claude, 23n24 Joachim, Joseph, 4, 9 Johnson, Graham, 67, 68n7, 105, 178 Kehler, Marie von, 154n37 Kenny, Aisling, 16n9 Kerner, Justinus, 62 “Der Wanderer,” 63–68 “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” 68–69 Klassen, Janina, 2, 55, 90, 96, 159n45, 178 Krebs, Harald, 24, 177 on CS’s “Auf einem grünen Hügel,” 173n64 on CS’s “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” 157

Index on CS’s “Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen,” 140n15 on CS’s “Liebst du um Schönheit,” 144n27 on CS’s “O Lust, o Lust,” 174n65 on CS’s “Sie liebten sich beide,” 149 on CS’s “Volkslied,” 94 on CS’s “Was weinst du, Blümlein,” 163n50, 164, 165 Lang, Josephine, 180 Lewin, David, 53 Liszt, Franz, 104, 105, 133 Litzmann, Berthold, 127n60 Lochhead, Judy, 17n10, 20n17 Loewe, Carl, 180 long nineteenth century, 179 Lyser, Johann Peter “Walzer,” 77–81 Macarthur, Sally, 17n10 Mahler, Alma (née Werfel), 14 Malawey, Victoria, 135n7 Malin, Yonatan, 31, 54, 94n29, 95n31 Martin, Nathan, 24 McClary, Susan, 23n24 Mendelssohn, Felix, 180 Meyer, Leonard, 70 Miller, Caitlin, 105 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus “Das Veilchen,” 127–30 new Formenlehre, 7–8, 23–27 Osborne, Tyler, 24 Parsons, Laurel, 6, 18, 19, 20n17 Parton, Christopher, 162, 172, 177 on CS’s “An einem lichten Morgen,” 166 on CS’s “Auf einem grünen Hügel,” 171–72 on CS’s “Das Veilchen,” 127–29 on CS’s “Was weinst du, Blümlein,” 163n51, 164 Pedneault-Deslauriers, Julie, 24, 58n33, 177 on CS’s “Beim Abschied,” 65n4, 122n52, 125n53 on CS’s “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” 156 on CS’s “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” 100, 100n35, 101, 125 on CS’s song melodies, 32, 34 on descending bass lines in CS’s music, 39, 88, 126n58 phrase structure. See Clara Schumann (née Wieck): expansive themes

Ravenscroft, Brenda, 6, 18, 19, 20n17 Reich, Nancy, 1, 5, 21n20, 22n21, 71, 72, 81, 117 Reichardt, Louise, 13 Rollett, Hermann “An einem lichten Morgen,” 165–68 “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” 58, 168–71 Jucunde, 1 “O Lust, o Lust,” 173–76 “Was weinst du, Blümlein,” 162–65 Ronyak, Jennifer, 19 rotational form, 135n7 Rückert, Friedrich “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” 92, 98–104 “Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen,” 139–41 “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” 39–44 “Liebst du um Schönheit,” 142–44 “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat,” 110–17 “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” 46–47, 144–47 Liebesfrühling, 137 Schmalfeldt, Janet, 7n19, 31 on CS’s “Die stille Lotosblume,” 29, 158–60 Schubert, Franz, 22, 178, 180 “Ihr Bild,” 53 theme-types in his songs, 20n18, 24, 74 voice/piano echoes in his songs, 54 Schumann, Clara (née Wieck) comparisons with Robert Schumann, 5–6, 13–16, 26n31, 91–104 expansive themes, 74–81, 163, 175 as a hallmark of CS’s songwriting style, 29–39 compound antecedents (antecedent+continuation), 29–31, 47, 68–69, 122–23 compound antecedents (compound basic idea+continuation), 33–39, 44, 63–65, 119 sentences, 72–74, 98–102 expressive accompaniments, 119, 166–68, 169–70, 173 as a hallmark of CS’s songwriting style, 50–58 chromatic postludes, 56–58, 74, 96–98, 102–4, 157 echoed by the vocal melody, 54–56, 90–91, 108, 114–17, 164, 167 evoking the sounds of nature, 77–81, 83, 138 repeated block chords, 52–54, 72

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Schumann, Clara (née Wieck) (cont.) simplicity of songwriting style, 20–23, 51, 104–5, 134, 148–52, 173–76 undermined cadences and cadential syntax/rhetoric, 69–71, 146–47 and fused/separated poetic stanzas, 83–91, 109–10, 139–40 and linguistic punctuation, 26–27, 31–32, 40–44, 65–68, 89–90, 119–22, 130–32 as a hallmark of CS’s songwriting style, 39–50 works “Am Strande,” 61n1, 82–91, 105, 107, 133 “An einem lichten Morgen,” 36–39, 51, 148, 162, 165–68 “Auf einem grünen Hügel,” 161, 162, 162n49, 170, 171–73 “Beim Abschied,” 65n4, 117, 122–26 “Das ist ein Tag, der klingen mag,” 161, 162, 162n49 “Das Veilchen,” 1, 61, 81, 126–32, 162 “Der Abendstern,” 4n12, 52, 71, 72–74, 119 “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” 52, 56–58, 96, 148, 155–57 “Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle,” 4n12, 61n1, 68–71 “Der Wanderer,” 4n12, 61n1, 63–68, 71, 77n18, 92 “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage,” 98–104, 137 “Die Lorelei,” 51, 54–56, 82, 83, 104, 105–10, 111, 167 “Die stille Lotosblume,” 29–32, 33, 47, 52, 70, 136n9, 147, 148, 158–61, 162 “Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen,” 50, 50n22, 136n9, 137, 138–41, 142, 145 “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” 54n30, 56–58, 96, 148, 162, 168–71, 173 “Ich hab’ in deinem Auge,” 39–44, 52, 54n28, 104, 147 “Ich stand in dunklen Träumen,” 52–54, 55, 147 “Liebeszauber,” 44, 52, 55n31, 58n33, 147, 148, 150, 152–55, 156 “Liebst du um Schönheit,” 47–50, 58n33, 137, 141–44, 145, 146, 152 “Mein Stern,” 61n1, 117, 118–22 “O Lust, o Lust,” 148, 162, 173–76 “Oh weh des Scheidens, das er tat,” 82, 104, 105, 110–17

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“Sie liebten sich beide,” 147, 148–52 “Volkslied,” 55n31, 82, 83, 91–98, 102, 107 “Walzer,” 4n12, 61n1, 71, 74–81 “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” 35, 44–47, 109, 137, 144–47 “Was weinst du, Blümlein,” 161, 162n49, 162–65, 166, 167, 170, 171, 172, 173 Deuxième Scherzo, op. 14, 177 March in E-flat major (for piano fourhands), 4 Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 7, 65n4, 177 Piano Sonata in G minor, 177 Piano Trio in G minor, op. 17, 58n33, 177 Romance in B minor, 4 Sechs Lieder, op. 13, 8, 104, 133–35, 147–48, 161 Sechs Lieder aus Jucunde, op. 23, 1, 8, 36, 133–35, 161–62 Three Romances, op. 11, 177 Three Romances, op. 22, 58n33, 177 Zwölf Gedichte aus F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling, op. 12, 8, 14, 15, 133–35, 137–38, 148, 152, 161 Schumann, Robert, 14, 178, 180 open endings of his songs, 70 piano postludes, 22, 56 voice/piano echoes in his songs, 54 works “Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sagen,” from Vier Gesänge, op. 59, 98–104 “Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen,” from Dichterliebe, op. 48, 56 “Volkslied,” from Romanzen und Balladen, op. 64, 91–98 Zwölf Gedichte aus F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling, op. 37, 8, 14, 15, 133, 137–38 Serre, Friederike, 117 “Beim Abschied,” 122–26 “Mein Stern,” 118–22 Serre, Friedrich Anton, 117 Smith, Barbara Hernnstein, 46, 109, 125 Spillman, Ronald, 52 Stefaniak, Alexander, 22, 51n23, 53, 104, 146n29, 152 Stein, Deborah, 52 Straus, Joseph, 20n17 Strauss, Richard, 154 strophic form, 69, 72, 119–22 different types, 135–36 in CS’s “An einem lichten Morgen,” 165–68 in CS’s “Auf einem grünen Hügel,” 171–73

Index in CS’s “Der Mond kommt still gegangen,” 155–57 in CS’s “Die stille Lotosblume,” 158–61 in CS’s “Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen,” 138–41 in CS’s “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” 168–71 in CS’s “Liebeszauber,” 152–55 in CS’s “Liebst du um Schönheit,” 141–44 in CS’s “O Lust, o Lust,” 173–76 in CS’s “Sie liebten sich beide,” 148–52 in CS’s “Was weinst du, Blümlein,” 162–65 in CS’s op. 12, 137–38 in CS’s op. 13, 147–48 in CS’s op. 23, 161–62 in CS’s opp. 12, 13, and 23 as a whole, 134–36

Taylor, Benedict, 178 Temperley, David, 76, 77 Thym, Jürgen, 13, 17, 61, 89, 111n46, 177 Vande Moortele, Steven, 30n4, 158n43, 160n47 Vespermann, Marie, 181 Wieck, Friedrich, 62 Wolf, Hugo, 178, 180 Wollenberg, Susan, 16n9, 177 on CS’s “Liebst du um Schönheit,” 49, 142, 143, 143n20, 144 Wurm, Mary, 180 Youens, Susan, 177, 178 on CS’s “Die Lorelei,” 108, 109, 110n45 on CS’s “Geheimes Flüstern hier und dort,” 169 on CS’s “Sie liebten sich beide,” 148n31, 149

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