Carnaval, Opus 9
Five Novelletten, Opus 21
“A meeting of two kindred spirits: a quintessentially romantic composer
and an equally romantic player at their best.” – Classical Pulse!
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Program Notes by Elizabeth Rich
In 1830, the 20-year old Robert Schumann came to Leipzig to study with the famous pedagogue, Friedrich Wieck. Wieck’s daughter Clara (later Clara Schumann), born in 1819, was already a celebrated child pianist. As a kind of answer to Schumann’s “Papillons”, published in 1832, the 12-year old Clara composed her Opus 2; it contained the five-note descending theme (C, B-flat, A-flat, G, F) which was to become Clara’s “motto” in Robert Schumann’s work.
By 1839, Schumann was writing to Clara “In the Novelletten, you, my bride, appear in every possible setting and circumstance—and in other ways in which you are irresistible!” So, too, the Clara motif appears in inversion, augmentation, diminution, transformation—in every possible setting and circumstance. Elsewhere, Schumann called the Novellettes “longish connected adventure stories,” and, again to Clara: “I have written such a tremendous lot of music for you during the last three weeks—jests, Egmont stories, family scenes with fathers—a wedding—and I have called the whole, Novelletten because your name is Clara and Wieketten does not sound nice enough…” (The work was thus also named after Clara Novello, a famous contemporary singer.)
All of the Novellettes are in some variant of ABA; that is, with one or more contrasting middle sections. The five-note Clara motto can be heard directly as the opening “jest” of the sixth novellette and as the “voice from the distance” of the last great (eighth) novellette, where its inversion (ascending five tones) also forms the opening theme. More hiddenly, the motto is everywhere woven into the formal fabric of the music, in large scale and small.
Ernestine von Fricken also studied with Friedrich Wieck, and during the years 1833-5, she and Robert Schumann believed they were in love. Ernestine was born in the town of Asch, and Schumann discovered that Asch could be spelled in musical notes (German) and that the same notes were the only musical letters in his own name. The coincidence provided the “four notes”* for the “little scenes.”* (A, E-flat [S, in German], C, B [H, in German].)
Schumann was also a music critic, and the articulate and poetic quality of his prose served both his noble musical convictions and his imagination. He signed his articles “Florestan,” representing the fiery, impetuous side of his nature, or “Eusebius,” personifying his gentle, lyrical self. Eusebius and Florestan held printed discussions; they were the founding members of the Davidsbund (League of David). This was Schumann’s imagined society of artists, both actual and fanciful, and the name promised that artists would prevail against contemporary philistines as the biblical David had conquered his enemies. In the March of the Davidites against the Philistines*, the Davidites are strengthened by a theme from the finale of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto; the Philistines are represented by a peasanty 17th-century Grossvatertanz.
Wrote Jean Paul Richter, the German romantic author whom Schumann loved, “A masked ball is perhaps the most perfect medium through which poetry can interpret life.”
*Please refer to program.
Schumann Carnaval, Opus 9, Five Novelletten, Opus 21 was recorded in 1991 and originally published by Connoisseur Records in 1992.