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Robert Schumann: Herald of a "New Poetic Age"
Forced by a hand injury to abandon a career as a pianist, Robert Schumann went on to become one of the world's great composers. Among many works, his Spring Symphony (1841), Piano Concerto in A Minor (1841/1845), and the Third, or Rhenish, Symphony (1850) exemplify his infusion of classical forms with intense, personal emotion. His musical influence continues today and has inspired many other famous composers in the century since his death. Indeed Brahms, in a letter of January 1873, wrote: "The remembrance of Schumann is sacred to me. I will always take this noble pure artist as my model."
Now, in Robert Schumann: Herald of a "New Poetic Age," John Daverio presents the first comprehensive study of the composer's life and works to appear in nearly a century. Long regarded as a quintessentially romantic figure, Schumann also has been portrayed as a profoundly tragic one: a composer who began his career as a genius and ended it as a mere talent. Daverio takes issue with this Schumann myth, arguing instead that the composer's entire creative life was guided by the desire to imbue music with the intellectual substance of literature. A close analysis of the interdependence among Schumann's activities as reader, diarist, critic, and musician reveals the depth of his literary sensibility. Drawing on documents only recently brought to light, the author also provides a fresh outlook on the relationship between Schumann's mental illness--which brought on an extended sanitarium stay and eventual death in 1856--and his musical creativity. Schumann's character as man and artist thus emerges in all its complexity. The book concludes with an analysis of the late works and a postlude on Schumann's influence on successors from Brahms to Berg.
This well-researched study of Schumann interprets the composer's creative legacy in the context of his life and times, combining nineteenth-century cultural and intellectual history with a fascinating analysis of the works themselves.
Now, in Robert Schumann: Herald of a "New Poetic Age," John Daverio presents the first comprehensive study of the composer's life and works to appear in nearly a century. Long regarded as a quintessentially romantic figure, Schumann also has been portrayed as a profoundly tragic one: a composer who began his career as a genius and ended it as a mere talent. Daverio takes issue with this Schumann myth, arguing instead that the composer's entire creative life was guided by the desire to imbue music with the intellectual substance of literature. A close analysis of the interdependence among Schumann's activities as reader, diarist, critic, and musician reveals the depth of his literary sensibility. Drawing on documents only recently brought to light, the author also provides a fresh outlook on the relationship between Schumann's mental illness--which brought on an extended sanitarium stay and eventual death in 1856--and his musical creativity. Schumann's character as man and artist thus emerges in all its complexity. The book concludes with an analysis of the late works and a postlude on Schumann's influence on successors from Brahms to Berg.
This well-researched study of Schumann interprets the composer's creative legacy in the context of his life and times, combining nineteenth-century cultural and intellectual history with a fascinating analysis of the works themselves.
624 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 21, 2021
A comprehensive life-and-works. Daverio offers analyses of various works across Schumann's career and in every genre (though the music examples in concerted and vocal works often tend to be piano reductions). He is fairly enthusiastic about all the works he mentions, making distinctions as to their varying functions (such as pedagogic, Hausmusik, salon pieces, virtuosic works) and is scornful of the belief that Schumann's later compositions show a falling off in talent and dismisses the idea that works like the Violin Concerto reflect incipient madness.
The conceit that runs throughout the book is the concept of music as literature. The exact meaning of this is difficult to pin down, though Daverio distinguishes it immediately from the idea of program music. It has more to do with music as a way of expressing ideas and manifests itself in various ways over the composer's career. The author quotes the 18-year-old Schumann's reference to Schubert's Eight Variations on a theme from Hérold's Opera Marie for piano duet (D 908) as "the most perfect romantic portrait, a perfect novel in tones," seeing the conflation as a kind of synesthesia, but also of a piece with the youth's anticipation of a dual career as author and musician. (Hearing the work itself, my impression is of a fairly standard theme-and-variations form; but perhaps one might hear all such compositions as sorts of novels, a series of variation-chapters in which we follow the adventures and transformations of the theme-protagonist.)
In the early piano pieces, Daverio looks into various underlying literary forms and inspirations that underlie them: works by Jean Paul and Hoffmann or the literary-biographical fantasies of Eusebius, Florestan, and the Davidsbund. In the most specific example of a musical-literary interrelationship, an appendix presents a chapter from Jean Paul's Flegeljahre which provided inspiration for Papillions, Op. 2. In later years Daverio credits Schumann being the a pioneer of "literary opera", musical-dramatic works that directly adapt an existing dramatic text rather than an adapted libretto, in Genoveva, , and Scenes from Goethe's Faust.
The conceit that runs throughout the book is the concept of music as literature. The exact meaning of this is difficult to pin down, though Daverio distinguishes it immediately from the idea of program music. It has more to do with music as a way of expressing ideas and manifests itself in various ways over the composer's career. The author quotes the 18-year-old Schumann's reference to Schubert's Eight Variations on a theme from Hérold's Opera Marie for piano duet (D 908) as "the most perfect romantic portrait, a perfect novel in tones," seeing the conflation as a kind of synesthesia, but also of a piece with the youth's anticipation of a dual career as author and musician. (Hearing the work itself, my impression is of a fairly standard theme-and-variations form; but perhaps one might hear all such compositions as sorts of novels, a series of variation-chapters in which we follow the adventures and transformations of the theme-protagonist.)
In the early piano pieces, Daverio looks into various underlying literary forms and inspirations that underlie them: works by Jean Paul and Hoffmann or the literary-biographical fantasies of Eusebius, Florestan, and the Davidsbund. In the most specific example of a musical-literary interrelationship, an appendix presents a chapter from Jean Paul's Flegeljahre which provided inspiration for Papillions, Op. 2. In later years Daverio credits Schumann being the a pioneer of "literary opera", musical-dramatic works that directly adapt an existing dramatic text rather than an adapted libretto, in Genoveva, , and Scenes from Goethe's Faust.
December 18, 2012
Most composers of the Romantic era had pretty interesting lives and Schumann is no exception. I really liked the biographical details in this book, such as his battle to marry Clara, his Florestan and Eusebius personalities, and his longtime struggle with mental illness. The author is also very careful and tries to avoid making any assumptions (ie. not insinuating anything went on with Brahms and Clara). There were also lots of great insights into his relationship with literature and how this affected his music. He also covers mostly all of Schumann's works even the lesser known ones. However, I'm also not into harmony, so I found myself skimming/skipping over the long frequent analytical passages.
I also didn't like the ending with the author commenting on the students listening to their dumb "fortunately not too loud!" rock music. He's trying to be like Schumann through glorifying the past, being critical of the present, and being hopeful for a "new poetic age" in the future, but unlike Schumann, he just seems pretentious. But other than that this is a really exhaustive biography that I would recommend for anyone intrigued in Robert Schumann!
I also didn't like the ending with the author commenting on the students listening to their dumb "fortunately not too loud!" rock music. He's trying to be like Schumann through glorifying the past, being critical of the present, and being hopeful for a "new poetic age" in the future, but unlike Schumann, he just seems pretentious. But other than that this is a really exhaustive biography that I would recommend for anyone intrigued in Robert Schumann!
June 18, 2009
A great biography and a fascinating appreciation of Schumann's work. Schumann was one of the great musical geniuses of the Romantic movement. Daverio is especially adept at pointing out the mastery in Schumann's often overlooked large-scale later works like "Scenes from Goethe's Faust" or "Das Paradies und die Peri", finding no loss in quality due to Schumann's supposed mental illness. Ear-opening and thought-provoking, delves into Schumann's literary interests (Jean-Paul, Hoffmann, Goethe, etc.) and illuminates the ways in which he endeavored to create a new musical-literary poetics. Made me think differently about the way I create art.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews