"Who gives us from the first free flowing energetic life."

Robert Schumann could have written those words about himself.  Perhaps
everything a composer writes is about himself as he sees himself expressed
in others.  Or might I say, those who will be remembered as composers work
this way.

The whole thing opens up with a yearning upward phrase in the violins.
It is a theme of a shape that would be of great use to Mahler, and bears
certain similarities to theme to Mahler 10's Adagio.

And is often the case with the generation of Mendelssohn and Schumann
there is a peculiar inversion of the role of the parts of a sonata.
Instead of being introductory, the beginning is thematic and expository.
The exposisition clouds rather than clarifies, the development reduces
tenstion rather than increases it.

- - -

When I was younger I was of the sort that had a bad attitude to Schumann,
his reliance on I-vi for chromatic tension, his constant spinning out over
a static interchange of chords, his lack of interlocking of rhythmical
ideas in the manner of Beethoven and Mozart - all added up to a composer
who was simply not doing anything but spinning wheels.

In a sense this is the truth of the music, it is not music about the
external tensions, but the internal tensions.  Its themes, rather than
being classical fragments remain themselves too much.  Instead of a
conversation of parts, we find ourselves in a layered world with each voice
having a definite part within a whole.  The consciously lyrical thought in
the violin, the misgivings and amendations in the cello response, and the
free flowing engine of feeling itself in the piano.

There is a moment when the heavy opening barrage has ended, and we are
given a music box like dance, light with snow flakes and drifting memories.
And it broadens and deepens into music which is of that type emblematic of
nostalgia, and then to a full blown remembering of - the music of the
opening!  Here is music that simply would not work without flagrant
violation of the old "rules" without a violation of the sonata form as
being "organically" related to the harmonic substance.

I can see I've gotten ahead of myself again.  To explain, the alterations
of mood and pace in Haydn, in Beethoven, in Mozart, and in most of Schumann
are intimately related to a vision of harmony as being dominated by the
circle of fifths.  Themes are made out of harmonic tropes, and movements
follow the same twists and turns as a theme.  The two fit together because
they are born out of the same substance.  After the deaths of Beethoven and
Schubert the road of chromaticism found in Dusseck, Clementi and the
"brilliant style" began more and more to demand inclusion.  The operas of
Weber and the soleful turns of melody in song were simply to powerful not
to be used in symphonic form.  However the symphonic forms of the time were
brittle and broke - Chromaticism with its priveledging of the minor, its
movement away from trebble versus bass and toward tension in the middle
note of a chord - all attacked the unity of symphonic trope with harmonic
trope.

What this means is simple.  In 1815 you can write a passable sonata
movement by taking a relatively standard theme and just playing with it.
The themes people wanted to write with were made of the same chords that
structured a whole movement of music.  In 1845 this is long since
impossible.

Schumann's solution to the problem was to take advantage of the violation.
He pauses directly when one thematic section has reached a point where it
can no longer continue, he halts, he builds sections so thick that they
have no room of the entering in and out that makes a movement by Haydn or
Beethoven.  Everyone is going full guns all the time.

- - -

To try and compress all of this:

Schuman wants to write sonata movements, he wants wailing rending themes
that are out of Schubert's songs and out of the cast of poetic and lyrical
of his age.  He wants what he thinks of as "expression" to reside in the
theme itself, rather than in its fragmentation.  He wants even his cryptic
fragments to have some cast of expression.  Contrast this to Haydn who
though of his themes fragments as pieces to send where he liked.

Since his technique of large scale form is built on the assumption of
unindividual themes, and his melodies on the lyric identifiablility of
these themes, he needs another device.

In this quartet the one he uses is the *irreconcilability* of the themes
with the techniques.  The two circle each other.  THe chord progression
wants to meander through keys, the structure won't allow it, and so the
theme is set dissonantly against the structure, or the whole motion is
brought to a full stop without transition.  Each of these devices is, of
course, expressive, and hence to Schumann's end.

His next movements - a scherzo affair reminiscent of Beethoven's "out of
order" dance movements, and a "Langsam, mit inniger Empfindung" - seal the
point.  Without the necessity of theme, he is capable of dancing and almost
bluffing his way through a standard format, without the necessity of form
that warps and bends the shape of the music, there is none of the fervid
pain of the first movement.

The finale returns to some degree of the first movement, its theme is
longer than the dance movement, and its structure more propulsive than the
third.  It is with fire, and his idea of fire from Beethoven is having more
figuration rather than thematic unity.  It is laid out in a format which is
the same as the first movement - highly charged lyrical theme against
lighter dance like rememberance theme.

- - -

I suppose I need to summarise this grab bag.  Alright here it is: the
sonata to Beethoven was merely the way he wrote.  Beethoven had to work to
do church music and other forms which had a known shape, but a sonata was
what he called one.  For Schumann a sonata form is the form that Beethoven
used.  Just as Beethoven's tension between homophonic and polyphonic style
leads him to twist and strain when he desires to use the older form in
newer music - witness the voluminous commentary on the use of polyphony
in Beethoven's late sonatas and his last symphony - so too Schumann takes
advantage of the tension between past and present by using the tension
between the techniques and modes of expression to create expressive forms
in music.

Stirling S Newberry
allegro [log in to unmask]