SCHUM.ANN'S LATER LETTERS.*
Miss HERBERT has followed up her excellent translation of Schumann's Early Letters (Bell and Sons, 1888) by an equally meritorious version of the collection edited by F. G. Jansen in 1886 (Breitkop and Hartel, Leipzig). This collection extends to 312 letters, of which about 90 had hitherto been unpub- lished, and their issue in a trustworthy English translation deserves a cordial welcome. They are in some respects less interesting than the Jugen.dbriefe, but as affording an insight into the character of a great artist, they possess the highest value, and tend, on the whole, to enhance the personal esteem in which Schumann deserves to be held.
Throughout the Whole course of his life, as mirrored in his letters, occur premonitions of his sad and untimely end. But these temporary occultations of his powers never once cussed him to surrender his high aims. Nervous and irritable and moody he was, on his own showing, but his nature was singularly free from the pettiness and meanness which has disfigured the reputation of so many eminent musicians. Nothing is more admirable and delightful in these letters than the tone and spirit in which he addresses or alludes to Mendelssohn. In a smaller nature than Schumann's, the posi- tion of his great contemporary would infallibly have provoked envy and jealousy. Of such feelings there is not a single vestige; on the contrary, Schumann's attitude is throughout marked by the deepest affection and reverence untinged by adulation. What a happy phrase is that, for example, in which he writes of Mendelasohn's face, "which in its perpetual, delicate mobility, speaks without reserve of all that is going on within him;" and how admirable is the criticism of St. Paul, in which he says that Mendelssohn was the first who gave the graces a place in the house of God ! This generous and un- stinted admiration on the part of Schumann has made Mendelssohn's silence in his published letters very difficult to understand, especially as there is good ground for believing that these feelings were cordially reciprocated, while Mendelssohn himself was equally incapable of jealousy. Schumann's chivalrous devotion was, as these letters abun- dantly prove, no mere question of time, as so frequently happens in the case of even illustrious composers. His admira- tion did not stop short with Beethoven, Bach, and Schubert. Wherever he encountered genius, or what he took to be genius —for his judgment was not invariably infallible—he was ready to say, "Hats off !" His detestation of platitudes and " tinsel " often led him to attach undue importance to mere solid effort ; but his leniency in this regard did little harm in the long- run. Earnest aspirants to musical distinction have never had so sympathetic, stimulating, or generous a critic as Schumann. More than once he thought he had detected the sacred fire in young composers whose very names are now buried in oblivion. But against these failures should be set his prompt and unerring recognition of the claims of Chopin, of Berlioz, of Sterndale Bennett, and, above all, of Brahma. The later letters abound in quaint and characteristic allusions to the "young eagle" whom he befriended so signally at the outset of a career which has since amply fulfilled Schumann's magnificent predictions. This anxiety to help all "young and honestly striving artists" went hand-in-hand with a singular right-mindedness of perception as regarded his own merits. He was conscious of great powers, but he never minimised the drawbacks of his early education. When an enthusiastic Belgian admirer expressed a desire to have his portrait to place between two of the greatest composers, he replied in a truly felicitous phrase : "Don't place me between • The Life of Robert Schumann, told in his Letters. Translated from the German by May Herbert. London : Bentley and Bon.
Beethoven and Weber, though somewhere near them, so that I may go on learning from them all my life." We should like to know how many composers of half his genius would, if editors of a paper, have emulated his honesty in inserting an article on song-writers in which the writer placed him in the second class. His own intuition told him that the estimate was unjust, and he did notrefrain from ex- pressing his disappointment to the author of the article. But such a private expression of feeling does not impair the im- partiality of the act. Even when he was obliged to assert him- self most energetically, he did not forget to be magnanimous.
He bore no malice against his father-in-law for his long and determined refusal to sanction his daughter's marriage, and though driven to invoke the aid of the law, was indisposed to prolong the rupture after he had carried his point.
Schumann was magnanimous and modest, as these letters eloquently testify, but under provocation he could be severe enough. As late as 1851, he received a letter from a young student, offering him a libretto for an opera, which he coupled with the gratuitous recommendation that Schumann should give up romanticism and always write clearly, so that all could understand him. This elicited from Schnmann a digni- fied but crushing rebuke. "Haven't you found out," he asks
• his correspon.dent, "that I have got other aims than amusing children and amateurs?" And again : "How can you, who have given the world no proof of artistic or critical gifts— how can you proffer advice, such as one would give to beginners, to a man who has at all events given some proofs of his capacity?" On another occasion, he gave one of his publishers a good rap over the knuckles, when the latter asked him to write a " Pendant " to his Jugendalbum, which had become very popular. "The idea of 'Pendants' !" replied Schumann, indignantly. "What are you thinking of P You might know that 'Pendants' are not in my line." With regard to his strictures on other composers, it is interesting to observe how his opinions varied, and how candid he was in confessing that he had altered his opinion. His first impression of Wagner, as recorded in a letter to Mendelssohn, was that of "undoubtedly a clever fellow, full of crazy ideas, and bold to a degree I declare that he cannot write or imagine four consecutive bars that are melodious or even correct." But three weeks later he says : "I must retract a good deal of what I wrote to you after reading the score [Tannh.auser]. On the stage everything is very different. I was quite impressed by some of it," And a couple of months later he went so far as to say that Tannhauser con- tained much that was deep and original, and that Wagner might become of immense importance to the stage. "I consider the technical part, the instrumentation, excellent, and it is all far more masterly than it used, to be,"—i.e., in Rienzi. Schumann, however, recurred somewhat in the long-run to his earlier impressions, for which the devotees of the Wagnerian religion have never forgiven him. The simple fact of the matter is this, that composers are not ideal critics, any more than poets are. Spohr had a great deal of the Sapellmeister in him, and yet he was about the only Kapell- meister of his time who appreciated Wagner. On the other hand, Spohr thought Beethoven's later work anarchical and wrong.
Schnmann's letters to his friends are devoid of the gaiety and sparkle which seldom desert those of Mendelssohn. In his brightest moods there is a tinge of melancholy, or, to use his own phrase, employed when he was in very good spirits : "If man had as many happy moments in his hours of grief as he has sad ones in his hours of happiness, I am sure he would be even happier than I am now." On his sombre and reserved temperament, however, some personalities—such as those of Mendelssohn and Joachim—invariably exerted an exhilarating influence. Of the latter he says : "I always get into a good humour when I write to you : you are a kind of doctor to me."
Many notable traits are recorded in these pages, of which we can only touch upon two or three. It seems to have been Schumann's almost invariable praCtice, according to his own account, to append the most characteristic titles to his pieces after they were finished. Sometimes he would discover quite a new meaning in them, as in the case of one of the Phan- tasiestiicke, "Die Nacht," in which he found the whole story of Hero and Leander. It is interesting, again, to know what he considered his best work,—namely, the Sreisleriana, Phan- tasiestiicke, R,omanzen, and Noveletten. Some passages we have marked as mutually irreconcilable. In Vol. I., p. 224, he says to Hirschbach : "Perhaps you are like me, who have always placed the composition of songs below instrumental music,—indeed, have never considered it as a great art." Now, on p. 248 of the same volume, he says : " I.can hardly tell you what a treat it is t6 write for the voice, compared with instru- mental composition." So, again, p. 287: "Above all write for the voice. That gets you on more than anything, and brings out the innermost qualities of the musician." After all, a great musician is generally a kaleidoscopic character, and we have no great fault to find with Schumann for his incon- sistency. At worst, this is a trifling blemish in a musician who set so bright an example to all who came after him by his industry, his sincerity, and his earnestness.
Previous page
