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Study, Copy, and
Conquer: Schumann’s
1842 Chamber Music and
the Recasting of Classical
Sonata Form
JULIE HED GE S BRO WN
C
ritics took note when Robert Schumann
began publishing his chamber music from 1842. Composed following
his 1841 efforts to write orchestral music (which produced his Symphony
in B ♭ major and the first version of the Symphony in D minor, among
other pieces), these chamber works further solidified what many perceived as a stylistic break from Schumann’s earlier output. Instead of
songs and piano pieces marked by literary-poetic associations and striking experimentation, which had been the focus of the preceding decade,
he was now writing pure instrumental music articulated through the
Certain ideas presented here first appeared in my PhD dissertation,
‘‘‘A Higher Echo of the Past’: Schumann’s 1842 Chamber Music and
the Rethinking of Classical Form’’ (Yale University, 2000). Portions
have also been presented at the 19th Congress of the International
Musicological Society, Rome, July 2012, and the North American
Conference on 19th-Century Music, July 2011, Richmond, VA,
among other venues. Research and writing were facilitated in part by
grants from the College of Arts and Letters and from the Faculty
Grant Program at Northern Arizona University; funding was also
provided by the Northern Arizona University School of Music and
the Charles H. and Donna M. Aurand Music Faculty Development
Award. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this
journal for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this
essay. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 30, Issue 3, pp. 369–423, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2013
by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and
Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/JM.2013.30.3.369
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
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forms and genres established by classical predecessors. Although Schumann saw his youthful music as a developmental stepping-stone toward
these larger instrumental works, critics quickly emphasized the stylistic
distance between the two repertories. For example, an 1845 review of the
String Quartets, op. 41, noted that, like other works of the early 1840s,
‘‘the musical ideas are given a clearer shape and do not lose themselves
so readily in the mystical profundities and obscure reveries of earlier
compositions.’’1 Similarly, an 1844 review of the Piano Quintet, op. 44,
commented: ‘‘[T]he whole distinguishes itself mightily from the works of
Schumann’s earlier period through steadiness [and] level-headed use of
all means.’’2 Likewise, an 1846 review of the Piano Quartet, op. 47,
opened by proclaiming: ‘‘How differently Schumann’s more recent
works appear from those he published ten years ago! Everything is
clearer and milder, that which is eccentric has been restrained and
instead blended into an independent style.’’3
Though they highlight Schumann’s new orientation, such comments
are problematic in various ways. First, they discourage listeners from discerning ties between Schumann’s earlier and later music and thus thwart
full understanding of his stylistic development. Second, by emphasizing
restraint and comprehensibility, they hinder appreciation of Schumann’s
creative rethinking of inherited forms. In an 1843 article about the history
of the string quartet, for example, Hermann Hirschbach acknowledged
innovations in Schumann’s recent contributions, noting that his quartets
are ‘‘so unusual that I cannot compare them to anything else.’’4 Yet to
1
‘‘Wie in allen diesen Werken die musikalischen Ideen sich klarer gestalten, sich
weniger in jene mystischen Tiefsinnigkeiten, in dunkle Träumereien verlieren, als in früheren Compositionen.’’ Ernst Friedrich Richter, ‘‘Rob. Schumann: Drei Quartette für zwei
Violinen, Viola und Violoncello, Op. 41,’’ Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (15 January 1845),
38; for an English translation of this essay, see Hans Kohlhase, ‘‘Kritischer Bericht / Critical
Report,’’ in Robert Schumann, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke: Drei Quartette für zwei Violinen,
Bratsche und Violoncello op. 41, series 2, Kammermusik, Werkgruppe 1, Werke für Streicher
(Mainz: Schott, 2006), 1:163. Kohlhase provides excellent documentation (in both the
original German version and the English translation) of the reception and performance
history of the string quartets.
2
‘‘Das Ganze unterscheidet sich mächtig von den Werken einer früheren Periode
Schumann’s durch Sicherheit, Besonnenheit in der Verwendung aller Mittel.’’ Anonymous, ‘‘R. Schumann: Quintett für Pianoforte, zwei Violinen, Viola und Violoncelle, Op.
44,’’ Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (28 February 1844): 149.
3
‘‘Wie anders sieht doch eine Schumann’sche Composition neuerer Zeit aus, als die,
die er vor zehn Jahren herausgab! Wie ist Alles klarer und milder, alles Abenteuerliche
zurückgedrängt worden, und dafür zu einem selbständigen Style verschmolzen!’’ A[ugust]
K[ahlert], ‘‘Robert Schumann: Quartett für Pianoforte, Violine, Viola und Violoncelle, Op.
47,’’ Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 48 (15 July 1846): 472.
4
‘‘Sie sind so besonders, daß ich sie mit nichts vergleichen kann.’’ Hermann
Hirschbach, ‘‘Zur Geschichte des Quartetts,’’ Neue Zeitschrift für Musik [hereafter NZfM] (20
March 1843); translated in Hans Kohlhase, ‘‘Kritischer Bericht / Critical Report,’’ 159.
Hirschbach does not elaborate on his comment, probably because Schumann—as a scrupulous editor of the NZfM—likely discouraged him from saying more.
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facilitate their public reception and respond to criticism from a provincial
quartet ensemble that the works were ‘‘rubbish,’’ Hirschbach subsequently
stressed their coherence: Schumann’s quartets, he wrote, ‘‘keep within
traditional forms and are not at all revolutionary, but [rather] stand out
by virtue of their particular quality of invention.’’5 Others showed less
sympathy toward Schumann’s change of direction, further impeding recognition of his innovative approaches. In his infamous essay ‘‘Das Judentum in der Musik’’ Wagner asserted that Schumann’s early genius was
thwarted by such composers as Mendelssohn, whose ‘‘Jewish influence’’
set Schumann—and the course of music itself—in the wrong direction by
favoring pure instrumental forms and genres.6 Particularly influential was
a lengthy essay in 1845 by Franz Brendel, Schumann’s successor as editor of
the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and a budding Wagnerite. Brendel suggested
that Schumann’s more traditional works of the early 1840s represented his
attempt to deflect the subjectivity of his earlier music; but, Brendel continued, the composer ‘‘isn’t entirely at home in the objective world and
thus occasionally lapses into lack of clarity, even dryness.’’ Brendel’s image
of objectivity battling subjectivity hindered appreciation for Schumann’s
instrumental music, and it influenced a number of subsequent reviews.7
371
5
‘‘Aber selbst dieser pedantischen Kunstansicht [ascribed by Hirschbach to the provincial quartet ensemble he critiques] . . . würden die Schumann’schen [Quartette], sich in
hergebrachten Formen bewegend und durchaus nicht revolutionair, aber durch Eigenthümlichkeit der Erfindung sich auszeichnend, keineswegs widersprechen.’’ Hermann
Hirschbach, ‘‘Musikzustände der Gegenwart,’’ Repertorium für Musik (June 1844); translated in
Hans Kohlhase, ‘‘Kritischer Bericht / Critical Report,’’ 161. After hearing a private performance of the quartets in September 1842, Moritz Hauptmann responded similarly; noting that
Schumann’s earlier piano pieces had been ‘‘so aphoristic and fragmentary, with a mere
complacent eccentricity,’’ he observes that in the quartets ‘‘there is no lack of unusual features
as regards form and content, but they are intelligently conceived and held together, and
a great deal of the music is very beautiful.’’ Letter of 2 October 1842, translated ibid., 154–55.
6
Richard Wagner, ‘‘Judaism in Music [1869 version],’’ in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works,
trans. William Ashton Ellis, vol. 3, The Theatre (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1894;
reprint, New York: Broude Brothers, 1966), 117–18; page reference is to the reprint edition.
7
Franz Brendel, ‘‘Robert Schumann mit Rücksicht auf Mendelssohn-Bartholdy und
die Entwicklung der modernen Tonkunst überhaupt,’’ NZfM 22 (19 February, 5 and 12
March, 2, 9, and 30 April, 3 May 1845): 63–67, 81–83, 89–92, 113–15, 121–23, 145–47,
149–50; cited from a partial English translation by Jürgen Thym in his ‘‘Robert Schumann
with Reference to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and the Development of Modern Music in General (1845),’’ in Schumann and His World, ed. R. Larry Todd (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 330–31. Brendel, a Hegelian, applied principles of dialectical logic to
Schumann’s stylistic development; thus he held out hope for a third synthetic phase that
would ‘‘reconcil[e] and unif[y] everything’’ (335). For a discussion of how Brendel’s formulations affected subsequent reviews, see Jürgen Thym, ‘‘Schumann in Brendel’s Neue Zeitschrift für Musik from 1845–1856,’’ in Mendelssohn and Schumann: Essays on Their Music and Its
Context, ed. Jon W. Finson and R. Larry Todd (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1984),
21–36. Brendel eventually heralded Wagner as Beethoven’s true successor, helping to precipitate the midcentury polemic about the development of modern music. Reviews of Schumann’s music in the NZfM that adopt Brendel’s characterizations should be seen against this
background.
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
Schumann eventually lamented the simplistic dichotomy applied to his
output and the superficial understanding it encouraged. In an 1854 letter
to Richard Pohl—a onetime supporter of his who had become a Wagnerite
—Schumann complained that Pohl’s manner of ‘‘venting’’ about him
leads me to believe you do not understand me . . . You speak of a lack of
objectivity; have you considered this, too? Are my four symphonies all
alike? Or my trios? Or my songs? Are there really two kinds of creativity,
one objective and the other subjective? Was Beethoven an objective
[composer]? Let me tell you: these are secrets that cannot be revealed
with such miserable words.8
Such dichotomous notions of Schumann’s development continued
into the twentieth century, though with the classical–romantic pairing
increasingly favored and with growing preference given to the earlier
works. In her 1967 biography, for instance, Joan Chissell asserted that
most of the works composed in the 1840s fail to achieve
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a happy balance between the romantic and classical elements in Schuman’s makeup. . . . [T]oo frequently his mind—and often a tired
mind—would labour to manipulate abstract sound-material in such
a way as he thought befitted a would-be orthodox ‘‘classical’’ composer,
with the result that his most valuable attribute—his spontaneous imagination—was gradually smothered and destroyed.9
Similarly, in his 1980 entry on Schumann for the New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians, Gerald Abraham suggested that with ‘‘the great
turning-point’’ in 1841, Schumann ‘‘did not cease to be a Romantic, but
his Romantic conception of music first as a medium of self-expression
was now modified by the older Classical view of musical composition as
a craft to be practiced.’’ According to Abraham, the craft was never
mastered: ‘‘Schumann’s inability to cover a large canvas with his playful
aphorisms and lyrical melodies is as painfully apparent here [in the First
Symphony] as in the piano sonatas, and the inventiveness which seldom
failed to produce new and interesting piano textures almost dried up
when he had at his disposal a medium capable of figuration far richer but
not shaped under his fingers.’’10 The two criticisms that Abraham levels
8
Letter of 6 February 1854, translated by John Michael Cooper in Schumann and His
World, 259-61. This letter appears as an appendix to Cooper’s translation (233–59) of
Richard Pohl’s 1878 essay ‘‘Erinnerungen an Robert Schumann’’ (Reminiscences of Robert
Schumann).
9
Joan Chissell, Schumann (London: Dent; New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1967),
95–96.
10
Gerald Abraham, ‘‘Robert Schumann,’’ New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), 16:851–52.
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against Schumann’s large-scale works—weak instrumental writing and
the lack of sustained development arising from lyrical and epigrammatic
impulses—surface in many other twentieth-century writings on Schumann’s instrumental music.11 Even in the twenty-first century such sentiments continue. In his 2001 biography Eric Jensen suggests that
although Schumann’s ‘‘greater dependence on traditional models led
those with more conservative taste to gain greater comprehension of his
work, the change in style risked a loss in creativity: The danger to Schumann lay in the degree to which he became dependent on musical
tradition, with academicism replacing originality.’’12
Recent scholarship has nevertheless begun reassessing Schumann’s
efforts in the larger instrumental genres. New ways of hearing Schumann’s symphonic writing—from matters of orchestration to thematic
development—have been offered through diverse in-depth studies.13
11
For instance, Felix Weingartner—who saw Schumann as the first and ‘‘the most
peculiarly subjective of the romanticists’’—suggests that in his attempt ‘‘to be classical’’
Schumann’s ‘‘own originality suffered severely without his being able to reach his model.’’
Although his treatment of the piano was ‘‘original,’’ for instance, ‘‘his management of the
orchestra leaves . . . almost everything to be desired.’’ Weingartner, Die Symphonie nach Beethoven (1897); the pages on Schumann were translated as ‘‘On Schumann as Symphonist’’
in Schumann and His World, 375–80, with the above quotation taken from 376–77.
Regarding the influence of lyrical and epigrammatic ideas, Mosco Carner noted that all of
Schumann’s sonata forms ‘‘are distinguished by the possession of elements that belong to
the Lied-form and which are alien to the nature of the sonata form.’’ As a result, Carner
concluded, Schumann’s later music signaled the dying life of sonata form: ‘‘finite lyrical
ideas’’ hindered the organic ‘‘regeneration’’ of material and thus broke the dramatic
thread that previously sustained the form. Carner ultimately asserts a limited biological life
for sonata form; it reached its ‘‘most perfect consummation’’ in Beethoven’s middle-period
works, with ‘‘decay’’ setting in thereafter. Carner, ‘‘Some Observations on Schumann’s
Sonata Form,’’ Musical Times 76, no. 1112 (October 1935): 884–86. The essay encapsulates
conclusions Carner reached in his study Studien zur Sonatenform bei Robert Schumann (PhD
diss., University of Vienna, 1928); see especially 1–15. Half a century later Carl Dahlhaus
similarly remarked, ‘‘[B]y substituting the motivic unity of the character piece for that of
the Beethoven symphony, [Schumann] became embroiled in contradictions between lyricism and monumentality, contradictions that led not so much to a productive dialectic as
to mutual paralysis of its various components.’’ Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J.
Bradford Robinson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), 160.
Donald Francis Tovey similarly asserted: ‘‘Schumann is a master of epigram . . . [But] the
creators of such Einfälle seldom show high constructive genius on a larger scale. But what
else can we expect? Large forms imply the expansion of initial ideas by development; and
development is the very thing that an epigram will not bear.’’ Donald Francis Tovey, Essays
in Musical Analysis, vol. 2, Symphonies (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), 46.
12
These remarks conclude Jensen’s overview of the 1842 chamber music. Eric Jensen, Schumann (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 212.
13
For instance, Jon Finson has reevaluated orchestration in Schumann’s works,
arguing that the increasing size of nineteenth-century orchestras (those to which Weingartner, for example, was accustomed, see note 11) may account for perceived problems of
imbalance in Schumann’s symphonies. Jon Finson, Robert Schumann and the Study of Orchestral Composition: The Genesis of the First Symphony, Op. 38 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989),
140–41. Markus Waldura has argued that Carner’s organic view of forms and styles led to
a biased view of Schumann’s sonata forms. By thinking of analytical concepts such as
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Favorable surveys of the chamber repertory have also appeared,14 and
some authors have suggested novel means for understanding Schumann’s
idiosyncratic approach to traditional forms.15 Particularly germane for this
essay—which explores three unusual sonata forms from the 1842 chamber
music—are studies by Anthony Newcomb and Joel Lester: each has shown
how an evolution of musical ideas may override the tonal norms of sonata
form in ways that produce satisfying results. In his analysis of Schumann’s
Symphony in C major, op. 61—a work criticized in the twentieth century as
formally flawed—Newcomb argues that a psychological trajectory spanning all the movements explains the seemingly deviant finale, in which
thematic transformations begun in the development section continue in
a way that usurps a traditional recapitulation. Because these transformations also pull together strands from preceding movements, and because
they ultimately lead to a satisfying conclusion, the sonata-form principle of
reconciling ‘‘proposed oppositions is thus fulfilled but more in thematic
-
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‘‘motivic-thematic working out’’ and ‘‘sonata form’’ in broader terms (as was the case in
Schumann’s day), Waldura suggests that in many ways Schumann’s forms, instead of undoing, continue the thematic processes of Beethoven while also anticipating those of Brahms.
Markus Waldura, Monomotivik, Sequenz und Sonatenform im Werk Robert Schumanns (Saarbrücken: Saabrücker Druckerei und Verlag, 1990), 10–20. In an analysis of the D-minor
symphony, Mark Evan Bonds suggests that Schumann’s ‘‘misreading’’ of Beethoven’s Fifth
signals not compositional weakness—as some critics have asserted—but rather an attempt
to clear creative space for himself by proceeding differently, an idea on which I build in
discussing the works here. Mark Evan Bonds, After Beethoven: Imperatives of Originality in the
Symphony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 1–8, 109–37.
14
See John Daverio, ‘‘‘Beautiful and Abstruse Conversations’: The Chamber Music of
Robert Schumann,’’ in Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music, ed. Stephen E. Hefling (New York:
Schirmer, 1998), 208–41; pages 215–23 specifically survey the 1842 chamber music. See also
chapter 7 of Daverio’s biography Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), from which parts of his essay above derive; and, for comments on the 1842 chamber music, Linda Correll Roesner, ‘‘The Chamber Music,’’ in The
Cambridge Companion to Schumann, ed. Beate Perrey (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2007), 123–47, esp. 124–33.
15
Daverio, for instance, has suggested that a striking formal deviation—like the ‘‘Im
Legendenton’’ passage in the first movement of the Fantasie, op. 17, a movement with
sonata-form elements—may function not as a shortcoming but rather as a self-conscious
critique of an inherited form, principle, or idea. John Daverio, Nineteenth-Century Music and
the German Romantic Ideology (New York: Schirmer, 1993), 19–47. Roesner has reexamined in
positive terms several unusual sonata-form movements in Schumann’s early piano sonatas
and the Fantasie, op. 17, explaining how local-level details explain the surprising formal
extensions that give rise to ‘‘parallel’’ structures. Linda Correll Roesner, ‘‘Schumann’s
‘Parallel’ Forms,’’ 19th-Century Music 14, no. 3 (1991): 265–78. In a provocative analysis
of the finale of the String Quartet op. 41, no. 3, Anthony Newcomb has described how
Schumann ‘‘defamiliarizes’’ classical rondo form (which he compares to a ‘‘paradigmatic
plot,’’ a notion taken from structural studies of narrative) by reversing the formal functions
of refrain and episode. But in this subversion of structural norms the finale empowers once
again the form whose conventions it ‘‘mocks,’’ for ‘‘the attentive listener is forced to move
beyond static recognition of formal schemata to dynamic questioning of formal procedures.’’ Anthony Newcomb, ‘‘Schumann and Late Eighteenth-Century Narrative Strategies,’’ 19th-Century Music 11, no. 2 (1987): 165, 173–74.
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than in tonal terms.’’16 In an article surveying Schumann’s sonata-form
practices, Lester noted that the act of creating and resolving two contrasting key areas is often not the point; instead, Schumann’s sonata forms may
be ‘‘motivated by organic and narrative explorations of themes and keys,’’
yielding movements that show coherence because each ‘‘uniquely relates
its large-scale structural and narrative plans to its thematic content.’’17
My own work, prompted by a strong belief that this repertory merits
greater attention, offers new perspectives on formal idiosyncrasies in Schumann’s 1842 chamber music.18 First, the chamber pieces illustrate in telling
and underappreciated ways the influence of his earlier experimental music
and hence belie the stylistic distance posited by so many critics between
these repertories. Indeed, as I demonstrate here and elsewhere, the chamber music reveals a number of traits typically associated with Schumann’s
earlier output, among them aphoristic impulses, interruptive gestures, rhetorically unusual openings, sustained tonal ambiguity (even competing
tonics), ‘‘parallel’’ structures, and other anomalous treatments of musical
form. Second, far from letting ‘‘academicism replace originality,’’ the 1842
chamber works exhibit many creative and successful reworkings of older
forms that deserve attention. In this essay I explore three chamber movements in which Schumann strikingly reworked sonata procedures in ways
that have remained unacknowledged in the scholarly literature. The movements reveal two complementary approaches: either the tonic key monopolizes the exposition (as in the first movement of the Piano Quartet in E ♭
major, op. 47), or a modulating main theme undercuts a definitive presence of the tonic key at the outset (as in the first movement of the String
Quartet in A major, op. 41, no. 3, and the finale of the String Quartet in A
minor, op. 41, no. 1). Both approaches thwart the tonal contrast of keys so
characteristic of sonata form. Viewed against conventional practice, these
chamber movements appear puzzling, perhaps even incoherent or awkward. Yet surely their unusual openings signal not compositional weakness
(Schumann could certainly write otherwise) but rather an effort to reinterpret the form as a way of strengthening its expressive power.
16
Anthony Newcomb, ‘‘‘Once More between Absolute and Program Music’: Schumann’s Second Symphony,’’ 19th-Century Music 7, no. 3 (April 1984): 243.
17
Joel Lester, ‘‘Robert Schumann and Sonata Forms,’’ 19th-Century Music 18, no. 3
(Spring 1995): 198, 190. In this essay, while surveying general traits of Schumann’s sonata
forms, Lester also provides analyses of the Toccata for piano, op. 7 (Schumann’s first
published sonata-form movement), the opening movement of the Piano Sonata in F-sharp,
op. 11, and the first movement of the String Quartet in A major, op. 41, no. 3, an analysis I
supplement later in this essay.
18
Julie Hedges Brown, ‘‘Schumann and the style hongrois,’’ in Rethinking Schumann, ed.
Roe-Min Kok and Laura Tunbridge (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011),
265–99; idem, ‘‘Higher Echoes of the Past in the Finale of Schumann’s 1842 Piano Quartet,’’ Journal of the American Musicological Society 57, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 511–64; and idem, ‘‘‘A
Higher Echo of the Past.’’’
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In this regard my study takes a cue principally from Schumann himself, who in his critical writings laid forth his ideas on the dynamic relationship of present to past. On the one hand Schumann always insisted
that an artist should ‘‘lead me a step further in the spiritual realm of art
and provide poetic depth and novelty everywhere.’’19 On the other hand
he underscored the importance of inherited models, even if unacknowledged by the artist himself:
Given the tremendous speed with which music develops—of which no
other art can offer an example—it often happens that even the best are
recognized by their contemporaries for seldom longer than a decade.
The intolerance of many young intellects, so thanklessly forgetful and
unmindful that they are only building up a height for which they did
not lay the foundation, is an experience that every younger epoch has
made and will in the future make.20
376
As is well known, Schumann fostered a distinct self-consciousness
about traditions inherited from his notable predecessors, awareness that
he urged others to cultivate. As he noted in an 1839 review, ‘‘One cannot
originate everything from one’s own depths. Consider how long it took to
develop the fugue! Should the artist first work through and try out everything himself?’’ Yet Schumann also urged an interactive dialogue with the
past. Mere imitation was of limited use, for only through creative reworking could traditional models remain vital. Through such mastery an artist
assured not just a dusty preservation of traditional models but a reinvigorated life for them. In his 1839 review he continued: ‘‘[D]oes not [the
artist] more quickly arrive at his goal if he studies and copies the best
existing works, until he has conquered their form and spirit?’’ In this way inherited models could yet serve as valuable frames of reference for contemporary composition.21
19
‘‘Denk’ ich nun freilich an die höchste Art der Musik, wie sie uns Bach und Beethoven
in einzelnen Schöpfungen gegeben, sprech’ ich von seltenen Seelenzuständen, die mir der
Künstler offenbaren soll, verlang’ ich, daß er mich mit jedem seiner Werke einen Schritt weiter
führe im Geisterreich der Kunst, verlang’ ich mit einem Worte poetische Tiefe und Neuheit
überall, im Einzelnen wie im Ganzen.’’ Review of 3 August 1838, NZfM, reprinted in Robert
Schumann, Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker (hereafter Gesammelte Schriften), ed.
Martin Kreisig, 5th ed., 2 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1914), 1:343.
20
‘‘Bei der großen Schnelle der Entwickelung der Musik, wie keine andere Kunst ein
Beispiel aufstellen kann, muß es wohl vorkommen, daß selbst das Bessere selten länger als
vielleicht ein Jahrzehnt im Munde der Mitwelt lebt. Das viele der jungen Geister so undankbar vergessen und nicht bedenken, wie sie nur eine Höhe anbauen, zu der sie gar
nicht den Grund gelegt, ist eine Erfahrung der Intoleranz, die jede Epoche der jüngeren
gemacht hat und künftig machen wird.’’ Schumann’s review of 5 June 1834, NZfM,
reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:10.
21
‘‘Man kann nicht alles aus eigener Tiefe heraufbeschwören. Wie lange bildete die
Zeit an der Fuge herum! Soll der Künstler erst alles an sich selbst durchmachen und versuchen, und kommt er nicht schneller um Ziel, wenn er das vorhandene Beste studiert,
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In many ways the three chamber movements that I will discuss illustrate the ‘‘study, copy, and conquer’’ process described above. Prior to
composing his op. 41 string quartets in June and July 1842 (his first
chamber works of that year), Schumann immersed himself in the study
of string quartets by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.22 His career as
a music critic, combined with his early playing of chamber works by
Schubert and others, had also given him ample opportunity to study the
chamber medium. The three movements I have chosen make clear the
sonata-form tradition on which Schumann drew, not only by the position
of each movement within its multimovement cycle (two first movements
and a finale) but also by conventions of sonata form that each preserves:
expositions begin in the tonic key and end with cadences in the dominant key (or mediant key in the minor mode); central sections develop
materials of the exposition; recapitulations provide harmonic adjustment of secondary materials; all end with codas; and two of the movements begin with slow introductions. Yet the three movements also
thwart a hallmark of the form—the contrast of two tonal areas—by establishing their tonic key either too strongly or not strongly enough. Schumann instead creates tension from the way the opening materials
question the harmonic norms of the paradigm they invoke. And through
this questioning the movements prompt a new kind of expressive trajectory, for the opening materials pose a challenge, a compositional problem, to which the remaining music must respond. This unorthodox
treatment of the home key has compelling large-scale ramifications. Subsequent materials reverse the tonal strategies of earlier passages, creating
a balance of a different sort, and a significant rethinking of material
occurs, with themes and motives appearing in new guises and new contexts, and often with transformed formal functions. Thus, as Newcomb
and Lester have stressed, the transformation of musical ideas plays a significant role. And although producing less-than-straightforward recapitulations, such transformations are satisfying because they arise as
convincing responses to their unusual openings. In these ways the movements restore to the sonata-form paradigm something of its earlier
-
nachbildet, bis er sich Form und Geist untertan gemacht?’’ Schumann’s review of 5 March
1839, NZfM, reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:390; my emphasis. Schumann’s well-known
comment that ‘‘the future should be a higher echo of the past’’ (‘‘Die Zukunft soll das
höhere Echo der Vergangenheit sein’’) encapsulates the same idea; see the entry of 5–6
June 1834 in Robert Schumann, Tagebücher (hereafter Tagebücher), vol. 1, ed. Georg Eismann, vols. 2–3, ed. Gerd Nauhaus (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1971, 1987,
1982), 1:304. Schumann’s comments also clarify why he would have been frustrated with
the overly simplistic dichotomy that critics applied to his output: a rift between subjectivity
and objectivity—and between the related concepts of innovation and tradition—would
have been incompatible with Schumann’s dynamic view of historical progression.
22
Schumann, Tagebücher, 3:210–13.
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
provocative force, or, to use Schumann’s words, they manage to ‘‘conquer its form and spirit.’’
My analyses also draw on other perspectives to illuminate these
three sonata forms. All of them adopt, for instance, a striking thematic
idea or formal ploy that evokes a specific Beethovenian precedent. Yet
each movement also throws into relief Schumann’s creativity by departing notably from the conjured model—another illustration of the
study-copy-conquer process. I also draw on Schumann’s sketches, especially those concerning changes made during the compositional process, to illuminate relevant analytical points. Finally, in the analysis of
the finale of the A-minor quartet I will consider how Schumann’s evocation of Hungarian gypsy music may be not merely incidental but
supportive of his reimagined sonata form. Ultimately the perspectives
offered here easily accommodate—even celebrate—Schumann’s idiosyncratic approach to sonata form. They also demonstrate that his
earlier experimental tendencies were not antithetical to but foundational for his efforts in the early 1840s to advance his inherited classical
past.
378
The Monopolizing Tonic: The First Movement of the Piano Quartet in E ♭ Major,
Op. 47
In the first movement of the E ♭ -major Piano Quartet, op. 47, Schumann explores the effects of a monopolizing tonic key area. After
a slow introduction, he presents an expansive primary theme area the
bulk of which becomes even more apparent when the secondary key
(V) does not achieve true autonomy. The expansiveness of the opening theme area arises from its weighty, formally closed design. Specifically, Schumann presents a full ternary form (a b a’), each part
ending with full closure and the whole solidifying E ♭ major (mm.
13–64; fig. 1 diagrams the first theme group, and ex. 1 excerpts it).
figure 1. Piano Quartet in E ♭ major, op. 47, movement one: overview
of the primary theme area
13
36
a
b
Phrase 1
Phrase 2
sequence
52
cadential idea
64
TRANSITIONAL
MATERIALS . . .
Single
Phrase
Keys:
HC
PAC
PAC
PAC
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example 1. Piano Quartet in E ♭ major, op. 47, movement one: opening
materials (mm. 1–40)
379
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 1. (Continued)
380
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example 1. (Continued)
381
Reinforcing our sense of closure and hence formal stability, the main
thematic idea (a) delays the structural tonic downbeat until the end of
its two-phrase structure, a sequential period (mm. 13–35). Although
the antecedent phrase begins on E ♭ harmony, it metrically undermines
this tonic by placing it on a weak beat (m. 13) and treating it as a onemeasure anacrusis to the following V 43 chord (m. 14). The consequent
phrase begins by avoiding tonic harmony altogether: its initial tonicization of F minor (mm. 26–31, the element that makes the theme
a sequential period) ultimately serves as a predominant, readying the
perfect authentic cadence that finally brings the structural tonic
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382
downbeat (m. 35).23 To create greater drive toward this moment,
Schumann undermines the rhetorical force of the half cadence separating the two phrases. Despite a clear dominant arrival in measure 24,
continuing melodic motion brings a seventh to the chord (m. 25),
enabling its rapid transformation into a German-sixth chord in
F minor, the predominant key that in the second phrase prepares full
closure in the home key. Thus, despite the strong presence of E ♭ major
within the opening thematic statement, tonic harmony itself remains
unstable until the theme’s conclusion (m. 35). As a result, the material
of part a comprises a large-scale upbeat to this final cadence, a trajectory that highlights the emphatic formal closure of this part. This
harmonic sweep also characterizes a’ (mm. 52–64), where a single
phrase now encapsulates the material of the original periodic theme.
The contrasting middle part (part b, mm. 36–51) also contributes to
the stability of the home key area. Although it initially sounds transitional, developing motives of part a via sequential movement, part b actually reinforces the home key through a structural arpeggiation of the E ♭
tonic. The music proceeds sequentially from E ♭ major through F minor,
to a cadentially oriented idea in G minor (mm. 36–46); a deceptive
resolution (m. 47), however, eventually leads to a full cadence on the
dominant, B ♭ (m. 51), completing the tonic arpeggiation. Ultimately, the
deceptive resolution to an E ♭ chord—which functions as a pivot between G
minor and B ♭ —signals the persistent presence of the overall tonic. When
opening materials subsequently return in E ♭ major (a’, mm. 52–64), Schumann solidifies both the home key and the substantive, block-like nature
of the primary theme area.24
In composing his main theme, Schumann seems to have had
a Beethovenian prototype in mind: the opening Allegro theme of the
‘‘Razumovsky’’ String Quartet in C major, op. 59, no. 3 (ex. 2, mm. 30–
43).25 The two themes show remarkable similarity in terms of rhetorical,
23
For examples of consequent phrases that behave similarly, see Arnold Schoenberg,
Fundamentals of Musical Composition, ed. Gerald Strang and Leonard Stein (London and
Boston: Faber and Faber, 1967), 29; and William Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal
Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 53.
24
I first proposed a tonic arpeggiation within part b of the theme in my dissertation,
‘‘‘A Higher Echo of the Past,’’’ 188–89. In an insightful article, Peter Smith too has
acknowledged ‘‘a larger tonic expansion’’ within this section, though he suggests that the
tonicization of G minor signals a larger interaction with E ♭ major, a ‘‘tonal pairing’’ that
creates continuity across the different parts of the sonata form. Peter Smith, ‘‘Associative
Harmony, Tonal Pairing, and Middleground Structure in Schumann’s Sonata Expositions:
The Role of the Mediant in the First Movements of the Piano Quintet, Piano Quartet, and
Rhenish Symphony,’’ in Rethinking Schumann, ed. Roe-Min Kok and Laura Tunbridge
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 244–52.
25
My thanks to Michael Friedmann for first pointing out this resemblance to me.
Basil Smallman has also observed this reference in passing in his book, The Piano Quartet
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melodic, and harmonic disposition. Following Beethoven’s slow introduction, a chordal gesture emphasizing 3̂–4̂ melodic motion is followed by
quasi-rhapsodic solo figuration, with the grouping then sequentially restated a step higher (cf. mm. 30–40 of Beethoven’s theme with mm. 13–21
of Schumann’s theme). Like Schumann, Beethoven also treats his opening tonic chord as an upbeat to a dominant sonority (m. 30), similarly
delaying the structural tonic downbeat by a significant length. (A cadence
in C major occurs in m. 43, but the chromatic approach keeps it from
sounding definitive.)Moreover, both themes highlight the supertonic
(cf. the tonicization of D minor in Beethoven, mm. 35–40, with Schumann’s tonicization of F minor, mm. 26–31). Finally, both composers
follow their opening thematic statements with materials that initially
sound transitional (beginning at m. 43 in Beethoven and m. 36 in Schumann) but ultimately lead back to the home key and emphatic tonal
closure (m. 59 in Beethoven, where the first definitive cadence in C major
occurs, and mm. 52–64 in Schumann, where a varied reprise of part
a material culminates with full closure in E ♭ ).26
Schumann’s writings can illuminate the significance of this reference, for during his years as a music critic he commented on a number
of Beethovenian reminiscences in the music of his contemporaries;
as Schumann once noted, ‘‘[D]o we not all subsist on his treasures?’’27
-
and Quintet: Style, Structure, and Scoring (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 48. Schumann
certainly would have known Beethoven’s op. 59 quartet, not only through his study of
Beethoven’s string quartets—along with those of Mozart and Haydn—in the spring of 1842
but also through earlier efforts to familiarize himself with quartet repertory. From 1836 to
1838, Schumann regularly attended rehearsals of a quartet ensemble led by Ferdinand
David that featured contemporary works but also works by classical masters. This experience seems to have prompted Schumann’s first quartet attempts (several fragments from
1838–1839), a series of six essays evaluating recent contributions in this genre (‘‘Quartettmorgen’’), and a prolonged study of Beethoven’s late quartets, a repertory then considered strange and inaccessible. For an overview of Schumann’s activity in the late 1830s,
see Daverio, ‘‘‘Beautiful and Abstruse Conversations,’’’ 212–15.
26
Without noticing the Razumovsky reference, some commentators have briefly
observed other Beethovenian echoes in Schumann’s movement. John Gardner, for example,
hears the introduction as ‘‘Beethoven-ish’’ in how the slow introduction is ‘‘interwoven into
the subsequent Allegro—after the manner of Beethoven’s own op. 127 Quartet’’ (a work also
in E ♭ major). John Gardner, ‘‘The Chamber Music,’’ in Robert Schumann: The Man and His
Music, ed. Alan Walker (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1972), 219. Daverio has suggested that
the ‘‘hymnic quality’’ of the slow introduction, along with the ‘‘figural, abstract character of
much of the [Allegro] material . . . bears comparison with the tone struck by Beethoven in his
‘Harp’ Quartet, op. 74, and ‘Archduke’ Trio, op. 97’’; Daverio, Robert Schumann, 260. See also
Daverio’s ‘‘‘Beautiful and Abstruse Conversations,’’’ 220, 222.
27
‘‘Die Anklänge an Beethoven erwähnten wir schon; zehren wir doch alle von seinen Schätzen.’’ Schumann’s review of 5 June 1838, NZfM, reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften,
1:330. For a lengthy study of the various ways in which Schumann’s reception of Beethoven
manifested itself, see Bodo Bischoff, Monument für Beethoven: Die Entwicklung der BeethovenRezeption Robert Schumanns (Köln-Rheinkassel: Verlag Dohr, 1994). Although Bischoff does
not discuss the Beethovenian references explored in this essay, his book provides helpful
time charts that document Schumann’s encounters with specific Beethoven works.
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example 2. Opening of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C major, op. 59,
no. 3 (mm. 1–44)
384
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example 2. (Continued)
385
Yet for some references he offered censure, for others praise. In an 1842
review of a string quartet by Johann Verhulst, for instance, Schumann
observed: ‘‘The last movement begins, almost literally, like the last of the
‘Eroica’Symphony. Did this elude the composer’s notice? If not, why did
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386
he allow it to remain?’’28 Similarly, after noting references to Beethoven
and other composers in a symphony by Karl Reissiger, Schumann complained: ‘‘For my part, I am only bothered by the frequent and strong
reminiscences and the ulterior motives behind them; so plentiful are
they, that if one began removing them, half of the symphony would likely
fall away.’’29 In an 1835 review of Christian Müller’s Third Symphony,
however, Schumann was more favorably disposed, noting that ‘‘those
details that recall Beethoven’s manner even stimulate at times reflections
that, in a certain sense, work to the young composer’s advantage’’
because, Schumann continued, ‘‘his own successful self is wholly and
happily distinguished from the outside model he wanted to emulate.’’30
This remark clarifies Schumann’s stance on reminiscences, Beethovenian
or otherwise. Those that merely imitate compromise the spirit of artistic
invention; they even risk the ‘‘degeneration’’ of one’s independence ‘‘into
a mannerism.’’31 Rather, references should work in union with the composer’s own creativity, preferably even throwing into relief the new artistic
contributions. Thus, even though the first movement of Mendelssohn’s
Piano Sonata, op. 6, ‘‘recalls the thoughtful melancholy of Beethoven’s
last A-major Sonata, . . . this is not weak dependence but rather spiritual
kinship.’’32 Similarly, although the first theme from Louis Hetsch’s Grand
28
‘‘Der letzte Satz fängt mit dem lezten der ‘heroischen’ Sinfonie an, beinahe
buchststäblich. Ist das dem Komponisten entgegen? Wenn nicht, warum ließ er es stehen?’’
Schumann’s review of 17 May 1842, NZfM, reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:76.
29
‘‘Mich für meinen Teil störten nur die häufigen und starken Reminiszenzen, oft der
Nebengedanken,— so daß, wollte man auszuscheiden anfangen, die Sinfonie wohl bis auf
die Hälfte zusammenfallen würde.’’ Schumann’s review of 16 July 1839, NZfM, reprinted in
Gesammelte Schriften, 1:428. Schumann then provides a laundry list of the composers evoked.
Excessive reminiscences constitute a recurring topic in Schumann’s reviews of Reissiger;
compare his comments on the F-major and F-minor trios (opp. 97 and 103) and A-major
string quartet (op. 111) in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:177, 1:338. Elsewhere, Schumann decried
the practice in even stronger terms: ‘‘What is more, people who search their music cabinets to
seek resemblances and reminiscences are disagreeable and uncultured’’ (Die Menschen
sind unleidlich und ungebildet überdies, die gleich ihren Musikschrank umwenden, um
Ähnlichkeiten und Reminiszenen herauszusuchen), Gesammelte Schriften, 1:94.
30
‘‘Das einzelne, was an Beethovensche Art erinnert, reizt manchmal sogar zu Betrachtungen, die in gewissem Sinne zum Vorteil des jüngeren Komponisten ausfallen, da
das gelungene Selbsteigene von dem, wo er es dem fremden Vorbilde nachtun wollte, sich
ganz glücklich unterscheidet.’’ Schumann’s review of 10 February 1835, NZfM; reprinted in
Gesammelte Schriften, 1:67.
31
‘‘Im Besitz so vieler äußeren Kunstmittel, an der kräftigen Orgel aufgewachsen und
Meister darauf—mit einem Worte, er muß sich mit aller Gewalt von der einseitigen Verehrung dieses Meisters losmachen, dem selbst gewiß die Selbständigkeit seines Schülers als
Komponist über dessen Anhänglichkeit an eine Manier geht, aus der für die Sinfonie kaum
etwas zu gewinnen ist.’’ Schumann’s review of 6 October 1837, NZfM; reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:264. This comment appears in a review of the Third Symphony by
Hesse, a composer whose style, in Schumann eyes, was overly indebted to that of his
teacher, Louis Spohr.
32
‘‘Klingt also in dieser Sonate auch vieles an, so namentlich der erste Satz an den
schwermütig sinnenden der letzen A-dur-Sonate von Beethoven, und der letzte im
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Duo evokes ‘‘Beethoven’s great E-flat Concerto, no harm is done because
of the warm treatment that everywhere breaks forth. But apart from this
reminiscence, we frequently encounter in the movement prominent curiosities, especially interesting and novel harmonic features. The piece is
also rich with artistic combinations in the thematic work.’’33
With Schumann’s remarks in mind, we can appreciate more the
Beethovenian reference in his piano quartet, for what is especially striking are not the similarities but the differences between the two movements that highlight Schumann’s creative distance from his predecessor.
Beethoven’s opening theme displays a looser form than that of Schumann’s piano quartet. Instead of a periodic structure that confirms the
tonic key (as in part a of Schumann’s primary theme area), Beethoven’s
theme actually obscures tonal focus: the second gesture (mm. 35–40)
provides a varied transposition of the first, thereby establishing D minor
just as strongly as C major. This treatment contrasts with Schumann’s
approach in his piano quartet: here the tonicization of ii serves clearly as
-
allgemeinen an Webersche Weise, so ist dies nicht schwächliche Unselbständigkeit, sondern geistiges Verwandtsein.’’ Schumann’s review of 29 December 1835, NZfM; reprinted
in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:124. This review also considered piano works by Schubert, another
composer whom Schumann admired for his independence from Beethoven.
33
‘‘Den Vorzug vor allen Sätzen geben wir dem ersten; erinnert er auch in seinem
Hauptthema etwas an das des Beethovenschen großen Es-dur-Konzerts, so hat das doch der
überall hervorbrechenden Wärme der Behandlung keinen Eintrag getan. Diesen Anklang
ausgenommen begegnen wir sonst im Satze lauter Eigentümlichem, oft, namentlich in der
Harmonie, Interessantem und Neuem; auch an künstlichen Kombinationen in der thematischen Arbeit ist das Stück reich.’’ Schumann’s review of 16 November 1843, NZfM;
reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, 2:153. Schumann urged originality even in arrangements.
For instance, in one of the few published reviews of his own compositions, Schumann
admitted that in his op. 3 Etudes after Paganini’s Caprices he ‘‘copied the original, perhaps
to its detriment, nearly note for note, only elaborating harmonically.’’ For the op. 10
Concert Etudes after Paganini’s Caprices, however, he sought to ‘‘give the impression of
an independent piano composition,’’ one that seemed to ‘‘forget’’ its ‘‘violin origin’’ but
‘‘without forfeiting the poetic idea’’ of the original work. (Anders aber, als bei der Herausgabe eines früheren Heftes von Studien nach Paganini, wo ich das Original, vielleicht zu
dessen Nachteil, ziemlich Note um Note kopierte und nur harmonisch ausbaute, machte
ich mich diesmal von der Pedanterie einer wörtlich treuen Übertragung los und möchte,
daß die vorliegende den Eindruck einer selbständigen Klavierkomposition gäbe, welche
den Violinursprung vergessen lasse, ohne daß dadurch das Werk an poetischer Idee
eingebüßt habe.) Schumann’s review of 19 April 1836, NZfM; reprinted in Gesammelte
Schriften, 1:212. Schumann also acknowledged that reminiscences could be accidental,
something he termed ‘‘inverse imitation.’’ In a review of Taubert’s Brillantes Divertissement
(‘‘Bacchanale’’), Schumann commented, ‘‘We find echoes of Mendelssohn, even of Weber,
here and there but in a manner that I would like to term inverse imitation, in which
a composer, with all his diligence, seeks to avoid that which he resembles until, in an
unguarded moment, he falls entirely into its arms.’’ (Anklänge an Mendelssohn, wohl auch
an Weber finden sich hier und da, aber in einer Weise, die ich umgekehrte Nachahmung
nennen möchte, indem mancher Komponist gerade dem, dem er ähnlich wird, mit allem
Fleiss auszuweichen sucht, bis er ihm in einem unbelauschten Augenblick mit dem ganzen
Körper in die Arme fällt.) Schumann’s review of 30 June 1837, NZfM; reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:305.
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388
a cadential predominant within the second phrase, preparing emphatic
full closure in the home key (mm. 26–35). Tonal ambiguity in Beethoven’s quartet arises even prior to the Allegro theme: unlike Schumann’s
slow introduction, which remains rooted in E ♭ major, local chromaticism
notwithstanding, Beethoven’s introduction is harmonically disorienting,
built on a mostly chromatic descending bass that underpins a number of
fully diminished seventh sonorities; as Joseph Kerman has noted, all
three forms actually appear, providing the entire chromatic aggregate.34
Such chromaticism, combined with the main theme’s sequential motion
and subsequent chromatic approach to C-major harmony (mm. 40–43),
withholds tonal clarity until the tutti idea that begins in measure 43.
Creating additional ambiguity and formal looseness in Beethoven’s
Allegro theme, the ‘‘thematic concept’’ is ‘‘split,’’ as Carl Dahlhaus has
argued. The first ‘‘clearly delineated thematic shape’’ occurs only with
the tutti idea (m. 43), yet that melody is ‘‘banal’’ and ‘‘inconsequential’’
in that it does not provide a ‘‘‘subject’ for ‘working out.’’’ The initial
Allegro idea, on the other hand, offers a ‘‘point of reference’’ for future
development, but, with its rhapsodic figuration, the idea does not attain
‘‘the character of a Gestalt.’’ That is, the idea is ‘‘thematic and prethematic at the same time,’’ generating a conflict between gesture and
context.35 Schumann’s material, however, shows more thematic and formal regularity: traditional cadences and key relations articulate regular
forms, namely, a periodic design for part a and an overall straightforward
ternary form. Also unlike Beethoven’s quartet, thematic gestures unfold
almost entirely in four-measure units; only for cadential punctuation
does phrase extension occur (mm. 21–25, 30–35, and 60–64). Moreover,
local-level phrases—in both the a and b sections—consistently evoke the
sentence form. The opening four measures, for example, comprise
a basic idea whose I–V 43 motion (mm. 13–16) is balanced by its varied
repetition (V 43–I6, mm. 17–20), with a continuation leading to dominant
arrival (mm. 21–24). Such melodic and harmonic regularity is lacking in
Beethoven’s opening theme (mm. 30–43).36
What ultimately distinguishes Schumann’s material from Beethoven’s is the context in which such formal stability occurs, namely the
opening of a sonata form. Although evoking Beethoven, Schumann offers a different approach, which recasts the tonal argument of sonata
form by exploring the effect of a monopolizing tonic key. The opening
34
Joseph Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets (New York: Norton, 1966), 136.
Carl Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to His Music, trans. Mary Whittall
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 176–77.
36
For a discussion of Schoenbergian sentence form and related terminology, see
Caplin, Classical Form, 9–12 and 35–48; for a discussion of sentential functions within
periodic forms, see 65–70.
35
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theme area comprises some fifty measures—half of the exposition. Schumann also resists devices that could have shortened the theme while
integrating it into subsequent music: b materials could have functioned
transitionally, for example, or part a’ could have remained tonally open.
Instead, a stable block-like construction that emphasizes length and
forceful cadential closure prevails.
The large tonic group challenges the potential for tonal contrast:
how will subordinate materials balance the main theme area to make
modulatory motion persuasive? Yet tonal polarity does not motivate the
movement. In fact, Schumann takes the opposite approach: bolstering
the prominence of the tonic group even more, he drastically deemphasizes the secondary key of B ♭ major, which further distinguishes his
movement from Beethoven’s. Indeed, a subordinate theme group—with
contrasting materials that prolong the dominant key—never even appears. Rather, the transition (beginning in m. 64) leads not to a medial
caesura heralding the onset of the second group but to a full cadence in
B ♭ that concludes the exposition (m. 119)—what Warren Darcy and
James Hepokoski would call a continuous exposition.37 Admittedly, this
cadence acts as a strongly achieved goal, for it culminates a chromatic
progression leading from a dominant arrival in G minor (m. 103) to V of
B ♭ . (Arrival on V of B ♭ occurs in m. 115 via a structural rising chromatic
bass line: D–E ♭ –E ♮–F.). In the piano, constant eighth-note emphasis on
the pitch B ♭ (mm. 107–14), combined with a crescendo, registral expansion, and eventual landing on the dominant, all serve to dramatize the
full cadence on B ♭ (m. 119).
Yet despite this cadential emphasis, B ♭ serves only as an ephemeral
goal. Unlike typical continuous expositions, in which closing materials
that sustain the secondary key follow, here the cadence marks the end of
the exposition. That is, no postcadential material appears that might
prolong, even briefly, this key. In fact, bolstering the effect of a monopolizing tonic key even more, the music returns immediately to E ♭ major:
the following measures outline in octaves the notes B ♭ –A ♭ –G–E ♭ (mm.
121–24), which cancels any tonic function of B ♭ and prepares the return
of slow introduction materials in E ♭ major at the beginning of the development (mm. 125–35). B ♭ never assumes a convincing independence
from the tonic, thereby undermining our sense of a fully autonomous
secondary key. Further confirming the subservient nature of B ♭ ,
37
James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and
Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2006), 23–50 (which discusses the medial caesura) and 51–64 (which describes the
continuous exposition). Although Schumann’s movement arrives on a tonicized half
cadence in B ♭ (m. 88), it does not introduce a stable thematic zone but initiates additional
modulation based on the same sequential idea that began the transition.
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390
Schumann prepares this final cadence much like the ephemeral one that
ended part b of the first theme area, namely as a tonicized dominant
preparing the tonal return of E ♭ . The two cadences are even prepared
remarkably similarly: motion from V of G minor leads chromatically to V
of B ♭ , with the bass line rising thus: D–E ♭ –E ♮–F (cf. mm. 103–15 and mm.
46–50). This parallelism reinforces the fleeting role played by B ♭ in
relation to E ♭ .38
In this movement, Schumann subverts the traditional procedure of
a sonata-form exposition. Rather than dramatizing two tonal areas, the
exposition emphasizes tonic stability at the expense of the secondary
key—a complete reshifting of classical proportions. So unconventional
is this procedure that commentators seem unwilling to acknowledge it,
for many have asserted that the transition (beginning in m. 64 after the
E ♭ cadence) must be the ‘‘second theme,’’ a label that ignores the
rhetorically and harmonically unstable nature of this material.39 Yet if
we understand how Schumann has simultaneously conjured up and
departed from Beethoven, the movement makes more sense. Although
it evokes the Razumovsky quartet, Schumann’s movement also reverses
the latter’s harmonic procedure: instead of a home key that gradually
comes into focus, followed by a substantial second theme group in the
dominant key (mm. 77–105 in Beethoven’s quartet), Schumann’s
piano quartet unfolds an expansive tonic group that, combined with
other factors, works against an autonomous status for the dominant
key; that is, compromising tonal identity occurs in a different expositional space.
Understanding this reversal also helps explain Schumann’s recapitulation, for its topsy-turvy treatment of formal norms serves clearly as
38
Though he does not cite op. 47, Joel Lester has briefly noted other examples of
movements that fail to establish the second key strongly, among them the first movement of
the A-minor Violin Sonata, op. 105, and the finale of the D-minor Violin Sonata, op. 121;
Lester, ‘‘Robert Schumann and Sonata Forms,’’ 207.
39
Hans Kohlhase has provided a more detailed discussion than others: he acknowledges the ‘‘unthematic’’ and ‘‘developmental’’ nature of this material but nevertheless
asserts it as the Seitensatz, noting that it appears without a ‘‘mediating transition’’ and
emphasizes the mediant key, G minor. Hans Kohlhase, Die Kammermusik Robert Schumanns:
Stilistische Untersuchungen (PhD diss., University of Hamburg, 1978); published as no. 19 in
the series Hamburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, ed. Constantin Floros, 3 vols.
(Hamburg, 1979); for references cited here, see 1:135 and 2:99. For additional examples,
see Frieder Rheininghaus, ‘‘Zwischen Historismus und Poesie: Über Klavierkammermusik
von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy und Robert Schumann (2. Teil),’’ Zeitschrift für Musiktheorie 5, no. 1 (1974): 40; A. E. F. Dickinson, ‘‘Chamber Music,’’ in Schumann: A Symposium, ed. Gerald Abraham (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 155; Smallman, The
Piano Quartet and Quintet, 48; and Fanny Davies, Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music,
ed. Walter Wilson Cobbett (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), 383. In Hepokoski
and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory (52), a continuous exposition makes a search for
a secondary theme futile; without a proper medial caesura, there can be no launching site
for such a theme.
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figure 2. Piano Quartet in E ♭ major, op. 47, movement one: primary
theme in the recapitulation, showing deletions and additions
213
221
a
b
Phrase 1
Phrase 2
deleted
229
(Varied)
sequence
new
continuation
Deleted
---
Keys:
HC
252
237
b
(Transposed Return)
sequence
cadential idea
TRANSITIONAL
MATERIALS . . .
PAC
391
a response to the unusual exposition. Although the recapitulation begins
with a sense of tonal-thematic return, it nonetheless dissolves the formal
stability of the original theme group and ultimately the tonal monopoly
of E ♭ major (fig. 2). Materials of part a return in the home key, but they
are drastically abridged. Gone is the tonal-thematic reprise (a’), the ternary element that gave the first group its large-scale formal stability.
Moreover, Schumann dismantles the periodic structure of part a, for only
the first phrase returns (mm. 213–20). Schumann also truncates this
phrase by expunging the original solo piano figuration, thereby evening
the harmonic rhythm and subphrasing (2þ2þ4 in lieu of the original
4þ4þ5). Where part a becomes diminished in presence, part b becomes
doubled in size. A seemingly untransposed statement (beginning in m.
221) turns out to be false, its second half continuing with different material toward A ♭ (mm. 229–36). Schumann then presents a full statement of
part b transposed down a fifth (mm. 236–52); thus, where part b led from
I to V in the exposition, this latter statement now takes the music from IV
to I, a nod to tradition but one that, as we shall see, will ultimately
compromise tonic identity. Transitional materials then follow unaltered,
though also transposed down by a fifth (mm. 252–308).
By abridging part a materials and doubling those of b, the recapitulation assumes a rhetorical character wholly different from that of the
exposition. The originally stable, self-enclosed structures of part
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
392
a disappear. Instead, the recapitulation, comprised almost entirely of part
b and transitional materials, stresses loose-knit material characterized by
fragmentation, sequence, and roving tonicizations. In adopting a more
developmental character, the recapitulation also undermines the tonal
sovereignty of E ♭ major. The full cadences that originally closed parts
a and a’ do not recur here. Without these cadences, a definitive tonic
downbeat thus becomes considerably delayed, for, like the exposition, the
recapitulation too begins with tonic harmony treated as an anacrusis
(m. 213). Amplifying this effect, the cello sustains 5̂ from the retransition
(mm. 213–17; the retransition begins at m. 204). Combined with the
following half cadence (m. 220), this B ♭ bass reinforces a dominant
emphasis that makes explicit the upbeat function of the phrase. Thus,
despite the thicker texture, more rapid surface rhythm (repeated
eighths), and louder dynamic that dramatize the truncated return of part
a, this passage never brings a convincing arrival on tonic harmony. Since
part b begins like part a, with a metrically deemphasized E ♭ chord (m. 221),
a strong tonic downbeat occurs only much later, with the E ♭ cadence
ending the transposed statement of b (m. 252): in place of the original
delay of twenty-three measures there is now a delay of forty measures.
Yet even this cadence fails to establish a definitive tonic presence.
Because of Schumann’s formal adjustments, the E ♭ cadences in the recapitulation correspond to those on B ♭ in the exposition. (Thus the second
E ♭ cadence appears when it concludes the recapitulation, m. 307, analogous to m. 119.) And just as the dominant was treated ephemerally in
the exposition and heard mainly in relation to the key a fifth below, so
also is the tonic in the recapitulation. Like the B ♭ cadence ending part
b in the exposition (m. 51), the analogous E ♭ cadence (m. 252) completes motion from a fifth below (A ♭ ) and serves only as a momentary
tonicization, since transitional materials that immediately follow (beginning in m. 252) emphasize other keys. The E ♭ cadence that ends the
recapitulation is similarly ephemeral because the following measures
(analogous to those that begin the development) again suggest a function as a dominant, given that successive octaves—E ♭ –D ♭ –C–A ♭ —imply
a turn to A ♭ major (cf. mm. 309–12 with mm. 121–24).40 As a result,
neither E ♭ cadence announces a controlling tonic presence in the recapitulation. The coda thereby becomes integral to the movement by providing the necessary anchoring in the home key.41
40
Initially, these octaves prepared the return of materials from the slow introduction at
the beginning of the development (mm. 125–35). Here they initiate the coda (mm. 309–55),
which opens with a slow chordal passage (mm. 313–19) that recalls the character of the
introductory materials.
41
To restore tonal focus, the coda quickly negates A ♭ major via a rising bass line that
leads to V 65/V (F–G–A ♮, mm. 313–20), then features a new Piú agitato section that
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By these means the music reverses the usual tonal function of a sonataform recapitulation: rather than solidifying the tonic, the recapitulation
challenges its tonal sovereignty. Abridging the material of part a prevents
strong closure in E ♭ and hence an early definitive structural downbeat.
And although the recapitulation transposes nontonic materials down
a fifth, this traditional tonal adjustment cannot prolong E ♭ because there
was never a corresponding prolongation of B ♭ in the exposition. Nevertheless, in these very departures from tradition, the recapitulation provides a satisfying response to the exposition; forming an about-face, the
recapitulation dissolves the exposition’s unusual tonic emphasis. Ironically, this reversal occurs partly by extending a formal property of the
original first group, the delayed structural downbeat. In the exposition,
this delay helped dramatize the cadential closure of part a (m. 35). Given
this lack of closure in the recapitulation, however, and other formal and
harmonic adjustments, the home key does not become fully stabilized
until the coda. Yet in this delayed tonal anchoring, the original endorientation of part a is taken to its furthest extreme. Thus, despite the
unusual recasting of sonata-form procedure, Schumann’s movement provides a satisfying link between its opening Allegro theme and large-scale
design.
The Compromised Tonic: The First Movement of the String Quartet in A Major,
Op. 41, No. 3
In the first movement of the String Quartet in A major, op. 41, no. 3,
Schumann wrote another unorthodox primary theme group though one
that differs entirely from that used in the corresponding movement of
op. 47. Where the latter presents a sizeable, tonally closed primary group,
in op. 41, no. 3, the tonic is not maintained enough to provide a convincing point of departure. This twist seems surprising because at first glance
the opening Allegro materials seem formally regular (ex. 3). The main
idea, for instance, comprises a four-measure phrase in the home key of A
major (mm. 8–11) that is answered by a more conclusive statement ending on 1̂ instead of 5̂ (mm. 12–15). Moreover, this material initiates what
we might thematically perceive as a rounded formal design (a b a’):
a contrasting middle section develops sequentially (b, mm. 16–27), then
leads to a varied thematic restatement of the opening eight measures (a’,
mm. 28–35). With such nods toward tradition, the atypical aspects of this
material seem especially striking. For one thing, the main idea is rhetorically unusual in beginning with a closing gesture, the brief cadential
progression in A major: ii 65–V7–I. As a result, the structural downbeat
-
culminates with full closure in the home key (m. 337). Also unlike the recapitulation,
postcadential materials now prolong E ♭ major rather than swerving from it (mm. 338–55).
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 3. Opening of the String Quartet in A major, op. 41, no. 3,
movement one (mm. 1–46)
394
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example 3. (Continued)
395
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 3. (Continued)
396
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becomes delayed as it was in op. 47, weighting the cadence that (in this
case) quickly follows. Yet unlike op. 47, where cadences solidify the
monopoly of the home key, here the brief cadential gesture will paradoxically confuse tonal focus, for it soon tonicizes other keys as well. The
middle section, for example, leads to a full restatement not in A major but
in B major (mm. 28–35); the theme thereby avoids a double return, producing a contradiction between thematic and tonal structure.42 Underscoring the tonal wanderings of the theme, the subsequent music shifts
abruptly to C major and presents yet another statement of the main idea
(mm. 36–41).
Schumann’s approach is mosaic-like, coloring his aphoristic gesture
with multiple tonalities—A major, B major, and C major. The principal
idea thus serves not as a tonal landmark but, ironically, as a sequential
model that—in conjunction with the tonicizations of the middle section
—treats A major as part of a stream of ongoing tonal shifts. Indeed, the
opening materials as a whole seem oriented not toward the home key but
toward the secondary key of E major (V), the first key in the movement to
be convincingly stabilized (mm. 46–101): the B-major reprise establishes
V/V (mm. 28–35) and the C-major statement confirms ♮VI/V (mm. 38–
41), a sonority then treated as a German-sixth chord resolving to V/V
(mm. 42–45). Hence the opening materials not only modulate, they
actually obscure tonal focus in favor of the secondary key (the very opposite of what occurred in op. 47). This tonal leaning of the main theme
likely explains why no rhetorically differentiated transition appears;
instead, the second theme immediately enters (m. 46).43
Changes made during the compositional process suggest that obfuscation of the home key was intentional. As Schumann’s sketch of the
movement demonstrates, an A-major statement of the main idea originally
followed the B-major reprise. Although this statement varied somewhat
(its E in the bass implied a V9 harmonization in place of the original ii65
plus a fermata and ritardando altered the rhythmic flow), it nonetheless
restored focus by returning to the home key area. As a result, Schumann
followed with a transitional passage (based on the closing turn figure of
42
This tonal procedure differs significantly from small-scale aba’ forms that initiate
modulation within the thematic reprise, the a’; in the latter case, the form supplies a tonalthematic return but proceeds to modulate instead of cadencing. On this point, see Caplin,
Classical Form, 197.
43
The idea of modulating to E major by turning a C-major tonicization into a
German-sixth sonority may have been inspired by the first movement of Mozart’s
A-major String Quartet, K. 464, a work that Schumann certainly would have known. In
Mozart’s sonata-form movement, however, there is no undercutting of the home key. For
an earlier discussion of the opening materials, see my dissertation, ‘‘‘A Higher Echo of the
Past,’’’ 205–11; Roesner has echoed similar points in her 2007 survey ‘‘The Chamber
Music,’’ 130–31.
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
398
the theme) that modulates to the dominant key.44 Subsequently he
scratched out all of this material, apparently while making the fair copy—
since only here does he provide the substitute C-major material. Such
a change creates a new direction: undermining tonic identity now seems
a purposeful objective. And by replacing the original transition with the
abrupt shift to C major, Schumann forefronts even more the modulatory
impulses of the main idea. Ultimately the tonal strategy of the first group
signals an unusual recasting of sonata-form procedure. The definitive
anchoring of the tonic key, A major, serves not as a beginning event but
as an anticipated goal.45
I would argue that this tonal trajectory derives from the main idea
(mm. 8–11), which lacks an initiating tonic, beginning instead with predominant harmony (ii 65) and treating I only as the goal of its cadentially
oriented phrase. Schenker termed such a progression an auxiliary
cadence [Hilfskadenz], and on a deeper level of structure the progression
does indeed prolong tonic harmony.46 On the surface, however, the idea
is clearly end directed since it opens not with the fundamental tonic
downbeat but with harmonies that precede it as an anacrusis, thereby
blurring a sense of true beginning. The preceding slow introduction
contributes to this sense of delay by emphasizing circular, rather than
goal-oriented, motion: instead of preparing a dominant arrival, the introduction ends as it began, with ii 65 harmony supporting the falling-fifth
motive F ♯–B. Because this gesture also begins the main theme, no
44
For a transcription of this portion of the sketch and commentary, see Kohlhase,
‘‘Kritischer Bericht / Critical Report,’’ 106–7 and 279; for a facsimile, see the accompanying
facsimile supplement in that source, 14.
45
The finale explores the same unconventional approach, though now within the
context of an extended refrain-based form. Indeed, its main idea directly recalls that of the
first movement: it comprises the same cadential progression (ii 65–V7–I); it occurs in the
same registral spacing; it undergoes immediate repetition; and it behaves not as a tonicdefining gesture but as a sequential model, quickly returning in two other keys. This
harmonic procedure foreshadows the course of the movement, for thematic reprises generally return in nontonic keys, further blurring tonal focus. Ultimately, an emphatic tonal
return occurs only near the movement’s end. For a detailed discussion that relates the
finale’s harmonic procedure to the style hongrois that permeates the movement, see my
‘‘Schumann and the style hongrois,’’ 269–73; see also the related discussion of the first
movement of op. 41, no. 1 later in this essay.
46
For a discussion of the auxiliary cadence in Schenker’s writings, citations of the
sources, and examples from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music, see Poundie Burstein, ‘‘The Non-Tonic Opening in Classical and Romantic Music’’ (PhD diss., City University of New York, 1988). Schumann’s earlier piano music and songs provide a number of
precedents for such openings. For an overview of representative samples from this repertory, and others from his 1842 chamber music, see my ‘‘‘A Higher Echo of the Past,’’’ 222–
25. For a recent analysis that explores this phenomenon against a larger affective trajectory
of coming home within the context of a song, see Janet Schmalfeldt’s gloss on Charles
Burkhardt’s analysis of Schumann’s ‘‘Mondnacht’’ from Liederkreis, Op. 39, In the Process of
Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 230–36.
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harmonic-motivic change articulates the theme’s entrance, blurring the
formal boundary between the two passages.47 Nevertheless, all of these
factors serve to dramatize subsequent tonic arrival in measure 11. Moreover, they foreshadow the overall process of the movement that gradually
brings into focus the home key of the work and the tonal stabilization of
the principal idea.
As in op. 47, a Beethovenian reference in op. 41, no. 3, sheds light
on Schumann’s unusual approach to tonality. Various writers have
noticed that the main idea strongly evokes the opening of Beethoven’s
Piano Sonata in E ♭ major, op. 31, no. 3, another movement in triple
meter (ex. 4).48 The similarities are clear: like Schumann’s, Beethoven’s
theme traces the cadential progression ii 65–V7–I (though an applied fully
diminished chord and cadential 64 embellish the dominant; mm. 1–8);
the opening chord also features a falling-fifth motive over 6̂ and 2̂, plus
a registral span of just over two octaves; and both pieces immediately
repeat their cadential idea. What writers have not emphasized are the
differences between the two themes. Where Schumann problematizes
tonal identity, Beethoven reinterprets the notion of theme. As Dahlhaus
has remarked, Beethoven’s movement (like the first movement of his
String Quartet, op. 59, no. 3) unfolds a contradiction between thematic
gesture and function. The opening sounds introductory, not only
because it lacks an initiating tonic but also because of its pace: a ritardando, crescendo, and fermata give the idea a tentative, improvisatory
character. Because a conventional theme never follows, the listener
must reevaluate the opening idea as the principal theme, albeit an
unusual one. In Dahlhaus’s terms, the form is ‘‘reflective,’’ deriving its
meaning by deviating from the pattern ‘‘it presupposes.’’49 Still, despite
47
In prolonging ii 65 harmony, the introduction thus forms part of the opening
cadential progression geared toward tonal arrival in measure 11. As Schenker briefly observes in Der freie Satz, this introduction is ‘‘connected, as if it were a prophecy, with the
main section by the auxiliary cadence.’’ Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition, trans. Ernst
Oster (New York: Longman, 1979), 89. (In the supplemental volume, fig. 110e, ex. 4,
graphs this cadential progression.)
48
See, for example, Todd, ‘‘On Quotation in Schumann’s Music,’’ 111n27; Lester,
‘‘Robert Schumann and Sonata Forms,’’ 193n17; Dickinson, ‘‘The Chamber Music,’’ 148;
Chissell, Schumann, 159; and J. Barrie Jones, ‘‘Beethoven and Schumann: Some Literary
and Musical Allusions,’’ Music Review 49 (1988): 121. Although not remarking on the
allusion to op. 31, no. 3, a contemporary of Schumann, Ignaz Moscheles, commented that
the quartet was ‘‘strongly Beethoven-ish in character.’’ Ignaz Moscheles, Life of Moscheles,
with Selections from His Diaries and Correspondence, 2 vols., comp. Charlotte Moscheles and
trans. A. D. Coleridge (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1873), 2:210. Schumann had been
familiar with Beethoven’s op. 31 sonatas at least since late December 1840. In a diary entry
of 20–27 December, he indicates a gift of the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven, issued
from the Viennese publisher Haslinger, and an entry of 3–10 January 1841 indicates that he
had already begun reading through them; Schumann, Tagebücher, 2:135, 2:139.
49
Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven, 42; and idem, Nineteenth-Century Music, 14–15,
which discusses the Tempest Sonata, op. 31, no. 2, in similar terms. For a compelling
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 4. Opening of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E ♭ major, op. 31,
no. 3 (mm. 1–20)
400
its ambiguous syntax, the opening material strongly establishes the tonic
key of E ♭ major.
Schumann’s approach is quite different. His cadential idea is also rhetorically unusual, but he contextualizes it in ways that render it more conventional than Beethoven’s. Although his sketch of the movement initially
began with the cadential idea, Schumann subsequently preceded it with
a slow introduction, thereby avoiding confusion between introductory and
-
elaboration of Dahlhaus’s analysis of the latter work and a discussion of the criticalhistorical context for his ideas on process-oriented form, see Schmalfeldt, In the Process of
Becoming, 23–57.
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principal materials.50 In addition, he embeds the idea within what we
initially perceive as a thematically rounded form (a b a’). Rather than
thematic ambiguity, Schumann generates tonal ambiguity, compromising tonic identity by using the main idea to tonicize other keys as well. To
some extent, this procedure also shows a reflective treatment of form: for
instance, when an A-major restatement of the theme fails to appear, we
must reassess the contrasting middle section (mm. 16–27) as initiating
not just a contained tonal departure but large-scale modulation. Yet by
jeopardizing the home key within a passage traditionally devoted to its
establishment, Schumann also departs notably from convention: the
tonic serves not as a backdrop against which tonal contrast might occur
but instead as a distant goal. Thus, where Beethoven capitalizes on the
unusual syntax of his cadential idea, Schumann builds on the tonal
ambiguity implied by his theme’s non-tonic opening. Ultimately, Schumann’s recasting of the Beethovenian reference highlights his own compositional invention.
To explore the consequences of Schumann’s opening, I turn first to
Lester’s insightful article on Schumann’s sonata-form practices, in which
a concise analysis of this movement appears. Lester’s comments on the
opening are cursory, but his remarks on its long-term ramifications are
illuminating and provide a framework on which to build my analysis.
Lester believes that Schumann reinterprets an old form for new ends
partly by deemphasizing traditional tonal and thematic contrast. The
first theme, Lester notes, ‘‘is not all that firmly rooted to the tonic key.
[It] appears in A (mm. 8–15), B (mm. 28–35), and in C (mm. 38–41).
The first theme also ends the exposition in E (mm. 98–101),’’ appearing
after the codetta idea in measures 90–96 when ‘‘the exposition seems to
be over.’’ Other motivic and harmonic ties lessen the contrast between
the first and second themes: the latter features a cadence in A major (m.
54), creating a ‘‘tonal bond’’ with the first theme, and it too highlights
‘‘falling fifths and ii(7) chords (or closely related IV or V7/V chords).’’51
What drives the movement, Lester argues, is not ‘‘tonal-thematic
polarity’’ but rather ‘‘the search of the first theme . . . for a tonal home.’’
The ‘‘main characters’’ in this search are the falling-fifth motive, F ♯–B, and
the non-tonic ii65 chord that accompanies it, elements that give the theme
‘‘a longing quality characteristic of so many Schumann themes.’’ As Lester
argues, tonal resolution of the theme and its principal characters occurs
50
It is unclear exactly when Schumann added the slow introduction, although it
appears on the bottom system of the sketch’s first page. See the facsimile supplement
accompanying Kohlhase’s ‘‘Kritischer Bericht / Critical Report,’’ 14; for commentary, see
ibid., 279.
51
Lester, ‘‘Robert Schumann and Sonata Forms,’’ 191, 193–94. All subsequent references are to these pages.
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example 5. String Quartet in A major, op. 41, no. 3, movement one:
conclusion of movement, showing return of main idea,
plus coda (mm. 198–226)
402
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example 5. (Continued)
only at the end of the recapitulation, because the recapitulation begins
not with the main theme but with the second theme (transposed to A
major) and presents just the material of the second group. As a result,
the main idea appears only at the end of the second theme (mm. 206–9;
ex. 5). As Lester points out, Schumann’s truncated recapitulation works
effectively: because the second theme has returned in the tonic key, the
main idea can here finally ‘‘express its cadential progression in an already
secure A-major setting.’’ Lester also describes how the coda provides
further resolution (mm. 210–26). Transposing the falling-fifth motive
up by fourth, the coda brings the motive into tonic harmony for the first
time: E descends to A, appearing three times in the first violin over an
inverted tonic chord (mm. 212–16), then in a more stable context within
the cello’s final measure. In this way Schumann ‘‘withholds full stability
until the very last moment.’’
Lester’s analysis of how resolution occurs engages with the movement’s irregularities in a positive and convincing manner. His argument
can even be bolstered through additional analysis of a passage that he
downplays but that I believe serves a significant role in the theme’s
search for tonal resolution. Just prior to the recapitulation of the second
theme, the main idea returns in a harmonically open form, prolonging
the dominant of A major over a chromatically-ascending bass (mm. 146–
53; ex. 6). In a footnote, Lester acknowledges here ‘‘a strong allusion to
the opening theme; but this allusion, with its changed harmonies and its
evaporating sense of tempo, hardly qualifies as an arrival on the first
theme in the tonic key.’’ Instead, Lester stresses elsewhere in his analysis
the preceding return of the F ♯–B motive over ii 65 harmony (m. 144),
a moment that in his view ‘‘reformulat[es] the tonal/thematic problem
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 6. String Quartet in A major, op. 41, no. 3, movement one:
end of development, showing varied return of main idea as
retransition (mm. 142–55)
404
posed in the introduction.’’52 Admittedly this passage does not comprise
a proper return. Rather, it functions retransitionally, since it prepares the
recapitulation of A major by prolonging its dominant (the F♯–B motive
actually makes it a dominant-ninth chord). Nevertheless, this passage is
significant because it counters the tonally disorienting impulses of the
opening theme. The changes made to both the falling-fifth motive and
the theme demonstrate the latter’s increased sense of tonal clarity.
52
Ibid., 191n13, 193.
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Unlike the initial statement of the theme, the retransitional version
is approached in a way that stresses its beginning, not its end. In both
contexts, two statements of the F ♯–B motive precede the one initiating
the theme (cf. mm. 6–8 of the opening with mm. 144–46). But where
a single harmony—ii 65 —initially underpinned these statements, a dominant-oriented progression now appears: ii 65 – (V6) V9. In other words,
where the theme’s entrance was initially blurred, a dominant arrival now
articulates its return (m. 146) and thus sharpens its formal outline.53
The retransition also reverses the unusual tonal strategy of the first
group. Where the closed cadential form of the main idea ultimately
jeopardized A major by tonicizing other keys as well, the open form
corroborates the tonic by prolonging its dominant. That is, where the
primary theme area became oriented away from the tonic, or transitional
in function, the open form of the theme is oriented toward the tonic, or
retransitional in function. Thus, although outside what Lester would
recognize as the recapitulation proper, and although lacking tonic harmony, this passage reacts effectively to the first group: rather than ‘‘reformulating the problem,’’ the passage actually begins the process of
tonal clarification. Interestingly, this version of the theme shares remarkable similarities with the A-major return that—in Schumann’s initial
sketch of the movement—originally concluded the primary theme
group: both feature a thematic return over a V9 chord (implied in the
sketch) and a halting character produced by a slowing of tempo and
a fermata. Did Schumann later expunge the first appearance so as not
to preempt the rhetorical force of the retransition? By substituting the
C-major modulation and thematic statement into the exposition (mm.
36–41 in the final version), Schumann not only changed the tonal argument, he also made the retransitional version of the theme a participant
in the journey toward tonal clarity.
The retransition is significant because it also responds to the slow
introduction. It accompanies the varied return of the main idea with
a chromatically ascending bass line (begun in m. 141) that derives from
the movement’s opening five measures There the bass line accompanies
material with a blurred sense of key: cadential progressions consistently
resolve deceptively; the subdominant key momentarily suggests itself;
tonic harmony never appears; and the circular return of ii 65 harmony
usurps the dominant arrival with which introductions typically end. In
the retransition, however, the bass line projects tonal clarity: it prolongs
the dominant arrival that now orients the theme, as well as itself, more
!
53
This ‘‘opening up’’ of a previously cadential main idea is a recurring topic in the
1842 chamber music, happening in the finales of both the A-major String Quartet, op. 41,
no. 3, and the Piano Quartet, op. 47. For a discussion of this pattern, see Brown, ‘‘‘A Higher
Echo of the Past,’’’ 222–24.
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406
firmly to A major; it also provides the dominant emphasis lacking in the
introduction. As a sign of its importance, the rising bass line also appears
elsewhere; indeed, these other appearances confirm the progression
from tonal ambiguity toward tonal clarity. For instance, near the end
of the second theme (mm. 76–83 of the exposition), the rising bass line
occurs with material that, like the slow introduction, veils local tonic
identity (here E major). Instead of the expected cadence, the theme
loses itself in a wash of chromaticism that slides briefly toward the submediant key of C ♯, delaying closure for some fourteen measures. On the
other hand, the line’s appearance in the coda (mm. 216–23; ex. 5) substantiates the tonal clarification first launched in the retransition. Here
the bass line finds its most stable form: with its chromaticism mostly
expunged, the line finally brings tonal resolution in the home key, ending on 1̂ over tonic harmony. As additional evidence of the bass line’s
significance, Schumann sets off each appearance from its surrounding
music. In particular, a slower tempo, reduced volume, and more expressive articulation tend to distinguish occurrences of the bass line: Andante
espressivo and a piano dynamic in the slow introduction; diminuendo and
un poco ritenuto at the end of the second theme; slentando, piano, and dolce
markings in the retransition, along with a fermata; and a decrescendo
from forte to pianissimo in the coda. All of this suggests that we must
recognize the bass line as another important ‘‘character’’ in the search
for a tonal home: like the falling-fifth motive and ii 65 sonority, it too traces
a path toward ever increasing tonal clarity; and again the retransition
plays a significant role in advancing this journey.
The retransition fortifies the relationship not only between the main
theme and the introduction (via the rising bass line and F ♯–B motive) but
also between the main theme and the second theme. Because the materials of both occur here in even closer proximity than in the exposition,
their motivic-harmonic ties become that much more apparent. Additionally, the retransition makes explicit the theme’s original tonal orientation
toward the second group, though now within the context of the home key.
In the exposition, the sequential statements of the theme structurally
prepared the secondary key (E major) by tonicizing V/V (B major) and
♮VI/V (C major, subsequently treated as an augmented-sixth chord
resolving to V of E major); in the retransition, the theme now prepares
the tonic recapitulation of the second group by prolonging V of A major.
Despite such clarifications, I would argue that the retransition actually
downplays the subsequent tonal-thematic return, thereby lending the
coda greater weight. For one thing, the retransition’s slowing of tempo
(slentando) and final fermata (m. 153) dissipate the rhythmic drive of
the development. For another, the rising cello line connects fluidly with
the second theme: its ascent narrows the registral span of the four parts
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to a striking tenth by measure 153—an attenuated sound continued in
the second theme—while also switching the line’s function from bass to
melody (beginning in m. 154; a voice crossing gives the viola the function
of bass). In some sense, this deemphasis of the recapitulatory moment
seems surprising: Schumann’s rearrangement of material facilitates what
a return of the first theme would not have allowed, namely, a simultaneous tonal-thematic return, possible since the second theme begins
with root-position tonic harmony. Yet this deemphasis also plays into the
larger trajectory that weights the ending of this movement. The retransition substantiates what would have been a metrically weak return anyway:
the tonic beginning the second theme falls not on the downbeat but on
the half beat, initiating a pattern in which melody and accompaniment
remain metrically unaligned for the theme’s first statement. (Hence the
imperfect authentic cadence that ends this statement in m. 170 is similarly deemphasized.) As a result, the first strong harmonic and metric
definition of the tonic occurs only with the codetta (m. 198), in the
passage that leads to the moment where the main theme is finally able,
in Lester’s words, ‘‘to express its cadential progression in an already
secure A-major setting (mm. 206–9).’’ Thus, by downplaying the return
of the second theme, Schumann further highlighted the conclusion of
the movement in which tonal resolution of the principal idea finally
takes place.54
In an 1836 review, Schumann once remarked that A major was
‘‘the key that above all others overflows with youth and strength.’’55 In his
A-major string quartet, Schumann’s recasting of classical sonata form imbues the key with something of this character. Instead of A major serving
as a known quantity from the outset, we witness its emergence as a controlling key center only gradually. As a result, the principal thematic idea,
which only near the end becomes definitively anchored in the home key,
also retains a degree of freshness right up to the movement’s end.
The Compromised Tonic: The Finale of the String Quartet in A Minor,
Op. 41, No. 1
Like the first movement of the String Quartet in A major, the finale of
the Quartet in A minor also relinquishes tonic control near its outset.
54
Harold Krebs has discussed the metrical ‘‘dissonance’’ of the second theme,
showing how conflicting metrical layers gradually dissipate so that the exposition (and
hence also the recapitulation) end with ‘‘secure metrical consonance,’’ that is, with
‘‘maximal alignment’’ of all rhythmic layers. Harold Krebs, Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance
in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 112–13, 155–56.
55
‘‘Als ich nun beim Aufschlagen des Döhlerschen Konzerts A-dur, die Tonart, die
vor allen überströmt in Jugend und Kraft . . . ’’ Schumann’s review of 8 March 1836, NZfM;
reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:149.
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Although the main theme begins in A minor, it ultimately becomes
subsumed into its relative key, C major, and the convincing stabilization
of the home key again becomes a long-range tonal goal. The obscuring
of tonic identity arises through the formal design of the opening theme.
As example 7 shows, the theme comprises two parts: a statement in A
minor (mm. 1–16), followed by a thematic extension in C major (mm.
17–23). Both parts end with full cadences, yet in a surprising move the
theme dramatizes closure not in A minor but in C major. Although the
cadential progression in A minor occurs twice (mm. 13–14, ♭ II6 – V7 – I,
repeated in mm. 15–16), the cadence is rhythmically weak: tonic harmony falls on the second beat, and the root appears in the bass only on
the offbeat. These syncopated treatments of the root each follow two
previous bass syncopations, thereby highlighting the downbeat harmonies that follow ( ♭ II6 in m. 15, and V6 of C major in m. 17). The A-minor
tonic thus acts less as a stable point of arrival than as a springboard into
subsequent harmonies. Indeed, using metric and dynamic stress, Schumann seems to emphasize the larger transformation of the Neapolitan in
A minor into V 43 of C major (ex. 8): both chords emphasize D in the bass
and share two common tones, and both—unlike the tonic—occur on
downbeats with sforzando accents. Enhancing the smooth transition into
C-major territory, Schumann maintains the theme’s overall surface
rhythms, texture, and character. Ultimately, the theme stresses as its goal
the closure in C major, punctuating this latter cadence with metrically
stable half-note chords and a series of forte accents (mm. 21–23). The
theme as a whole thus undercuts tonic identity, subsuming A into C as
a kind of submediant upbeat. In this way Schumann exploits the inherent instability of minor keys, whose second and third scale degrees lead
easily toward the relative major.
The theme’s tonal procedure has significant ramifications, for C
major serves ultimately as the secondary key. Thus the main theme ends
by stressing the key in which the exposition will end, a maneuver that
forces us to reevaluate the function of subsequent sections. Although the
passage that follows sounds transitional—emphasizing model-sequence
patterns, circle-of-fifths motion, and increased dynamic intensity (mm.
23–62)—it does not modulate but rather returns to the key in which the
passage began. As a result, the subsequent passage (beginning in m. 63)
represents not an arrival in a new key but a continuation of C major.
Reinforcing our sense of key continuity, this passage restates material that
arose with the earlier C-major cadence—broken third figuration accompanied by a drone (cf. mm. 63–70 with mm. 23–26)—while also overlaying
a melody clearly derived from the main theme’s head motive. Given that
transitional materials drive toward this C-major passage, the music constitutes a continuous exposition, and, accordingly, the passage serves
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example 7. String Quartet in A minor, op. 41, no. 1: opening of the
finale (mm. 1–28)
409
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 7. (Continued)
410
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ex amp le 8 . String Quartet in A minor, op. 41, no. 1, finale:
transformation of the Neapolitan in A minor into the
dominant harmony in C major
a closing function. (It prolongs C major via tonic-dominant alternations
over a C drone.) Nevertheless, in Schumann’s exposition this closing
material does not solidify a new key (as tradition dictates) but instead
reconfirms a tonal goal achieved nearer the beginning of the movement.56
The opening theme’s closure in C major hence results in an anomalous reworking of sonata-form procedure: the secondary key dominates
the exposition and does so at the expense of A-minor tonic identity. But if
tonal contrast is lacking, so is thematic variety. Virtually all materials derive
from the main theme, borrowing either its rising-fifth head motive or its
broken-third figuration. Moreover, a rustic character and persistent
eighth-note motion remain constant throughout, a perpetuum mobile
that heightens the uniformity wrought by the saturation of C major.
I would suggest that the specific character of Schumann’s music helps
illuminate its formal irregularities and, in particular, that his challenging
of formal norms receives additional meaning through his use of the style
hongrois—a term referring to stylized evocations of Hungarian gypsy
music. Although no one to my knowledge has written about this reference,
the style hongrois saturates Schumann’s movement, illustrated by the
following traits: fiery anapest rhythms (short–short–long), first stated in
the theme’s rising-fifth head motive and permeating the finale; pronounced syncopations, including the stomping alla zoppa rhythms of measures 11–12 (short–long–short), and the off-beat accents accompanying
the A-minor cadence (mm. 13–14, repeated in 15–16), and closing theme
(mm. 71–74); frequent drones (e.g., in the beginning of the transition and
throughout the closing theme); detached articulations produced by pizzicato and staccato notations; numerous sforzandi accents; minor mode;
and a presto tempo that reinforces the overall fervent Gypsy character.57
56
For a similar discussion of this movement, see Brown, ‘‘‘A Higher Echo of the
Past,’’’ 229–49. Roesner echoed a number of similar points in her survey, ‘‘The Chamber
Music,’’ 125–27, though she relates such points to her inter-opus cyclic interpretation of the
op. 41 quartets.
57
For a summary of traits characterizing the style hongrois, see Jonathan Bellman,
The ‘‘style hongrois’’ in the Music of Western Europe (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
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Referencing the style hongrois is by itself not necessarily significant.
As Jonathan Bellman and Catherine Mayes have discussed, classical composers from Gluck to Beethoven began adapting traits of Hungarian
Gypsy music into their works, such that they became regular features
of the vocabulary of Western art music in the late eighteenth century
and beyond.58 As Bellman has also suggested, however, even as such
gestures became standardized, some nineteenth-century composers
imbued the style hongrois with deeper expressive meanings. In such
instances, the style ‘‘ceased being merely a superficial reference to the
musical style of Gypsy entertainers, and instead became an evocation of
something much more immediate and powerful, with powerful extramusical associations.’’ For example, Bellman suggests that Caspar’s revelry number in Weber’s Der Freischütz, ‘‘Hier im ird’schen Jammerthal,’’
intimates the hollow nature of Caspar’s friendship to Max by invoking
the style hongrois. Although Gypsy characters do not appear in the
opera, the stylistic reference, Bellman suggests, would have prompted
Weber’s audiences to think of such negative cultural stereotypes associated with the Gypsy as falseness of character and links with the
demonic.59
Schumann’s engagement with the style hongrois was two-fold.60 On
the one hand, he recognized its origins as a popular vernacular style,
composing in the 1840s various Gypsy-inspired works intended as Hausmusik. (Publishers had begun issuing arrangements of Hungarian Gypsy
dances for amateur players as early as the 1780s, after the music of Hungarian Gypsies became popular in Vienna and surrounding regions.).61
-
1993), 93–130. Shay Loya has since discussed additional structural and harmonic features
of the style hongrois, especially in relation to Liszt. Shay Loya, ‘‘The Verbunkos Idiom in
Liszt’s Music of the Future: Historical Issues of Reception and New Cultural and Analytical
Perspectives’’ (PhD diss., King’s College, University of London, 2006), 141–52.
58
On the emergence of the style hongrois in Western art music, see Bellman, The
‘‘style hongrois,’’ 47–68; and Catherine Mayes, ‘‘Domesticating the Foreign: Hungarian-Gypsy
Music in Vienna at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century’’ (PhD diss., Cornell University,
2008), chapters 2–3.
59
Bellman, The ‘‘style hongrois,’’ 65, 144–46. For an overview of Gypsy stereotypes
propagated in literature and culture of the time, see ibid., 69–92. See also Jonathan Bellman, ‘‘The Hungarian Gypsies and the Poetics of Exclusion,’’ in The Exotic in Western Music,
ed. idem (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 74–103. Bellman’s The ‘‘style hongrois’’ also highlights expressive treatments of the style hongrois in the music of Schubert,
Liszt, and Brahms.
60
I have discussed this topic earlier in Brown, ‘‘Schumann and the style hongrois,’’
265–99.
61
For instance, the 1840 ‘‘Zigeunerleben’’ for small choir, op. 29, no. 3; a ‘‘Zigeunerliedchen’’ from his 1849 Lieder für die Jugend, op. 79; an ‘‘Ungarish’’ for four hands in the
1851 Ball-Szenen, op. 109; and a ‘‘Zigeunertanz’’ in his third Clavier-Sonaten für die Jugend, op.
118, from 1853. Most of these works date from what Anthony Newcomb has described as
Schumann’s Hausmusik stage of piano composition (1848 on), when interest in accessible,
amateur music composition became a particular focus; see Anthony Newcomb, ‘‘Schumann
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Yet Schumann also poeticized the style hongrois in more ambitious works,
using it as an expressive idiom likely inspired by Schubert. In particular,
Schumann seems to have seen the style hongrois as a pathway for experimentation, the consequences of which conjure up Gypsy stereotypes common in Schumann’s day. For instance, in three closely related finales
(those concluding the Piano Sonata, op. 11, completed in 1835–1836, and
the String Quartet, op. 41, no. 3, and Piano Quintet, op. 44, both from
1842), Schumann radically rethought rondo form in ways that feature
sustained tonal ambiguity and multiplicity of keys, with tonic definition
treated only as an end goal. The results resonate with nineteenth-century
perceptions of the Gypsy community as a group distant from sociocultural
norms that explores the unknown through their nomadic lifestyle. As an
1837 entry in the Austrian National Encyclopedia put it, ‘‘Gypsies are
unfamiliar with all the benefits of civilization; they do not like to settle
down; most of them follow their overpowering partiality to the wandering
life, and roam with their tents through the land, where they prefer to seek
out unbeaten paths and gloomy mountain ravines.’’62 Such an image
could be doubly spun: for the state the Gypsy figure often appeared
threatening and uncontrollable, a violator of boundaries; but for many
late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists, the Gypsy became idealized, a model for artistic freedom and innovation. The latter notion even
explains the double meaning that the French term for Gypsy, Bohémien,
later assumed.63
Schumann, himself perceived by his contemporaries as a frequent
transgressor of boundaries, seems to have supported the latter perspective. Not only in the finales cited above but also in the finale to the String
Quartet in A minor, Schumann’s use of the style hongrois in conjunction
with various formal irregularities suggests that he may have seen the style
as connoting freedom from established norms. The surprising confirmation of the secondary key within the opening theme, for example, prevents the tonal polarity so typical of classical sonata forms; it also forces us
to rethink the formal functions served by subsequent transitional and
closing materials. In addition, by not anchoring the movement definitively in the home key, the finale could also evoke the unrootedness that
many Europeans associated with Gypsy life. Schumann’s use of the style
-
and the Marketplace: From Butterflies to Hausmusik,’’ in Nineteenth-Century Piano Music, ed. R.
Larry Todd (New York: Schirmer, 1990), 270–75.
62
Österreichische National-Encyklopädie (Vienna, 1837), 6:247; cited in Bellman, The
‘‘style hongrois,’’ 78–79.
63
See Bellman, The ‘‘style hongrois,’’ 90–92. As George Sand stated in the concluding
pages of her novel La Dernie`re Aldini, ‘‘Gaily let us dispense with wealth, when we have it, let
us accept poverty without worry, if it comes; let us keep above all our liberty, enjoy life all
the same, and long live the Gypsy!’’; cited in Bellman, The ‘‘style hongrois,’’ 69.
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hongrois hence may be not merely incidental but, rather, supportive of
the finale’s recasting of sonata-form procedure.
Schumann’s atypical exposition nonetheless demands a satisfying
response, and, like the first movement of the A-major quartet, the need
to secure tonic control again leads Schumann to rethink the recapitulation and assign the retransitional materials a significant role. Yet, unlike
the first movement of the A-major quartet, the recapitulatory process
resolves the question of tonal identity not just within the finale but also
within the work as a whole.
To anchor the movement in the home key, Schumann does not
merely recapitulate A minor, he actually reverses the tonal and thematic
events of the exposition. After the development section, he restates transitional and closing materials first, transposing them a fifth below their
original pitch level (mm. 152–205). Returning in F major, these materials
now serve as a large-scale harmonic upbeat to the tonic return of the main
theme (which enters in m. 214). What once dominated the theme now
capitulates to it, and where A minor was once subsumed into C major,
a diatonically symmetrical resolution uses F major to prepare A minor:
414
a—C
F—a
Schumann undercuts the prominence of returning transitional and
closing materials in other ways as well. First, where the exposition punctuated the onset of transitional materials via an emphatic C-major
cadence (m. 23), he now merges the transition seamlessly with developmental materials, preceding it with a chordal passage that prevents any
cadential motion (mm. 148–51). As a result, the recapitulatory process
becomes evident to the listener only gradually. Second, to make clear the
preparatory role that F now plays in relation to A minor, Schumann
changes the conclusion of the closing materials. Whereas a full cadence
finished off these materials in the first ending of the exposition, here
Schumann substitutes a variation of the closing idea that clearly functions retransitionally (mm. 206–13). Instead of a stable tonic drone, this
version emphasizes V of A minor via Phrygian motion from F; specifically
F underpins a surface-level predominant, serving as the bass of an
augmented-sixth chord resolving to V of A minor (cf. mm. 204–13 with
mm. 75–80 of the first ending). In this way, the closing idea becomes
destabilized and forced to prepare the tonic return of the main theme
that immediately follows. Although the elision with developmental materials blurs a sense of thematic recapitulation, the tonal return is clear
cut (m. 214), reserved for the very theme that had its tonic identity
compromised from the outset.
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Several events consolidate the A-minor return of the theme. Schumann concludes the theme forcefully in the tonic, though only after
evoking, then conquering, its original impulse toward the relative major
(mm. 214–42). That is, the theme again suggests a cadence in C major,
but an extension (mm. 236–41) thwarts closure to prepare a more
emphatic cadence in A minor (m. 242). In this way, Schumann ensures
that the home key now contains the key of III as an embedded tonicization. The following passage—an imitative version of the closing theme
(mm. 242–53, derived from the development, mm. 84–102)—confirms
the reversal of roles: rather than solidifying C major (as it did in the
exposition), the closing idea now secures the tonal control of the home
key. As if to confirm such control and the role that the style hongrois had
in challenging it, Schumann propels us into an otherworldly realm. For
the first time in the entire quartet, the tonic major is emphasized (beginning in m. 254), a significant mode change that protectively moves A
farther from both F major and C major. Increasing our sense of distance
from what has come before, a dramatic change in character occurs:
instead of the passionate Gypsy-inflected music that has permeated the
finale, we hear an abrupt drop in volume and sudden slowing of tempo
and surface rhythm that brings first a lyrical musette (mm. 254–63), then
a solemn hymn-like passage, the white notes of which produce a distant,
archaic-seeming effect (mm. 264–85). Although both passages transform
motives from the main body of the movement, they still make clear
a break from the preceding sound world. Only then does Schumann
resume the style hongrois character of the finale, although not the minor
mode: maintaining distance from both F major and C major, the concluding materials sustain, and eventually close within, A major (mm.
286–320).
What makes Schumann’s recapitulation even more interesting is that
its significance extends beyond the finale itself. By folding F major into A
minor as a large-scale harmonic upbeat, Schumann resolves a tonal ambiguity that has overshadowed the entire work. As various writers have remarked, the quartet unfolds an unusual interaction between A minor and
F major (fig. 3). Indeed, the key of F has challenged the tonal sovereignty
of A minor from the outset: the first movement establishes A minor in the
fugal slow introduction (Andante espressivo) but F major in the following
Allegro sonata form, an extraordinarily surprising design that assigns F
great weight. The following movements maintain the split tonal focus: the
Scherzo confirms A minor, the Adagio F major. What writers have not
emphasized is how the finale’s unusual sonata form ultimately resolves
this split tonal focus. On the one hand, the finale’s modulating main
theme seems surprising since it occurs within a work that has questioned
tonic identity from the start; that is, Schumann again compromises
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
figure 3. Formal overview of the String Quartet in A minor, op. 41, no. 1
ANDANTE
ESPRESSIVO
Introduzione
A minor
416
ALLEGRO
SCHERZO
ADAGIO
A minor
F major
[Sonata Form]
F major
PRESTO
[Sonata Form]
. . . . . . A minor
A minor in the very movement we expect to re-establish the home key
definitively. On the other hand, this approach helps reformulate the
larger problem of key identity while also paving the way toward tonal
resolution: by restating transitional and closing materials in F major as
preparation for the tonal recapitulation of the main theme, Schumann
simultaneously reverses the events of the tonally imbalanced exposition
and invokes, then resolves, the larger dichotomy between A minor and F
major.
From the beginning, Schumann considered his work a ‘‘Quartett in
A moll.’’ Yet, significantly, he composed the slow introduction to the first
movement only after he had sketched and made a fair copy of all four
movements.64 Thus, he seems to have initially conceived of a directional
tonal scheme, with F major opening the work and A minor attained by its
end. In adding the slow Andante later on, Schumann altered the tonal
argument, pairing two keys that compete for tonic identity from the
outset. In fact, to make clear that A serves not a contingent but an
independent role in relation to F (and hence to sharpen our sense of
a true tonal dichotomy), Schumann subverts another formal norm: the
opening Andante is not left tonally open—for example by having it end
on V of A minor or V of F major—but instead concludes with full closure
in A minor (m. 25, followed by a four-measure coda). In this way, the
Andante comprises a closed, self-contained structure; its formal integrity
64
As his Haushaltbuch entries show, the sketch of the quartet was begun on 4 June
1842 (‘‘Quartett in A Moll angefangen’’) and completed on 10 June. The fair copy was
made from 20 to 24 June, with the slow introduction added a day later (‘‘Nachmittag
Introduction z. 1sten Quartett auch fertig gemacht’’); see Schumann, Tagebücher, 3:216–18.
As Roesner has shown, physical evidence also supports this chronology. The Andante’s
pencil lead differs from that used for the following sonata form. Moreover, where successive bifolios characterize the sketch of the quartet, the Andante appears on a single side
(2r) of a single folio (the reverse side, 2v, is blank). As Roesner has speculated in her
dissertation, this latter evidence suggests that the Andante was not just written but likely
conceived after the sketching of the quartet; she does not explore here, however, the largescale musical consequences of this addition for the work. Linda Correll Roesner, ‘‘Studies
in Schumann Manuscripts: With Particular Reference to Sources Transmitting Instrumental Works in the Large Forms’’ (PhD diss., New York University, 1973), 1:83–88; Roesner
transcribed the entire sketch of the quartet in 2:38–50.
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could even justify its status as a separate movement, although Schumann’s heading, ‘‘Introduzione,’’ suggests that we should hear its key
in relation to the following F-major sonata form. In all, Schumann’s
arrangement presents a radical reversal of formal functions: a typically
ancillary passage—the slow introduction—assumes great weight by establishing and closing within the true tonic key, and the first-movement
sonata form, though structurally complete in itself, ultimately represents
a large-scale dissonance to which the quartet must respond; after all, this
is a quartet ‘‘in A minor.’’ Nevertheless, by undercutting the tonal control of A minor, the F-major sonata form generates a tonal dichotomy
that persists until the end of the finale. As a result, what was true of the
finale is also true of the entire quartet: the unequivocal tonal control of
A minor emerges only as an end-oriented event.
In adding the Andante after the quartet’s composition, Schumann
imbued the passage with elements that foreshadow not just the interplay
between A and F but even its eventual resolution. Using the head motive
of the opening fugal subject as a point of departure (E–F–E, highlighting
5̂ and 6̂), Schumann develops a bass-line interaction between these same
pitches to show how F can both thwart and facilitate cadential definition
of A minor. For instance, each of the two deceptive cadences prevents
closure in A minor, with the bass E moving to F (mm. 16 and 20);
through this maneuver Schumann intimates the role that F will subsequently play in questioning the tonal sovereignty of A minor. Yet, significantly, the bass note F also prepares V of A minor two times as
a predominant, with F resolving to E; Schumann even foreshadows the
Phrygian motion of the finale’s retransitional passage by having an
augmented-sixth chord built on F prepare first the dominant arrival that
ends the opening section (mm. 11–12) and then the final full closure in
A minor (mm. 22–25). The latter’s 6̂–5̂ movement even serves as the goal
of the Andante’s climax, culminating a rise in register and volume and
highlighted via sforzandi accents and a subsequent drop in volume. In
this way, the Andante also portends the finale’s large-scale resolution of
F as a harmonic anacrusis to V of A minor.
As with the sonata forms discussed earlier in this essay, Schumann’s
quartet gains additional significance by referencing the music of Beethoven. Indeed various writers have perceived a number of Beethovenian
echoes in this quartet. The Adagio’s main theme, for example, strongly
evokes the main theme of the corresponding movement in Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony.65 Especially singled out for comparison is Beethoven’s
65
See for example Kohlhase, Die Kammermusik, 2:37; Daverio, Robert Schumann, 252;
Dickinson, ‘‘The Chamber Music,’’ 144; and Nicholas Marston, ‘‘Schumann’s Heroes:
Schubert, Beethoven, Bach,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Schumann, ed. Beate Perrey
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 54.
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
418
late String Quartet in A minor, op. 132, a work that—as Marie Sumner
Lott has argued—became the touchstone for a number of nineteenthcentury quartets in A minor, a key with virtually no presence in the
eighteenth-century quartet repertory.66 Like Schumann’s A-minor quartet, Beethoven’s op. 132 highlights F-centered music: F major is the secondary key in the first-movement sonata form, and F Lydian underpins the
famous slow movement, the ‘‘Heiliger Dankgesang.’’ John Daverio has
also suggested that Schumann’s imitative slow introduction ‘‘conflates the
detached character (and A minor tonality)’’ of the opening movement
from Beethoven’s op. 132 string quartet ‘‘with the fugal texture’’ that
characterizes the first movement of his op. 131 quartet. And Lott compared the brief A-major musette appearing near the end of Schumann’s
quartet with the A-major musette-based trio in Beethoven’s second
movement.67
These echoes of op. 132 notwithstanding, what interests me is the way
in which Schumann sets his a/F interaction into play. Where op. 132
introduces these keys within the context of a first-movement sonata form,
Schumann juxtaposes them much more unexpectedly, between the
A-minor ‘‘Introduzione’’ and the following F-major sonata form, thereby
assigning a more independent status to F. Through this surprising maneuver, Schumann conjures up another Beethovenian reference as yet unnoticed in the scholarly literature, namely the Cello Sonata in C major, op.
102, no. 1. Like Schumann’s quartet, Beethoven’s cello sonata opens with
a slow Andante in the tonic key of the work (here C major), followed by
a fast sonata form in the submediant key (A minor). Like Schumann’s,
Beethoven’s Andante also subverts its seeming function as a slow introduction by ending with full closure in C major: the dominant arrival in
measure 24 (accompanied by a fermata) unexpectedly resolves to tonic
harmony, sustained for several measures until another fermata highlights
1̂ in the top voice (mm. 25–27). Although Schumann’s formal plan is
highly atypical, it is not, as John Gardner suggested, unprecedented.68
66
Marie Sumner Lott, ‘‘Audience and Style in Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music,
c. 1830–1880’’ (PhD diss., Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, 2008), chapter 4.
67
Daverio, Robert Schumann, 252; Lott, ‘‘Audience and Style,’’ 255–57. To these observations might be added another, for, like Schumann, Beethoven also highlighted the
half-step relation between 6̂ and 5̂ (F and E) within A-minor material: in the opening Assai
sostenuto, for example, where half-step motives pervade the contrapuntal lines, and at the
subsequent Adagio juncture, measures 20–21; and of course in the finale, where the Aminor refrain highlights F–E as an ostinato figure. As Kerman has noted, ‘‘[I]t is the step F–
E which the Finale salvages from the cantus-firmus motif of the opening’’; Kerman, The
Beethoven Quartets, 263.
68
Gardner, ‘‘The Chamber Music,’’ 203. To my knowledge, Beethoven’s sonata is the
only precedent for the unusual format of Schumann’s opening movement. Although
Schumann never mentioned the C-major Cello Sonata in his criticism or diaries, the NZfM
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Beethoven’s opening movement highlights the unusual C/a duality in
other ways. First, the exposition of his A-minor sonata form modulates not
to III but to minor V (E minor); in this way, Beethoven avoids treating C
(the true tonic) as an internal area of departure, preserving it instead as an
outside contrasting key. Second, the thematic character of the Allegro
remains mostly uniform, with forceful rhythms and explosive dynamic
accents pervading the whole; Beethoven’s use of a continuous exposition
also means that a contrasting second theme never appears, although
E minor—the secondary key area—is solidly established.69 Therefore, thematic contrast occurs more outside than within the sonata form, a contrast
of character that reinforces the larger C/a dichotomy.
As with Schumann’s quartet, Beethoven’s unusual movement demands that subsequent materials resolve the question of tonal identity,
an issue I briefly address since it also throws into relief Schumann’s
unique response. In Beethoven’s sonata, tonal clarification occurs in the
interior of the work, with a section that evokes a slow movement but
ultimately serves as an introduction to the finale. (For a formal overview
of the work, see fig. 4.) After a fantasia-like Adagio, the materials of which
are both tonally and thematically vague (mm. 1–9), a varied cyclic return
of Andante materials reestablishes the key of C major (Tempo
d’Andante, mm. 10–16), a tonal focus confirmed by the sonata-form
finale. As if to redress the odd format of the first movement, Andante
materials now remain open, ending with a dominant arrival (m. 16,
accompanied by a fermata) that leads smoothly into the finale. That is,
the Andante now seems to self-consciously fulfill its expected, traditional
function as a slow introduction to a C-major sonata form, the very thing
we expected at the outset. The result, however, further confuses the
question of movements in this work: although we hear the opening
Andante as introductory, it ends with tonal closure, thereby suggesting
-
published several concert reviews that cite performances of Beethoven cello sonatas,
including three in the years 1841–1842. (‘‘Davidsbündlerbriefe aus Augsburg,’’ NZfM 7,
no. 11 [8 August 1837]: 44; ‘‘Aus Düsseldorf,’’ NZfM 15, no. 8 [27 July 1841]: 31; ‘‘Bericht
aus Königsberg in Preußen,’’ NZfM 16, no. 25 [25 March 1842]: 100; and ‘‘Aus Zwickau,’’
NZfM 16, no. 52 [28 June 1842]: 208; the last-named review mistakenly labels the F-major
Cello Sonata ‘‘op. 8’’ instead of op. 5.) Bischoff also noted a November 1834 entry in Clara’s
diary that indicates a likely performance of a Beethoven cello sonata; Bischoff, Monument
für Beethoven, 425. The C-major sonata had also been well disseminated. Within several years
of its composition in 1815, the piece had been published by Simrock and Artaria; arrangements for violin and piano followed, as did several reprintings. See Georg Kinsky and Hans
Halm, Das Werk Beethovens: Thematisch-Bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner sämtlichen vollendeten
Komposition (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1955), 283–84. All of these references suggest that
Schumann knew the piece.
69
Arrival on V of E minor occurs early on (m. 46), with subsequent materials
prolonging E minor, but a medial caesura never occurs. Instead, transitional materials
eventually drive to full closure in measure 66, with subsequent closing materials recalling
the dotted rhythms and 1̂–3̂–5̂ emphasis of the main theme (mm. 66–75).
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
figure 4. Formal overview of Beethoven’s Cello Sonata in C major, op.
102, no. 1
ANDANTE
ALLEGRO VIVACE
ADAGIO
C major
A minor
Key? . . .
(Sonata Form)
TEMPO
D'ANDANTE
(cyclic return)
C major
ALLEGRO VIVACE
(Sonata Form)
C major
I
420
its status as a separate movement; the Adagio and Tempo d’Andante, on
the other hand, both reinforce the character of a slow movement, yet
ultimately introduce the concluding C-major sonata form. We are left to
ask, then, whether Beethoven has presented us with a two-, three-, or
four-movement sonata.70
Schumann’s A-minor string quartet strongly recalls the opening
tonal maneuver of Beethoven’s cello sonata. And like Beethoven, Schumann too minimizes internal contrast within the first-movement sonata
form to throw into relief the larger a/F duality: thematic character remains largely uniform, and the use of a continuous exposition again
means that a contrasting second theme does not appear.71 Yet even so,
Schumann’s quartet remains strikingly different from Beethoven’s
sonata. Although his quartet, like the Beethoven sonata, explores a submediant relationship, its paired keys are more distantly related: a/F
versus the relative keys C/a (and I have shown that the proximity of the
pair serves to undermine A minor in the finale, thereby reformulating
the larger question of tonic identity in the quartet). The arrangement of
70
On movement ambiguity in this sonata, see Lewis Lockwood, ‘‘Beethoven’s
Emergence from Crisis: the Cello Sonatas of Op. 102 (1815),’’ Journal of Musicology 16, no. 3
(Summer 1998): 306, 312–13. For his discussion of middle movements in Beethoven that
problematize closure and their psychological effect within the work as a whole, see Lewis
Lockwood, Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1992), 181–97.
71
Although a dominant arrival in C major occurs early on (m. 95, extended to m.
100), it does not function as a medial caesura that leads to a second theme but instead
initiates further modulation and thematic development. Ultimately, Schumann went even
further than Beethoven in diminishing contrast within the exposition, for true arrival and
closure in C major occurs within the first ending only (m. 137). Indeed, in the second
ending, an augmented-sixth chord embellishes C, suggesting its possible function as V of
F—the home key of the sonata form (though resolution to A ♭ occurs instead, m. 133 of the
second ending). The tonal goal of the exposition thereby becomes unfixed and ambiguous, undermining any sense of C as a stable, independent key area. In this way, Schumann
helps focus attention on the larger tension between A minor and F major.
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movements within Schumann’s quartet is also more regular than in
Beethoven’s sonata, with a conventional series of formal types following
the first movement (scherzo, slow movement, and fast finale). Most significantly Schumann sustains his split tonal focus far longer than Beethoven does; indeed, by compromising A minor at the finale’s outset,
Schumann forces postponement of tonal resolution until near the work’s
end. By its very presence, such sustained tonal ambiguity also engenders
a sense of absence, a longing for what tradition dictates—the definitive
control of a home key—but what cannot here be perceived. In this
regard, the appearance of the style hongrois within the finale gains yet
more significance, for Schumann also saw within that style the possibility
of inexpressible longing produced by intimations of the unknown. As
a youth he recorded the impressions made on him by Schubert’s most
famous work in the style hongrois, the 1824 Divertissement à l’Hongroise, op. 54. Schumann’s experience was clearly multivalent. On the
one hand, the style could conjure up a specific peasant culture. As he
noted in an 1831 diary entry, ‘‘If I might put it into words, I could
probably say: I comported myself appropriately at a traditional Hungarian wedding and stamped my feet much.’’ Yet in the hands of a master
like Schubert, the style hongrois could also act as a referent for the
ineffable. In that same entry, Schumann continued, ‘‘[B]ut spare me,
Florestan, from having to somehow convey the yearning, the melancholy
of this song and all of the lovely forms flying by as if in a dance. Eusebius
thought that the pedal point at the end is like the blessings of the
priest—and then they pull away, with tambourines sounding noisily on
and on into the far-off distance, farther and farther away.’’72 For Schumann, the style hongrois could therefore serve as a sort of musical
poetry, an embodiment of romantic yearning and romantic distance.
Schumann’s finale captures something of these qualities by renewing
72
The full entry reads as follows: ‘‘Zilia [Clara’s Davidsbündler name] war gestern
unwohl und verdrießlich; ich kann ihr doch jetzt wenigstens die schönsten Grobheiten von
der Welt sagen, ohne mißverstanden zu werden, was freilich w[e]nig klingt. Das Ungarische
Divertissement von Franz Schubert schien sie etwas aufzuräumen. Wenn ich etwas in Worten
ausdrücken dürfte, so könnt’ ich wohl sagen: daß ich ordentlich auf einer ungarischen
Bauernhochzeit mir war u. viel mit den Füßen stampfte; aber wenn ich das Sehnen, diese
Wehmuth, diesen Gesang u. all die schönen Gestalten, die wie im Tanze vorbeifliegen, zeigen soll, so erlaß mir das, mein Florestan! Eusebius meinte: die Pedalstelle am Schluß wäre
der Segen des Priesters—dann ziehen sie fort, mit Tambourins, lärmend u. immer fort u.
immer fort in die ferne Weite—immer fort.’’ Diary entry of 20 August 1831; Schumann,
Tagebücher, 1:363–64. Tambourines are more accurately associated with the Turkish style in
Western European art music, a style that shared characteristics with the style hongrois but
nevertheless remained distinct from it; see Bellman, The ‘‘style hongrois,’’ 11–16. Yet composers
frequently mixed the two in a kind of pan-exotic referencing; ibid., 47–68. For example, in
Schumann’s 1840 choral piece ‘‘Zigeunerleben,’’ the score indicates an ad libitum role for
the triangle and tambourine. For more on Schumann’s reception of the style hongrois via
Schubert, see Brown, ‘‘Schumann and the style hongrois,’’ 267–68.
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t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
at its outset the tonal ambiguity of the whole, with longing for resolution
forcibly extended toward a more distant, unknowable horizon. And
through this rebirth of ambiguity, the finale again highlights its creative
remove from Beethoven’s cello sonata while also paving the way for
another novel reimagining of sonata form procedure.
422
***
Schumann once aphoristically remarked, ‘‘The misfortune of the imitator is that he can only appropriate the striking features of an original; but
out of natural inhibition he dares not reproduce its actual beauties.’’73
Schumann betrayed no such inhibition in his 1842 chamber movements.
His expressive reworking of classical sonata form, and of Beethovenian
models, illustrates how an artist might question the past in a way that
simultaneously renews its value for the present. In a sense, this notion
might also describe Schumann’s engagement in these works with his own
past: the surprising formal and harmonic irregularities suggest that,
despite the turn to more traditional instrumental genres in the early
1840s, the experimental tendencies of his earlier output informed,
rather than hindered, his efforts to ‘‘conquer the form and spirit’’ of
older models.
Northern Arizona University
ABSTRACT
Schumann’s 1842 chamber music exemplifies a common theme in his
critical writings, that to sustain a notable inherited tradition composers
must not merely imitate the past but reinvent it anew. Yet Schumann’s
innovative practices have not been sufficiently acknowledged, partly
because his instrumental repertory seemed conservative to critics of Schumann’s day and beyond, especially when compared to his earlier experimental piano works and songs. This essay offers a revisionist perspective by
exploring three chamber movements that recast sonata procedure in one
of two complementary ways: either the tonic key monopolizes the exposition (as in the first movement of the Piano Quartet in E ♭ major, op. 47), or
a modulating main theme undercuts a definitive presence of the tonic key
at the outset (as in the first movement of the String Quartet in A major, op.
41, no. 3, and the finale of the String Quartet in A minor, op. 41, no. 1).
Viewed against conventional sonata practice, these chamber movements
73
‘‘Das Unglück des Nachahmers ist, daß er nur das Hervorstechende sich anzueignen, das Eigentlichschöne des Originals aber nachzubilden, wie aus einer natürlichen
Scheu, sich nicht getraut.’’ Robert Schumann, ‘‘Aus Meister Raros, Florestans und Eusebius’ Denk- und Dichtbüchlein,’’ NZfM (1834); reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften, 1:21.
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appear puzzling, perhaps even incoherent or awkward, since they thwart
the tonal contrast of keys so characteristic of the form. Yet these unusual
openings, and the compelling if surprising ramifications that they prompt,
signal not compositional weakness but rather an effort to reinterpret the
form as a way of strengthening its expressive power.
My analyses also draw on other perspectives to illuminate these
sonata forms. All three movements adopt a striking thematic idea or
formal ploy that evokes a specific Beethovenian precedent; yet each
movement also highlights Schumann’s creative distance from his predecessor by departing in notable ways from the conjured model. Aspects
of Schumann’s sketches, especially those concerning changes made
during the compositional process, also illuminate relevant analytical
points. Finally, in the analysis of the finale of the A-minor quartet, I
consider how Schumann’s evocation of Hungarian Gypsy music may
be not merely incidental to but supportive of his reimagined sonata
form. Ultimately, the perspectives offered here easily accommodate—
even celebrate—Schumann’s idiosyncratic approach to sonata form.
They also demonstrate that Schumann’s earlier experimental tendencies
did not contradict his efforts in the early 1840s to further advance his
inherited classical past.
Keywords: Beethoven allusion; Piano Quartet, op. 47; String Quartet, op.
41. no. 1; String Quartet, op. 41, no. 3; style hongrois
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423

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