Poetic Virtuosity:

Robert Schumann as a Critic and Composer

of Virtuoso Instrumental Music

(Volume One)

by

Alexander Stefaniak

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the

Requirements for the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Supervised by

Professor Ralph P. Locke

Department of Musicology Eastman School of Music

University of Rochester Rochester, New York

2012

ii

Curriculum Vitae

Alexander Stefaniak was born in Parma, Ohio on August 13, 1983. He attended Baldwin-

Wallace College from 2002 to 2006 and graduated summa cum laude with Bachelor of

Music degrees in Music History and Literature and Piano Performance. He came to the

University of Rochester in August 2007 and began studies in musicology at the Eastman

School of Music with the support of a Sproull Fellowship. Work as a teaching assistant

and graduate instructor at Eastman and at the College of Arts and Sciences led in 2010 to

an Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student.

Additional fellowships from Eastman include the Ann Clark Fehn Award (2007) and two

Graue Fellowships (2008 and 2009). Prof. Ralph P. Locke supervised his dissertation

work, and a Glenn Watkins Traveling Fellowship supported research in Germany during

Fall 2011. In August 2012, Alexander will begin an appointment as Assistant Professor

of Musicology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Publications to date:

Review of Lettres de Franz Liszt la Princesse Marie de Hohenlohe-Schillingsfrst ne de Sayn-Wittgenstein. Edited by Pauline Pocknell, Malou Haine, and Nicolas Dufetel. Journal of the American Liszt Society (forthcoming).

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Acknowledgements

Perhaps the most delightful aspect of writing a dissertation has been the opportunity to

meet and work with many generous people who are passionate about the scholarly study

of music. I owe especial thanks to my readers: Prof. Ralph P. Locke (who served as my

primary advisor), Prof. Holly Watkins, and Prof. William Marvin. All three gave freely of

their own considerable and varied expertise, shared their infectious curiosity and

fascination with nineteenth-century music, and constantly challenged me to think more

deeply about my subject and craft. Other faculty at the Eastman School of Music and the

University of Rochester who have contributed to my dissertation work include Prof.

Melina Esse (who led our dissertation writers group), Prof. Reinhild Steingrver (who

helped with several of the trickier German translations), Prof. Celia Applegate (who

offered her insights on German musical culture at various stages of this project), and

Prof. Seth Monahan (who provided some life-saving technological pointers).

Two fellowships from the University of Rochestera Sproull Fellowship and a

Glenn Watkins Traveling Fellowshipallowed me to complete this dissertation on time

and to pursue research in Germany during Fall 2011. In Germany, I benefitted greatly

from the advice and hospitality of several scholars, librarians, and archivists, notably Dr.

Matthias Wendt and his staff at the Robert-Schumann-Forschungsstelle in Dsseldorf,

Dr. Thomas Synofzik and Dr. Hrosvith Dahmen of the Robert Schumann Haus in

Zwickau, and the staff of the Musiklesesaal at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich.

Prof. Rufus Hallmark provided some indispensable advice prior to my research trip, and

Dr. Katelijne Schiltz and Dr. Wolfgang Rathert were congenial, helpful contacts and

guides during my stay in Munich.

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In the United States, I enjoyed the assistance of Prof. Ruskin King Cooper,

American representative of the Schuncke Archive (who kindly sent me copies of several

very-hard-to-find scores), Prof. Claudia Macdonald (who shared the unpublished English

version of one of John Daverios articles), and David Peter Coppen of Sibley Music

Library Special Collections. In January 2012, Prof. Robert Mayerovitch of Baldwin-

Wallace College collaborated with me on a lecture-recital and gave back-to-back

performances of Schumanns tudes symphoniques and unpublished Fantaisies et finale,

an experience that led to me to refine some of the points I make about these works.

Finally, some of my discussions depend on material received from the Bibliothque du

Muse Royale de Mariemont in Belgium, the British Library, the Newberry Library, and

the University of California, Berkeley.

Last but not least, a cohort of friends and family members provided indispensable

moral support during my work on this dissertation. My fellow Eastman graduate students

Andrew Aziz, Regina Compton, Naomi Gregory, Katherine Hutchings, Samantha Inman,

Amy Kintner, and Kira Thurman listened to conference-paper rehearsals, exchanged

drafts, and formed a supportive community. My parents, Martha and Carl, and my

brother, Andy, have long nurtured my interest in music scholarship and were ever ready

to learn more about Robert Schumann and the process of writing a dissertation. And,

finally, Eliana Haig was there from the beginning of this project to the end: she helped in

ways big and small, supplying a musicians ear, good humor, and unwavering

encouragement.

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Abstract

In this dissertation, I explore Robert Schumanns activities as a critic and composer of

virtuoso instrumental music. I argue that the view of Schumann as the consummate anti-

virtuoso polemicistcurrent in Romantic critical discourse as well as present-day

scholarly literatureis an oversimplified one. Instead, Schumann played a significant

role in the nineteenth-century German interaction between virtuosity, Romantic

aesthetics, and the ideology of serious music. German Romantic composers and critics

regarded virtuosity, on one hand, more as a source of crowd-pleasing entertainment than

as high art but, on the other, as a source of astonishment, originality, and audience appeal.

Schumann himself worked to promote (as critic) and realize (as composer) a self-

consciously serious, transcendent approach to virtuosity. Chapter 1 argues that Schumann

directed his critique of virtuosity at a specific repertory that recent scholars have termed

postclassical. This styleexemplified by the works of Henri Herz and Carl Czerny

prized accessibility and elegance, and Schumanns writings on postclassical showpieces

comment on their style and conventions as well as on the cultural significance of this

repertory. Chapters 2 and 3 explore ways in which Schumann sought to poeticize and

elevate virtuosity by combining postclassical conventions with Romantic musical

metaphors for inwardness and transcendence. The second discusses how Schumanns

concept of the poetic informed his approach to virtuosity. The third argues that

Schumann viewed virtuosity as a potential source of sublime experience and, moreover,

that contemporary critics received several of his own showpieces as sublime. Chapter 4

considers writings in which Schumann argues for a symbiotic relationship between

virtuosos and musical institutions he regarded as serious. This ideal, I argue, shaped the

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style and structure of Schumanns own concertos, which stage virtuosic display as part of

the symphony-centered concert and incorporate the virtuoso into the idealized community

of the professional symphony orchestra. Schumann thus participated influentially in a

discourse that did not establish a binaristic opposition between virtuosity and serious

music or attempt to suppress public interest in virtuosity but rather created various ways

of customizing contemporary virtuosity according to the ideology of serious music and

the aesthetic imperatives of German Romanticism.

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Table of Contents

Volume 1

Curriculum Vitae ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract v

Note to the Reader 1

Introduction 2

Chapter 1 Schumanns Critique of Postclassical Virtuosity 32

Virtuosity as Entertainment: The Postclassical Style 36

Schumann and the Neue Zeitschrifts Critique of Postclassical Virtuosity 57 Virtuoso Entertainment and Aristocratic Frivolity 66 Epilogue: Henriette Voigt and the Poetic Salon 75 Chapter 2 Virtuosity and the Schumannian Poetic 80 Ein Opus II 86 A Poetic Virtuoso Makes his Debut:

Schumanns Abegg Variations, Opus 1 102 A Pianistic Sampler and a Poetic Network: Schumanns Unpublished Fantaisies et finale 112 From Chiaroscuro Depth to Poetic Distance: Poetic Texture and Figuration, According to Schumann 129 Chapter 3 Schumanns 1830s Showpieces and the Rhetoric of the Sublime 145 Sublime Virtuosity in Schumanns Critical Writings 155 Poeticizing and Appropriating Paganini: The Roots of Schumanns Sublime Virtuosity 162 A Concerto with an Ocean for a Finale 171

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A Toccata Emblazoned with the Name of Beethoven 183 From the Poetic to the (Beethovenian?) Sublime: The 1837 tudes symphoniques 196 Chapter 4 The Virtuoso on Mount Parnassus: Schumann and the 206

Concertante Principle

The Virtuoso Concerto and Schumanns Critique of Postclassicism 217 Vehicles for Serious Virtuosity 230 Twin Strategies: Schumanns Piano Concerto, Op. 54 234 Trajectories of Sublimation and Convergence: The Later, Single-Movement Concertos 248

Epilogue 277 Bibliography 284

Volume 2 Appendices: Figures and Examples

Chapter 1 Figures and Examples 298

Chapter 2 Figures and Examples 323

Chapter 3 Figures and Examples 358

Chapter 4 Figures and Examples 396

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List of Figures and Examples

Volume 2

Chapter 1 Figures and Examples Example 1.1: Carl Czerny, The School of Practical Composition. Sample variations. 299 Example 1.2: Henri Herz, Grandes variations sur le Choeur des Grecs du Sige du Corinthe, Op. 36. Theme and Variation 1. 301 Example 1.3: Herz, Grandes variations. Finale. 303 Figure 1.1: Herz, Grandes variations. Formal outline. 305 Example 1.4: Herz, Grandes Variations. Variations 3 and 4. 306 Example 1.5: Theodore Dhler, Fantaisie et Variations sur la Cavatine Favorite de Anna Bolena, Op. 17. Variation 1. 307 Example 1.6: Dhler, Fantaisie et Variations sur Anna Bolena. Two clichs identified by Schumann. 308 Example 1.7: Julius Benedict, Introduction et Variations sur un thme favori de lOpra La Straniera, Op. 16. Variation 5. 309 Example 1.8: Benedict, Variations sur La Straniera. Introduction. 310 Example 1.9: Sigismund Thalberg, Grande Fantaisie et Variations Brillantes sur un motif favori de lOpra I Capuletti e Montecchi, Op. 10. Variations 1 and 2. 312 Example 1.10: Thalberg, I Capuletti Variations. Finale. 313 Example 1.11: Frrric Kalkbrenner, Fantaisie et Variations sur un Thme de La Straniera, Op. 123. Theme, Variation 1. 316 Example 1.12: Thalberg, Grand Fantaisie sur des motifs de lOpra Norma, Op. 12. Introduction. 318 Example 1.13: Thalberg, Norma Fantaisie. Variation 2. 320 Example 1.14: Thalberg, Norma Fantaisie. Finale. 321

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Chapter 2 Figures and Examples Example 2.1: Frdric Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations, Op. 2. Close of introduction. 324 Example 2.2: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations. Variation 1. 325 Example 2.3: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations. Variation 5. 326 Example 2.4: Chopin, L ci darem la mano Variations. Continuation of second episode in rondo finale. 328 Figure 2.1: Schumann, Abegg Variations, Op. 1. Sequence of movements and theme. 330 Example 2.5: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Variation 1. 331 Example 2.6: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Variations 2 and 3. 332 Figure 2.2: Rondo form of Abegg finale. 334 Example 2.7: Schumann, Abegg Variations. Finale, transition to second episode (C). 335 Figure 2.3: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Sequence of variations. 337 Example 2.8: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Theme. 339 Example 2.9: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasies 2 and 3. 340 Example 2.10: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 7 and Trio. 341 Example 2.11: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 4. 342 Example 2.12: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Fantasy 10. 344 Example 2.13: Heinrich Marschner, Wer ist der Ritter hochgeehrt, from Der Templer und die Jdin. 345 Example 2.14: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale. Finale refrain. 347 Figure 2.4: Marschner, Wer ist der Ritter. Text (by Wilhelm August Wohlbrck) and translation. 348 Example 2.15: Ferdinand Hiller, Etude, Op. 15, no. 2. 349

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Example 2.16: Cramer, Studio per il pianoforte, No. 36 and Hiller, Etude Op. 15, no. 22. 350 Example 2.17: Hiller, Etude Op. 15, no. 4. 351 Example 2.18: Hiller and Chopin etudes. 352 Example 2.19: Chopin, Etude Op. 25, no. 1. Excerpts. 353 Example 2.20: Schumann, Papillons, Op. 2 and Abegg Variations, Op. 1. Distant sound effects. 354 Example 2.21: Schumann, Exercise. Coda. 355 Example 2.22: Schumann, Toccata, Op. 7. Coda. 356 Chapter 3 Figures and Examples Example 3.1: Schumann, Kreisleriana, Op. 16. Movements 1 and 7. 359 Example 3.2: Chopin, Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35. Finale. 359 Example 3.3: Paganini, Caprice No. 16. Schumann, Etude, Op. 3, no. 6. 360 Example 3.4: Paganini, Caprice No. 16. Schumann, Etude Op. 3, no. 6. Coda. 362 Example 3.5: Paganini, Caprice No. 12. Schumann, Etude Op. 10, no. 1. 363 Example 3.6: Paganini, Caprice No. 10. Schumann, Etude Op. 10, no. 3. 365 Example 3.7: Paganini, Caprice No. 4. 366 Example 3.8: Schumann, Etude Op. 10, no. 4. 368 Example 3.9: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, Op. 14, movement 4. Opening. 370 Figure 3.1: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. 371 Example 3.10: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Theme B. 372 Example 3.11: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Theme C. 373 Example 3.12: Schumann, Concert sans orchestre, movement 4. Retransition (first and second parallels). 374

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Example 3.13: Some early nineteenth-century double-stop piano showpieces. 376 Example 3.14: Ludwig Schuncke, Allegro Passionato, Op. 6. Excerpts. 377 Example 3.15: Ludwig Schuncke, Caprice No. 2, Op. 10. Excerpts. 378 Example 3.16: Schumann, Exercise and Toccata, Op. 7. Openings. 380 Example 3.17: Schumann, Toccata. Three versions of second theme. 382 Example 3.18: Schumann, Toccata. Transition to closing theme. 383 Example 3.19: Schumann, Exercise and Toccata. Retransitions. 384 Example 3.20: Beethoven, Symphony No. 3, Eroica, movement 1. Fugato in development. 385 Example 3.21: Schumann, Toccata. Coda. 387 Figure 3.2: Schumann, Fantaisies et finale (1835) and tudes symphoniques, Op. 13 (1837).Sequence of movements. 389 Figure 3.3: Schumann, tudes symphoniques, Op. 13. Secondary keys, continuity, and formal expansion. 391 Example 3.22: Schumann, tudes symphoniques. Etude VII. 392 Example 3.23: Schumann, tudes symphoniques, Etude IX. 393 Example 3.24: Beethoven, Eroica Symphony, movement 4, G-minor variation. Excerpts. 394 Chapter 4 Figures and Examples Figure 4.1: Henri Herz, Concerto No. 1 in A major, Op. 34, movement 1. 397 Exposition form and excerpts. Example 4.1: Herz, Concerto No. 1, movement 1. Closing display of exposition (excerpts). 398 Example 4.2: Frdric Kalkbrenner, Concerto No. 4 in A-flat, Op. 127, movement 1. Second theme group, closing display. 400 Figure 4.2: Charles Mayer, Concerto, Op. 70. First movement form (complete). 402

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Example 4.3: Clara Wieck, Concerto No. 7 in A minor, Op. 7, movement 1. Expositional closing display, segue to development. 403 Example 4.4: Schumann, Piano Concerto, Op. 54, movement 1. Transition between first and second theme groups (piano and strings only). 405 Example 4.5: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 1. Development. 407 Example 4.6: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 1. Closing display of recapitulation. 408 Example 4.7: Adolph Henselt, lyrical showpieces in Clara Wiecks repertoire. 411 Example 4.8: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 1. Cadenza. 412 Example 4.9: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 3. Closing display of exposition (excerpts). 413 Example 4.10: Schumann, Piano Concerto, movement 3. Beginning of coda (piano only). 417 Figure 4.3: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato, Op. 92. Large-scale symphonic and concertante hybrid. 418 Example 4.11: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato, Op. 92. Opening of Introduction. 419 Example 4.12: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato. Transition to Allegro. 421 Example 4.13: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato. Second theme group and false closing display. (Piano and winds only.) 422 Example 4.14: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato. Opening of coda. 424 Example 4.15: Schumann, Introduction and Allegro Appassionato. Coda (piano only after m. 472). 426 Example 4.16: Schumann, Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134. First theme group (piano only after m. 26). 428 Example 4.17: Schumann, Introduction and Concert Allegro. Transition and second theme. 430

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Example 4.18. Schumann: Introduction and Concert Allegro. Closing display of exposition. 431 Example 4.19: Schumann, Introduction and Concert Allegro. Cadenza (excerpts). 432 Example 4.20: Schumann, Introduction and Concert Allegro. Coda. 433 Example 4.21: Schumann, Phantasie, Op. 131. Violin entrance. 435 Example 4.22: Schumann, Phantasie. Introduction. 436 Example 4.23: Schumann, Phantasie. Opening of first theme group. 437 Example 4.24: Schumann, Phantasie. Closing display of exposition. 438 Example 4.25: Schumann, Phantasie. Development (excerpts). 439 Example 4.26: Schumann, Phantasie. Coda. 441

Note to the Reader 1

Note to the Reader

The text that follows includes many quotations from Schumanns 1854 anthology of his

own writings as well as from nineteenth-century music periodicals. I have abbreviated the

following titles in the text and footnotes:

Schumanns Gesammelte Schriften ber Musik und Musiker GS

Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik NZfM

Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung AmZ

Signale fr die musikalische Welt Signale.

For this study, I have used Martin Kreisigs widely available 1914 edition of Schumanns

Gesammelte Schriften, published by Breitkopf und Hrtel, Leipzig. Occasionally, I have

found differences between the anthologized version of a given essay by Schumann and

earlier versions (e.g., the ones published in the NZfM or AmZ or found in a surviving

manuscript). In those cases, I give the details in a footnote.

Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

Introduction 2

INTRODUCTION

In 1843, Robert Schumann published a striking, seemingly self-contradictory article on

virtuosity in his Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik, a review of Italian violinist-composer

Antonio Bazzinis May 14 concert in Leipzig. At first, Schumann plays the role he often

assumes in the musicological literature, that of a staunch anti-virtuoso polemicist. The

public has lately begun to notice a surplus of virtuosos, he writes. So has this journal,

as it has often made known. He goes on to deride the nineteenth-century rage for

virtuosity in general:

The virtuosos themselves seem to feel this, as their recent desire to travel to America attests, and many of their enemies nurture the silent wish that, God willing, they will all stay over there. For, all things considered, the newer virtuosity has contributed but little to the benefit of art.1

But then the review takes a surprising turn, one that complicates Schumanns sweeping

condemnation: However, when virtuosity confronts us in as delightful a form as the

above-mentioned young Italian, then we gladly listen to it for hours.2 Schumann

suggests that Bazzini, unlike the unnamed virtuosos from the beginning of the review, did

contribute to the benefit of art. Schumann praises two of Bazzinis compositions for

violin and orchestra: his Concertino in E, Op. 14 and his Scherzo Variato ber Motive

aus Webers Aufforderung zum Tanze, Op. 13.3 Of the Concertino, Schumann writes,

1 Das Publikum fngt seit kurzem an, einigen berdru an Virtuosen merken zu lassen, und (wie es schon fters gestanden hat) diese Zeitschrift auch. Da dies die Virtuosen selbst fhlen, scheint ihre neuerdings entstandene Auswanderungslust nach Amerika zu beweisen, und es gibt manche ihrer Feinde, die dabei den stillen Wunsch hegen, sie mchten in Gottes Namen ganz drben bleiben; denn, alles in allem erwogen, zum Besten der Kunst hat die neuere Virtuositt nur wenig beigetragen. Robert Schumann, Antonio Bazzini, in Gesammelte Schriften ber Musik und Musiker, 5th ed., edited by Martin Kreisig (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hrtel, 1914), 2:134. Hereafter GS. 2 Wo sie uns aber in so reizender Gestalt entgegentritt wie bei dem obengenannten jungen Italiener, da lauschen wir gern noch stundenlang. Ibid., 2:134. 3 Schumanns review does not name the specific works that appeared on Bazzinis concert. For the full contents of the program, I am indebted to the Gewandhaus Programmsammlung, Robert Schumann Haus, Zwickau. Document 847.

Introduction 3

The natural flow of the whole, the mostly discreet instrumentation, the really charming

luster and melodiousness of some individual passagesmost virtuosos have barely any

idea of these things.4

Schumanns appraisal of Bazzinis virtuosity extends beyond the style of his

compositions. He nods to the violinists nationality when he calls him an Italian through

and through, but in the best sense, an expression that invokes positive stereotypes about

the melodic charm of Italian music even as it attempts to distance Bazzini from less

complimentary ones about Italian frivolity or shallowness.5 Schumann registers his

impression of Bazzinis onstage persona, idealizing him for his strong youthful face,

from whose eyes flash jocularity and love of life, traits that, Schumann suggests, provide

a welcome contrast with world-weary, pale virtuoso figures.6 Schumann also implicitly

takes into account the scope of Bazzinis professional activities. The review treats a

concert Bazzini gave with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of Felix

Mendelssohn. The laudatory tone and substantial length of Schumanns essay testifies to

his interest in promoting virtuosos who, rather than sweeping through town and

performing concerts for their own benefit, established relationships with institutions that

Schumann and the Neue Zeitschrift regarded as bastions of serious musical culture.

Indeed, Bazzinis showpieces, on this occasion, shared the stage with Mendelssohns

Hebrides and Beethovens Egmont overtures.7

4 Sein Konzert bewies es am deutlichsten; der natrlich Gu des Ganzen, die meist diskrete Instrumentierung, der wirklich bezaubernde Schmelz und Wohlklang in einzelnen Stellenvon alle diesem haben ja die meisten Virtuosen kaum eine Ahnung. GS 2:134. 5 Italiener ist er durch und durch, aber im besten Sinne. Ibid., 2:134. 6 Weltmder, blasser Virtuosengestalten haben wir nun schon genug gehabt; erfreut euch nun auch einmal an einem krftigen Jnglingsgesicht, dem Heiterkeit und Lebensluft aus den Augen blickt. Ibid., 2:135. 7 Bazzini went on to cultivate this relationship. In 1844, he appeared with the orchestra again, playing a Concertante for four violins and orchestra by Maurerthe other soloists were Heinrich Ernst, Joseph

Introduction 4

Despite his overall approval, Schumann also criticizes the violinist for at times

lapsing into the role of crowd-pleasing entertainer and implicitly exhorts Bazzini to

conform even more closely to an image of an ideal virtuoso. (Schumann thereby reminds

readers that, while impressed, he is not so star-struck by Bazzinis charisma and bravura

as to forget the requirements of serious music.) He chides Bazzini for programming two

of his other compositions, his Fantaisie dramatique on the closing scene from Donizettis

Lucia di Lammermoor and his Capriccio on themes from Bellinis I Puritani. In contrast

to the Concertino and the Weber-based scherzo, Schumann writes, these pieces show that

Bazzini was not ashamed of flattering the public. He describes them not as music but

as an accumulation of violin effects, in which no one can surpass Paganini.8 In general,

though, Schumanns review ringingly endorses the violinist. At one point, he briefly

launches into his trademark style of imagistic, poetic criticism and invokes Romantic

ideals about musics potentially universal, transcendent qualities: Schumann calls Bazzini

an artist from a land of songnot a land that lies here or therefrom that unknown,

eternally bright land.9

In one of the final reviews he wrote for the Neue Zeitschrift, then, Schumann

articulated a complex attitude toward virtuosity, one that regarded the nineteenth-century

fascination with virtuosity as a potentially problematic phenomenon but also

distinguished between virtuosos who contributed little to the benefit of art and those

who exemplified Schumanns ideals of serious, transcendental music. In this study, I

Joachim, and Ferdinand David. (Gewandhaus Programmsammlung, Document 880.) That year, he also gave the first private performance of Mendelssohns Violin Concerto, Op. 64. 8 An den beiden folgenden Stcken sah ich nur ungern, da er auch dem Publikum zu schmeicheln nicht verschmht; hier war weniger Musik, aber eine Anhufung von Violinknsten, in denen es nun einmal Paganini niemand nachtun wird. Ibid., 2:135. 9 Als kme er aus dem Lande des Gesanges, nicht einem Lande, das da oder dort liegt, aus jenem unbekannten ewig heitern, so war mirs manchmal bei seiner Musik. Ibid., 2:134.

Introduction 5

explore Schumanns engagement with virtuosity through his critical writings and

virtuosic compositions. In doing so, I hope to illuminate the significant but little-

understood role that Schumann played in the larger interaction between instrumental

virtuosity, Romantic aesthetics, and the ideology of serious music in early nineteenth-

century Germany.

Virtuosity and (or, For Some, Versus) Serious Music

During Schumanns career as critic and composer, which extended roughly from 1831

until 1854, virtuosity became an object of public fascination and critical preoccupation.

The first half of the century witnessed a significant shift in thinking about musics role in

society and position among the arts. This projectwhich was at its most elaborate and

urgent in Germanysought to elevate music as a serious art form worthy of the respect,

even veneration, of a highly literate, mostly middle-class public. It intertwined

developments in musical life and institutions with the imperatives of Romantic aesthetics.

In many regards, German Romantic attitudes have informed the culture of Western art

music well into the twenty-first century. Perhaps for this reason, scholarsincluding

David Gramit, William Weber, Celia Applegate, Lydia Goehr, and Sanna Pederson

have only recently begun to treat the ideology of serious music as a historical event in

need of contextualization and explication.10 The German Romantic projects

10 See, for example, David Gramit, Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770-1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); William Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Celia Applegate, How German Is It? Nationalism and the Idea of Serious Music in the Early Nineteenth Century, 19th-Century Music 21, no 3 (1998): 274-96; Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, rev. ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Sanna Pederson, Enlightened and Romantic German Music Criticism, 1800-1850 PhD. diss, University of Pennsylvania, 1995. Carl Dahlhauss somewhat earlier study takes note of the literization and sacralization of music as part of nineteenth-century audiences tastes and

Introduction 6

manifestations ranged from the concretely institutional to the abstractly ideological. They

included the establishment of the public concert as a space for displaying, organizing, and

cementing a community of serious musicians, the formation of a canon of classics,

attempts to endow music with quasi-literary content or significance, the stigmatization of

music designed specifically for casual diversion, such concepts as absolute and

poetic music, andpervading nineteenth-century writing on the aforementioned

topicsa view of music as a vehicle for quasi-spiritual experience. John Daverios

characterization of Schumann as one of the first musicians to espouse the belief that

music should aspire to the same intellectual substance [and by implication, I would add,

the same recognized cultural significance] as the lettered arts: poetry and philosophy

places the composer-critic squarely at the center of this process.11 So do Schumanns own

essays, which in various instances perpetuated the cult of Beethoven as a sublime genius

and symbol of German national pride, lionized such values as originality and inner

expression, derided Philistines who viewed music as a vehicle for everyday recreation,

and depicted poetic transcendence in colorful, quasi-narrative reviews.12

The construction of music as a serious art form ran parallel to the nineteenth-

century burgeoning of public fascination with virtuosity. Schumann was equally

entangled with this other aspect of contemporary musical life: his early aspiration to be a

touring piano virtuoso is well known, and his diary recorded rapturous impressions of

Paganinis 1831 concert in Frankfurt. Some of the same factors that stimulated and gave composers strategies. Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), see, for example, 164-68. 11 John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 89. 12 In several ways, Schumanns early life primed him to enter this discourse. As is well known, Schumannthe son of a bookseller and translatorgrew up in a highly literate household, enjoyed a university education, and agonized over the tension between poetry and music in his own intellectual life and career plans.

Introduction 7

urgency to the German Romantic projectnotably the rise of a large, middle-class

audience and the growth of the public concertnourished what many critics celebrated

or lamented as The Age of Bravura.13 While most visible on the concert stage, the

virtuosity boom also filled drawing rooms and salons. Just as music-lovers flocked to see

star instrumentalists in public or semi-public performances, they purchased variation sets,

opera fantasies, etudes, and concertos to perform or practice at home. The rage for

virtuosity involved not only iconic stars like Liszt and Paganini but several generations of

musicians, including composer-performers who specialized in virtuoso music as well as

musicians better known for their work in other areas.

It was in this context that virtuosity became a problematic issue for musicians

invested in the construction of music as a serious art form. In Gramits summary, critics

regarded the virtuoso as a threat from within: the virtuoso was so firmly established as

a corrupting force that, by the 1840s, writers who were quite serious in their rejection of

what virtuosos represented could play with the topic with easy familiarity.14 Nineteenth-

century writers cited aesthetic issues. Whereas the Romantic ideology valorized inner

experience in music, flashy showpieces foregrounded displays of physical skill. Gramits

study argues that, throughout the nineteenth-century, German musicians strove to

distance their art from any association with Handwerkthat is, from crafts requiring

physical skill as opposed to fine art requiring genius and intellect. For self-consciously

serious musicians, he notes, The all-too-obvious physicality of the virtuoso distracted

13 Eduard Hanslicks history of concert life in Vienna, for example, terms the years between 1830 and 1848 as the Virtuosenzeit and the Epoch of Liszt and Thalberg. Hanslicks very choice of names for separate epochs suggests his suspicion toward virtuosity: the years between 1848 and 1868 bear the heading Associations of Artists and are described as a Musical Renaissance. Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumller, 1869), vi, 289. 14 Gramit, Cultivating Music, 139.

Introduction 8

from the real significance of music.15 Critics also cited more practical, institutional

concerns. Virtuoso instrumentalists often led itinerant careers, moving from locale to

locale and performing concerts for their own benefit. They thus worked outside ofand,

some critics alleged, drew audiences away frominstitutions symbolic of the serious

aspirations of German musical culture, particularly the symphony orchestra and the

choral society. It was the nineteenth century that popularized the clichd image of the

virtuoso as a cynical egotist who manipulated audiences for his or her own benefit rather

than high-mindedly serving the dissemination of masterworks, the authenticity of his or

her own inner inspiration, or a larger community of serious musicians.16 All of their

specific concerns drew upon a desire to separate high art from crowd-pleasing

entertainment, a boundary virtuosos and their music threatened to blur.

Small wonder, then, that scholars have uncovered an extensive critical debate

about the merits, attractions, and evils of virtuosity which peaked in the German musical

press during Schumanns career, one Dana Gooley characterizes as a Battle Against

Instrumental Virtuosity.17 Shrill rhetoric and sweeping pronouncements abounded. An

unsigned 1843 article entitled Virtuosen-Unfug [Virtuoso Nonsense] that appeared in

the Leipzig Signale fr die musikalische Welt, for example, roundly accuses

contemporary virtuosos of single-mindedly seeking commercial success. It rails against 15 Ibid., 141. 16 Richard Lepperts study of Liszts public image, for example, includes several contemporary caricatures that depict the superstar virtuoso as a prize-hungry figure whose extravagant performing gestures represented a calculated show put on for the audience. Leppert, The Concert and the Virtuoso, in Piano Roles, ed. James Parakilas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 268-70. Granted, pre-nineteenth-century writers had occasionally ridiculed or complained about virtuosos or ascribed such foibles as egotism or amateurishness to them. Benedetto Marcellos 1720 satirical treatise Il teatro alla moda, for example, is full of vapid, applause-seeking prima donnas. (Marcello skewers many aspects of operatic life besides vocal virtuosos, from insufficiently trained composers to overly long arias.) The nineteenth-century discourse was new in the intensity and vehemence with which it debated virtuosity and its anxiety about the relationship between the cult of the virtuoso and that of serious music. 17 Dana Gooley, The Battle against Instrumental Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth Century, In Liszt and his World, ed. Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 75-112.

Introduction 9

virtuosos who supposedly prospered while Schubert and Beethoven starved and

concludes by gleefully predicting that the virtuoso craze will be replaced by large music

festivalscommunal rather than individual displays of musical achievement.18 An 1841

article by organist and critic Eduard Krger entitled Virtuosenconcert: Gesprch that

appeared in the Neue Zeitschrift stages a fictional dialogue between a Kapellmeister

(symbol of tradition, seriousness, learning, and middle-class stability), a Dilettante

(whom Krger portrays as easily seduced by virtuoso performances), and a Virtuoso.

Krgers article chides the Virtuoso for drawing audiences away from sublime art and

elevating his own ego at the expense of canonized masterworks.19 More often, writers

expressed their unease in more ambivalent terms that acknowledge a potentially positive

side of virtuosity. Just as often as music periodicals advertised showpieces designed for

domestic amateurs with the descriptor brilliant but not difficult, critics evaluated

virtuoso performers and music by claiming that virtuoso display should not represent an

end in itself but rather a means to an [unspecified but somehow worthier] end.20

18 Virtuosen-Unfug, Signale fr die Musikalische Welt 1, no. 29 (July 1843): 217-20. 19 Eduard Krger, Das Virtuosenconcert: Gesprch, NZfM 14, nos. 40-43 (May 17-28, 1841): 159-61, 163-65, 167-69, 171-73. 20 To briefly cite two examples of this rhetoric from the Neue Zeitschrift: Oswald Lorenz, in a study of brilliant violin music, proposed that there are two kinds of bravura pieces: Either the presentation of every characteristic [of the instrument] and the difficulty of handling them are the main point, but the material and form of the piece are only the unifying means, the cloth on which all of the colorful splendors are embroidered, or, on the other hand, content, form, and the character of the piece are the main point and everything else is subordinated, subservient. Entweder die Darlegung jener Eigenthmlichkeiten ... und die Schwierigkeit ihrer Handhabung ist die Hauptsache, Stoff und Form des Tonstcks aber sind nur das verbindende Mittel, das Tuch, worauf alle die bunten Herrlichkeiten gestickt sind; oder aber, Stoff, Form, Charakter des Musikstcks sind die Hauptsache, das Herrschende, jenes Alles nur das Untergeordnete, Dienende. Brillante Musik fr die Violine mit Begleitung, NZfM 7, no. 22 (September 15, 1837): 88.

Joseph Mainzer (the Zeitschrifts Parisian correspondent for part of Schumanns tenure as editor) also invoked the issue of means and ends in a report on concerts by Liszt and Thalberg. Thalberg, Mainzer writes, is a master of piano technique but treats technique as an end in itself. Liszt, he claims, knows the technical aspect of his instrument as well as Thalberg does, but nevertheless seeks to use it purely as a means, to develop his thoughts and ideas. Liszt kennt den technischen Theil seines Instrumentes wie Thalberg, sucht jedoch denselben blos als Mittel zu gebrauchen, um seine Gedanken und Ideen daraus zu entwickeln. Aus Paris, NZfM 6, no. 46 (June 9, 1837): 185.

Introduction 10

This discourse about virtuositys proper role in musical life spanned the

nineteenth century and has continued to evolve in the twentieth and twenty first. Our

present-day culture continues to regard virtuosity with a mixture of admiration and

ambivalence. Guitar virtuosos reign as iconic figures in rock music history. Symphony

orchestras often rely on celebrated guest soloists playing popular warhorses to draw

audiences. Conservatory instructors and students routinely scoff at shallow virtuosity

and compliment a performer for being more than a mere virtuoso. And, two of the

more controversial figures in recent classical-music history have been the pianists

Vladimir Horowitz and Lang Lang (whose dazzling technical capabilities are universally

acknowledged but whose seriousness and integrity as artists have been hotly debated).21

Two late twentieth-century sources encapsulate this ambivalence and its prevalence in

both the academy and the wider community of classical-music listeners. Owen Janders

article on Virtuosos for the second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and

Musicians concludes by noting that though there has been a tendency to regard dazzling

feats of technical skill with suspicionthe true virtuoso has always been prized without

explaining what constitutes a true virtuoso.22 Written for a less scholarly audience, the

second edition of Ted Libbeys 1999 NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection

promises on its cover that a reader will become a better listener by learning to

distinguish between emotional truth and technical brilliance.23

21 For one discussion of the Horowitz reception, see, for example, Richard Taruskin, Why Do They All Hate Horowitz? in The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 30-36. Taruskins essay originally appeared in the New York Times on November 28, 1993. 22 Owen Jander, "Virtuoso," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanly Sadie (London: Macmillan and New York: Grove, 2001) 26:790. 23 Ted Libbey, The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection, 2nd rev. ed (New York: Workman Publishing, 1999).

Introduction 11

Schumann on Virtuosity

Schumann participated in a formative stage of the discourse on virtuosity and played a

role that combined written criticism with musical production. His engagement with this

musical craze and critical dilemma produced numerous reviews published between 1831

and 1844; such solo piano works as the Abegg Variations, Op. 1, Paganini etudes Op.

3 and 10, Toccata, Op. 7, tudes symphoniques, Op. 13, and Concert sans orchestre, Op.

14; three concerted works for piano and orchestra; and two for violin and orchestra.

These compositions and writings offer a rich, revealing window into the story of

virtuosity as it unfolded in nineteenth-century Germany. The works span Schumanns

careerfrom his Opus 1 to his posthumous Violin Concerto, WoO 23and inhabit a

variety of genres. Schumanns critical writings, more than the sweeping pronouncements

of Virtuosen Unfug and the abstractions and caricatures of Das Virtuosenkonzert,

offer nuanced, musically concrete statements about aesthetics, published compositions,

and the professional activities of contemporary performers.

However, scholars have yet to explore the complexity and extent of the composer-

critics contribution. An oversimplified view of Schumann that has remained routine in

the musicological literature selectively emphasizes his critique of virtuosity and distances

his compositions from the contemporary rage for bravura. This attitude finds precedent in

the Romantic critical discourse itself. Carl Kossmalys 1844 review of Schumanns piano

works for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitungthe first major article on the composer

to appear in the German presslionizes Schumann as a Romantic hero. Schumann,

Kossmaly writes, inherited a lamentable musical situation characterized by the

dominance of a mind-and-thought-destroying virtuosity that sees itself as the sole,

Introduction 12

ultimate aim of art. Nonetheless, he continues, Schumann displayed forceful

originality and imposing intellectual strength by resisting the lure of popular virtuosity

and instead retaining his own artistic bearings.24

The few scholarly works to directly address the topic of Schumann and virtuosity

have echoed in various ways Kossmalys binary opposition. Studies of Schumanns

critical writings often reiterate nineteenth-century value judgments about showy salon

pieces and reduce Schumanns project to a crusade against shallow virtuosity. Leon

Plantingas still-standard book on Schumanns criticism describes him resisting what

Plantinga describes as the mediocrity and crass commercialism of Parisian pianist-

composers and working to promote higher standards in piano music. Schumann

displayed an interest in the works of Liszt and Thalberg, Plantinga writes, but it was a

guilty fascination.25 Anthony Newcombs essay on Schumann and the marketplace

carefully separates the early piano music from contemporary virtuosity. Newcomb

stresses (mostly but not entirely accurately) that Schumanns output does not include the

fantasies or potpourris on popular opera tunes that provided the backbone of the mid-

century virtuoso repertory. His brief discussion of the Abegg Variations and tudes

symphoniques maintains that these works are simply too complex or substantial to bear

comparison with contemporary popular showpieces. The Variations is not a set of

figurational variationsbut a set of highly characteristic (in the sense, full of character)

variations and the tudes symphoniques is more the tude charactristique than the

virtuoso etude of dazzling figurational display. His statements only beg the questions of

precisely how and to what purpose these showpieces depart from convention, what being

24Carl Kossmaly, On Robert Schumanns Piano Compositions (1844), trans. Susan Gillespie, in Schumann and his World, ed. R. Larry Todd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 306-307. 25 Leon Plantinga, Schumann as Critic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 16-23, 203.

Introduction 13

full of character means in this context (and why it might stand in opposition to

figurational display), and how Schumanns contemporaries understood the virtuosity

these showpieces do present.26 More recent scholarship often adopts a different

perspective and critiques the values of high art by casting Schumann the critic as an elitist

who attempted to suppress public interest in virtuosity. Dana Gooleys 2006 essay on the

virtuosity debate, for example, argues that Schumann founded the Neue Zeitschrift as a

pulpit for anti-virtuosity views in opposition to what Gooley calls the tolerant and

sensible perspective of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. Even though Gooley

acknowledges that virtuosity, for Schumann, needed to contribute to the animation of

the intellect that will render music a poetic art, he does not elaborate on how or in what

works virtuosity might have served this purpose.27

More often, studies of Schumanns music avoid the topic of virtuosity altogether.

One of the most active areas of recent Schumann scholarship (exemplified by John

Daverios and Erika Reimans work) reveals the influence of contemporary literary

theory on the composers character-piece cycles and lieder but omits his showpieces.28

Although some scholars have insightfully approached Schumanns compositions in

virtuoso genressuch as in Claudia Macdonalds study of the piano concertos, Damien

Ehrhardts analyses of the variations, and Linda Roesners work on the source material

for Schumanns sonatastheir work focuses on issues of formal structure and

26 Anthony Newcomb, Schumann and the Marketplace: From Butterflies to Hausmusik, in Nineteenth-Century Piano Music, 2ne ed., edited by R. Larry Todd (New York: Routledge, 2004), 264-65. 27 Dana Gooley, The Battle Against Instrumental Virtuosity, 86-87. 28 John Daverio, Schumanns Systems of Musical Fragments and Witz, in Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology (New York: Schirmer, 1993), 49-88; Erika Reiman, Schumanns Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004). For two other examples of this literary approach to Schumanns music, see Laura Tunbridge, Schumanns Late Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Berthold Hoeckner, Schumann and Romantic Distance, Journal of the American Musicological Society 50, no. 1 (1997): 55-132.

Introduction 14

compositional genesis and does not consider what kind of virtuosity (indeed, what kind of

virtuoso) these works stage for a concert audience and how they fit into the broader

virtuosity discourse.29 The commonly held view of Schumann remains that of a

philosophically inclined composera musician of solitary intimacy, to use Roland

Barthess wordswho wrote for a rarefied audience and whose most famous work

exemplifies Romantic ideals of Innigkeit.30 All features would seem to fit ill with the

extroversion of virtuoso instrumental music.

My project seeks a richer understanding of Schumanns engagement with

virtuosity. In the chapters that follow, I explore the worldly and aesthetic issues that

virtuosity raised for Schumann, how they informed the analytical points and rhetoric of

his reviews, and how they shaped the compositional strategies he employed in his

virtuosic works. Rather than passing judgment on Schumanns approach and casting him

as either crusader or spoilsport, I am more interested in illuminating how Schumann

contributed to one of the most exciting musical developments of his time in ways that

responded to the ideology, aspirations, and perceived needs of a particular musical

culture.

I argue that Schumann attempted to write (as a composer) and promote (as a

critic) virtuoso music that answered the imperatives of Romantic aesthetics and that

staged virtuoso performance as serious music. In this sense, Schumann regarded

virtuosity as simultaneously problematic and indispensable, as potentially a threat from

29 See, for example, Claudia Macdonald, Robert Schumann and the Piano Concerto (New York: Routledge, 2005); Linda Correll Roesner, The Autograph of Schumanns Piano Sonata in F Minor, Opus 14, The Musical Quarterly 61, no. 1 (1975): 98-130; Damien Ehrhardt, La variation chez Robert Schumann: Forme et evolution (PhD diss., Universit Paris-Sorbonne, 1997). 30 Roland Barthes, Loving Schumann, in The Responsibility of Forms, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985), 293.

Introduction 15

within but also as a potentially productive, valuable, and attractive component of the

culture of serious music. His well-known anti-virtuosity invective actually targets a

specific style of bravura music that Jim Samson has termed postclassical.31 Such

musicexemplified by the works of Carl Czerny and Henri Herzenjoyed

overwhelming popularity in nineteenth-century Europe and generally featured a

deliberately simple harmonic and phraseological idiom, transparent textures, a melodic

style derived from Italianate opera, and structures (including a potpourri-like approach to

formal design) designed to present a pleasing variety of contrasting material. The critical

defenders of postclassical virtuosity embraced an aesthetic that regarded virtuoso

showpieces primarily as vehicles for accessible entertainment, a view of musics social

role at odds with Schumanns.

But virtuosity also represented a vital part of Schumanns project to shape musical

taste in Germany. It was in this sense a pressing and significant rather than a guilty

fascination. The striving for individual distinction that drove the virtuoso scene,

Schumanns writings suggested, could be harnessed to serve his own interest in

convention-defying originality. His review of Ferdinand Hillers etudes, for example,

directly attributes their original style to Hillers immersion in the Paris virtuoso scene and

exposure to cutting-edge trends in pianism.32 The drive to astonish audiences that

motivated virtuoso performer-composers also resonated with Schumanns transcendence-

seeking aesthetic. To cite but one of many examples we will encounter, Schumanns

1834 review of violinist Henri Vieuxtemps uses mystical imagery when it reminisces

about hearing Paganini perform his own compositions. Even though the Vieuxtemps

31 For one summary of the postclassical style, see Jim Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 19. 32 I will discuss Hiller and Schumanns review of his etudes at length in Chapter 2.

Introduction 16

review appeared three years after Schumann attended Paganinis concert, it reveals that

the Italian virtuosos ability to entrance audiences and whip them into states of ecstasy

continued to impress the young composer-critic:

How he cast his magnetic chains into the listeners lightly and invisibly, so that the latter swayed from one side to the other! Now the rings became more wondrous, more convoluted; the people thronged together more tightly, now he interlaced them more strongly until they gradually melted together.33

And, not least, virtuoso performers and music offered a link to a vast public of

concertgoers and amateur performers, the very public that Schumann was attempting to

reach and influence. His writings thus argue for a symbiotic, if still idealized, relationship

between virtuoso performers and the institutions and repertoire he regarded as serious.

His review of star Parisian pianist Marie Pleyels 1839 Leipzig concert, for example,

acknowledges the role of the virtuoso in forming public taste when he writes, This most

interesting woman willthrough her preference for the noblest in her art, further its

dissemination.34

Schumanns own showpieces musically work out these strategies for turning the

means of virtuosity to what he considered serious, transcendental ends. His etudes,

concertos, and variation sets attempt to poeticize and elevate virtuosity through a

variety of strategies, including musical realizations of literature- and philosophy-derived

metaphors for transcendence such as Witz and the sublime, the transformation of

postclassical conventions, and allusions to works by canonized composers. Schumanns

33 Wie er nun locker, kaum sichtbar seine Magnetketten in die Massen warf, so schwankten diese herber und hinber. Nun wurden die Ringe wunderbarer, verschlungener; die Menschen drngten sich enger, nun schnrte er immer fester an, bis sie nach und nach wie zu einem einzigen zusammenschmolzen, dem Meister sich gleichwiegend gegenber zu stellen. GS 1:15. 34 Die hchst interessante Frau wird berall durch ihr viel erfreuen und, mehr als das, durch ihre Vorliebe fr das Edelste ihrer Kunst zu dessen Verbreitung mitwirken. Ibid., 1:444.

Introduction 17

concern for the virtuosos role in musical life not only informed his writings on

contemporary pianists but also shaped his compositional approach to the concerto, a

genre that, by its very nature, stages the virtuoso as part of a community of musicians and

can frame and present virtuosity in a variety of ways.

Considering this aspect of Schumanns activities reveals the complexity and

breadth of the virtuosity discourse itself. Present-day musicians, when they speak of

good or true virtuosity, usually mean a performers ability to play expressively or

insightfully in the midst of extraordinary technical difficulties or a performers

commitment to the more serious corners of the standard repertoire. For Schumann and

other nineteenth-century critics and musicians, virtuosity meant more specific things than

sheer difficulty and flashiness, and poetic virtuosity more than the ability to play

sensitively: both were multifaceted phenomena and categories that possessed cultural,

philosophical, institutional, and musically concrete dimensions. Virtuosity entailed

musical conventions and generic contractsconcertgoers and amateur players expected

the spectacle of virtuosic display to unfold in certain ways and according to certain

aesthetic orientations. It also involved normative career trajectories and performance

practices that many composer-performers followed and the public images that virtuosos

cultivated (features that, in turn, affected what kind of music these virtuosos wrote).

Different virtuosos and styles of virtuosity also invoked broader issues of nationality,

class, and gender. Schumanns writings and compositions incorporate all of these facets

into his critique of postclassical virtuosity as well as his ideal of serious, poetic virtuosity.

Introduction 18

Beyond SchumannThe Nineteenth-Century German Project to Elevate Virtuosity

Ultimately, Schumanns engagement with virtuosity offers us insight into a story that

extends beyond one composer and his lifetime. Musicological and more broadly

humanistic interest in virtuosity has flourished in recent years. The resulting studies,

however, have focused on virtuosity primarily as a French phenomenon, not as a German

one. Scholars of virtuosity have written extensively on Parisian figures and have rarely

engaged with musicians active in Germany and committed to the ideology of serious

music. Nicol Paganini and, to an even greater extent, Franz Liszt alone often stand in for

the phenomenon of nineteenth-century virtuosity altogether. For example, Richard

Lepperts article on virtuosity for the 1999 collection of essays Piano Roles focuses on

Liszt and briefly mentions Thalberg.35 Richard Taruskins Virtuosos chapter for the

nineteenth-century volume of his Oxford History of Western Music mentions piano

concertos by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Mozart but gives pride of place to Paganinis

caprices and variation sets and Liszts Piano Concerto No. 1 and Remiscences of Don

Juan. Robert and Clara Schumann appear in the chapter entitled Critics. Taruskin

acknowledges that the Schumanns may not have always lived up to their own strictures

against virtuosity and popularity but assumes that both held basically anti-virtuosity

and anti-popularity views.36 Studies dedicated to virtuosity have at times sought to offer

35 Richard Leppert, The Concert and the Virtuoso, 184-224. For two other studies of virtuosity that stress the French scene, see Susan Bernstein, Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century: Performing Music and Language in Heine, Liszt, and Baudelaire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), and Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Gillen DArcy Wood has considered what he calls virtuosophobia in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: his chapters on nineteenth-century instrumental music feature Jane Austens musical experience and Franz Liszts English tour. Romanticism and Music Culture in Britain, 1770-1840: Virtue and Virtuosity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 36 Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, Music in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 251-92.

Introduction 19

alternatives to historiographical narratives founded on the study of canonic, most often

German musical works and to reveal the significance of now-marginalized composers

and repertoire as well as the roles of iconic performers and their public images. In the

process, though, they have generally not considered how their insights might transform

our thinking on composers and works that a Romantic-influenced tradition has placed on

the serious, non-virtuosic side of a binary.37 When the topic of virtuosity and Germany

does emerge, studiessuch as Gramits aforementioned bookgenerally stress the anti-

virtuoso polemic. As a result, an overdrawn distinction between serious Germany and

Paris, the capital of virtuosity, which many nineteenth-century writers were indeed

eager to make, has continued to structure present-day scholarship, albeit for reasons that

now stem from widespread interest in the Parisian musical scene and a desire to

complicate historiographical tradition rather than from German cultural nationalism.

Unacknowledged is the insightand unexplored are the sources that revealthat

the broadest pattern in the German Romantic project did not involve the suppression or

stigmatization of virtuosity as much as it did a range of attempts to channel it in ways that

Schumann and his contemporaries regarded as elevating. Two recent studies of Liszt

have begun to explore this more complex side of the virtuosity discourse as it applies to

one (sometime) Parisian pianist-composer. Gooleys The Virtuoso Liszt has discussed

Liszts effort to establish himself as both virtuoso and serious artist during his touring

years (particularly with German audiences), and Samsons Virtuosity and the Musical 37 Alexander Rehding credits the increase of scholarly interest in virtuosity in part to the deconstruction of the idealist work-oriented concept of music. Review: The Virtuoso Liszt, by Dana Gooley, in Journal of the American Liszt Society 58 (2007): 69. Jim Samson speculates about the possibility to writing an alternate history of music based not on works by on practices (such as the salon and the subscription concert) and instruments (the operatic voice or the violin). Virtuosity and the Music Work, 22-23. In general, the burgeoning of interest in virtuosity has produced a boom in Liszt studies and even, one could argue, contributed to the rehabilitation of Liszts virtuosic performances and showpieces as worthy of scholarly study.

Introduction 20

Work has considered how different versions of the Transcendental Etudes interact with

Romantic notions of the work-concept, originality, and poetic content. My exploration of

Schumann draws upon some of these two scholars insights and extends them to new

areas. Strategies that Schumann employed in his own music (and that he identified in

music by other composers) differ substantially from the Lisztian and reveal the diverse

means by which musicians attempted to elevate virtuosity. Schumann also reviewed

figures ranging from international superstars to virtuosos famous only in Northern

Germany. His work thus shows that this project involved not only the highly ambitious

and cosmopolitan Liszt but also a generation of musicians who inherited the Romantic

attraction to and ambivalence toward virtuosity.

Beyond the more extreme voices of the anti-virtuoso polemic (though certainly

under their influence), I would propose, a complex process unfolded in which composers,

performers, and critics carved out their artistic identities and professional trajectories by

creatively navigating a perceived tension between seriousness and showiness. Because of

the public fascination and substantial market that virtuosic music commanded, this

process represents a particularly significant but less-understood aspect of the history of

self-consciously serious music. Two events that transformed the nineteenth-century

musical landscape represented important stages in this story, even if they have rarely

been described as such: the German reception of Paganini in the 1830s as a

transcendental, borderline-supernatural artist and the mid-century rise of the repertory

recital and its concomitant view of the virtuoso as a reverent interpreter.38 During

Schumanns career, which fell roughly between these points, the interaction of virtuosity

and the culture of serious music shaped compositions, writings, and performing activities 38 On the latter, see William Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste, 245-54.

Introduction 21

in a wide variety of ways. The actors involved included critics such as A. B. Marx and

Ignaz Castelli, composer-performers such as Felix Mendelssohn, Clara Wieck, Franz

Liszt, Adolph von Henselt, and Wilhelm Taubert, and salon patrons and amateur

musicians such as Henriette Voigt and Baron Ignaz von Fricken. Briefly citing a few

episodes from this side of the virtuosity discourse reveals how it intertwines divergent

opinions about whether certain virtuosos qualify as serious and about the larger role of

virtuosity in musical life.

In 1841, several popular pianist-composers contributed to a volume of Dix

morceaux brillants, profits of which went to fund a Beethoven monument in

Bonnone instance of the appeal of virtuosity literally supporting the veneration

of canonized masterworks. Whereas most of the contributors offered light or

lyrical showpieces (such as Kalkbrenners Lecho! Scherzo brillant and

Thalbergs Romance sans paroles, Op. 41, no. 1), two of them composed

virtuosic compositions that aim for a level of seriousness, learnedness, and sheer

difficulty commensurate with Beethovens monumental stature. Felix

Mendelssohn offered his Variations srieuses, Op. 54. As R. Larry Todd and

Christa Jost have pointed out, Mendelssohns title pointedly contrasts his piece

with the variations brillantes common in the mid-century salon repertoire, as

does his pieces severe, contrapuntal theme and occasional references to Baroque

style.39 Franz Liszt sent in a virtuosic transcription of the second-movement

39 R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 414; Christa Jost, In Mutual Reflection: Historical, Biographical, and Structural Aspects of Mendelssohns Variations srieuses, in Mendelssohn Studies, ed. R. Larry Todd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 38-39.

Introduction 22

funeral march from Beethovens Eroica Symphony that, as Jonathan Kregor has

shown, simultaneously aims for fidelity to Beethovens text and a degree of

pianistic difficulty unprecedented in piano transcriptions of symphonies.40

Even the most vociferous anti-virtuoso critics evinced a complex attitude toward

virtuosity when pressed. In 1840 and 1841, Eduard Krger, the author of Das

Virtuosenkonzert, engaged in a debate about virtuosity in the Neue Zeitschrift

with composer-critic Herrmann Hirschbach. In August and September 1840, the

Zeitschrift printed an article by Krger titled (somewhat like the aforementioned

Signale article) ber Virtuosenunfug.41 Hirschbach responded in October with

a short article that called Krger a tradition-bound, anti-virtuoso Philistine. The

threat to serious, German music, Hirschbach argues, is not the public fascination

for virtuosity itself, but rather the fact that composers have not used these

technical developments for truly original works of art. The violin repertory,

Hirschbach complains, has no equivalent of the Beethoven piano works. He cites

the prevalence of bravura variation sets as evidence of this trend and calls the

genre a poison shrub corrupting the promised land of music.42 Krger waited

until April 1841 to respond. When he did, he maintained that he was of course not

opposed to virtuosity per se but believed that virtuosos should renounce vanity,

40 Jonathan Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 143-48. 41 Eduard Krger, ber Virtuosenunfug, NZfM 13, no. 17 (August 26, 1840): 65-66; no. 18 (August 29, 1840): 69-70; 13, no. 19 (September 2, 1840): 73-75; no. 20 (September 5, 1840): 77-79; no. 21 (September 9, 1840): 81-83; no. 22 (September 12, 1840): 85-86. 42 Heinrich Hirschbach, Antiphilistrses, NZfM 13, no. 30 (October 10, 1840): 119-20. Unsere Kunst ist ein Wunderland, unergrndlich wie die Ewigkeit; da gibt es nur einen Giftstrauch: Tanz- und Variationenmusik.

Introduction 23

promote poetic artworks, and learn to compose away from their instruments.43

In contrast to Hirschbach, Krger cites already-canonized masterworks as

exemplars of good virtuosity: Beethovens symphonies, Bachs cello sonatas,

and (ridiculing Hirschbachs dismissal of the variation genre) variation sets by the

Viennese classicists. Not content to let the debate end there, Krger issued yet

another multi-part article on virtuosity in May of that year, the aforementioned

Das Virtuosenkonzert. In 1843, Hirschbach weighed in again on the issue of

virtuosity with his article Componist und Virtuos.44 Schumann probably printed

these substantial articles on virtuosity in the Zeitschrift less to chastise a virtuoso-

loving public than because of the variety of perspectives they offered on the topic

of serious virtuosity, the importance of virtuosity in musical life, and (not least,

surely) the tendency of virtuosity to spark intellectually sophisticated and

passionate debate.

Adolph von Henselt, who enjoyed a short but stellar career as a salon pianist in

Germany before moving to St. Petersburg and working as an administrator in the

Russian conservatory system, often appears in the German musical press as an

antidote to Thalberg, Liszt, and Chopin, one who embodied what the writers

considered wholesome, introverted, German qualities. In his footnote to another

writers Neue Zeitschrift essay that compared Liszt, Thalberg, Henselt, and Clara

Wieck, Schumann himself singled out Henselt as the best composer.45 As late as

1872, Wilhelm von Lenzs memoir about his personal encounters with four major 43 Eduard Krger, Odioses, NZfM 14, no. 33 (April 23, 1841): 133-34. 44 Heinrich Hirschbach, Componist und Virtuos, NZfM 18, no. 30 (April 13, 1843): 119-20. 45 Schumanns footnote to Liszt in Wien, NZfM 8, no. 34 (April 27, 1838): 136.

Introduction 24

piano virtuosi (Liszt, Chopin, Tausig, and Henselt) ascribes such virtues as

German youthfulness, truth, and depth to Henselt.46

Eduard Hanslick incorporated the topic of serious virtuosity into his promotion of

Brahms and critique of the New German School. Hanslicks rave review of

Brahmss Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor credits the composer with turning the

concertoconventionally associated with light, appealing virtuosityinto a

display of pathos. Hanslick writes that the storms of [Beethovens] Ninth

Symphony run through the first movement of the concerto and imagines Brahms

finding an exalted union with Beethoven in this virtuosic work.47 In a different

article, Hanslick claimed that Liszts early production of opera fantasies and

transcriptions revealed his insufficient powers of invention and foreshadowed

what Hanslick described as the vapid quality of Liszts later orchestral works.48

It was this turn from a virtuoso scene dominated by postclassical showpieces into one

where a self-consciously serious, German virtuosity achieved prominence in concert life

that Schumann promoted in his writings and for which he composed his showpieces.

46 Wilhelm von Lenz, Die grossen Pianoforte-Virtuosen unserer Zeit aus persnlicher Bekanntschaft (Berlin: B. Behr, 1872), 85-111. 47 In dem erste Satze des Brahmsschen Concertes grollen die Gewitter der Neunten Symphonie. Eduard Hanslick, Concerte, Componisten, und Virtuosen der letzten fnfzehn Jahre: 1870-1885 (Berlin: Allgemeine Verein fr Deutsche Literatur, 1886), 109-111. 48Eduard Hanslick, Liszts Symphonic Poems (1857), in Music Criticisms 1846-99, trans. Henry Pleasants, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Penguin, 1963), 53.

Introduction 25

Chapter Overview

Chapter One: Schumanns Critique of Postclassical Virtuosity

The first chapter of this study considers Schumanns writings on postclassical bravura

music. I argue that Schumanns critique represented one side in a confrontation between

two opposing views of virtuositys role in musical lifeindeed, two opposing views of

how music should secure a vast middle-class audience. Postclassical pianist-composers

including Czerny and Herz as well as Frdric Kalkbrenner, Theodore Dhler, and Franz

Hntenhave not fared well since the 1830s and 40s, and the formation of the musical

canon has largely excluded them from concert life. In the nineteenth century, though,

they enjoyed not only commercial success (even hegemony) but also the support of

several powerful critical voices, notably Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, editor of the Allgemeine

musikalische Zeitung, and bestselling composer and pedagogue Carl Czerny himself.

Writings by these figures reveal a complex aesthetic that regarded accessibility and

elegance as markers of musical excellence.

Reviews of postclassical showpieces by Schumann and other Neue Zeitschrift

writers reflect a Romantic unease with music designed specifically for light diversion.

Schumann himself discusses the conventions of postclassical music while also employing

rhetoric that invokes national, class, and gender stereotypes. Most importantly, in an age

when many virtuoso pianists based their activities in Paris and cultivated auras of high-

society glamor, Schumann appeals to nationalistic and anti-aristocratic sentiments

common among middle-class, liberal Germans. I conclude with a discussion of a real

salon hosted by Henriette Voigt that Schumann attended during the 1830s. Schumanns

Introduction 26

essay on this salon portrayed the kind of concert-going, piano-playing amateurs he

envisioned as an audience for serious, poetic showpieces.

Chapter Two: Virtuosity and the Schumannian Poetic

As an alternative to the postclassical aesthetic and its emphasis on recreational use-value,

Schumann advocated one that he described as poetic. Schumanns concept of the poetic

presents a constellation of interrelated musical concepts, all of which share a goal of

using music as a path to inner, transcendent experience that lifts one beyond the

everyday. These concepts range from an overall emphasis on originality to compositional

procedures derived from literary techniques. The existing scholarship on the

Schumannian poetic excludes works in virtuoso genres. In this chapter, though, I argue

that Schumann attempted to write and promote virtuoso showpieces that could serve as

vehicles for poetic experience. My discussion centers on essays and compositions that

date from the formative years of Schumanns career: his 1831 review of Chopins L ci

darem la mano Variations, Op. 2; the Abegg Variations, Op. 1; the Fantaisies et

finale (an 1835 salon showpiece that Schumann, at the last minute, withheld from

publication and, in 1837, reworked as the tudes symphoniques, Op. 13); his 1835 review

of Ferdinand Hillers Etudes, Op. 15; and the coda of his Toccata, Op. 7. The

compositions transform the generic features of postclassical showpieces in ways that

evoke nineteenth-century metaphors for musical transcendence, while the reviews read

such combinations into works by other composers. In doing so, they reveal that the poetic

did not offer Schumann a refuge from flashy, appealing, or saleable music, but rather a

way to realize an ideal that echoes throughout early Romantic literature and philosophy:

Introduction 27

the giving of transcendental, inward-looking touches to the accoutrements of ordinary

life, in this case musical genres that figured prominently in everyday listening and music-

making.

A Word about Schumanns Borrowings

Some of my points in Chapters 2 and 3 involve quotations, allusions, and a potential case

of structural modeling in four of Schumanns 1830s piano works. Schumanns undeniable

penchant for intertextuality has served scholars as a valuable interpretive window even as

it has inspired divergent approaches and, in some cases, outright perplexity. The diversity

of readings often arises from nineteenth-century sources curious documentary silence

about many of these quotationsincluding some quotations now acknowledged as

present or even obvious. The field of musical-borrowing studies in general thrives on the

question of just how much evidence is needed before we can accept a quotation as

intentional and meaningful. In the case of Schumann, for example, R. Larry Todd takes a

conservative, skeptical approach and warns against becoming ensnared in specious

intertextual webs.49 Christopher Reynolds identifies networks of allusions more freely

and argues persuasively for a tradition of concealment that spanned the nineteenth-

century. Part of the game of music, in Reynoldss view, was the scattering of not-

altogether-obvious references and hints: missing them did not necessarily detract from

the experience of listening, but awareness became one of the pleasures of

connoisseurship.50 In fact, I shall argue in various contexts (sometimes but usually not

49 R. Larry Todd, On Quotation in Schumanns Music, in Schumann and his World, ed. R. Larry Todd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), see especially 86-92. 50 Christopher Reynolds, Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), see especially 142-3, 164-68. For an early study of

Introduction 28

related to borrowing) that Schumann adapted virtuoso figuration and generic codes to

create concealment where postclassical works stressed clarity and accessibility.

The four heretofore unrecognized or at least unexplored quotations and allusions I

will discuss enjoy a wide range of evidential support. Schumann actually pointed out one

in a published article (a nod to the funeral march from Beethovens Eroica in

Schumanns Paganini Etude Op. 10, no. 4), and one of his Neue Zeitschrift reviewers

suggested another (a possible connection between the Eroica finale and the tudes

symphoniques, Op. 13).51 Contemporary reviews hinted at a third case (allusions to the

Eroica first movement in the Toccata, Op. 7) but remained silent about a fourth (a

quotation from Marschners Der Templer und die Jdin in the Fantaisies et finale). All

four cases, though, also find support in strong contextual evidence, including Schumanns

contact with published scores of the relevant models, his own borrowing practices (as

shown through well-established instances of citation and allusion), nineteenth-century

generic conventions, and internal musical evidence. Just as importantly, these

borrowings reveal themselves to be meaningful aspects of the pieces that complement

other evidence surrounding Schumanns approach to virtuosity.52 Indeed, although

Schumann scholars have long pointed to intertextuality as one way in which this music borrowing, modeling, and allusion in nineteenth-century music (though one that uses Harold Blooms work on the anxiety of influence as a framework rather than nineteenth-century allusive practices and that concerns itself more with the issue of influence than with that of allusion), see Kevin Korsyn, Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence, Music Analysis 10, nos. 1-2 (1991): 3-72. 51 Ironically, the Eroica nod that Schumann himself acknowledged is the borrowing I will discuss that, without the documentation, would be most easily overlooked as coincidental. The latter case, because it involves a case of structural modeling rather than direct citation, demands to be understood as necessarily speculative, despite the suggestion of the NZfM critic. 52 My approach is indebted to J. Peter Burkholders articles on borrowing and the methodology they propose for substantiating the intended-ness and meaningful-ness of a borrowing. See, for example, J. Peter Burkholder, Borrowing, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan and New York: Grove, 2001) 4:5-8. On Schumanns quotations as part of his systems of fragments, see John Daverio, Schumanns Systems of Musical Fragments and Witz, in Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology (New York: Schirmer, 1993), 59-61.

Introduction 29

reaches for the poetic or at least the designedly mystifying, the allusions I identify all

contribute specifically to the composers project of elevating instrumental virtuosity.

Chapter Three: Schumann, Virtuosity, and the Rhetoric of the Sublime

Scholarship on musical manifestations of the sublime has focused on symphonies and

large choral pieces (particularly Beethovens). Robert Schumanns work, though, reveals

that nineteenth-century musicians also engaged with contemporary thinking on the

sublime through virtuosity. During the 1830s, I argue, Schumann used his writings to

bestow the distinction of sublimity on certain virtuoso works and composed showpieces

of his own that contemporary critics described as sublime. According to Schumannand

reviewers of some of his 1830s showpiecesthe extraordinarily complex figuration and

daunting physical feats of virtuosic music could evoke the overwhelming force, heroic

struggle, and sensory overload that represented hallmarks of the sublime. For the

nineteenth-century imagination, the sublime combined astonishment with uplift. Courting

the distinction of sublimity thus offered Schumann and other composers and performers

of showpieces a strategy for elevating virtuosity as serious.

Schumanns approach to sublime virtuosity differed significantly from Liszts.

As critic, Schumann lauded works and performances by Liszt, Chopin, and Leipzig

composer-pianist Ludwig Schuncke as sublime, each for unique reasons. Moreover,

several previously unexamined reviews locate sublimity in three of Schumanns 1830s

showpieces and offer new insight into their styles and structures. Writings on the finale of

the Concert sans orchestre read like textbook descriptions of what Kant called the

dynamic sublime: they evoke cataclysmic natural phenomena to illustrate the finales

Introduction 30

metrically and harmonically dissonant virtuosic writing, as well the way its idiosyncratic,

rondo-like form undercuts the periodic tonal and lyrical repose typical of bravura rondos.

Reviews of Schumanns Toccata and tudes symphoniques stress the sublimes heroic

connotations and frequently draw comparisons between these works and Beethovens.

They point to waysheretofore unacknowledged by scholarsin which these two pieces

infuse conventional virtuosic genres and figurational styles with compositional

procedures and musical gestures derived from Beethovens Eroica Symphony.

Schumann thus invokes Beethovens inherent association with sublimity as well as the

Eroicas heroic plot. In all cases, Schumann and his reviewers suggested that

supposedly sublime characteristics rendered showpieces more transcendental or noble

than conventional virtuosic works.

Chapter Four: Schumanns Concertos: Staging the Virtuoso in the Arena of Serious

Music

Discussion of the larger virtuosity discourse has remained curiously absent from studies

of Schumanns concertos. In my concluding chapter, I consider ways in which four

Schumann concertosthe Piano Concerto, Op. 54, the Introduction and Allegro

Appassionato, Op. 92, the Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op. 134, and the violin

Phantasie, Op. 131stage the soloist and present him or her as both poetically virtuosic

and member of a com