I really missed a trick this morning in not including Robert Schumann on my radio show, “Sweetness and Light.” Today is Schumann’s birthday anniversary, and my theme is June weddings. It would have been perfect had I included Franz Liszt’s arrangement of “Widmung” (“Dedication”), a song Schumann had written for his bride, Clara, as I had four or five minutes to fill at the end of the program. But perhaps it’s best that I didn’t.
For whatever reason, Liszt really rubbed Clara the wrong way. Essentially, everything about him ran counter to what she and her husband thought music should be. But it wasn’t always the case.
Clara first met Liszt in 1838, prior to her marriage. Clara Wieck was 19 years-old. Like everyone else, she was in awe of his superhuman technique, but it also made her feel inadequate, especially when they played piano four-hands.
For his part, Liszt was very complimentary. In a letter to his mistress, Marie d’Agoult, he wrote, “Her compositions are truly remarkable, especially for a woman. They contain a hundred times more inventiveness and real feelings than all former and present fantasias by Thalberg.” Sigismond Thalberg was one of Liszt’s chief rivals. But this wasn’t simply “trash talk.” Liszt was consistently impressed by both Schumanns.
In 1840, he dedicated his “Transcendental Etudes” to Clara. She continued to include his music on her concert programs until 1847. Sadly, familiarity bred contempt, and increasingly she came to find everything about him repugnant. She didn’t like that he was a showboat. She recoiled when he took liberties with the scores he played. And she was totally put off by the indelicacy with which Liszt described her husband’s Piano Quintet as “typically Leipzig.”
Liszt, clueless, continued to make friendly overtures, championing Robert’s music. Robert, for his part, responded cordially. Liszt published a long essay in praise of the artistry of both Schumanns in 1855, but Clara remained implacable.
As the War of the Romantics began to heat up in 1860, with heightened antagonism between the Brahmsians (including the Schumanns) and the New German School (followers of Liszt and Wagner), contact became rare.
In 1884, Clara wrote to Liszt with the aim of copying the correspondence he maintained with her husband, who had died in 1856. Liszt responded that he hadn’t saved any of the letters. That essentially ended all interaction between them.
45 years earlier, in 1839, Schumann completed his “Fantasie in C major,” during an imposed separation from his future wife. Clara’s father, Schumann’s piano teacher, flew into a rage when he discovered their relationship and forbade any further contact between them. (Clara had not yet reached her majority and had no say in the matter.) Following a protracted and acrimonious legal battle, the court found in favor of the young lovers, and the two married the day before Clara turned 21 – at which age she could have done as she pleased!
Schumann wrote to Clara about the “Fantasie,” “The first movement is the most passionate I have ever composed; it is a profound lament on your account.”
Ironically, it was Liszt who received the dedication. Liszt returned the favor by dedicating his own Piano Sonata in B minor to Schumann in 1854.
Clara confided to her diary, “Today, Liszt sent me a Sonata dedicated to Robert and some more pieces, together with a polite note. But those pieces are so creepy! Brahms played them to me and I felt really miserable… This is only blind noise – no more healthy thoughts, everything is confused, one cannot see any clear harmonies! And, what is more, I still have to thank him now – this is really awful.”
Of course, Robert, at 44, had already lost his grip on sanity and was by then confined to an asylum.
With that in mind, on Robert Schumann’s birthday, enjoy his Fantasy in C major.
Schumann vs. Wieck
Henry Daniell, one of Hollywood’s most supercilious villains, hilariously cast as Liszt in “Song of Love” (1947), with Katharine Hepburn as Clara Schumann and Paul Henreid as Robert. As if this weren’t ridiculous enough, Robert Walker plays Brahms!
Hepburn pantomimes selections from Schumann’s “Carnaval.” That’s Arthur Rubinstein on the soundtrack.
Van Cliburn in concert, playing Liszt’s transcription of Schumann’s “Widmung,” written as a wedding present for Clara.
Happy birthday, Robert Schumann!
“Sweetness and Light” streams on KWAX Saturday mornings at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT.
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