Schumann: Piano Works (Davidsbündlertänze, Arabeske, Humoreske, Waldszenen)

Description

In the piano music of Robert Schumann, the short form is the place in which fantasy, literary memory, self-portraiture and inner landscape gather with their utmost intensity. The double itinerary proposed by this disc, which places the Davidsbündlertänze op. 6 and the Arabeske in C major op. 18 on the first CD, and the Humoreske in B flat major op. 20 together with the Waldszenen op. 82 on the second, offers a true geography of the Schumannesque imagination. Two decisive seasons of his creative life are traversed here. The first is that of the later 1830s, dominated by his troubled love for Clara Wieck, by the poetics of the fragment, and by the invention of an inner theatre inhabited by imaginary figures. The second is that of full maturity, when the piano once again becomes a place of poetic vision within a writing more concentrated and more limpid. The continuity between these works lies in their capacity to transform the keyboard into a book of states of mind, of masks and of landscapes. In the case of Schumann, this also means allowing literature to enter music as a form of thought itself.

The Davidsbündlertänze, presented here in their second version, revised in 1850 and published in 1851, are perhaps the clearest example of this process. The Davidsbund, the imaginary brotherhood created by Schumann in order to set poetic spirits against the philistines of musical life, gathers around itself two capital figures, Florestan and Eusebius, that is to say impulse and dream, irregular energy and lyrical introspection. In the first edition of the cycle the eighteen pieces bore the initials of one or the other, almost as though the collection were signed by distinct and complementary personalities. Behind this symbolic game one perceives the long shadow of Jean Paul, an author deeply beloved by Schumann and a master in the representation of divided natures. Yet the significance of the Davidsbündlertänze does not end with psychological allegory. The work was born in the incandescent climate of the secret engagement to Clara and bears, from its very opening, the sign of her presence. The initial motto, indicated as deriving from C. W., in fact cites a mazurka from Clara’s Soirées musicales op. 6. Schumann later confided to Clara herself that no other composition of his had been conceived for her with greater urgency, and that many thoughts of marriage lived within these dances. The reference to the Polterabend, the wedding eve evoked by the composer, confers upon the entire cycle an underlying narrative character, woven of expectation, sudden impulses and shadows.
The structure of the Davidsbündlertänze renders this inward drama audible with singular vividness. The two books into which the cycle is divided construct a supple breathing, in which the pensive tenderness of Innig, the rugged energy of Ungeduldig or of Wild und lustig, the remote suspension of Wie aus der Ferne, and the extreme simplicity of the conclusion all contribute to an arc of high poetic coherence. The tempo indications, entrusted to a highly personal and imaginative German, partake fully of this universe. Schumann desires that the word should orient the sound with psychological precision. The entire cycle is traversed by a tonal tension between G major and B minor, while the appearance of C major towards the end has the value of an unexpected light. In the first edition the conclusion even allowed the idea to emerge of distant tolling, of a midnight descending upon the tale. Thus the dance is transformed into memory, and the intoxication of movement dissolves into a stillness of the most intense significance.

If the Davidsbündlertänze represent the lyrical novel of an inward community, the Arabeske op. 18 concentrates that same imagination into a miniature of perfect measure. The page was born in Vienna, during a period of painful separation from Clara, exacerbated by the practical difficulties of Viennese life and by an unsatisfactory relationship with the musical environment of the city. In the midst of such tension, Schumann composed a series of works of more gathered and apparently lighter character. The Arabeske, dedicated to Friederike Serre, belongs to this group alongside the Blumenstück and bears in its title a reference to the world of the visual arts. The term alludes to an ornamental line that winds back upon itself, to a mobile, elegant and continuous design. And this is precisely the logic of the page. A theme of serene cantabile returns several times, always the same and always different by virtue of the shadows cast by the intermediate episodes in the minor mode. Schumann, who on occasion judged the piece with excessive severity, in reality attains here a form of classicism wholly Romantic in nature. Ornament does not disperse the discourse. It renders it subtler, more elusive, more capable of entrusting to the pure inflection of phrase the sense of nostalgia.
The Humoreske op. 20 belongs to that same Viennese sojourn, yet offers its most ambitious and most disquieted aspect. Schumann himself described it to Clara as the product of days spent at the piano between laughter and tears, and the title refers to a notion of Humor wholly Romantic, far removed from mere wit. In a celebrated explanation he observed that the French did not truly understand this word, because for him it designated the fusion of the fantastic and the witty, of the profound and the mobile. The Humoreske translates this idea into a vast and mutable organism, devoid of a single outward form, yet of the greatest firmness in its internal coherence. Schumann interweaves within it modes of scherzo, rondo, march, study, dance and lyrical episode, in a continuity that proceeds by metamorphosis. Such mobility culminates in one of the most singular gestures in the whole piano literature, the notation of the innere Stimme, the inner voice traced upon a third stave and destined to remain mute. Here the centre of the piece coincides with something that is not materially heard, but must be perceived in the imagination. In no other work did Schumann render with such sharpness the idea of a music that thinks from within.

From this point of view, the pairing of Arabeske and Humoreske proves particularly eloquent. The former entrusts to the elegance of profile and to the recurrence of the refrain a form of guarded desire. The latter opens that desire to a harsher, richer and more unstable dialectic. Both were born of the same Viennese crisis, yet transform it according to two complementary registers. The Arabeske distils song into an almost ornamental gesture. The Humoreske breaks apart its apparent unity and makes of it the theatre of a mobile and feverish subjectivity. In this sense, the first CD and the opening of the second constitute a diptych on the way in which Schumann makes lightness and profundity, salon and confession, measure and abyss coexist.

The Waldszenen op. 82 carry the discourse into another region of the Schumannesque soul. The forest, in German Romantic culture, is at once refuge, enigma, place of consonance with nature, and seat of the unknown. To this topos Schumann entrusts nine pieces of astonishing concision, in which the external landscape is constantly converted into inward symbol. The genesis of the work shows how much importance he attached to the relation between word and sound. In the manuscript there appeared various poetic mottos intended for the individual numbers, later almost all withdrawn at the moment of publication. Schumann knew that a title, when rightly chosen, does not impoverish music, but orients its character and forestalls misunderstanding. Thus only the titles remained and, for Verrufene Stelle, the celebrated verses of Friedrich Hebbel, the dark centre of the cycle. For this very reason the Waldszenen are never mere naturalistic sketches. They proceed from Eintritt to Abschied like a small initiation, an entering and a taking leave, passing through ambushes, lonely flowers, benevolent landscapes, an inn, a hunting song, and above all the enigmatic Vogel als Prophet, a page suspended and estranged.
The poetic centre of the Waldszenen lies in their dual nature. On the one hand, Schumann evokes a recognisable world, with hunting calls, the serenity of the inn, and the step of farewell. On the other, every scene bears within itself a fissure. Jäger auf der Lauer already contains a shadow; Einsame Blumen displays its grace upon unstable ground; Verrufene Stelle freezes the path with its sinister vision; Vogel als Prophet seems to come from a time withdrawn from history. Thus the forest becomes a figure of consciousness itself. Its clearings and openings correspond to inner states, to sudden illuminations, to nameless fears. In relation to the great piano works of the 1830s, the language is more concentrated, barer, freer from every virtuosic complacency. The late miniature of Schumann possesses the force of distillation. Each piece concentrates a world.

Heard in the sequence of this double disc, the path leading from the Davidsbündlertänze to the Waldszenen thus delineates a single great self-portrait. At the beginning stand the masks of Florestan and Eusebius, the imaginary community, love for Clara, the festivity conceived as promise. Then follow the supple line of the Arabeske and the emotional labyrinth of the Humoreske, both born in Viennese solitude. Finally the forest opens, in which the Romantic landscape becomes the mirror of mature consciousness. In all these works, the piano of Schumann preserves the same sovereign prerogative. It knows how to become song, commentary, scene, landscape, memory and secret architecture. It knows how to speak in an undertone and to leave in silence its most ardent nucleus. It is in this capacity to unite introspection and form, literature and sound, confession and discipline, that the singular greatness of Schumann manifests itself. His piano remembers, imagines, divides itself in two, questions itself, and in so doing delivers to listening one of the highest forms of poetic truth in Romanticism.
Giulaino Marco Mattioli © 2026