Canonic Studies, Op. 56

Two hundred years after his birth, Robert Schumann remains a favorite composer among modern audiences, but the Canonic Studies for Pedal Piano, op. 56, will be new territory for a majority of listeners. Early in his career Schumann achieved brilliance as a pianist and composer of virtuosic piano music. As he matured, he felt the urge to amplify the rigor and technical mastery of his style. Thus like his contemporary, Felix Mendelssohn, Schumann sought instruction in counterpoint (the art of combining multiple melodic ideas simultaneously). In 1845 he undertook formal lessons in the “Baroque manner” with a teacher in Dresden. Those lessons bore immediate fruit in a series of works, including the six Studies op. 56, which Schumann felt contained “something entirely new.” (Tonight we hear nos. 1-4.)
These two-part studies were created for a piano with attached pedal keyboard, a domestic instrument intended to mimic the textures of the organ but which never gained wider popularity. Schumann stays closest to his models (which included careful study of Bach's Inventions) in the first piece; study no. 3 features ideas redolent of Mendelssohn. Schumann's own voice comes through in the poignant no. 2, with its totally un-Bachian throbbing chords, and in the songful no. 4, which bears the composer's signature tempo/character marking, “Innig” or “inmost.”

(c) Jason Stell