Liederkreis, Op. 39

After arriving on the scene as gifted child pianist, Robert Schumann revealed a passion for literature sparked, no doubt, by being the son of a bookseller. In 1821 he left home at age 11 (!) to begin studying law in Leipzig, though he spent more time socializing with poets and com-posers. He maintained the façade of being a law student for nearly ten years before he openly pursued his musical ambitions both as pianist/composer and as critic. A founding editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Schumann combined rare musical insight with a lifelong passion for letters to create witty, progressive essays. Another passion emerged at this time, however, that brought Schumann both great joy and great pain. He had fallen in love with 16-year-old Clara Wieck, daughter of his Leipzig piano teacher. Forbidden to meet by Clara’s father, the lovers secretly pledged themselves to each other in Shakespearean fashion. Herr Wieck never acquiesced, but Robert and Clara did marry in 1840 without his consent and after much legal wrangling.
The effect on Schumann was immediate: during 1840 alone, he wrote over 130 songs, including several multi-song collections, Dichterliebe (texts by Heine) and Frauenliebe und –leben (texts by Chamisso). These sets essentially define the modern idea of a “song cycle,” which involves direct key relationships between successive songs, musical allusions or recollections from one song to another, and—critically—a chronological progression of action over the course of the poems. In May 1840, with Clara as his muse, he was deeply engrossed in composing another set, entitled Liederkreis or “Song Cycle”, which he referred to as his “most romantic music yet.”
Unlike the other cycles, Liederkreis lacks strong tonal and motivic inter-song linkages. Instead, the set offers twelve vignettes on related poetic tropes (bird song, castles above the Rhine, the wanderer in nature, the nostalgia of distance in time and place). Most of the songs are strophic, feature doubling of the voice in the piano, and characterized by a quiet, lyric mood. One might point out a few highlights, such as the pleading 2-3 suspensions in song 5, or the hymn-like repose of song 9. Between song 7, where Schumann’s heavy accompaniment and antique final cadence depict literal castles in the air, and the bright, galloping rhythm of the hunt in song 11 lies a gulf overcome less by dramatic progress than by a complete shift of attention. Where all looked bleak just moments before, song 12 closes the set with the most energetic material of all. “She is yours, she is yours” quotes the text.
Schumann picked and chose from volumes of Joseph Eichendorff’s poetry to fashion the Liederkreis, and you can hardly blame the happy husband for giving pride of place at the end to such unbridled joy. Surely he saw himself as the wandering knight; attaining Clara’s hand liberated his heart … and his pen.

(c) Jason Stell