Piano Quintet in E-flat, Op. 44

After his forays into solo piano and song composition seem to have been sated, Robert Schumann turned to orchestral and chamber music. Two symphonies (Nos. 1 and 4) were penned in 1841, and the following year was given over almost entirely to chamber works. Five substantial pieces emerged in 1842: three string quartets, a piano trio, the Piano Quartet Op. 47, and the Piano Quintet Op. 44. The latter two works are both in E-flat major and sometimes called the “creative double.” They are among Schumann’s most performed and recorded compositions.
The Piano Quintet was composed in about one month; in fact, Schumann wrote out a complete rough draft in just five days! The first movement with a grand, almost stentorian main theme that fairly quickly morphs into a lyrical second idea. This latter motive is clearly derived from the first, but Schumann uses bare B-flat octaves and a shift toward G-flat major to suggest an entirely new scene. The true second theme of this sonata form begins moments later as a duet between cello and viola. A second statement of the material adds first violin before the same harmonic gambit as earlier (B-flat octaves and hint of G-flat major) ushers in another transition. At this point Schumann reprises the Quintet’s opening theme in the local key as a linking device to cycle back to the exposition’s repeat. In quick succession, therefore, we hear the main theme in one key (B-flat) functioning as the end of the exposition, and seconds later it appears again in the original tonic key (E-flat) as the signal for a full exposition repeat. This strategy would become important as 19th-century forms grew increasingly circular and self-referential.
The second movement March is one of the most interesting in Schumann’s chamber music repertoire. It opens in a dark, deeply somber C minor, unfolding in a series of stilted gestures. However, Schumann wonderfully overlaps phrase joints so that the music continually moves forward. The major-mode section remains harmonically piquant, and oscillating eighth-notes in the inner strings unsettle an otherwise brighter moment. Later a third idea appears, an agitato motive in F minor, although the rhythmic conflict between piano and strings seems overly fussy. It is possible that, in the white heat of excitement, Schumann might have done better to limit this movement to the interplay between his first two themes.
The ensuing E-flat major Scherzo strikes a better balance. From the opening gesture—a fourfold rising scale punctuated by tutti chords—the tone seemingly exults in having transcended the March’s mood of despair. Moreover, all five players join together as if to underline their shared sense of exhilaration. Not one but two Trio sections then follow. The first is more lyrical, the second fleet of foot and tinged by a spirit of folk dance.
The finale sounds like something a young Brahms might have written, where a readily identifiable melodic idea is embedded within a developing process that draws attention to texture over lyricism. This is one way to simply state that counterpoint (the combination of individual melodic lines) is at work throughout, weaving a rich tapestry of sound. But Schumann also introduces a bit of theme and variations to the evolution of the movement. Going a step further, one will note how the finale gradually settles on a fugue subject that clearly recalls the Quintet’s very first theme. Combined with the finale’s main theme, this fugal section was a last-minute inspiration; it does not appear in his rough draft. Schumann—wisely I think—does not go so far as to literally bring back the opening theme in all its majestic glory. Instead, mere hints of it suffice to remind us where we had been some thirty minutes earlier. As such, the Quintet’s ending gestures at its own beginning and forces us to hear the sense of grand unity that Schumann clearly intended.
From his earliest piano works, through his song cycles and chamber works, the aesthetic of inner unity becomes a guiding force. This gives a palpable aura of nostalgia to Schumann’s music, a network of emotionally-laden backward glances that became so central to all Romantic art.

(c) Jason Stell