Songs (various)

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was a brilliant piano composer and would likely have been one of the towering virtuosi of the mid 19th century—alongside Liszt and Paganini—had not an injury sidelined that ambition. He came to terms with that twist of fortune in the best terms he could, turning creative energies into composition and music criticism. And years before his spectacularly public mental breakdown, Schumann enjoyed a blissful period inspired by his love for Clara Wieck. During this time he composed more than a hundred songs and launched a successful musical periodical.
In Unterm Fenster Schumann sets a poem by Englishman Robert Burns. The text plays on a common trope: the double entendres inherent in the man requesting permission to enter her “gate.” Knocking at her window becomes the spark for a gradual kindling of their ardor. Schumann’s accompaniment likewise grows from a single repeated “knock” to more urgent, throbbing chords that never relent. Resolution is withheld through extended dominant and diminished-7th harmonies over tonic pedal. Schumann handles the voices in question-and-answer fashion until the end, where they finally begin to “overlap” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge…).
In 1849 Schumann also composed Four Duets, Op. 78. Tanzlied, on a text by Friedrich Rückert (familiar to all Mahler devotees), follows a mini-drama between boy and girl. Think of it as a high school dance circa 1850: her repeated entreaties that they dance together, offset by his embarrassed refusals. The musical setting is bubbly and joyous except when the boy sings about his social fear. At those points Schumann shifts into the minor key. It would all seem a touch melodramatic—all this drama and tonal nuance just to depict his reticence about dancing in public—if not for a nagging sense created in the music that the lovers’ musical contrasts foreshadow a permanent rift to come.
The other duet from Op. 78, “Ich denke Dich” (I Think of You”) by Goethe, tells a much different romantic tale. Here the lovers seem completely unified in their hopes and emotions. Throughout Schumann’s song, vocal lines move in lockstep rhythm. Combined with the slow tempo, this uniformity creates an almost hymn-like solemnity. The final stanza makes clear that these lovers are not actually together, and their rhythmic oneness thus takes on a poetic, metaphysical significance transcending their separation in space. Schumann encapsulates their longing in a handful of gestures, such as the A# to B figure that recurs quite often, as well as the simultaneous melodic highpoints on the subjunctive “wärst”—oh, if only you were here!

(c) Jason Stell