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"You don't like music?" asked Marechal, with a laugh. "Yes, military music. But two hours of Schumann and Mendelssohn at high pressure is too much for one man. But I say, Marechal, what do you think of Mademoiselle Herzog's being at Cayrol's soiree. It is a little too strong." "How so?" "Why, the father has bolted, and the daughter is preparing a dance.
Herein both she and her future husband showed themselves actuated by the very highest motives. Unfortunately for the romantic side of the story, theirs was not a case of love at first sight. No less than five years after their first meeting, we find Schumann deeply interested in a certain Ernestine von Fricken, another pupil of Wieck.
On the pianola, or what preceded it then as now the player provided his own rendering. But the Orpheus, the precursor also of types that have since been greatly perfected, was played by an electrical mechanism, and the audience was intended to listen to Chopin or Beethoven, to Schumann or Brahms, as interpreted by the famous players of the moment, without any intervening personality.
He would condescend to play with me some evenings and you can imagine what rare musical enjoyment, what happiness there was in playing with such a genius! I was still a boy when with him I played the Grieg F major sonata, which had just come fresh from the press. He played with me the D minor sonata of Schumann and introduced me to the mystic beauties of the Beethoven sonatas.
Schumann's music was not an easy music for the world to learn, and it is to Clara Wieck's eternal honour, that she not only inspired Schumann to write this music, and gave him her support under the long discouragement of its neglect and the temptations to be untrue to his best ideals; but that she travelled through Europe and promulgated his art, until with her own power of intellect and persuasion she had coaxed and compelled the world to understand its right value, and his great messages.
Several of my intimate friends- -for example, Joachim, and formerly Schumann and others have shown themselves strange, doubtful, and unfavourable towards my musical creations. I owe them no grudge on that account, and cannot retaliate, because I continue to take a sincere and comprehensive interest in their works.
Of most of them one might say what Schumann said of one that they are "poems rather than studies;" and much surprise has been expressed that Chopin should have chosen such a modest and apparently inappropriate name for them as "studies." Now, I have a theory on this subject: I believe it was partly an ironic intention which induced Chopin to call some of his most inspired pieces "studies."
I myself, in all humility, allowing fully that I may be altogether wrong, while convinced that I am absolutely right, deliberately set him far above Brahms, above Gounod, above Schumann above all save Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, and Wagner.
Lucia began with Scarlatti and Bach; wandered off through Schumann into Chopin, a moonlit enchanted wilderness of sound; paused, and wound up superbly with Beethoven, the "Sonata Appassionata." And as she came back to him over the green lawn she seemed to Jewdwine to be trailing tumultuous echoes of her music; the splendour and the passion of her playing hung about her like a luminous cloud.
It is true his friend Devrient tells us that he was anxious to write one, and would have done so had not his fastidious taste prevented him ever finding a libretto to his liking which is equivalent to saying a man would have painted a fine picture could he only have secured a good subject. In some respects Schumann was even more antipathetic.
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