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The late summer of 1850 brought Schumann an appointment of director of music in Düsseldorf, left vacant by the departure of Ferdinand Hiller for Cologne. Schumann and his wife went to Düsseldorf the first week of September and were received with open arms. A banquet and concert were arranged, at which some of the composer's important works were performed.
It was under this baptismal touch of Love that Schumann wrote his first sonata, "Florestan and Eusebius." It gained him at once a fame with all from whom fame was graceful. In the light of this period of his life must be interpreted those wonderful little "pieces" which mystify whilst they fascinate; without it their meaning is as strange as their names.
Here he would earnestly think it out, whether he would not remain for a few more years with the battery. Two families were quartered at the end of the corridor, that of Sergeant-major Schumann and that of the deputy sergeant-major, Heppner; each had a bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen, and they shared the entrance-hall between them.
He visited all parts of Europe and met most of the celebrated musicians of the day. Spohr, Molique, Schumann, Paganini, Henselt, and Richard Wagner were among the celebrities whom he met, and in his tours he was associated with Servais, Thalberg, and other well-known artists. Not content with Europe as a field for conquest, he visited America in 1844, and again in 1857 and in 1870.
For you the instrument was a newer, stranger, more virgin thing than it was for either Schumann or Chopin. You knew even better than they how to listen for its proper voice. You were more deeply aware than they of its proper color and quality. You seem to have come to it absolutely without preconceived ideas.
"How are you?" he asked Vogt. "All right, thanks," he answered. "Glad to hear it." He stretched out his hand to the recruit, and the two men exchanged a hearty grip. "So pass the bottle about, hurrah! Gaily sing and shout, hurrah! Jolly artillerymen are we!" Sergeant Schumann looked once more round the two rooms and the kitchen; no, nothing had been left behind.
What an astonishing repertoire Chaminade, Schumann, Grieg, Richard Strauss. Finally Schubert, and Schubert only, the last and the best given, as it is meet, to him who is the master of all. The rainbow-tinted orb of the wall mirror continued to hold my eyes; they drooped and fell as the radiance grew fainter and yet fainter. When I awoke Red-Fez was standing at the bedside, hot-water can in hand.
When I heard the serenade I thought of Coventry Patmore's epithet, actually used, I think, about Mozart: "glittering peace." Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, and Beethoven all seemed for the moment to lose a little of their light under this pure and tranquil and unwavering "glitter." I hope I shall never hear the "Serenade" again, for I shall never hear it played as these particular players played it.
She died June 5, 1600, and on her tomb she is named, "la noble et vertueuse dame Regina de Lassin, veuve de feu Orland de Lassus." She had been a good wife to a good husband. The sadness of her latter years with her beloved and demented husband reminds one of the pathetic fate of Robert Schumann and his wife.
It was a strange thing, and he was more surprised by it than anybody, but no musicians irritated him more than those who had pretended to be and had actually been the most free, the most spontaneous, the least constructive, those, who, like Schumann, had poured drop by drop, minute by minute, into their innumerable little works, their whole life.
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