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But in the volumes and volumes of musicians' letters, which it has been my fortune to read, I have never found any others which were so ardent and yet so earnest, so throbbing with longing and yet so full of honesty, so eloquent and so dramatic with the very highest forms of eloquence and romance as those of Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck.
Wagner wrote some articles for Schumann's journal and was highly thought of at first, but Schumann soon lost sympathy with him; the final sign of the break-up of his wonderful appreciation of other men's music. His life was more and more his home, and that more and more a voluntary prison. In 1853 he presented his wife on her birthday with a grand piano, and several new compositions.
Among living composers gifted with musical wives, the most preëminent is Richard Strauss. As Clara Schumann could perform her husband's works, so the wife of Strauss, who is an excellent singer, is at her best when giving her husband's songs. Like Grieg's wife, she is more successful than all other singers in this rôle of domestic devotion.
Let me hear you sing 'The Moonlight' or 'The Lotus-flower. Schumann and Schubert were the singing birds of the fifties; I love their romantic sentimentalities, orange gardens, south winds, a lake with a pinnace upon it, and a nightingale singing in a dark wood by a lonely shore; that is how they felt, how they dreamed."
Wieck's refusal may have been due to his entertaining higher hopes for his now famous daughter, but at any rate the father found an adequate reason in the vague and unsubstantial prospects of the young composer. This was a sad blow, but Schumann tacitly acknowledged its justice, for he soon began making efforts to better his condition, instead of working only for the glory of art.
The Allegro is one of Chopin's most difficult works. It abounds in risky skips, ambuscades of dangerous double notes, and the principal themes are bold and expressive. The color note is strikingly adapted for public performance, and perhaps Schumann was correct in believing that Chopin had originally sketched this for piano and orchestra.
His studies are tuneful, but they seem to me, in many cases, weak imitations of the style of some masters such as Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc., who may be studied with more profit. I believe that the studies of Loeschhorn possess great pedagogical value.
"In me, wanderer that I am, in me, with the Heimweh in my heart never to be stilled but in that home where Schumann has already gone, you see Florestan." "Louis Boehner!" Filled with wonder, and scarcely knowing what I did, I took a little piece of paper which he unwrapped from many folds and placed in my hand. On it these words were written:
And of all people, those who study music should be particularly attentive to sounds of all kinds. Indeed, the only way to begin a music education is to begin by learning to listen. Robert Schumann, a German composer, once wrote a set of rules for young musicians. As it was Schumann's habit to write only what was absolutely needed we may be sure he regarded his rules as very important.
Schumann or Brahms could do, he went out with absolute confidence to persuade the world that he was right and all others were wrong. To those who may be interested in the study of Wagner, the mighty creative artist, as a cerebral curiosity, I commend Mr. Newman's book aforementioned. Mr.
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