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It was under Ernestine's inspiration, which Schumann called "a perfect godsend," that he fashioned the various jewels that make up the music of his "Carnéval," using for his theme the name of Ernestine's birthplace, "Asch," which he could spell in music in two ways: A-ES-C-H, or AS-C-H, for ES is the German name for E flat, while AS is our A flat and H our B natural.
Beethoven save in the C sharp minor and several other sonatas was not sympathetic. Schubert he found rough, Weber, in his piano music, too operatic and Schumann he dismissed without a word. He told Heller that the "Carneval" was really not music at all. This remark is one of the curiosities of musical anecdotage.
He was as humiliated as a whipped school boy; the old Baroness had to use her choicest powers of persuasion to calm him. He then played the whole of Schumann’s “Carneval” for her, a piece of music of which she was passionately fond. Every forenoon you could see him hastening across the bridge. He always walked rapidly; his coat tails flew.
As I said, I take the difficult passages of a composition and make the minutest study of them in every detail, making all kinds of technical exercises out of a knotty section, sometimes playing it in forty or fifty different ways. For example, take the little piece out of Schumann's Carneval, called 'The Reconnaissance. That needed study.
The high verve that marks his work lifts his "Sing, O Heavens," out of the rut of Christmas anthems. Of instrumental work, there is only one small book, "Scènes du Bal," a series of nine pieces with lyric characterization in the spirit, but not the manner of Schumann's "Carnéval." The most striking numbers are "Les Bavardes," "Blonde et Brune," and a fire-eating polonaise.
This valse may be danced as far as its dithyrhambic coda. Notice in this coda as in many other places the debt Schumann owes Chopin for a certain passage in the Preambule of his "Carneval." The next Valse in A minor has a tinge of Sarmatian melancholy, indeed, it is one of Chopin's most desponding moods.
It was impossible to give a whole opera, so I coolly took the first act of "Tannhauser" as far as the end of the Pilgrims' Chorus, closing in G major, then after a pause commenced again in G major with the prelude to the third act of "Lohengrin," and so continued with the whole act to the end of the duet, winding up the performance with the overture "Carneval Romain" and the second act of "Benvenuto Cellini," omitting the baritone air.
It is stated that the beautiful numbers of the "Carneval" were due largely, if not wholly, to her inspiration, which at that time reached its highest point. He himself noted this coincidence in a letter to Moscheles, and built the themes of the various numbers almost wholly upon them. However this may be, he certainly had a great admiration for Clara even in her early years.
Only Schumann in certain pages of his "Carneval" seizes the secret of young life and love, but his is not so finished, so glowing a tableau. Regarding certain phrasing of this valse Moriz Rosenthal wrote to the London "Musical Standard": In Music there is Liberty and Fraternity, but seldom Equality, and in music Social Democracy has no voice.
A French theorist, Albert Lavignac, calls Chopin a product of the German Romantic school. This is hitching the star to the wagon. Chopin influenced Schumann; it can be proven a hundred times. And Schumann under stood Chopin else he could not have written the "Chopin" of the Carneval, which quite out-Chopins Chopin. Chopin is the musical soul of Poland; he incarnates its political passion.
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