Love Notes
The Story Behind The Concert
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
If you're truly interested, and wish to look around for yourself, we advise caution when approaching the spewing, lurching firehose that awaits if you Google "Schumann Brahms Love Triangle." After falling down scores of bloggish, citationless rabbit holes ourselves, we've decided to paint a broad scene for you, and decorate it with as much primary resource material as we can without coming off as pedants. To this end, we present, with a modicum of intentional ambiguity and dropped details, some of the music and bits of the history of three inextricably intertwined German Romantic composers, by presenting works they produced as a result, in the context, and through the poetry of love.
But first:
Der Elefant im Raum: German Romantic Music is Boring
Get over it. The only thing both the Schumanns, and especially Brahms, can be criticised for is superlative, flawless craftsmanship. In the analogous historical parlance of, let’s say, a surly, disenfranchised high-school kid from the early nineteen-eighties wearing a Hüsker Dü T-Shirt, perhaps “over-produced.” Y’know; thoughtfully, methodically and painstakingly composed, edited, assembled, and presented. Like Pink Floyd. Or Queen. Boring stuff like that with no emotion, or imagination. No individualism, man.
But get this: They called it the "Romantic" period because of a self-proclaimed emphasis on emotion, imagination, and individualism. And the ironic part about the Romantic zeitgeist, is that it fanned the flames of polarized factions in popular music (Google "War of the Romantics"). Brahms and the Schumanns were firmly on the “conservative” side of things, along with other greats like Mendelssohn, who thought they were reviving an idealized notion of mediaeval chivalry by employing something they called “form moving in sound.” Self-proclaimed “progressives” like Wagner and Liszt were all about “new wine requires new bottles” (the motto of one of their clubs) and tried to emphasize the more narrative and pictorial side of composition. But all of them are labelled “Romantics”, and all of them were railing against the formalist music of a waning Enlightenment era based in reason and logic. Or, as our disgruntled teenager in the early nineteen-eighties would describe it: “Disco.”
Furthermore, public and critical interest in the minds (and bedrooms) of musicians got its start in the 19th Century, and it bred canonization. Essentially, rock stars were invented by the European Romantics (Google “Lisztomania”). For some perfect storm of sociocultural reasons that put audiences, music critics, psychoanalysts and paparazzi in the same clown car, the idea that you can "understand" or "appreciate" an artist's work better by figuring out what is wrong with their head began just about the same time Robert Schumann had his first nervous breakdown. Ever since, we've been evaluating music as some kind of psychological utterance, or biographical confession. Y’know; like Kurt Cobain. Or Billie Holiday. So thank you, Romantics. We think.
At any rate, whatever it is, it isn’t boring, so stop that.
Meet The Protagonists
So into a disturbingly familiar scene of political upheaval, culturally materialistic division and socially obsessive idolatry, we place our cast: Robert Schumann, the brooding, depressed, rapidly declining and misunderstood dreamer; his wife Clara, the child prodigy from a broken and abusive home turned mega-star piano virtuoso, and Johannes Brahms, the talented, slightly damaged blue-eyed young man from a poor Northern family who dreams of fame, and comes knocking on the door of the Schumann’s Düsseldorf home in the fall of 1853 to play some of his compositions for them.
But let’s back up a bit.
Robert and Clara
This Kind of Stuff Wins Academy Awards
Robert was eighteen when he first saw eight-and-a-half-year-old Clara Weick, as she was making her professional debut as a concert pianist. So impressed by her playing, he began taking lessons from her father, and soon abandoned his legal studies to pursue music. Eventually, and it seems inevitably, he fell in love with her - for undocumented, but fairly obvious reasons - just after she turned sixteen. Clara, whose life up to this point had been mostly composed of being carted around to music halls, Colonel Tom Parker-style, by her emotionally and financially abusive father, was smitten as well, and she and Robert began a relationship of long walks, musical conversation and impassioned love letters that would have made the Brontë sisters pass out. Robert proposed in 1837.
Clara’s father Friedrich was having none of it, though, largely because he was making a mint off of Clara’s performance career, so he sent her out on tour, forbade the relationship, and threatened to shoot Robert if he ever set foot in the house again. In the subsequent court cases that Clara and Robert brought against Wieck in an effort to be married, he either didn’t show up, or when he did, famously accused Robert of being an egotistic, mindless, stupid, unstable alcoholic with no talent or business sense. Eventually, Robert managed to successfully sue Wieck for slander, and the courts finally granted him and Clara the permission to marry, which they did, in 1840.
Relevant side note: 1840 is celebrated as Schumann’s explosively productive “year of song” when he threw himself uncharacteristically into writing music for voices. Coincidence? We think not.
Robert’s Inevitable Decline
So let’s take stock here. Robert, a highly sensitive, bi-polar and latently syphilitic composer with an increasing string of lows as a critical success, is now, after a protracted court battle with her father in which he was publicly smeared, married to the unconditional love of his life; a gifted and wildly successful concert pianist, and nine years his junior. You can kind of feel it coming: four years into the marriage, after accompanying Clara on a tour of Russia as celebrity spouse, Robert had a nervous breakdown. The next ten years, brightened briefly by an appointment as Director of Music in Düsseldorf in 1850 (during which time he composed the wonderful Romanzen und Balladen, Op. 67 which we are singing tonight) were a long slide into literal madness, and by 1853 he had trouble speaking, was hallucinating and prone to seizures, and was fired from his position at the demand of the Düsseldorf Musical Association. During a street carnival in late February 1854, Robert threw himself off a bridge into the Rhine river. Plucked out by fishermen, he self- admitted to an insane asylum near Bonn, where he was deemed dangerous to, and denied visitation by, Clara until two days before his death, in July of 1856.
Tragic, but on the whole, not entirely unexpected. But here’s the part of the story we’re interested in, and the bit that even the most cynical have no explanation for: the depth, irrefutability and immovable mass of Clara’s love for Robert.
Clara Schumann: Candidate for The Marvel Universe
Let’s get this out of the way: Starting at age eleven, Clara Schumann toured as a concert pianist steadily for forty-seven years. Impressive, but not unheard of. However, from the time she married Robert in 1840, until he threw himself off the bridge in 1854, she did it while pretty much continuously pregnant. Fourteen years of constant touring. Ten pregnancies. Eight kids. Even if you factor in some of the historical context, this is herculean.
Clara was by far the principal bread winner, as well. And what did she do in her spare time? She dedicated herself to Robert’s works, performing extensively, as well as editing and publishing them after his death. Passionate companion; vital collaborator; selfless provider; staunch defender; ceaseless promoter; dedicated caregiver - Clara survived Robert by four decades, and never remarried. Ours is not to even attempt to understand this kind of love. Would we even be talking about Robert Schumann had it not been for Clara? Arguable. And as you’ll see, the same can be suggested for Johannes Brahms, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Can We Get To The Part About The “Love Triangle” Please?
Just The Facts, Ma’am
As we’ve said (and you probably already know) the Internet is a bit of a cesspool. Even as actual music pundits and people like us try to be, in their case, scholarly, and in ours, at least nonpartisan, it’s hard not to start thinking along generally insinuative, and specifically oedipal lines when relating at least the first part of this story. But here we go anyway.
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When Johannes Brahms knocked on Clara and Robert’s door in October of 1853, he was twenty years old, thin, pink and introverted, with longish hair, bright blue eyes, and a high-pitched voice. Nothing like the portly, bearded, late middle-age man with a cigar we usually see gazing stoically off into the distance in photocopied concert programs.
But man, could he play the piano.
Relevant side note: It’s impossible not to mention somewhere in here that Brahms, as a teen, helped to support his financially struggling family by playing piano in waterfront brothels. And while there isn’t a lot of empirical evidence, there is plenty of speculation about how it may have influenced everything from his fondness for referencing folk songs in his compositions, to his lifelong bachelorhood, and his questionable behaviour around women in general. To quote the man himself, writing to Clara in later years: “I saw things and received impressions that left a deep shadow on my mind.”
Robert listened as Johannes performed his 1st Piano Sonata in C Major (which, for buffs and pedants, referenced Beethoven’s Hammerklavier and Waldstein) and ran to get Clara to come and listen. Almost immediately, Robert set about writing a celebrated article hailing him as heir to Beethoven’s legacy. Brahms spent two weeks living with, and playing for the Schumanns, and needless to say, the three formed both a productive musical relationship, and a strong, if motivationally questionable bond.
But as we know, not only was Robert a complete wreck by this point, but Clara, as is clear from her diary entries, was worried about her own career. And in February of 1854 - while Clara was pregnant with child number eight, btw - Robert jumped off a bridge. Johannes immediately rushed to the Schumann house to render aid, and stayed until Robert’s death in asylum, two and a half years later.
Johannes and Clara
So here’s where things get fuzzy, and therefore grist for the tabloid mill. We have concrete dates for a number of events, and letters (oh, we have letters) but there is wildly varying speculation about what exactly was going on. So let’s take stock again, and let you make of it what you will:
Robert is in an insane asylum, and barred from visits from his wife. Clara, now thirty-seven years old and pregnant for the tenth time, is not only faced with the complete responsibility of family and finances, but is starting to doubt the sustainability of her career. Johannes Brahms, the up-and-coming young rock star, has taken up residence in the Schumann house to “help out.” Be honest: even considering the conservative realities of nineteenth century Germany, what do you think is going to happen?
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The truth is, it’s complicated. It was love though, indubitably, and a forty-plus year relationship that saw that love - as is its wont - change, adapt, and mature. From the stammering boy with a crush on his high school English teacher we hear in Johannes’s early letters:
“…just a friendly greeting to say that you are keeping well and that you will be back in 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 days!…”
And Clara’s telling diary entries:
“I cannot say what a pleasure I find it to enjoy all this with Johannes. He draws in great breaths of nature, and one grows young with him. It is true that I am often sad and that distresses him, but it is only natural that the more inspiring our surroundings, the heavier my heart should grow at the thought that my beloved husband is alone and forsaken whilst I am free to enjoy the glories of nature and the society of the best of friends…”
To the much later correspondence of a more mature, but still endearingly smitten and awkward Brahms:
“How fortunate you are, or, I should say, how beautiful, how good, how right! I mean that you bear your heart as a conscious possession, securely; whereas we are obliged every minute to conceal ours. You see everything so warmly, with such beautiful serenity, just like a reflection of yourself; and then with the same serenity you give unto each his due. All this sounds so stupid, and I cannot say what I think; although it would be even more stupid to speak of lilies and angels, and then to come back to you and your sweet nature.” (1872)
And Clara’s increasingly maternal affections:
“Just received your letter, so I can thank you for it at once. The joy it has given me may well compensate you for the pains it cost you to write. What I like more particularly is that you frankly acknowledge the pleasure which such recognition must give you. It cannot be otherwise; an artist’s heart must feel warmer for it. And I must say that to witness your growing fame constitutes the happiest experience that the latter years of my life could bring.” (1874)
So, Did They Or Didn’t They?
In short, who cares.
There can be no doubt that the music we are singing tonight is inextricably connected to all of this. Clara’s affectionate and specifically crafted motivational birthday present to a declining and sentimental husband; Robert’s inspiration from, and collaboration with, the love of his life to produce Romanzen und Balladen, and, even if cynicism paints the Liebeslieders as a populist cash grab, they are still love songs, and for Johannes, Clara was as demonstrably key to his amorous motivations, as she was an incontrovertible part of his success.
As for “Intimacy and Madness,” it’s pretty clear that the story of the composers, the texts chosen by them in the works you will hear tonight, and arguably the handling of the music itself, all contribute to the timeless struggle to define love, as it straddles the misty border between the two.
Kit Hunt (1st Bass section)