The complete idiot's guide to classical music (36 page)

Once the couple was together, Clara’s own career went on hold because she had enough on her hands taking care of their eight children. Soon there was another person to care for: Robert himself, who was beginning his tragic descent into madness. After her husband’s death, though, Clara resumed her profession, earning the nickname “Queen of the Piano” from her many tours throughout Europe and the British Isles (19 in England alone), and personally seeing to it that her husband’s music—plus that of her close friend Brahms—were played to the widest possible audiences.

If women composers were looked on as something of an anomaly in the 19th century, the pattern of the composer-virtuoso had been firmly established by Liszt and Paganini, so Clara Schumann (after the wedding she always used her married name) cleverly straddled the musical fence by writing works for her own concert use, including a Piano Trio, two concertos, and a raft of songs and shorter keyboard pieces.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), born four years after his sister into the same warmly nurturing, culturally aware household, grew up as a man of education and attainments that went far beyond the world of music: He was a fine horseman and swimmer, an elegant dancer, a skilled painter, a chess master, and pretty hot stuff at the billiard table. His music reflects this aura of refinement; like his personality, it is literate, handsome, and harmonious. Mendelssohn, never lacking for material comforts or popular acclaim, was no rebel; he was content to live as he composed: with grace and gentility.

Music surrounded Felix from birth, and by the time he was five, he had contributed his first song to the family archives. Every Sunday there would be a morning musicale at the Mendelssohn house, with Fanny displaying her expertise at the piano, while brother Paul played the cello, their sister Rebecca sang, and other family members and visiting friends filled out the performing forces. In the middle of it all was little Felix, sometimes accompanying at the piano, sometimes helping out on the fiddle, and not infrequently lugging out a stool so the other players could see him while he conducted one of his new pieces.

And those new pieces kept coming. By the time he was 14, Felix had signed his name to a dozen short symphonies, not to mention three concertos, several operettas, and a few cantatas.

Unlike many prodigies, whose surface talents cannot survive the harsher glare of adult scrutiny, Mendelssohn continued to grow in stature and international fame throughout his all-too-short life. As music director of the famous Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, and co-founder of the Leipzig Conservatory, he was a major force in the cultural life of his own country, and as biographer Herbert Kupferberg wrote, “possibly no other composer’s music had ever spread through the world so quickly.” Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto is arguably the most loved in the whole repertoire, and untold millions have been spurred to the altar by the “Wedding March” (from his music to Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
).

 
Important Things to Know
If you are going to go down the bridal path, you will want some great music. Great as it is, Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” is a tad cliched at this point, as is the “Here Comes the Bride” theme from Wagner’s
Lohengrin
, so consider a few tonal alternatives for your matrimonial matinee. The “Wedding March” from Mozart’s
The Marriage of Figaro
is a nifty one, or try Grieg’s “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.” Saint-Saens’ lighthearted “Wedding Cake” might be better suited to skipping, rather than marching down the aisle, so for more serious folks, consider an instrumental section from one of Bach’s five Wedding Cantatas. Then have a happy life!

Though he traveled widely, both as tourist and performer, Britain rapidly became his destination of choice. Mendelssohn made ten separate trips to England, conducting the premieres of his oratorios
St. Paul
and
Elijah
to wild acclaim, becoming the darling of British society and—as the most distinguished semiresident since Haydn—something of an English hero as well. Mendelssohn gave organ recitals at St. Paul’s Cathedral, played his piano concertos, and was even welcomed at Buckingham Palace by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

A conductor, teacher, festival organizer, composer, pianist, and composer, Mendelssohn made the most of the scant 38 years allotted to him. Musical snobs often denigrate his works as not being profound enough, but audiences continue to bask in his luxurious melodies and warm harmonic invention. “Let us honor and love Mendelssohn,” said Robert Schumann. “He is the prophet of a glorious future, his road leads to happiness.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
The Nazis, contemptuous of Mendelssohn’s Jewish heritage, tore down his statues, removed his name from musical textbooks, got a state-approved composer to write a substitute “Wedding March,” and tried desperately to ban his compositions altogether. “Mendelssohn was an ersatz (fake) for a true German master,” stated one official document. “His music can perhaps still be used as material for practicing, but never as a full-valued work of art.” Needless to say, the Nazis could no more erase musical history than they could rule the world.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
is a perfect introduction to the warmth and radiance of Mendelssohn’s music: the complete set of Incidental Music contains vocal solos, choruses and—in some recordings—interpolations of Shakespearean readings, but you’ll get the flavor in the shorter “Suite,” with its luminous “Overture,” scampering “Scherzo,” and ubiquitous “Wedding March.”

The composer’s love for travel is displayed in the
Italian
and
Scotch
Symphonies, plus the Hebrides Overture, and the Venetian Boat Songs (included among his many “Songs without Words” for solo piano). On a more expansive keyboard level, there are two solo piano concertos and the aptly titled
Rondo Brilliant,
plus another pair of Concertos for Two Pianos and Orchestra. Unquestionably, though, the E Minor Violin Concerto is Mendelssohn’s greatest achievement in the form. The themes are glowing and gorgeous, and the soloist has enough opportunities for virtuoso razzle dazzle to make the concerto as delectable to hear as it is challenging to play. “It abounds with the purest and most felicitous lyricism,” wrote David Ewen, “it never fails to touch the heart or enchant the listener.”

Enchantments abound in his chamber music, too, the bulging roster includes two piano trios (the D Minor is especially scintillating), seven quartets (try the op. 44, no. 1), and the peerless octet.

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) possessed the true romantic’s affinity for poetry, drama, and dreams. He once wrote, “I do not know myself what I really am. If I am a poet—for no one can really become one—destiny will decide.” Destiny, meanwhile, was preparing a double-edged sword. The burning romantic spirit that allowed Schumann’s musical imagination to soar also turned his life into improbable melodrama and, ultimately, tragedy. Schumann’s sister, Emilie, drowned herself at the age of 20; his three brothers died young; and signs of his own mental instability became apparent as early as his 23rd year.

Born in Zwichau, Germany, Robert Schumann’s childhood gave no indication of the tragedies to come in his life. There was no poverty, no harsh or abusive parents. His father owned a publishing house and lending library, and his propensity for dark and gloomy fantasies may have helped shape young Robert’s own poetic personality; certainly it instilled in the boy an early love for literature. Although Robert wrote a few childish pieces at the age of six, and five years later was directing his school band, he devoted far more of his creative time during his teenage years to writing poems, essays, and even novels. Indeed, his fame as a music critic well preceded the acceptance of his own compositions.

After the death of his father, Schumann’s more conventionally minded mother enrolled Robert in law school, but his first rummagings in legalistic textbooks convinced him that music was his intended path after all. He signed up for piano lessons with Friedrich Wieck, who promised his mother to turn Robert into a great virtuoso within three years. He might have done it, too, had not Schumann’s impatient and impulsive nature caused him to invent a device that was supposed to strengthen his fourth finger. Instead, it crippled his fourth finger, ending his virtuoso dreams, and forcing him to channel his musical creativity into composition.

The time spent with Wieck was not entirely wasted. If you remember from a few pages back, Schumann fell for Wieck’s daughter, and despite Papa’s protests and ploys, the romance flourished. When Clara and Robert couldn’t meet, they wrote; when Clara’s father tore up Robert’s letters, they spoke of their love through music. Schumann described his F Minor Sonata as his heart’s cry for her, and Clara played it right under her father’s nose because, as she later wrote, “I knew no other way of showing something of my inmost heart. I could not do it in secret, so I did it in public.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
On Clara’s 18th birthday, she and Robert became engaged, and while they waited impatiently for her father’s grudging approval, Robert wrote her several other musical love letters “with many a bridal thought, amid the most splendid exaltation that I can ever recall.” Was he a “romantic” or what?

If the years of courtship inspired Schumann to some of his most impassioned piano music, including “Kreisleriana,” the C Major Fantasy (“my profound lament about you,”

Robert wrote to Clara), and the “Fantasiestucke,” Robert proclaimed his newfound happiness after their marriage in 1840, with a “year of song.” Here he poured out his love in dozens of magical lieder, and such exquisite song cycles as “Frauenliebe und Leben” (Woman’s Life and Love) and “Dichterliebe” (Poet’s Love).

In 1841, Schumann expanded into the first of his four symphonies, appropriately dubbed
Spring.
Then chamber music came to the fore, and in 1842 alone Schumann completed three string quartets, plus the beautiful Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet.

Alas, Schumann’s mental health, always a bit iffy, began to deteriorate much more seriously. He experienced bouts of extreme melancholy and began to have lapses of memory. He heard cosmic voices, the shrieks of demons alternating with angelic choirs. He claimed to have been visited by the spirits of Schubert and Mendelssohn. In February 1854, he bade farewell to his Clara, close to delivering their eighth child, and threw himself into the Rhine. Passersby rescued him, but a week later, Robert was moved to a sanitorium. He lived another two years, with only occasional moments of lucidity; on July 29, 1856, Clara held him for the last time. “He smiled at me,” she recalled, “and put his arms around me with great difficulty, for he had almost lost control of his limbs. Never shall I forget that moment. I would not give that embrace for all the treasures on earth.”