A New Discovery
I'm learning the Schumann Fantasy. That is to say, the Fantasie in C major, Op. 17, by Robert Schumann (circa 1836). I have been practising away very nicely. Do you know what happens when you practise? Ideas appear. That's what I'm going to tell you about today.
Anyway, here is the first page of the score (copyright Henle 2003). You can also see my notations on it, so if they are of any help, please absorb!
The Schumann Fantasy is a grand, great work. I heard it described recently as "possibly the greatest work of the nineteenth century". Schumann liked it originally but he wasn't so sure a few years later.
I am learning this piece because it suits me. I see eye to eye with it - and it passes the repertoire test. This is a test I just invented to ascertain whether a piece is worth learning. It goes like this: "Would you be happy to perform this work every day for the rest of your life?". That's it. And I would, so that's why it is going to be one of my pieces.
Look at the left hand part. E.g. the first bar! That's all left hand. Those semiquavers needed a bit of practise (about two days to get going), and there's a lot of this left hand activity in the piece, so it will come in handy later (frequently!). It's strange that the first page of a new piece often takes much longer to learn than any other page. Probably because lots of the material is introduced at the opening and subsequent pages more than likely are formed of the same material, so having learned it slowly at first, what one learned carries over into the rest of the piece and saves time later.
So these left hand semiquavers. Playing away at these (quite slowly, carefully, making sure I hit the keys in the middle, making sure the notes sound, etc.) for several hours, I start to get ideas. One in particular was this. Even though this piece is usually heard with a lot of pedal, as a rather grand wash of sound, it is possible to play sometimes with less pedal. As an experiment it is possible to do anything, of course. And that's partly what I am doing in practice, experimenting - not to find something that appeals to me, but to try and find the sound and expression that belongs to the work. The true voice.
Following the idea of trying less pedal, I started to hear something. For one thing, I started to hear the notes! I could imagine this material sometimes solid-sounding (something like the traditional all-purpose sound), sometimes with more detail peeping through. OK, I was getting somewhere now. The character of the music was starting to appear. It was no longer notes, it was starting to be alive!
As the music grew more vivid, colours appeared out of the black notes and white page. And I heard something. You might hear it too, especially in the following part (first bar of the bottom line):
Play it lightly, and does it remind you of something? How about this:
That is the opening of a piece by Debussy called Jardins sous la pluie ("Gardens in the Rain") from his set called Estampes. Do you think there might be some similarity? I thought so. the Debussy is a lot quieter (it gets louder later, mind you) but apart from that, it's more or less the same thing.
OK, you say, so what? Well, so nothing. It's just an interesting insight into the Schumann.
Or is it more than that?
Originally the Fantasy was conceived as a sort of memorial to Beethoven, the proceeds from the sale of which to go towards the building of a physical memorial in Bonn. Schumann quotes Beethoven, especially in the first movement (the quotation from An die Ferne Geliebte only appearing in its entirety at the end of the movement, by which time it is no longer a quotation, seeming to be something you've always known - see Charles Rosen's book "The Romantic Generation" for more on this). So when Schumann was first thinking of this work, it was as a "Grand Sonata...for Beethoven's Monument".
Hey, look at this. When Schumann first had the inspiration for this piece, he wrote about it in his diary on the 9th of September 1836:
Anyway, here is the first page of the score (copyright Henle 2003). You can also see my notations on it, so if they are of any help, please absorb!
The Schumann Fantasy is a grand, great work. I heard it described recently as "possibly the greatest work of the nineteenth century". Schumann liked it originally but he wasn't so sure a few years later.
I am learning this piece because it suits me. I see eye to eye with it - and it passes the repertoire test. This is a test I just invented to ascertain whether a piece is worth learning. It goes like this: "Would you be happy to perform this work every day for the rest of your life?". That's it. And I would, so that's why it is going to be one of my pieces.
Look at the left hand part. E.g. the first bar! That's all left hand. Those semiquavers needed a bit of practise (about two days to get going), and there's a lot of this left hand activity in the piece, so it will come in handy later (frequently!). It's strange that the first page of a new piece often takes much longer to learn than any other page. Probably because lots of the material is introduced at the opening and subsequent pages more than likely are formed of the same material, so having learned it slowly at first, what one learned carries over into the rest of the piece and saves time later.
So these left hand semiquavers. Playing away at these (quite slowly, carefully, making sure I hit the keys in the middle, making sure the notes sound, etc.) for several hours, I start to get ideas. One in particular was this. Even though this piece is usually heard with a lot of pedal, as a rather grand wash of sound, it is possible to play sometimes with less pedal. As an experiment it is possible to do anything, of course. And that's partly what I am doing in practice, experimenting - not to find something that appeals to me, but to try and find the sound and expression that belongs to the work. The true voice.
Following the idea of trying less pedal, I started to hear something. For one thing, I started to hear the notes! I could imagine this material sometimes solid-sounding (something like the traditional all-purpose sound), sometimes with more detail peeping through. OK, I was getting somewhere now. The character of the music was starting to appear. It was no longer notes, it was starting to be alive!
As the music grew more vivid, colours appeared out of the black notes and white page. And I heard something. You might hear it too, especially in the following part (first bar of the bottom line):
Play it lightly, and does it remind you of something? How about this:
That is the opening of a piece by Debussy called Jardins sous la pluie ("Gardens in the Rain") from his set called Estampes. Do you think there might be some similarity? I thought so. the Debussy is a lot quieter (it gets louder later, mind you) but apart from that, it's more or less the same thing.
OK, you say, so what? Well, so nothing. It's just an interesting insight into the Schumann.
Or is it more than that?
Originally the Fantasy was conceived as a sort of memorial to Beethoven, the proceeds from the sale of which to go towards the building of a physical memorial in Bonn. Schumann quotes Beethoven, especially in the first movement (the quotation from An die Ferne Geliebte only appearing in its entirety at the end of the movement, by which time it is no longer a quotation, seeming to be something you've always known - see Charles Rosen's book "The Romantic Generation" for more on this). So when Schumann was first thinking of this work, it was as a "Grand Sonata...for Beethoven's Monument".
Hey, look at this. When Schumann first had the inspiration for this piece, he wrote about it in his diary on the 9th of September 1836:
"Schlafen auf d. Wiese im Regen. Dann fürchterl. Giessen u. [illegible] Idee zu Beethoven"Rain, hey? How about that. I think I believe his diary.
"Sleeping in the meadow in the rain. Then terrible downpour and [illegible] idea for Beethoven"
3 Comments:
Nice idea. I love both pieces. I see a relationship with texture but not harmony.
The open of the fantasy has d-minor sitting on a G pedal (or ii on V). The Debussy does not, and seems to be moving to a new harmony (unlike the Schumann). Do you see it differently?
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Yes, that's right, I was mainly thinking of texture.
Schumann, as always, is ambiguous, and I think that's certainly true here. The harmony at the beginning seems very stable. It certainly is D minor on a G pedal (Charles Rosen says the same) but it combines the stability of a pentatonic chord (the notes would fit into a pentatonic mould except for the e in the melody, bar 4/5) with the direction of a dominant 7th/dominant 9th (and the appoggiaturas of the melody are certainly going somewhere too). That's how I hear it; only until the G sharp in bar 12 do I hear a conventional harmonic direction-change. It makes sense to me that Schumann writes it like this - because of the monumental sound of the work and because, of course, it was first intended as a sort of monument itself. But a monument is solid, and fantasy is fleeting so the harmony keeps me guessing.
The Debussy, on the other hand, is more dynamic in the short term. It's only a light rain shower from him! Though there is certainly a bit of action before the end...
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