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| Concerts - Mar 14 Program Notes |
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To purchase tickets to this event, click here. |
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| Program Notes |
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| Shai Wosner |
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In spite of the great chronological distance, there are parallels between the works of Robert Schumann (born Zwickau, June 8; died Bonn, July 29, 1856) and Claude Debussy, (born Saint-Germain-en-Laye, August 22, 1862; died Paris, March 25, 1918) perhaps above all in their piano music.
Both composers had a formative connection to other arts that greatly influenced their development as musicians: literature for Schumann (Jean Paul, E.T.A. Hoffmann), literature and visual arts for Debussy (Poe, Mallarmé, Manet, Whistler). Both wrote extensively about music and had significant artistic influence over many of their colleagues: Schumann founded the circle of Davidsbund to lead his crusade against philistinism; the term Debussyisme was already coined during Debussy’s lifetime. Piano music played a central role in their output, often as a medium for experimentation. Debussy described his first series of Images, for example, as being of “a completely new approach... in accordance with the most recent findings of harmonic chemistry.” Schumann, meanwhile, focused exclusively on piano works from Op. 1 to Op. 23 to produce some of his boldest and most personal works.
Nachtstücke, Op. 23(composed 1839-40; 18 minutes) can serve as an example of some of the defining elements of Schumann’s style and technique. Written around the time of his brother’s death in 1839, Schumann considered specific titles for each of the four pieces but decided to drop them and name them all “Night Pieces,” a title which echoes his fascination with the realm of the inaccessible, the demonic, the enigmatic. The fleeting nocturnal images of these pieces are animated by constant rhythmic drive. That element is a key to Schumann’s language and to its break from Classical tradition because it enabled the replacement of Beethoven’s dramatically conceived structures (with their cell-like motifs, articulated phrases, paragraphs and “rational” development process) with large sections of more homogenous material that alternate abruptly with other sections of highly-contrasting character, while everything is held together by driving pattern of almost obsessive rhythmic tension.
The first piece (Mehr langsam, oft zurückhaltend), for example, is an eerie, inexorable march that is sometimes heard in the distance and sometimes up front. It ends not by bringing its rhythmic pulse to a halt, but by fading out, literally, gradually “hiding” notes, like the grinning Cheshire cat. The driving rhythm in the second piece (Markirt und lebhaft) takes the form of rapid succession of chords, and in the third piece (Mit grosser Lebhaftigkeit), of curved, seemingly unstoppable eighth-note figures that sometimes appear in the foreground and sometimes as accompaniment.
The last piece of the set (Rundgesang mit Solostimmen) returns to the march-pattern heard in the opening, except that this time instead of fading out, it ends when its rhythmic steadiness melts away in a somewhat improvisatory gesture. This way of organizing material is not focused on the exploration and development of opposing elements in search of balance (as found in Classicism), but rather on unresolved tension between the different sections of each piece, blending them into a single, more homogenous entity. Perhaps it is one reason why the genre most closely associated with Schumann in this period is not so much the sonata but rather the cycle of character pieces.
In Carnaval, Op. 9(composed 1834-35; 27 minutes), that genre is transformed into a monumental statement. Written in the winter of 1834-5 (and finished during carnival season), its short pieces are framed between the opening Préambule (or Introduction) and the closing finale and construct a dense web of moods, cross relations, riddles and allusions. Originally, the set was subtitled “Faschingschwänke auf vier Noten” (“Carnival pranks based on four notes”), since it uses the four pitches that musically stand for the letters Asch (the native bohemian village of Ernestine von Fricken, Schumann’s fiancée at the time) but also Sch. A. (Schumann’s last and middle initials). Many titles refer to specific characters, some fictional (from the commedia dell’arte), others semi-fictional (such as Chiarina—reference to Clara Wieck, or Estrella—most likely Ernestine), and others real (Chopin and Paganini, whose movements are the only ones not based on the four pitches). Two very important characters that are both real and fictional, depending on the point of view, are Eusebius and Florestan, Schumann’s frequent noms de plume and representations of aspects of the personality he created for himself. The rich, colorful array of characters is constructed with incredible economy and precision: Chopin is captured in no more than thirteen bars; Florestan’s erratic disposition comes to life and self-destructs in just over a single page.
But the complexity of Carnaval is far beyond clever tone-painting or musical impersonations. It is at once both a set of miniatures in the frivolous spirit of a masked ball and a study in the tension between art and life and the coexistence of the abstract and the autobiographical, the sublime and the trivial, often seemingly aware of its own irony (the opening is marked Quasi Maestoso). Schumann himself later described works from this period as “reflections of my turbulent earlier life when man and musician always strove to express themselves simultaneously.”
The underlying duality of reality and disguise is hinted at in Reconnaissance, which presents a tune in two incarnations: once mechanically, as if played by a music-box, and then as a passionate love duet, as if the two lovers lifted their masks. The lines between masquerade and reality are further blurred when Florestan dreamily recalls a tune from Schumann’s own Papillons. Or when Paganini himself bursts into a perfectly amiable Valse Allemande, in a display of bravura that ends so violently it seems the violin is being smashed to pieces, á la Jimi Hendrix (possibly a reflection of Schumann’s own complicated fascination with virtuosity). Similarly, the leisurely Promenade is suddenly interrupted by a Pause, which brings in the Davidsbündler in a triumphant march to banish the philistines and champion high ideals in music and art. Their march brings back music from the opening, as well as its ironic overtones (they march in 3/4 time...).
Schumann’s influence extends far beyond his time and can be felt to great extent in the music of Debussy, who envisioned his pieces as belonging “to the left of Schumann or the right of Chopin”. Although Debussy’s break from tradition is famously attributed to the influence of Indonesian gamelan music, it was immensely inspired by the music of Schumann, not least by its wild imagination, sense of freedom and fresh inventiveness.
If Schumann’s music forms a unity out of miniatures and contrasting sections while retaining the tension between them, Debussy’s music often avoids any narrative altogether. To take the example of the Préludes, Book 1(composed 1909-10; 38 minutes), the sections that make up each Prélude are not a story-like succession of events, but rather various aspects of a single object being observed from different directions or the different textures and hues of the same color. The result is a radical shift in the perception of time and space in Debussy’s music: each piece is like a contemplation, and the sense of time seems “vertical.” The different types of material in the music are not developed over the course of the piece but rather seem to exist simultaneously, as if our ears were simply moving from one to the other. For example in Voiles (Sails, or Veils), time seems to be completely suspended and ideas float in the sound world of the whole-tone scale. The marking “like distant horn calls” (comme une lointaine sonnerie de cors) in Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir, which then recedes “even more into the distance” (encore plus lointain)—makes it seem as if the piece is taking place in space rather than time.
Sometimes it seems that the contemplative nature of the music is the source of its striking originality: for example, the effect of magical time suspension in Voiles is achieved through an exploration of the whole-tone scale, which has no tonal center. Another example is Les sons et les parfums which ends with a meditation around the note C-sharp, harmonized with no less than seven different chords. Each piece is to be taken in as a whole, almost like a visual object, which is perhaps why Debussy puts the title at the end of each Prélude, as if it were a painting, viewed before we lean over to learn its name.
In many cases it is probable that these titles (as well as those of Schumann) were given after the piece was finished. However, much like Carnaval, the Préludes can be seen as a world of images, objects and places that make up a sort of theater of the mind. They show motives that run throughout Debussy’s oeuvre: fascination with the mysterious (the ancient Greek sculpture of the three Danseuses de Delphes; Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest, or “What was seen by the Western Wind”), and the capricious (La sérénade interrompue; La danse de Puck; Minstrels), which echo Schumann’s attraction to the quirky and the fantastic. There is also important presence of nature and landscapes (Des pas sur la neige; Le vent dans la plaine; the hills of Anacapri), timeless exoticism and folklore (Spanish Cante Jondo in La sérénade interrompue; Anacapri; and the Breton legend of the sunken cathedral in La cathédrale engloutie).
© 2009 Shai Wosner
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© 2009 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association
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