May Byron

“ No shadow of artistic rivalry can fall upon their delight, nor darken their pleasure in each other's achievements. Schumann's most impassioned and characteristic productions have been definitely inspired by Clara, ever since the days [Pg 11] when, as a child of nine, she listened to his fantastic fairy-tales, and her exquisite playing thrilled him with a desire to think in music. And Clara, who has never made a mere show of her marvellous executive skill, but has "consecrated it to the service of true art alone,"—is never happier than when interpreting her husband's works. ”

“ He patted the lad's knee with gentle, friendly encouragement. "Do you think they know up there" he queried, "that a little boy has been playing down here with Mendelssohn?"—This question was the very essence of Schumann,—romantic, mystical, full of tender dreams.
His composition-lessons over, he conducts a part-singing class. Orchestral conducting is abhorrent to him; it is "too defiant and conspicuous a task." He cannot make his meaning clear by word of mouth: and in gesture he is singularly deficient. ”

“ The consummate musician who has surmounted every difficulty, acquainted himself with every method of his art—the man who has mastered the forms of symphony, chamber-music, pianoforte and vocal music to their farthest present limits—here stands forth as the exponent of little innocent every-day emotions. ”

“ His hands are ever thrown out to welcome the young and timid genius, even as they are clenched, so to speak, with threatening fists towards Philistinism, charlatanism and mediocrity. He loves to praise rather than to blame, and to detect the germs of coming greatness in some obscure, unsuspected artist. ”

“ For to this man, "from whom the knowledge of no emotion in the individual heart is withheld, it is a matter of extreme difficulty to give expression to ... those feelings which affect the whole of mankind in common."
"For you, who can realize human love so devoutly, there should be no eventual hindrance to the expression of love towards God," says the little dark-eyed woman, pressing his hand with warm devotion.
"You yourself are the concrete expression of love towards God," the composer murmurs, gazing down at her in the twilight—"you and your music together. ”

“ It is, in short, necessary to deal with Schumann as a whole,—as a man who has fulfilled the triple destiny for which Nature intended him,—as individual, husband, and father,—before one can even approximately understand this silent, studious dreamer, whose one ideal of happiness is to sit at home and compose. ”

“ But in such an hour as this, my Clara, I long more deeply to give expression to my holiest thoughts. To apply his powers to sacred music must always [Pg 56] be the loftiest aim of an artist. In youth we are all too firmly rooted to earth with its joys and sorrows: but with advancing age, our branches extend higher. ”

“ My whole life is one joyous activity."
The annals of art, indeed, hold no more lovely record of a union between natural affinities. That of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning perhaps approximates most closely to that of Robert and Clara Schumann. But whereas in the former case both husband and wife were alike engaged upon the same branch of literature,—poetry,—and a certain sense of sadness was apt to embitter the success of the wife, because of the unpopularity (in those days) of the husband,—Schumann is solely and pre-eminently a composer, and Clara solely and absorbingly a pianist. ”

“ The Davidsbund is a mystical community of kindred souls, each enlisted, with or without his knowledge, under the banner of "a resolve to do battle in the cause of musical progress, against Philistinism in every form." One can only vaguely compare it to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England. "Mozart was as much a member of it as Berlioz now is," so declares its founder. ”

“ He has the highest possible view of his vocation and what it should entail. "To send light into the depths of the human heart, that is the artistic calling," he has declared.... "The artist is to choose for his companions those who can do something beyond playing passably on one or two instruments—those who are whole men and can understand Shakespeare and Jean Paul.... ”

“ The fact is, that the "impossible man" dwells apart in a world of his own, a world peopled by the best folk he has ever encountered either in the flesh or the spirit, and a world where the austerest canons and noblest aspirations of his great art are upheld on a very different plane from that of Leipzig. ”

“ To his well-balanced mind, the silent moody man and his productions are too wild, too eccentric, too uncanny. He regards them, at times, with a species of grudging admiration: at others, he sides in heart, if not in speech, with the current opinion of the town. "Opposition to all artistic progress has always been a distinctive characteristic of Leipzig [Pg 42] musical society," and therefore horror-stricken hands are uplifted at the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, his heretical doctrines, and still more heretical deeds. ”

“ That wide and genial tolerance which he extends towards all new composers, he does not demand or even expect for himself. Nevertheless, as he allows, "I used to be quite indifferent to the amount of notice I received, but a wife and children put a different complexion upon everything. It becomes imperative to think of the future." ”

“ A man with such notions as these, in the first half of the nineteenth century, must of necessity live and move to a great extent in an ideal atmosphere of his own: and Schumann, to do so the more literally, has [Pg 32] created his own company in that "spiritual and romantic league," the Davidsbund, which exists only in his imagination, but exercises considerable vigour none the less. ”

“ He is almost unknown in society,—partly because he really has no interest whatever apart from music, partly owing to his silent manner and retiring disposition. It is on record that one day after Madame Schumann had been playing with tremendous success at one of the smaller German courts, the Serene Highness who was ruler there enquired of her with great affability, "whether her husband were also musical?" ”

“ Yet, at the present time, were you to search the world around, you should hardly find a happier man than this, in his own serene and thoughtful way. For, in his own words, "I have an incomparable wife. ”

“ And his own theories of art are bound to evolve themselves thus:—for "Only think," he has written, "what circumstances must be combined to produce the beautiful in all its dignity and splendour. We need,—1st, lofty deep purposes and ideality in a composition ”

“ The profound combinations, the poetry and humour of the new school of music principally emanate from Bach."
THE TWO GRENADIERS.
To France were returning two Grenadiers,
In Russia they long did languish,
And as they came to the German frontier,
They hung down their heads with anguish.
(Die Beiden Grenadieren) .
Mozart is to him, as to all great artists, a veritable divinity. "Do not put Beethoven," says he, "too soon into the hands of the young: steep and strengthen them in the fresh animation [Pg 54] of Mozart.... ”

“ He takes into his regard the personal equation wherever possible, and does not separate the musician from the man: for, he says, "the man and the musician in myself have always struggled to manifest themselves simultaneously.... ”