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Robert Schumann. Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Scenes from Vienna) for piano, Op. 26
Schumann faced incredible resistance in his lengthy struggle for the right to marry the acclaimed pianist Clara Wieck. The insistent objection of Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck, was the reason behind both the young lovers’ constant partings, when Clara’s father would dispatch her off on yet another concert tour to separate her from the – in his opinion – unpromising young musician, and the countless nervous breakdowns of the composer’s vulnerable psyche as well as Schumann’s failures in the profession, which had been secretly orchestrated by the indefatigable Wieck. One of his conditions had been that Schumann settle in music’s capital city – Vienna – where Clara could forge an even greater career. In October 1838 Schumann reached the Austrian capital in the hopes of taking his “first step as a grown man” and organising the publishing of his “child”, the Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik at the very heart of European public life. But Clara’s father had taken every effort in advance to ensure that the Viennese publishers had the “correct” opinion of the young and unreliable (from the point of view of censorship) musical publicist, and for several months Schumann waited in vain for responses from the publishing houses. Moreover, he found that Vienna was no longer “the city of Beethoven” but rather a place where “a crowd of gossips” (i.e. high society) light-heartedly enjoyed the waltzes of Johann Strauss (Vater). And yet being in the Austrian capital could not but leave Schumann with rich artistic impressions, one of which – the renowned carnival festivities – emerged as the Faschingsschwank aus Wien cycle five spirited pieces for piano.
Robert Schumann. Symphonic Études for piano, Op. 13
The mid 1830s was a time of intense publicistic activity for the young Robert Schumann with regard to the Neue Leipziger Zeitschrift für Musik which he had founded, as well as the time of his first and mutual love – his love for the young pianist Ernestine von Fricken. It was during this period that Schumann wrote two piano cycles that brought glory to his name – Carnaval and Symphonic Études. Both works owe their birth to the composer’s relationship with Ernestine. The main intonation core in Carnaval is formed from the musically encoded letters of the name of Ernestine’s home town – Asch. The theme for the large variation cycle Symphonic Études was suggested to Schumann by Ernestine’s father, the amateur flautist Captain von Fricken. Apropos, Schumann’s treatment of this theme is very far from amateur music making and it pursues much more serious goals. Bowing down before Beethoven’s symphonic scores, Schumann was literally trying to overcome steadfast perceptions of variations as a dazzling but superficial drawing room genre and, within the scope of piano music, to create a work of symphonic scale and depth, which is reflected in the title of the cycle.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Piano Sonata in C Minor
Mozart was the first composer in the history of European music to abandon the practice of permanently serving a person of high rank in order to safeguard his status as a free artist. He had long been extorted to do so by the Archbishop of Salzburg, who had tried in every possible way to emphasise the great musician’s dependent position and instil in him a sense of his own merit. Things went as far as bans on performances and on leaving Salzburg (essentially a provincial town where Mozart had nothing to do), as well as compelling him to compose countless pieces of church music in extraordinarily short periods of time and endure such household degradations as having to dine with his “master’s” footmen. Having decisively abandoned his position as a court musician, Mozart moved to Vienna, where he spent ten years of his life without any aristocratic patronage or stable income, forced to earn a living and to work himself to exhaustion, composing, performing and giving private lessons. Contrary to the later widespread image of Mozart as a “darling” of Destiny who had been selected by chance through Divine Providence, the great composer possessed not only a tremendous capacity for work and purposefulness, but also great courage to break with the traditions of the music and the life of the gallant 18th century. It was not without reason that Georgy Chicherin said that “Mozart was no revolutionary in terms of his gestures and poses like many representatives of ‘Storm and Stress’, though he did bring a revolution to music – not a revolution for revolution’s sake, but rather the creation of a new world in a state of fermentation.” This can plainly be heard in his famous Sonata in C Minor, composed two years after he had moved to Vienna – the year when Mozart joined the Masonic Lodge, convinced of the tremendous positive and creative power of that secret order.
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