BaL 26.01.19 - Schumann: String Quartet No 3 in A, Op 41

[Barbirollians]

Very sorry to hear that, visnick - very best wishes.

Seconded

[Master Jacques]

In any case, you could see or hear Schumann as ahead of his time in the expression of intense psychic or emotional dislocation; the music is often overtly obsessive, repetitive, vividly mood-swinging. Very distinctively individual.
So I think it does speak to our late-decadent-cultural times, the self(-ie)-obsessed extremes we ourselves experience, more immediately than most. (I hope it still does so in the late 21st Century! Humankind may have even greater need of it then... )

Individual, supremely so: and humankind certainly needs what he has to say more than ever, you're right!

But I think there is a danger if we view his "Florestan/Eusebius" metaphor through our own mirrors. Schumann's idea was not about psychic dislocation but the reverse - i.e. integration of passive and active to make the whole person, acceptance of both rather than a struggle, something much closer to oriental yin/yang mysticism than 20th century, Western psycho-analysis. The physical struggle for Schumann was of the artists against an unwilling society, not of self v. self. The danger of "medicalising" his music must be resisted.

Each age reads what it needs to read into every great creative mind. Schumann is at the heart of the romantic movement, so certainly puts the Self at the centre of his work, but he does so with essentially classical aims, material and methodology. As with Mendelssohn, many recent performers seize on him as some sort of Wagnerian/Mahlerian (or even Schoenbergian!) avatar, dragging in angst and instability which is wholly alien to his aesthetic ethos. Thus, many of the performances we heard yesterday - though by no means all, as you point out.

Remember also that Schumann despised Wagner's operas, countering with Genoveva - another of his works which is about the transcendence of self and unification of active/passive to make a perfect whole. It is a nasty, disturbing plot, but the music never contravenes the rules of sublime good taste. And to contrast his Manfred with Tchaikovsky's (both are marvellous) is to hear Schumann's striving for transcendence clothed in calm beauty, compared with the Russian's full-out emotional assault and battery.

[edashtav]

Individual, supremely so: and humankind certainly needs what he has to say more than ever, you're right!

But I think there is a danger if we view his "Florestan/Eusebius" metaphor through our own mirrors. Schumann's idea was not about psychic dislocation but the reverse - i.e. integration of passive and active to make the whole person, acceptance of both rather than a struggle, something much closer to oriental yin/yang mysticism than 20th century, Western psycho-analysis. The physical struggle for Schumann was of the artists against an unwilling society, not of self v. self. The danger of "medicalising" his music must be resisted.

Each age reads what it needs to read into every great creative mind. Schumann is at the heart of the romantic movement, so certainly puts the Self at the centre of his work, but he does so with essentially classical aims, material and methodology. As with Mendelssohn, many recent performers seize on him as some sort of Wagnerian/Mahlerian (or even Schoenbergian!) avatar, dragging in angst and instability which is wholly alien to his aesthetic ethos. Thus, many of the performances we heard yesterday - though by no means all, as you point out.

Remember also that Schumann despised Wagner's operas, countering with Genoveva - another of his works which is about the transcendence of self and unification of active/passive to make a perfect whole. It is a nasty, disturbing plot, but the music never contravenes the rules of sublime good taste. And to contrast his Manfred with Tchaikovsky's (both are marvellous) is to hear Schumann's striving for transcendence clothed in calm beauty, compared with the Russian's full-out emotional assault and battery.

I found that thought provoking and helpful.
Thank you Master J.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I, too, found MJ's post thought-provoking - but I can't help feeling that saying that "dragging in angst and instability which is wholly alien to his aesthetic ethos" is not how I hear (or read) the Music. There is always the danger that performers might impose an "angst and anxiety" that goes beyond the composer's intentions (although I suspect there would be vast discrepancies in opinion about which performances are felt do this - such is the nature of "interpretation"), but "angst and anxiety" is as essential to Schumann's Music as it is to Mozart's - to state that it is "wholly alien" risks an airbrushing of a vital aspect of the character of this Music, an airbrushing which is as fatal to the Music (as I understand it) as a near-hysterical approach - reducing Schumann to the level of [insert name of whichever "tasteful but dull" Victorian composer you wish]. MJ was absolutely spot-on to comment on Schumann's "striving for transcendence", but I prefer that "striving" to be made clear - "sublime good taste" includes the bitter. The Music should no more be "medicated" than it should be "medicalised".

And, by the nature of the BaL format, those excerpts that MJ found more reflective of our own times than of Schumann's aesthetic might well have led to other moments in the performances in which the mood was integrated with others - a genuine engagement with the Sonata principle that wasn't suggested in the fragment(s) that were played.

[edashtav]

I, too, found MJ's post thought-provoking - […]

And, by the nature of the BaL format, those excerpts that MJ found more reflective of our own times than of Schumann's aesthetic might well have led to other moments in the performances in which the mood was integrated with others - a genuine engagement with the Sonata principle that wasn't suggested in the fragment(s) that were played.

What a good response... Schumann respects and enhances formal procedures in a manner that marks him out from more rambling romantics: he can cram a quart into a pint pot. That concentration of invention can make his music unsettling but it's well-grounded on tight structures.

[Master Jacques]

What a good response... Schumann respects and enhances formal procedures is a manner that marks him out from mire rambling romantics: he can cram a quart into a pint pot. That concentration of invention can make his music unsettling but it's well-grounded on tight structures.

Very well put I think, edashtav: "respect and enhancement" of sonata form procedures - evolution, as opposed to Beethovenian revolution - is what defines the Mendelssohn-Spohr-Schumann line of romantics. And ferneyhoughgeliebte is right that, if it is to avoid blandness, good taste must find room for bitterness (contrast and conflict). I've been listening to a lot of Spohr lately, and the fading of his bright star (from Great Composer to Also Ran in a few decades) was surely due to that uniformity of good taste. Intellectually his music is always alive, and its technical finish is immaculate; but there's rarely that feeling of "quarts in pint pots" which still makes Schumann so exciting.

Of course as ferneyhoughgeliebte fairly says, short extracts can't convey levels of engagement with sonata principle. My feeling about the Takacs (which I owned briefly) and the Ysayes (which I've just decided to sell too!) is that fussy "angst and anxiety" in detail tend to break up the longer-span formal satisfactions, conveying a Beethovenian impatience with sonata principle, which goes flat against Schumann's classical style.

[jayne lee wilson]

Individual, supremely so: and humankind certainly needs what he has to say more than ever, you're right!

But I think there is a danger if we view his "Florestan/Eusebius" metaphor through our own mirrors. Schumann's idea was not about psychic dislocation but the reverse - i.e. integration of passive and active to make the whole person, acceptance of both rather than a struggle, something much closer to oriental yin/yang mysticism than 20th century, Western psycho-analysis. The physical struggle for Schumann was of the artists against an unwilling society, not of self v. self. The danger of "medicalising" his music must be resisted.

Each age reads what it needs to read into every great creative mind. Schumann is at the heart of the romantic movement, so certainly puts the Self at the centre of his work, but he does so with essentially classical aims, material and methodology. As with Mendelssohn, many recent performers seize on him as some sort of Wagnerian/Mahlerian (or even Schoenbergian!) avatar, dragging in angst and instability which is wholly alien to his aesthetic ethos. Thus, many of the performances we heard yesterday - though by no means all, as you point out.

Remember also that Schumann despised Wagner's operas, countering with Genoveva - another of his works which is about the transcendence of self and unification of active/passive to make a perfect whole. It is a nasty, disturbing plot, but the music never contravenes the rules of sublime good taste. And to contrast his Manfred with Tchaikovsky's (both are marvellous) is to hear Schumann's striving for transcendence clothed in calm beauty, compared with the Russian's full-out emotional assault and battery.

I think you're too prescriptive here....

Can we really hear his music through any other ears, or perceptions, than our own?
Isn't there a creatively fruitful contradiction anyway, between the Romantic Ideal and the "classical aims etc" that you describe? From which the sparks may fly.....

So interpretations can take a wide range of approaches, all equally valid. Including emotional extremes.
Preference is another matter, as ever....
But I think you overstate the "dragging in angst and instability" of recent recordings. I didn't hear that myself much in the many excerpts presented, rather a wonderful creative variety.
Remember too that, in many recent Symphonic Cycles (YNS, Dausgaard, Ticciati etc), the tendency has been back to the smaller-scale, HIPPs and Chamber Orchestra approaches, the emphasis on dynamic agility, lightness and rhythmical suppleness, and yes - those quicksilver moodswings. I don't hear much Wagnerian/Mahlerian input there. (I dislike many older, larger orchestral recordings (Karajan, Barenboim, etc., even Sawallisch) for the similar reasons implied, as with Mendelssohn).

***
As for "medicalising".... "must be resisted" is a little strong, since it seems at least possible, even likely, that a serious brain disorder would have affected his art long before it was obvious. Where do all those manic, demonic scherzi throughout the later Chamber Music come from? Those obsessive, agonised repetitions? I don't hear a "calm beauty" in those. I think a performer can at least claim some licence to take them to extremes, if she wishes.
(Afflicted with a large brain tumour myself once, I realised how deeply it had affected my perceptions emotions and responses, long before diagnosis, only in retrospect.)

I'm well aware of the difficulty of linking the Art to the Life but I think it restricts our responses and perceptions if you try to minimise it.
So with Tchaikovsky, it seems very unfair to accuse him of "emotional assault and battery". His music is a drama of intense emotion, intensely expressed upon the large orchestra. You can understand it without knowing his life story, but when you do... how could you not perceive, or at least reflect upon, the link?
He has a story to tell, his own anguished individual tale, and he tells it like it is.

***
As for "the music never contravenes the rules of sublime good taste". I don't think I'd love Schumann so much if that were really true. At least, I don't think of that as I listen.
And I'm not sure what good taste (however variously defined) has to do with great art, anyway....

(I do think Schumann's Sonata-Foregrounds go way beyond "respect and enhancement" too - e.g. 4th Symphony) but that's another story....

[edashtav]

JLW wrote:
(I do think Schumann's Sonata-Foregrounds go way beyond "respect and enhancement" too - e.g. 4th Symphony) but that's another story....
Yes, indeed,Jayne... but is that, in its final 1851 form, the exception to the rule? The cyclic way in which Schumann unexpectedly integrates the main theme of the first movement into his 4th movement is one of the greater structural triumphs of 19th century symphonism.

The point I was trying to make was that Schumann was conscious of, and built his works from, a clear structural franework. He doesn't allow drama or an external programme to rule. With Schumann, heart and head are co-ordinated, in harness, and they fertilise and inform each other.

[Master Jacques]

The point I was trying to make was that Schumann was conscious of, and built his works from, a clear structural franework. He doesn't allow drama or an external programme to rule. With Schumann, heart and head are co-ordinated, in harness, and they fertilise and inform each other.

You make the point well - co-ordination is the soul of his music.

Jayne, I don't mean to be prescriptive, merely to get us thinking about redressing a balance. Listening is a different experience for each one of us, though you're right that it has to aim to be open to that mixture of surprise and anticipation fulfilled, which at its best leads us beyond our own perceptions. Going physically beyond our own ears is a little more difficult for sure, but might not headphones (and hearing aids!) count as that?

When it comes to HIP, now you mention it those self-conscious "quicksilver moodswings" strike me as one way in which today's musicians go beyond what we know of playing practice at the time. Reading Spohr (him again!) on the later period's search for virtuoso smoothness of line rather than surface excitement is interesting. Maybe some of the febrile emotionalism of much baroque/rococo/classical playing is encouraged by that dubious modern invention, the conductor - but I don't want to press that too far!

I did say that Tchaikovsky's Manfred was marvellous, and didn't mean "emotional assault and battery" to sound like a criticism. Apologies if it did. That's what the piece does, and thrillingly too. Certainly classicist 19th c. critics outside Russia saw that heart-on-sleeve quality as "vulgarity", though nowadays we'd disagree. The more I study Tchaikovsky, the more I find that the "biographical element" can blind us to the richness and variety of what's there - he is such an immense, protean figure who never really repeats himself, and he "contains multitudes", intellectually as much as emotionally.

As for that moving target "good taste" ... well, of course you are right. But whatever it is, we all know it when we hear it; and at least it does not necessarily preclude "good art"!

[BBMmk2]

I do like The Tackacs very much. So with this in mind, perhaps I ought to retry this work?

[gradus]

I do like The Tackacs very much. So with this in mind, perhaps I ought to retry this work?

Yes do, since hearing the review it has stayed with me but not as an annoying ear worm. It's the lovely opening that hooks me.