Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Robert Schumann and his works. :)

1. You can't have a very unique style. Unique can't be qualitative. Something's unique or it's not.

2. Schumann is a very great composer. He's very idiomatic, and often overwraught. He's very awkward, and I am frightened each time I play him.

Kreisleriana is my favorite of his works, although the lieder, Symphonic Etudes, Etudes on Beethoven's 7th Symphony, and the chamber music are all of exceptional value. Much of the rest of his output feels too bourgeois.

Ah! Grammar police!

I know, I always make that mistake but I suppose I just wanted to accentuate his uniqueness. Thanks for keeping me in check! :p

I can't think of any Schumann pieces that I would consider to be "bourgeois" except maybe the F.A.E. Sonata but that's not his fault surely. Carnaval, Papillions, and the Fantasiestucke are inimitable in my opinon.

I double-checked the correct spelling of "overwrought"—and, in the process, learned that I've been under an unfortunate misapprehension of my own for many years.

I had mistakenly believed "wrought" to be the past participle of "wreak." It is not; "wreaked" is the correct form.

"Wrought" is, instead, a generally archaic (i.e., except for a few specialized uses) past tense and past participle of "work"!

Dang. I'm thinking of the countless times I've said to one or more of my cats, "What kind of havoc have you wrought?" And I'm surprised that none of them has ever deigned to correct me.

Daniel, thanks for making that typo!

Steven

He was also somewhat handsome, at least when he was young.

Here is a portrait of Schumann from Wikipedia:

Well played, sir. I raise you one Brahms.

<img src="http://i524.photo...s Pictures, Images and Photos"/>

Yeah, the texts of Frauenliebe have not aged well, but goodness me the gorgeous music is what matters in the end. I count learning and performing it as one of the more notable experiences of my life. Too bad it was with a mezzo -- I wasn't able to perform the work in the original keys.

Ugh, don't get me started on histrionics! The last time I heard Winterreise live, the stage had a table and a chair in addition to a piano. The silly baritone moved from chair to table to various places between -- sometimes between songs, sometimes during songs -- gesticulating and contorting his face all the while! The program notes didn't say anything about the concept behind the "staging" and I couldn't see the bloody point -- except maybe to show how utterly silly it can be to dwell excessively on a breakup (moving aimlessly in a room without going anywhere or doing anything productive, etc.).

Speaking of rings -- I am thankful that most of the sopranos I've seen playing Brünnhilde ignore Wagner's direction to smother the Ring with kisses just before Waltraute's entrance in Götterdämmerung.

Thanks SV for the heads up on that faux pa... or should I say foe paw?

You can say "foe paw" ... as long as you write faux pas! (It's the same form whether singular or plural.)

Steven

There are some nice piano solo transcriptions of this cycle.

I just keep synching lower... It's Paine full.

I guess I'm a thread spoiler but I think Schumann is overrated. I like his piano quintet and some of the pieces of the Kreisleriana. The rest, well, uhmmmm, I'll say nothing about.

I enjoy the Toccata Op. 7 and the Piano Concerto.

psssst... the 1st symphony has to be one of the most tiresome exercises in tedium that I can currently think of.

Otherwise, sorry mate, Schumann's a favourite, particularly the three glorious works for piano and orchestra, the Eb piano quartet, several of the lieder cycles, and -with a few glaring exceptions- most of the piano music. Then for a terrific, and I think underrated, choral work there's always Das Paradies und die Peri. Some very inspired music there.

Finally, I could not imagine my life without the C major Fantasie. I think it one of the most glorious works ever written in any medium, and Argerich's recording -con somma passione- is one of her landmark achievements.

It's funny how perceptions differ.

I really thought Schumann is rather underrated, and that that was the premise of this thread. His name looms large, sure, but it often seems as though his music is taken for granted with almost a shrug rather than praised with the passion it deserves IMNSHO.

Of course, if we're talking "underrated," there's a huge number of composers who don't even have the name recognition that Schumann does.

Steven

Schumann's music has certainly generated a lot of negative responses in its time. Chopin reportedly said of it, "I don't call that stuff music" while to Busoni he was "The amateur of Zwickau." Arnold Bax thought that the Schumann Piano Concerto typified the worst type of watered-down romanticism. On the other hand, Moisewitsch loved to play his music above all others and Sviatoslav Richter had a great affinity with Schumann's music.
Personally, I can't raise much enthusiasm for the choral works or Genoveva and can understand why they are neglected. The relative neglect of such lovely works as the 'cello concerto and the concert-piece for 4 horns and orchestra is, far more difficult to fathom.

Great thread! I am trying to read up on Schumann because I am working on my first Schumann piece - Of Foreign Lands and People from Kinderscenen. I tried to learn it about two years ago but I crashed and burned. I am doing a second try and this time I am thoroughly enjoying it.

I think a majority, myself included, would place Schumann in the top 10 composers of all time especially in a comparison of piano composers. I think the huge majority(90%+) of those familiar with most of his works and the major works of other composers would place him in the top 20.

I don't see why the term "underrated" would apply to him.

I think that the best way to see Schumann is a composer of great inconsistency. Some works are of the absolute highest quality, while others are of little to no merit.

The "best way"? That's a pretty rough generalization and one that is subjective in the extreme. I would very readily say precisely the same thing about Mozart but I doubt many people here would agree. What works have no merit?