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 IF IMPACT ON LATER GENERATIONS were in itself a measure of a composer's stature, then Schubert's significance for the history of music would be assured on this point alone. Johannes Brahms was only one of many composers who could justifiably claim that his love for Schubert was “a serious one, precisely because it is not a passing fancy.” Commenting on Schubert's symphonies, which Brahms had edited for the Breitkopf und HÄrtel collected edition, DvoŘák noted in a similar vein: “The more I study them, the more I marvel.”1 An abiding source of inspiration for nineteenth‐century composers from Mendelssohn to Bruckner, Schubert's music continued to cast its spell well into the twentieth century. While Schubertian echoes have long been acknowledged in the works of Mahler, Schoenberg, and Berg, they can also be detected in compositions nearer to our own day such as Luciano Berio's Rendering, based on Schubert's sketches for a Symphony in D (D. 936a), Edison Denisov's Lazarus, and John Harbison's November 19, 1828, a piano quartet named after the date of Schubert's death. As Alex Ross reports in a recent New Yorker article, György Ligeti recognized Schubert's late String Quartet in G (D. 887) as “a crucial influence on [his] current style.”

 

I

 

Though impossible to prove with absolute certainty, it could be argued that Schubert made a more immediate, long‐lasting, and profound effect on one composer more than any other: Robert Schumann. The documentary evidence leaves little doubt that although the two obviously never met, Schumann harbored feelings for the older composer the likes of which we usually reserve for our most intimate friends. According to the testimony of Emil Flechsig (Schumann's roommate during his days as a law student in Leipzig), the news of Schubert's death in November 1828 threw Schumann into such a state of agitation that he “sobbed the whole night long.”3 Schumann himself described his year of legal studies in Leipzig (from May 1828 to May 1829) as a time of “revelling in Jean Paul and Schubert.”4 Jean Paul, of course, was the pen name of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, author of a long series of idiosyncratic (and for many modern readers impenetrable) novels that counted among Schumann's favorite specimens of imaginative prose. In a number of his diary entries from the late 1820s, Schumann went so far as to equate his experiences as a reader with his response to his newly found musical idol: “Schubert,” he wrote in August 1828, “expresses Jean Paul, Novalis, and E. T. A. Hoffmann in tones.” Similarly, Schumann informed his piano teacher Friedrich Wieck in a letter of 6 November 1829 that “when I play Schubert, it's as if I were reading a novel composed by Jean Paul.” Another remark from the same letter is even more suggestive: “Apart from Schubert's music, none exists that is so psychologically unusual in the course and connection of its ideas … While others used a diary to set down their momentary feelings, Schubert used a piece of manuscript paper.”

 

In order to form a clear picture of Schubert's meaning for Schumann, we will first need to consider which of Schubert's works he knew and when he came in contact with them. Needless to say, Schumann did not have ready access to the totality of Schubert's output, and indeed, by our standards, his knowledge of it was spotty (The “Unfinished” Symphony, D. 759, which did not see the light of day until 1865, is only one of the mainstays of the Schubert canon that Schumann would not have known.) Yet considering that during the 1820s and 1830s Schubert's music was little circulated outside of Vienna, it is all the more remarkable that Schumann learned as much of it as he did.

 

The musical affinity between the two composers was already acknowledged during Schumann's lifetime. In an 1846 review of his Piano Quartet in E flat (Op. 47), for instance, the critic August Kahlert stated unequivocally: “In my opinion, Schumann is most closely related to Schubert.” Only recently, however, has a systematic study of Schumann's outlook on Schubert and his music appeared: Marie Luise Maintz's Franz Schubert in der Rezeption Robert Schumanns. Rather than recapitulate at length the material presented in this excellent book, I will offer only a brief survey of the high points in Schumann's engagement with Schubert's output. This, in turn, will serve as the background for an examination of Schumann's multifaceted response to Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat, D. 929, a work whose significance for the younger composer warrants closer attention.

 

Schumann's love affair with the music of Schubert began soon after he matriculated at the University of Leipzig in the spring of 1828. Among the first of Schubert's pieces to attract his attention was the celebrated ballad “Erlkönig,” which, according to Flechsig, he played from start to finish time and again. At about this time, Schumann also developed a passion for Schubert's variations and polonaises for piano, four hands. In July 1828, he dubbed the Variations on a Theme from Hérold's Marie (D. 908) a “perfect novel in tones” [“ein vollkomner Tonroman”], noting further a month later that the work was “too sublime and otherworldly for the man of today,” Between August 1828 and January of the following year, Schubert's Polonaises (D. 824 and 599)—“thunderstorms with romantic rainbows spreading over the solemnly slumbering world”—figured prominently in Schumann's convivial music making with his friends and his sister‐in‐law Therese. These sessions must have fueled Schumann's creative impulses, for in the late summer of 1828 we find him working on his own set of polonaises for piano, four hands (VIII Polonaises, WoO 20). Although the collection was never published, Schumann salvaged some material from the fourth and seventh polonaises in Nos. 11 and 5, respectively, of his Papillons, Op. 2. Furthermore, the VIII Polonaises clearly attest to Schumann's early attempts to emulate Schubert's style. The easygoing, unbuttoned character of Schumann's writing for piano, the emphasis on the Neapolitan and other flat‐side harmonies, the frequent modulations by third—all of these features recall comparable traits in Schubert's music.

 

During the same period, Schumann also became acquainted with some of Schubert's more ambitious compositions. In a diary entry of 13 August 1828, he wrote that in the “Wanderer” Fantasy (D. 760) Schubert “tried to summon up an entire orchestra with only two hands; the inspired opening is a seraphic hymn of praise to the godhead.” Reflecting further on the same piece, Schumann penned an “Evening Fantasy in X Major” in which he described the “free fantasy” as the medium for the most elevated musical thoughts, for it combines “the strict law of the measure with alternately lyrical and free metric groupings.” Between late November 1828 and March 1829, Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat became an intense object of study, and, as we shall see, it elicited a more far‐reaching creative reaction from Schumann than any of Schubert's other works up to that point. Another of Schubert's major chamber works occupied Schumann later in 1829, the C‐major String Quintet (D. 956), which he asked Wieck to send him in November of that year.

 

Schubert's so‐called Sehnsuchtswalzer, or “Yearning Waltz” (which is actually comprised of two pieces, the Waltz in A flat, D. 365, and the Deutscher, D. 972), provided the theme for a set of variations composed by Schumann in 1833. (As early as 4 March 1829, he contemplated writing a Fantasie on the Sehnsuchtswalzer.)16 Like the VIII Polonaises, the variations remained unpublished,  and here, too, Schumann drew on some of the music in a later compositional effort: the lengthy introductory section of the variation set became the Préambule to Carnaval, Op. 9, completed early in 1835.

 

Schumann's designation of the year 1834 as the most important of his life was motivated in part by his founding—along with Wieck, Ludwig Schunke, and Julius Knorr—of the Neue Leipziger Zeitschrift für Musik (soon renamed the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik), the critical mouthpiece for an all‐out crusade against philistinism in the contemporary musical scene. Schubert's music, a prime representative of the poetic spirit advocated by Schumann and his halfimaginary cohorts, the Davidsbündler, was a favored object of critical attention, particularly between 1835 and 1840. During those years, Schumann published substantial critiques of a number of Schubert's later compositions, focusing on keyboard works such as the Impromptus (D. 935) and 16 Deutsche und 2 Ecossaisen (D. 783); the Sonatas in A minor (D. 845), D (D. 850), G (D. 894), C minor (D. 958), A (D. 959), and B flat (D. 960); and the Sonata in C (“Grand Duo”) for Piano, Four Hands (D. 812). Among Schubert's chamber works, Schumann bestowed special praise—in either brief reviews or passing references—on the String Quartet in D minor (Der Tod und das MÄdchen, D. 810), the Piano Trio in B flat (D. 898), and, most especially, the Piano Trio in E flat. In a concise but laudatory account of a series of works for choral forces and piano (Gebet, D. 815; Nachthelle, D. 892; StÄndchen, D. 920; Mirjams Siegesgesang, D. 942), Schumann expressed his fervent hopes for the rapid appearance of Schubert's masses and operas in print, adding that “Vienna possesses no greater musical treasures than these.” Finally, Schubert's “Great” C‐major Symphony (D. 944) was the subject of one of Schumann's most significant essays.

 

Conspicuously absent from this list are Schubert's lieder, a portion of his output toward which Schumann harbored an attitude that most contemporary observers will find rather odd. Having at first reacted positively to his earliest steady exposure to this repertory (at musical soirées held at the home of Dr. Ernst August Carus and his wife, Agnes, in the winter of 1828 in Leipzig), Schumann subsequently adopted a cooler stance toward Schubert's songs. In sketching the history of the German lied in an 1843 review of songs by Robert Franz and others, he downplayed Schubert's role in the development of the genre, tracing its recent flowering to three other sources: Bach, Beethoven (whose influence, according to Schumann, can be felt in Schubert's songs), and the new school of lyric poetry exemplified by writers such as Rückert, Eichendorff, Uhland, and Heine. Furthermore, Schumann was rather critical of two aspects of Schubert's approach to song composition: his supposed lack of discrimination in the choice of poetry (“Telemann, who demanded that a respectable composer should be able to set a billboard to music, would have found his man in Schubert”), a factor that, in Schumann's opinion, could take its toll on the musical setting; and Schubert's  fondness for persistent accompanimental figures, which, as Schumann wrote, “threatened the delicate life of the poem.”

 

Schumann's outlook was considerably more prescient when it came to Schubert's instrumental music. While attempting to gain a foothold in Vienna late in 1838 and early in 1839, Schumann paid several visits to Ferdinand Schubert, who introduced him to much of his brother Franz's unpublished music, including operas, four Masses, and four or five symphonies. Of all these pieces, the one that impressed Schumann most was the C‐major Symphony. Almost surely composed in 1825, though subjected to revision over the course of the next year or two, the symphony had not yet been performed when Schumann came upon it. He quickly rectified this situation, arranging for a public premiere with the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra under Mendelssohn's direction on 21 March 1839, and also for publication of the score by the venerable firm of Breitkopf und HÄrtel. While the Gewandhaus orchestra was preparing for another rendition of the work later in 1839, Schumann wrote breathlessly to his colleague Ernst Becker: “At today's rehearsal I heard part of Schubert's [C‐major] Symphony—all the ideals of my life unfolded in this piece, which is the greatest achievement in instrumental music after Beethoven, not even Spohr and Mendelssohn excepted. … It has stimulated me to take up symphonic composition soon again, and when I am peacefully united with Clara, I think that something will come of my plan.” On the same day he sent an equally enthusiastic report to Clara herself, extolling the symphony's ingenious instrumentation and—to quote one of his more celebrated epithets—its “heavenly length.”

 

Schumann reiterated both of these points in his most extended pronouncement on Schubert's symphony, an essay published in the 10 March 1840 issue of the Neue Zeitschrifi. (In a highly symbolic gesture, he drafted the essay with a pen he had found on Beethoven's grave during his stay in Vienna.) Here it might be instructive to restore Schumann's famous sound bite on the symphony's sprawling dimensions to its context: “Consider also the heavenly length of the symphony, like a thick novel in four volumes by Jean Paul, who was also incapable of coming to an end, and to be sure for the best of reasons: to allow the reader, at a later point, to re‐create it for himself.” Much as in his diary entries of the late 1820s, Schumann thus drew a parallel between the narrative strategies of a favored author and a revered composer. In addressing Schubert's deft handling of his orchestral forces, Schumann marveled at his ability to make it seem as though the instruments “converse like human voices and chorus.” Yet for Schumann the chief token of the work's enduring value lay elsewhere—in “its relationship of complete independence from Beethoven's symphonies.”

 

On the last point, Schumann no doubt overstated his case. As several writers have observed, Schubert's C‐major Symphony proceeds along a path already cleared in Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, particularly as regards the shape and pacing of its first and second movements. Yet almost immediately after asserting the absolute distinction between Schubert's and Beethoven's symphonic styles, Schumann qualified his stance: “Conscious of his more modest powers, Schubert refrains from imitating the grotesque forms and audacious relationships that we encounter in Beethoven's later works.” Given the context (a discussion of the early nineteenth‐century symphony) Schumann must have been thinking of one of Beethoven's “later works” more than any other: the Ninth Symphony In other words, he was most deeply impressed by Schubert's creation of a monumental idiom that derived its sustenance from sources quite different from those that animated the last of Beethoven's symphonic works. Or, to put it in more general terms, Schubert had demonstrated to Schumann that it was still possible to make an original contribution to a genre whose potential had been seemingly exhausted by Beethoven. While Schubert's treatment of the orchestra may have been comparable in some ways to Beethoven's, the instrumental colors of the C‐major Symphony (Schumann spoke of its “brilliance and novelty”) bore Schubert's distinctive imprint. Also like Beethoven, Schubert stretched the temporal scale of the symphonic form to its outer limits—extending it both in “length and breadth”—but his means toward that end were quite different from Beethoven's. Imbued with “heavenly length,” Schubert's symphonic forms opened a window onto infinity.

 

Not surprisingly then, Schumann's own tendencies as a symphonist reveal a deep debt to Schubert's example. Echoes of Schubert's C‐major Symphony are perhaps most clearly audible in Schumann's Symphony No. 1 in B flat, Op. 38—the first product of his so‐called symphonic year, 1841—and Symphony No. 2 in C, Op. 61, both of which are dominated by brass mottos whose lineage can be traced to the opening horn melody of Schubert's symphony.31 The kinship between Schubert's C‐major Symphony and Schumann's symphony in the same key is especially pronounced, and understandably so: Schumann set to work on his symphony just days after attending a December 1845 peformance of Schubert's symphony in Dresden. Surely the martial, triplet‐driven fanfares of Schubert's first movement were ringing in his ears when he conceived the buoyant reprise of his own C‐major Symphony's opening movement.

 

At the same time, Schumann's symphonies in B♭ and C are not his only works in the larger forms that demonstrate a deep awareness of Schubert's alternative to Beethovenian paradigms, nor was Schubert's C‐major Symphony the only source for Schumann's understanding of that alternative. Over a decade before his rediscovery of Schubert's symphony, Schumann became intensely attached to a composition in which the Schubertian world of fresh instrumental colors and heavenly lengths would have been fully revealed to him—which brings us to the Piano Trio in E flat.

 

 

Given Schumann's fondness for Schubert's dances, it is easy to see why he was so profoundly affected by the Piano Trio in E flat. Its technical and musical challenges notwithstanding, the trio is thoroughly informed by the spirit of the dance, from the infectious rhythms of the triple‐time first movement to the lilting 6/8 tunes of the finale. Only the slow movement, whose attraction for Schumann lay in a wholly other domain, offers momentary contrast to the often‐boisterous strains of the other movements. In a word, Schumann discovered in Schubert's trio an idealized embodiment of the dance, a musical type to which he responded with visceral immediacy throughout his creative life.

 

Schumann expressed his high regard for Schubert's trio in no uncertain terms in a June 1838 review of the late piano sonatas in C minor, A, and B♭; as fine as these compositions were, Schumann was unable to put them in the same class as the trio, which he “always considered… to be Schubert's last as well as his most independent and individual work.” Similarly, while commenting on Mendelssohn's Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 49, in a review of December 1840, Schumann dubbed his friend's work “the master trio of the present, just as Beethoven's trios in B flat [Op. 97] and D [Op. 70, no. 1] and Franz Schubert's in E flat were the master trios of theirs.” Schumann's most revealing remarks on Schubert's trio can be found in a brief review published in a December 1836 issue of the Neue Zeitschrift. “About a decade ago,” he wrote, “Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat swept through the musical world like an angry portent from the skies.” Conjecturing that the Piano Trio in B flat was written a short time before its companion piece,35 he argued further that the two works bore little resemblance to each other:

 

    Inwardly they differ in essential ways. The first movement of the E‐flat work is a product of deep anger and boundless longing, while that of the B‐flat trio is graceful, intimate, and virginal. The slow movement, which in the former is a sigh intensified to the point of an anguished cry of the heart, appears in the latter as a blissful dream, an ebbing and flowing of beautiful human feeling. The Scherzos are similar, though I prefer the one in the second trio [in Eb]. As for the finales, I cannot decide. In a word, the second trio is more active, masculine, and dramatic, while in contrast, the other one is passive, feminine, and lyrical.

 

As in his review of the C‐major Symphony, Schumann seems to have been indulging in a bit of wishful thinking. For some critics, the similarities between the trios (especially evident in a number of melodic figures shared by their opening movements)37 are just as compelling as their differences. Moreover, the binary oppositions through which Schumann defined the essential character of the two works—active/passive, masculine/feminine, dramatic/ (p.20) lyrical—are at once overly schematic and, in several crucial instances, downright contrary to aural experience. The exuberant principal theme of the B♭ Trio's first movement is just as “active” (or “masculine”) as its counterpart in the Trio in E flat; conversely, the latter is just as rich in lyrical effusions as its supposedly “passive” (or “feminine”) cousin. Yet despite Schumann's exaggeration of the affective disparities between the trios—to say nothing of the purple prose and gendered rhetoric—his remarks are highly significant: first, because they offer a clue to his idiosyncratic understanding of the piece; and second, because that understanding would resonate with his own compositional efforts. In order to measure the trio's effect on Schumann's creativity, we will have to return to his initial encounter with the work.

 

Schumann first heard Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat on 30 November 1828 at a musical soirée at Wieck's home, where it was rendered by Adolph Wendler, an attorney and amateur pianist; Christian Müller, a violinist; and Johann Grabau, a cellist in the Gewandhaus orchestra. Schumann was also present when the trio was performed by the same players at a similar gathering held four days later. In typical fashion, he entrusted his reactions to his diary, writing on 30 November: “enraptured by [Schubert's] trio”; and on 4 December: “home at 3am—excited night with Schubert's immortal trio ringing in my ears—frightful dreams.”38 One of the guests at both events was Heinrich Probst, whose publishing firm had issued the trio a little over a month before. Also present was Gottfried Wilhelm Fink, editor of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung and at the time one of the principal music critics in the German‐speaking world. Reading Fink's review of the trio—one of a handful of serious accounts of Schubert's instrumental pieces to appear in print in the late 1820s—is tantamount to eavesdropping on the discussions prompted by the readings of the work for the inner circle of Leipzig's musical elite. What impressed Fink most was the trio's affective ambivalence, its ineffable blend of good humor and melancholy Consider his remarks on the recurrence of the main theme of the slow movement in the finale: “In a wondrously moving way, the plaintive Romanze of the second movement often enters into the impetuous play of pain and joy [in the fourth movement]. From time to time we perceive voices of recollection, although these reminiscences are drowned out by the turbulence of the present moment which, veiled in mist, spreads over the otherwise amiable morning of the future.”39 In a word, he viewed the trio as a masterpiece of psychological portraiture, an interpretation with which Schumann—given his sensitivity to the psychologically unusual relationships in Schubert's music—would have wholeheartedly concurred. And chances are, Schumann was also taken by the relationship between the trio's slow movement and finale, in ways that will soon become apparent.

 

In the weeks and months after these initial encounters, references to Schubert's trio appear frequently in Schumann's diaries. Moreover, the period encompassed (p.21) by these references—late November 1828 through mid‐March 1829—coincides almost exactly with Schumann's participation in a group he had organized for the express purpose of studying the literature for piano trio and piano quartet. Comprised of three amateur string players (Johann Friedrich TÄglichsbeck, violin; Christoph Soergel, viola; Christian Glock, cello), with Schumann himself at the keyboard, the ensemble focused on the chamber music for piano and strings of Mozart, Beethoven, Ferdinand Ries, J. L. Dussek, Prince Louis Ferdinand, and Georges Onslow. But the mainstay of the group's repertory was Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat, which figured in its sessions of 7 December 1828 and 19 January, 31 January, and 13 March 1829.40 Schumann's diary entry for 13 March provides a wonderful sense of the flavor of these gatherings: “Evening: 14th quartet session. [We played] Beethoven's “Archduke” Trio [Op. 97] ([a] bizarre [piece]), Dussek's Quartet in E flat (Op. 57), Quartet Op. V (went well), [drank] much Bavarian beer— longwinded conversation about the students' and peasants' associations— good cheer—late in the evening, the first movement of Schubert's Piano Trio [in E flat]—very noble music—gallopade—beautiful sleep.”41

 

The “Quartet Op. V” to which Schumann referred was a compositional project of his own: a piano quartet in C minor that occupied him during the four‐month life span of his chamber group. Having begun sketching it in late November 1828, Schumann completed a draft of the composition on the morning of 21 March 1829, and that evening the entire four‐movement piece (Allegro molto affettuoso, Minuetto. Presto, Andante, and Allegro giusto. Presto) garnered praise from his colleagues.42 On 25 March he checked through the score “note for note … behind closed doors,” no doubt in preparation for another run‐through at the final meeting of his group on 28 March 1829. Schumann's diary conveys no further reports on the piece until 7 January 1830, when we read: “The quartet will be cobbled into a symphony.”43

 

Although this plan was never realized, and while Schumann opted not to see the quartet version through to publication, he nonetheless retained fond memories of his youthful effort. In a diary entry written sometime between 1846 and 1850, he accorded it a special place in his compositional development: “I remember very well a passage in one of my pieces ([composed in] 1828), about which I said to myself: this is Romantic; a spirit different from that of my earlier music came into view and a new poetic life revealed itself for the first time (the passage in question was the Trio of a Scherzo [sic] from a Piano Quartet [in C minor]).”44 A wistful E‐minor dance tune notable for its lilting dactylic rhythms, the theme of the Trio is presented first by the violin, while the quietly pulsing chords in the piano part produce delicious appoggiature between D♯ and E in the third and seventh bars. (See Ex. 1-1a.) The second half of the Trio opens with a variant of the tune in the cello, evocatively accompanied by pizzicati in the violin and viola and appoggiatura‐laden harmonies in the piano. (See Ex. 1-1b.) Although there are unmistakable melodic (p.22)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-1a: Schumann, Piano Quartet in C minor, second movement, Minuetto. Presto, Trio section, mm. 1–8

similarities between the Trio theme and the opening gesture of Beethoven's Piano Trio in C minor (Op. 1, no. 3),45 it is tempting to speculate that the “new poetic life” to which Schumann alluded in his diary came to him principally by way of Schubert. As we will soon observe, this hypothesis is supported by (among other factors) the fate of the Trio theme in the finale of Schumann's quartet.

 

An impressive achievement for someone with essentially no formal training in composition, Schumann's C‐minor Piano Quartet is particularly significant for our purposes as a document of the aspiring artist's reception of Schubert. Schumann's very first reference to the quartet, in a diary entry of 31 November 1828, makes an implicit connection between the work's genesis (p.23)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-1b: Schumann, Piano Quartet in C minor, second movement, Trio, mm. 17–24

and Schubert's death: “My quartet—Schubert is dead—dismay.”46 As indicated in entries of 31 January and 13 March 1829, Schumann and his friends often rehearsed portions of his quartet and Schubert's E flat‐Major Piano Trio on the same evening.47 Furthermore, the musical parallels between the works are too striking, and too numerous, to be purely coincidental. To cite an obvious instance: the glittering passagework for piano in the first movement and finale of Schubert's trio is echoed at many points in the corresponding movements of Schumann's quartet. Likewise, the “listener‐friendly” canon48 that frames Schubert's Scherzo may have inspired the playful imitative textures of Schumann's Minuetto. For the most part, Schumann's forays into canonic writing are limited to brief passages that involve the rapid‐fire (p.24) exchange of scalar fragments, but in one case the interplay develops into a bona fide canon of nearly a dozen bars between violin and piano, the other instruments engaging in free imitation.

 

Two other aspects of Schubert's musical language—both of them much in evidence in the Piano Trio in E flat—seem to have made a particularly strong impression on Schumann at this point in his compositional career: its inimitable harmonic colors and its rhythmic verve. Elaborating on a metaphor first suggested by Tovey Richard Cohn has recently shown that Schubert's tonal world can be compared to a “star cluster” or constellation, a “decentered network” whose sense derives less from the relationship of triadic harmonies to a governing tonic than from the voice‐leading relationships among the harmonies themselves.49 As a prime example of Schubert's “cyclic” approach to tonality, Cohn cites the coda of the first movement of the Piano Trio in E flat (see Ex. 1-2 for the opening phase of this section), a passage that features modal mixture (E♭ major versus E♭ minor in mm. 585–88), augmentedsixth chords used as passing sonorities (m. 590), enharmonic reinterpretation (C♭/B in mm. 605–6), and modulation by third (E♭-C♭/B‐G‐E♭).50

 

All of these manifestations of Schubert's decentered tonal universe—and several others besides—surface with great regularity in Schumann's C‐minor Piano Quartet. The closing paragraph of the finale's exposition, for instance, offers a veritable lexicon of Schubertian tonal practices. Within the space of ten bars, Schumann moves through a colorful series of diminished‐seventh, Neapolitan, and augmented‐sixth sonorities, effecting the transitions between them, much like Schubert, through both semitonal voice leading and enharmonic sleight of hand. While the tonal pillars of the coda are comprised of harmonies with roots a minor third apart (A minor/C minor), this pairing of third‐related keys is in turn embedded in a larger progression characterized by modal mixture: C major (from the midpoint of the second group) versus C minor (the tonal goal of the exposition). Thus, on both the local and global levels, Schumann evokes the tonal properties associated with the “star clusters” of his model, though without lapsing into merely slavish imitation. Indeed, it could be argued that the overall tonal physiognomy of Schumann's quartet represents a mirror image of its counterpart in Schumann's trio. Whereas Schubert's is an E♭-major work in which C minor plays an important role (as the key of the slow movement and of the second main thematic idea from the finale), Schumann's quartet reverses the relative weight of these keys, offering C minor as tonic and E♭ as subsidiary tonality (in the exposition of the first movement and the recapitulation of the finale).

 

The quality of harmonic flux in Schumann's finale is heightened by the quick tempo (Allegro giusto. Presto) and even more by the almost obsessive repetition of a single rhythmic cell: SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929. Here, too, Schumann took his cue from Schubert. The Piano Trio in E flat, like many of Schubert's later sonatastyle works, makes extensive use of a kind of “isorhythmic” variation technique (p.25)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-2: Schubert, Piano Trio in E flat (D. 929), Allegro, mm. 585–605

whereby a compact rhythmic cell is combined with an ever‐changing array of melodic shapes over the course of a protracted temporal span. The second main thematic idea of the opening movement, for instance, is pervaded by melodically varied repetitions of a simple rhythmic pattern: a quarter note followed by four eighths. Likewise, the marchlike accompaniment to the slow movement's main theme (SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929) gradually assumes the character of a persistent (p.26)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-2. continued

ostinato. In the Trio of the Scherzo, Schubert uses the quarter‐pluseighths pattern from the first movement as a foil to a suave melody in the cello. Finally, each of the last movement's principal thematic groups is linked with a discrete rhythmic gesture: three upbeat eighths plus a quarter for the first group, steadily repeated eighths for the second (where Schubert evokes the cimbalon of the gypsy band), and metrically displaced duple groupings (SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929) during the course of the closing section. While this procedure obviously owes something to Beethoven, Schubert made it his own through the sheer obstinacy of his rhythmic repetitions and his frequent coupling of the latter with kaleidoscopic shifts in harmonic color.

 

If anything, Schumann was even more persistent than Schubert in his employment of the “isorhythmic” strategy in the finale of his C‐minor Piano Quartet. The propulsive dactylic rhythm cited earlier runs through a high percentage of the movement's 582 bars, energizing the accompaniment and, in some cases, informing the thematic substance as well. The most striking realization of the latter possibility comes at the climax of the movement, (p.27) where the wistful E‐minor theme from the Trio of the Minuetto serves as the point of departure for the jubilant Più presto that brings the work to a close in C major. (See Ex. 1-3.)

 

This gesture of transformed recall also resonates with Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat. As we have seen, in his review of the trio G. W. Fink called special attention to the intrusion of the slow movement's main theme into the boisterous world of the finale. Like a voice from afar, it recurs at two points in the last movement, first in the development section and next in the coda,

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-3: Schumann, Piano Quartet in C minor, Allegro giusto. Presto, mm. 546–53

(p.28) thereby imparting a distinctly epic quality to the work as a whole.51 In a sense, an epic or, more specifically, balladic quality is built into the theme itself (see Ex. 1-4), a derivative of the Swedish folk song “Se solen sjunker” (“The sun has set”) in an arrangement by the Swedish tenor Isaak Albert Berg. As we now know, Schubert almost surely heard the song in late November 1827 at the home of his friends the Fröhlichs, who hosted a gathering at which Berg was also a guest.52 In addition to the “walking” eighth‐note accompaniment of the original song, Schubert appropriated a number of melodic elements from his source, reordering them to suit his own ends. As they appear in Schubert's version of the tune, these elements include: the ornamental slide into the second bar, the leap down a fifth near the beginning of the third phrase, the falling octaves between the third and fourth phrases, and the expressive contour of the final phrase.53 Tinged with a faintly modal character that wavers between C‐Aeolian and G‐Dorian, this nostalgic tune strikes us as a musical emblem for distance in time—and hence a perfect vehicle for recall.54 In crafting the two extended passages where this material returns in the final movement, Schubert deftly integrated the folk tune with its new context, assimilating it gracefully to the prevalent 6/8 meter and surrounding it with the paired eighths that had already served as an accompanimental pattern earlier in the movement.

 

In Fink's description, these “voices of recollection” are “drowned out by the turbulence of the present moment.”55 Yet one might just as easily argue that the voices are transformed into an utterance of the turbulent present. When the melody from the slow movement recurs in the finale's development section, it appears in B minor, thus retaining its nostalgic character despite the transposition down a half step from its original pitch level. This scenario is drastically altered in the coda. Schubert begins by moving directly from the first phrase of the tune to the third, both of which are presented in a languid, E♭-ninor context. Having dispensed with the parenthetical octave leaps that follow in the initial version, he then takes the melody in an unsuspected direction, shifting from minor to major for the tune's fourth and final phrase and reinforcing the gesture of triumph by means of dynamics (forte and fortissimo) and instrumental color (violin and cello in octaves). The coda's overall affective progress from melancholy reflection to unbridled joy may well have had programmatic implications for Schubert. The text of the original folk song circles around the quintessentially Romantic themes of loss (of both time and hope) and separation (from a distant beloved):

 

        See the sun is going down behind the peak of the high mountain,

        Before night's shadows you flee, O beautiful hope.

        Farewell, farewell, ah, the friend forgot about

        His true dear bride.

        La, la, la, la.56

 

(p.29)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-4: Piano Trio in E flat, Andante con moto, mm. 1–21

 

(p.30)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-4. continued

 

Schubert's jubilant coda rescues the dejected speaker from his temporal and emotional dilemma. In the final stages of the Piano Trio in E flat, lost time and hope are recaptured as the distant beloved becomes a vivid presence.

 

Although there is little chance that Schumann would have been aware of the specific poetic background for Schubert's trio, he clearly grasped its affective meaning through the rhetorical power of the music alone. This is evident in part from his description of the slow movement, in his 1836 review of both piano trios, as “a sigh intensified to the point of an anguished cry of the heart.”57 The “sigh” is no doubt a metaphor for the plangent main theme itself, which Schubert intensifies into an “anguished cry of the heart” in a series of passionate developments based on motivic elements from the theme itself, especially in the latter half of the movement. In these passages, he unleashes the latent heroic power of the folk‐derived tune, though as Schumann must have realized, Schubert's efforts to dispell the anguish embodied in the developmental interludes collapse into resignation and defeat: the slow movement ends with eerie, disembodied allusions to its opening melody. At this point the narrative is thus left in a state of suspended animation, its definitive move toward triumph withheld until the concluding paragraphs of the finale. When Schumann described the essential character of the trio as “active” and “masculine,” it was in all likelihood this fundamental plotline that he had in mind.

 

Viewed against this background, the C‐minor Piano Quartet represents an early attempt on Schumann's part to replicate a narrative pattern that had been deeply impressed upon him by his experience of Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat. To be sure, the motion from despair to struggle to ultimate triumph is an affective paradigm that we tend to associate first and foremost with the middle‐period works of Beethoven, and justifiably so. What is most striking about Schumann's approach, then, is that he chose to realize this paradigm in ways that are clearly redolent of Schubert, through the transformation of a melancholy conceit—the wistful Trio theme of his youthful piano quartet— (p.31) into an emblem of joyous reconciliation—the jubilant variant of the theme in the coda of the quartet's finale.

 

Schumann paved the way for the decisive gesture of triumph in his Piano Quartet both overtly and covertly. Already in the third movement, Andante, we hear an evocative allusion to the Trio theme just before the recapitulation; fluctuating between G minor and G major, this passage was intended for horn in the projected symphonic version—a highly appropriate choice, for the tone of that instrument, more than any other, offered the Romantic imagination a potent symbol of distances near and far. The finale in turn brings fleeting references to ideas from each of the preceding movements—a fragment from the first movement's second theme, an allusion to the opening idea of the Andante, and, in the retransition to the reprise, a hint of the Trio theme itself—all of them swept up in the ostinato rhythm that propels the music inexorably forward. At the same time, Schumann prepares for the climactic restatement of the Trio theme in more subtle ways as well. As can be easily seen by comparing Examples 1-1a and 1-3, the rhythmic pattern of the original version of the theme is subjected to an exact diminution (by two– thirds) at the high point of the finale. The diminuted pattern, in turn, has already been the topic of considerable discussion in the finale's development section. Divorced from its initial melodic content, it is filled with ever‐new shapes, thus providing a subliminal preview of the main attraction: the C- major transfiguration of the theme that signals the denouement of the musical narrative. Schumann's covert strategy for motivating the final gesture of the quartet speaks eloquently to his creative engagement with his model. While obviously dependent on Schubert's “isorhythmic” technique, so far as I know, Schumann's use of the procedure in this case is without a specific precedent in the older composer's works.

IV

 

If Schumann ultimately decided not to put the finishing touches on his Cminor Piano Quartet and send it off for publication, it is not difficult to understand why Despite many impressive passages, it is a deeply flawed work, requiring not just minor adjustments but also major surgery to make it fit for public consumption. Only in the second movement, Minuetto, does Schumann seem to have convincingly channeled the flow of his musical ideas. In contrast, the Andante suffers from the overly zealous repetition of oftenuninspired figuration, while the development sections of both the opening movement and finale strike this listener as rather diffuse, rambling on without a clear sense of direction. At least in the outer movements, the problem lies mainly with the young composer's idiosyncratic approach to tonal planning. As if in intentional defiance of the traditional modus operandi, Schumann (p.32) continually circles back to the tonic in both developments, thereby undercutting the articulative force of the definitive return to tonic harmony at the point of recapitulation. In short, he appears to have been striving for heavenly length (even if he hadn't yet formulated this expression) without quite knowing how to achieve it. This might be an appropriate place, then, to consider how Schubert did. The Piano Trio in E flat—a primer of techniques intended to generate heavenly length—will serve as our primary point of reference.

 

On the whole, Schubert broadened the temporal frame of his musical arguments in two ways: through expansion from within and through incremental addition.58 Of course, the two processes are closely related: sequence, a favored means of prolonging the motion from one point to another and thus of amplifying the music's dimensions from within, is obviously an additive device as well. In the Piano Trio in E flat, as in any number of Schubert's mature works, sequence is frequently coupled with excursions into flat‐side tonal regions to produce what Tovey called purple patches. One such moment occurs during the first group of the opening movement, where Schubert lingers on the flat mediant (G♭) while en route to a half‐cadence on the dominant. When this strategy is projected over even larger temporal spans, the result is often one of Schubert's so‐called three‐key expositions. (The label is hardly accurate, but for better or worse, it seems to have stuck.) In the exposition of the trio's first movement, for instance, Schubert enriches the longrange motion from tonic to dominant with a series of sequentially elaborated phrases whose harmonic starting point is the flat‐submediant minor (enharmonically respelled as B minor). Outright digressions constitute another variety of expansion from within. Wedged between the reprise of the main and subsidiary ideas in the slow movement is an extended developmental interlude (mm. 103–27) that one might conceivably excise without many listeners being the wiser. To do so, however, would be ill advised, for it is precisely here that Schubert realizes the explosive potential of his main theme. In retrospect, the digression turns out to be the affective center of the movement.

 

The foundation for Schubert's techniques of incremental addition is the variation principle. Bound by no fixed law of continuation, a chain of variations is capable of infinite expansion and thus a favored agency of heavenly length. While the theme‐and‐variations form is common enough in the slow movements of multimovement cycles, Schubert often transferred this approach to sites within the cyclic structure where we would least expect it, namely, to the main sections of the sonata‐allegro design. Traditionally conceived as a medium for dynamic, goal‐directed arguments, the sonata form in Schubert's hands becomes a vehicle for leisurely unfolding.59 Perhaps the most striking instance of this practice (or the most “notorious,” depending on one's point of view) comes in the development of the trio's opening movement,60 which Schubert casts as a series of three nearly analogous paragraphs, the second and third presenting the music of the first transposed and (p.33) rescored.61 Given the essentially lyrical, ruminative quality of the thematic material (a lovingly spun‐out derivative of one of the closing ideas from the exposition), these paragraphs might well be construed as the successive strophes of a song without words. At times Schubert uses this sort of melodic parallelism to give shape to a movement as a whole. The massive 748-measure finale of the trio exhibits this tendency on the largest scale, the movement's recapitulation and coda running largely parallel with its exposition and development, respectively.62 With both procedures—the strophic variations of the first movement's development section and the “parallel” form of the finale— Schubert demonstrated how the stock‐in‐trade of the born song composer could be transformed into guarantors of heavenly length in the instrumental genres.

 

Schumann's understanding of these strategies deepened considerably as he acquired a broader knowledge of Schubert's output during the course of the 1830s. Imitation gave way to emulation as Schumann discovered increasingly sophisticated means of bending Schubertian techniques to his own expressive purposes. Not surprisingly, Schumann's piano works of this period reflect a close study of Schubert's mature contributions to the various genres of keyboard music. (In the following chapter, we will see how one of Schubert's later works in particular—the first of the four Impromptus, D. 935— resonated with Schumann's own interest in music's capacity to evoke different temporal states.) Similarly, Schumann's achievements as a symphonist are unthinkable without the revelation that accompanied his rediscovery of Schubert's C‐major Symphony. Of course, two of the features Schumann so admired in that work—its boundless rhythmic energy and its luxuriant expansiveness—would have been familiar to him from his earlier encounter with the Piano Trio in E flat. From this perspective, Schubert's symphony was not quite so revelatory as Schumann claimed, its specific contribution to his creative development consisting in a heightened awareness of how the motivators of heavenly length might function in a symphonic context.63

 

The Piano Trio in E flat continued to serve Schumann as a touchstone of creativity well after he had attained full artistic maturity. Indeed, the love affair that began in November 1828 during an evening of convivial music making culminated with the drafting of the Piano Quintet in E flat (Op. 44) and its slightly later counterpart, the Piano Quartet in E flat (Op. 47), between September and November of 1842, at the height of a year devoted principally to the composition of chamber music. Although it would be naive to suggest that Schubert's trio was the only model for these works—or even that Schumann required a specific model at this stage of his career—the Schubertian echoes in Schumann's Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet are too numerous to be ascribed to mere coincidence. Apart from obvious similarities in key (E♭) and medium (strings and piano), these products of Schumann's chamber music year also share a number of topical and textural features with Schubert's (p.34) trio. Take, for example, the main theme of the C‐minor slow movement, In Modo d'una Marcia, of Schumann's Piano Quintet. Directed to play molto p ma marcato, the violin presents a somber tune that evokes the opening idea of Schubert's slow movement—a plangent cello solo accompanied by the marchlike tread of the piano—in both key and character. Likewise, the canonic textures that figure prominently in the Scherzo movements of Schumann's Piano Quintet (Trio I) and Piano Quartet (reprise of the Scherzo's opening section, and Trio I) may call to mind the “listener‐friendly” canon of the Scherzo from Schubert's trio.64 Finally, Schumann's quintet and quartet embrace the entire spectrum of techniques that Schubert regularly employed to produce the heavenly length of his largest designs. The greater part of the development section from the first movement of Schumann's Piano Quintet, for instance, is occupied by a pair of ruminative strophic variations, the second a step lower than the first. A Schubertian three‐key exposition provides the tonal framework for the finale of Schumann's Piano Quartet. Moreover, the finales of the quintet and quartet are cast in “parallel” forms (with ample codas) that culminate in the climactic return of an important idea from an earlier stage in the four‐movement cycle. In light of these points of contact, we can only conclude that August Kahlert—whose review of the Piano Quartet was quoted earlier in this chapter—was absolutely justified in identifying Schubert as Schumann's closest musical relative.65

 

At the same time, there is not a single passage from either the Piano Quintet or Piano Quartet that could be mistaken for Schubert. The often dense, almost orchestrally conceived textures of Schumann's quintet stand in marked contrast to the generally more transparent sound world of Schubert's chamber music for piano and strings. Equally remote from Schubert is the rather abstracted, neoclassical pose that Schumann adopted with some regularity in his Piano Quartet (especially in the opening movement). Likewise, the climactic recall of the opening music at the conclusion of Schumann's Piano Quintet (see Ex. 1-5) is only obliquely related to Schubert's method of bringing down the curtain on his Piano Trio in E flat. The steady buildup of tension toward dominant harmony, the dramatic pause on the dominant itself, the ensuing double fugato on the principal ideas of the first movement and finale, the exhilarating drive to the final cadence—none of this bears direct comparison with the closing pages of Schubert's trio. The rhetorical force of Schumann's coda suggests Beethoven, but even here the fit is not quite right. Beethoven's final movements often drive toward a moment of apotheosis, and, with increasing frequency in the later works, his finales may also include reminiscences of music from earlier movements; but rarely, if at all, does Beethoven bring these two strategies together.66 In other words, the coda of Schumann's quintet finale at once represents a synthesis of Schubertian and Beethovenian strategies and an individualized solution to the problem of crafting an effective denouement for a multimovement composition.

 

(p.35)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-5: Schumann, Piano Quintet (Op. 44), Allegro ma non troppo, mm. 316–30

 

(p.36)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-5. continued

 

Schumann's tendency to synthesize apparently incompatible models and to imbue the result with a quirkiness all his own is even more strongly pronounced in the less well known Piano Quartet in E flat. For this reason, it will be instructive to examine this work more closely. Our focus will be Schumann's means of ensuring closure on the large scale, a process already set in motion in the coda of the third movement. The final fourteen measures of this Andante cantabile surely count among the most evocative passages in all of Schumann's chamber music. (See Ex. 1-6.) Devoid of any ostensible connection with the sentimental lyricism of the movement's principal themes, the coda conjures up a psychological state in which time and space seem to have been abrogated. The quality of temporal suspension emanates from the combined effects of several features, which include the hushed, pianissimo dynamic level, the tied notes in the upper strings, and the cello's tonic pedal on B♭ (Schumann underscores the latter by asking the cellist to tune the C string down a step). Hovering over the pedal is a mysteriously ascending line spun out of sequential elaborations of a three‐note cell. Comprised of a falling fifth and a rising sixth, the cell is caught up in a process whereby ascent and descent are confounded at an even higher level: while the melodic path of the sequences leads steadily upward through transpositions at the interval of a fourth, the harmonic trajectory moves in the opposite direction, downward by fifth. This process of spatial disorientation continues in the ensuing bars, where the upper strings and piano proceed in contrary motion with a series of delicately articulated scalar fragments that eventually dissolve into a murmur. (p.37) The result is an extraordinary musical evocation of weightlessness and timelessness, of sublime removal into a realm where the laws of gravity and temporal succession no longer hold sway Appropriately enough, the coda ends with a pair of tentative echoes of the three‐note cell, its intervallic content altered to embrace a falling fifth and a rising octave.

 

I have devoted considerable space to describing this remarkable passage because, as we will soon observe, it undergoes an equally remarkable series of transformations in the course of the finale. Indeed, as if to awaken his listeners from a pleasant daydream in the rudest manner possible, Schumann launches into the last movement of the quartet with a forceful call‐to‐arms whose shape is clearly that of the tiny cell from the slow movement's coda.67 (See Ex. 1-7.) The call‐to‐arms gives way to a flurry of sequentially descending sixteenths in the upper strings and piano that in turn becomes the point of departure for a bustling fugato initiated by the viola. Drawing on a strategy he would have encountered while assiduously studying the string quartets of Haydn and Mozart in March 1842, Schumann casts his first group as a fugal exposition, replete with four subject‐answer entries and a countersubject that moves in contrary motion with the fugato theme.68 But if the design of the movement's opening theme group speaks to Schumann's engagement with the tradition of the fugal finale in the classical string quartet, the exposition as a whole is patterned after one of Schubert's “three‐key” plans. Schumann articulates each phase of the design with utter clarity, beginning with the fugato theme in the tonic, E♭, proceeding with a pair of transitional phrases initiated by a passionate C‐minor melody in the cello, and closing with a series of phrases in the dominant. The entire process, however, takes

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-6: Schumann, Piano Quartet (Op. 47), Andante cantabile, mm. 117–30

(p.38)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-6. continued

up only 62 bars: hardly a display of heavenly length. On the contrary, the exposition of Schumann's finale is just as compact as its 186-bar counterpart in the first movement of Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat is discursive. In fact, Schumann's rapid progress through the various phases of his exposition— coupled with several abrupt shifts in character—creates a kind of nervous momentum that contrasts sharply with the leisurely pace of Schubert's larger forms. Moreover, Schumann increases the sense of urgency by means of a tightly wrought web of thematic relationships: the closing group in the dominant draws on an episodic idea from the slow movement and also makes a parting reference to the passionate cello tune from the transition.

 

(p.39) Another Schubertian paradigm, the strophic variation form, appears in an equally unusual light in the development section of the finale. The subject of Schumann's variations is far removed from the sumptuously lyrical music we encounter at the comparable juncture in the first movement of Schubert's trio. Less a theme than a constellation of motivic fragments, it is comprised of five segments: (1) an introductory unit that recalls the music of sublime removal from the preceding slow movement; (2) a stretto on the opening motto theme (“call‐to‐arms” plus descending sixteenths), which, as we have seen, derives from the coda of the previous movement; (3) another stretto, this one centered on the emphatic initial gesture of the motto, which figures here in a less than cordial dialogue between strings and piano; (4) a brief reference to the episodic theme from the slow movement (already a topic of discussion in the exposition); and (5) a playful series of imitative sequences on another melodic gesture from the slow‐movement episode. This rather complex affair is abbreviated considerably in the two variations that follow: moving from G♭ major to the dominant of B♭, the first offers only segments b (the motto) and e; the second also opens with segment b, but like the “theme,” it then proceeds with segment c. Since the latter is based on the opening “call‐to‐arms” and since the harmonic trajectory of the second variation replicates that of its predecessor at the lower fifth (C♭ to V/E♭), Schumann is able to lead smoothly and logically into the recapitulation of the opening motto in the tonic.

 

Much as in the exposition, the development of Schumann's finale thus invokes the structure, though not the character, of a Schubertian model. Unlike the development sections of most of Schubert's later sonata‐form movements, Schumann's development is notable for its contrapuntal density, its closely argued motivic relationships, its concision, its nervous energy, and its drive toward the reprise. On the one hand, several of these qualities point to Beethoven rather than Schubert; on the other, the overall framework in which Schumann presents his ideas is quite unlike anything in Beethoven and departs in significant ways from Schubert as well. In short, the development enacts a synthesis of disparate tendencies, and the result is noticeably greater than the sum of the influences that went into its making.

 

Similar claims could be made for the recapitulation. Immediately after the whole ensemble proclaims the initial motto theme in the tonic, the music embarks on an unusual path. Instead of proceeding with the fugato, as expected, Schumann introduces a self‐contained binary unit in A♭ that at first appears to bear no clear relationship to what precedes or follows it. (See Ex. 1-8.) Of course, for Schumann, such moments are really not so unusual at all; comparable digressions from the main thrust of the musical argument are standard fare in his keyboard music of the previous decade. Lyrical in tone, the episode from the piano‐quartet finale also assumes the character of an exercise in double counterpoint, its two chief melodic strands consisting of a descending chromatic line in the viola part and a winding, sequential idea in the (p.40)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-7: Schumann, Piano Quartet, finale: vivace, mm. 1–12

piano. In attending more closely to the second strand, we begin to understand the method in Schumann's madness: the sinuous figure in the piano is a derivative of the countersubject in the fugato that opens the movement, precisely the music that is withheld at this stage of the reprise. (Cf. Ex. 1-8 and Ex. 1-7, mm. 3–11, viola; mm. 12–15, piano; mm. 17–19, violin and piano.) A distant relative of the sudden detours in Schubert's larger forms (recall, for instance, the digression that occurs at the corresponding spot in the slow movement of the Piano Trio in E flat), Schumann's episodic aside is far more radical than its possible models, in terms of both the absolute contrast between (p.41)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

the episode and its surroundings and the quirky logic that justifies this interruption in the normal flow of events.

 

While the remainder of the recapitulation unfolds with nearly textbook regularity, things take another odd turn with the onset of the coda. Opening with a restatement at the lower fifth of the entire constellation of motives that served as the “theme” of the development's strophic variations, Schumann seems to invoke the sort of parallel form by means of which Schubert imparted structural clarity to the mammoth finale of his Piano Trio in E flat. In Schumann's finale, however, the exact parallelism breaks down rather sooner than in Schubert's, extending only through the initial segment of the first variation. Again, the musical path veers in an unexpected direction (cutting immediately to the last segment of the second variation), and again, (p.42) there is an underlying logic to Schumann's strategy The goal toward which he aspires is a grand restatement of the opening motto, imitatively fanned out by the whole ensemble in a three‐voice stretto. With this gesture of apotheosis, Schumann in effect tacks yet another coda onto the coda already in progress, a move that some listeners may well find excessive. Yet here, too, the procedure is not without justification, for Schumann is intent on discovering a satisfactory resolution not only for the finale but also for the fourmovement cycle as a whole.

 

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-8: Schumann, Piano Quartet, finale, mm. 147–64

 

(p.43)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

(p.44) The reprise of the motto works itself up to a fermata on the dominant, and then, in one last display of contrapuntal ingenuity, Schumann devotes the next thirty bars or so to a new fugato on the motto theme that rivals the opening paragraph of the movement in rhythmic drive and transformational power. All of these gestures—the triumphant return, the surge toward dominant harmony, the release of tension with yet another contrapuntal transformation of the motto—lend a dimension to the proceedings that is “epic” in the fullest sense of the term: Schumann not only calls up the past; more to the point, he makes the past vividly present. With the terminal coda of the finale we thus reach the last stage of a process that began with the moments of sublime removal at the end of the slow movement. In tracing a great affective arc from dreamy reflection to decisive action, Schumann invokes the path he had taken many years before in his Piano Quartet in C minor, a path already traversed in Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat. Of course, as a mature artist Schumann was able to realize his aims in ways that were clearly beyond him a decade before: what in 1828 was only the promise of future successes had evolved by 1842 into mastery of the whole range of contrapuntal and motivic techniques. Moreover, it was precisely in his handling of these techniques that the mature Schumann set himself apart from the model of his youth.

 

In closing, then, a few words about the terminal fugato of Schumann's Piano Quartet in E flat—a passage where he allowed free reign to his skills in counterpoint and motivic development. (See Ex. 1-9.) The fugato is based on a contrapuntal combination of the two elements that had been presented successively in the initial motto theme: the “call‐to‐arms,” extended from three to thirteen pitches to form an angular, rhetorically charged subject (given first to the viola); and the sequentially descending sixteenth‐note pattern, also amplified in its new context to provide a rhythmically driving countersubject (initially in the piano). Stated fourteen times in whole or in part (at various pitch levels, in closely overlapping entries, and with the relative position of subject and countersubject sometimes inverted), this contrapuntal unit also embodies a rather extraordinary motivic property Indeed, it allows us to view its melodic sources—the motto theme, the finale's opening fugato, the three‐note cell from the coda of the slow movement—in a new light. Combining features from all of its previous incarnations, the closing fugato reveals the latent connections among them.

 

As shown in Example 1-10, the subject is grounded in a chain of descending thirds that can be parsed into two complete cycles, each spanning a double octave from B♭ to B♭ (By inverting three of the thirds into sixths, Schumann is able to keep what would otherwise have occupied a full four octaves within a comfortable range.) Similarly, the countersubject outlines a complementary (if not quite so extravagant) pattern of descent in thirds. (See Ex. 1-11.) Hence Schumann practically forces us to realize, if we haven't already, that the motto theme itself elaborates a single cycle of the same downward spiral. (p.45)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-9: Schumann, Piano Quartet, finale, mm. 277–84

(p.46)

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-10: Schumann, Piano Quartet, finale, closing fugato subject

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-11: Schumann, Piano Quartet, finale, closing fugato contersubject

SCHUMANN AND SCHUBERT'S “IMMORTAL” PIANO TRIO IN E FLAT, D. 929

 

Example 1-12: Schumann, Piano Quartet, finale, motto theme

(See Ex. 1-12.) In returning to the subject of the closing fugato, we observe that its descending thirds might also be grouped into cycles of descending fifths, an interpretation suggested by the gap between B♭ and E♭ at the beginning of the subject and between C and F near the end. (See Ex. 1-10.) This alternate intervallic cycle in turn resonates with Schumann's treatment of the three‐note cell in the coda of the slow movement; as observed earlier, the otherworldly quality of this passage derives in part from a series of transpositions down by fifth. The decidedly earthbound close of the finale evokes the tonal trajectory of the slow movement's coda in another way as well: Schumann initially answers the fugato subject at the lower fifth, A♭. (See Ex. 1-9, mm. 281–84.)

 

Schumann's Piano Quartet in E flat is thus situated at a crossroads. On the one hand, it offers the listener a compelling—and strikingly original—syn‐thesis of earlier models and practices. While its structural underpinnings hearken to Schubert, its intense motivicism and rhythmic urgency suggest a Beethovenian source. The contrapuntal tour de force of its closing pages points back even further still, to the fugues of J. S. Bach. On the other hand, the work looks well into the future: the chains of cascading thirds that run through its final paragraphs would become a staple of Brahms's musical vocabulary. Schumann's quartet takes us on an incredible journey, a journey initiated by his experience of Schubert's “immortal” Piano Trio in E flat.