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Celebrate Schumann's 200th Birthday in 2010

Jul. 08, 2009

2010 marks the 200th birthday of Robert Schumann and performances of his works will be heard the world over next season. With his radical subjectivity, characteristic modernity and individuality, Schumann's music and life had a vast impact on the music of the 20th century, and composers still are paying homage to this great composer. To honor the composer, why not bridge the gap between the original compositions and the 20th-and 21st-century works they inspired by programming these works side by side? Schott offers a wide array of 20th-century works based on or inspired by particular Schumann pieces that would be an ideal addition to Schumann programs. Following is a selective list of works published by Schott which were written as a tribute to, inspired by, or utilize musical motifs of Robert Schumann.

Tobias Picker, Romances and Interludes - In December 1849 Schumann wrote his Drei Romanzen (‘Three Romances') for oboe and piano Op. 94. They are the only contribution of an original solo work by an important Romantic composer to the entire 19th-century oboe literature. Tobias Picker has embedded these pieces in his own composition: A Prelude precedes the first Romance, which is accompanied by Picker's colorful orchestration. The remaining two Romances are interspersed by Picker's Interludes.

Jörg Widmann, Fieberphantasie - Perhaps the composer most strongly influenced by Schumann of the younger generation, Jörg Widmann has said he often feels Schumann's melodic shape to be like the amplitude of a temperature curve: nervous, flickering, feverish, an infinite number of wave crests and troughs within the principal line. This phenomenon is the main impetus for Jörg Widmann in this piece. Slowly, individual tones emerge from ascending pizzicato lines, colorless sound surfaces, harmonics roughened by tremolos, and virtuoso clarinet scales, tones that do not reveal their origin until the work ends: C - F - E- D sharp, the beginning of Schumann's first violin sonata.

Jörg Widmann, Jagdquartett (Hunting Quartet) - In Jörg Widmann's cycle of five string quartets, each piece refers to the specific character of a movement from a classical quartet. Jagdquartett represents the fast middle movement of the scherzo. Widmann‘s work appears rough and wild in the style of Schumann's alter ego Florestan. His hunt begins in the tempo ‘allegro vivace assai' with the final theme of Schumann‘s Papillons, which often appears in Schumann's compositions.

Mark-Anthony Turnage, Four-Horned Fandango - In March 1849 Schumann wrote his Konzertstück für vier Ventilhörnerund Orchester F-Dur (Concert Piece for Four Valve Horns and Orchestra in F major), Op. 86, which he himself regarded as one of his best pieces. Mark-Anthony Turnage took the work as his inspiration when asked to write a work for the players of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with whom he had such a long and happy relationship. Four-Horned Fandango, too, revolves around the note F. However, Turnage's writing for the four horns is not overtly virtuosic, and lacks the high-flying lines of a concertante piece. And though the heart of the work is the dance music which provides the title, it is a relatively dark-hued and often introspective work in which the solo horns are woven into a complex, multi-hued texture. Influences of the dramatic scena Twice through the Heart, which Turnage worked on at the same time, can be clearly felt.

Heinz Holliger, Gesänge der Frühe - Holliger's cycle Gesänge der Frühe is inspired by the life and works of both Schumann and Hölderlin. Both artists' lives ended in so-called madness and isolation in Endenich and the Tübingen Tower respectively. Holliger comments:

Branded with mental disease as a mark of Cain, Schumann was and is more than any other composer marked out for misunderstanding. On the one hand some works of the early and middle period are praised to the skies, on the other hand the more unadorned and concentrated late works are covered with a cloak of silence.

The most recent issue of Schott Aktuell, the bi-monthly journal of Schott happenings around the globe, contains a more extensive and detailed listing of works in the Schott catalogue inspired by and based on Schumann's music. To access the Schott Aktuell online, click here.

Other Works Inspired by Schumann from Schott/EAM

Gustav Mahler's Instrumental Retouches of Schumann's Symphonies I through IV - Following a particularly prolific time in the composer's career in 1840 in which he composed 168 songs, including all of the Liederkreis op. 39, and the Dichterliebe op. 48, Schumann quickly began work on his first two symphonies, completing the first and what would become the fourth symphony, in just twelve months. Gustav Mahler's revisions to all four of Schumann's symphonies are available for performance from Universal Edition.

The symphonies contain some of Schumann's most exciting writing and inventive use of form, from the pastoral first and third symphonies with their delicate virtuosity to the fourth symphony in which all four movements play continuously; the finale a grand development of the first movement, inspired by Beethoven's Fifth.

Mahler greatly admired Schumann's symphonies and made careful revisions of all four. Frequently, his retouches lighten Schumann's textures, although in many tutti sections Mahler chooses to keep Schumann's thick scoring. In the first and second symphonies, Mahler resisted modernizing Schumann's orchestrations, although he did write more virtuosic brass parts in the outer movements of the fourth. In general, the intentions of the Mahler editions were to make Schumann's musical materials stand out, a principle that he adopted in the orchestrating of his own symphonies. Mahler's versions exquisitely blend the sounds of the late romantic symphony into the fabric of a composition conceived with only a mid-century orchestra in mind.

Beat Furrer's ensemble piece Ein Lied, das über das Ende des Liedes hinaus ein anderes Ende finden wollteis inspired by Schumann's Noveletten for piano and is available from Baerenreiter. The work was recently performed in New York by Klangforum Wien at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, to overwhelming critical acclaim.

Also available from Universal Edition is Raymond Murray Schafer's Adieu, Robert Schumann, for mezzo-soprano and orchestra. In this work the singer assumes the role of Clara Schumann, from whose diaries the text is drawn. A large part of the score consists of a montage of fragments of Schumann's own music: a number of his songs, notably 'Dein Angesicht', Carnaval and Kreisleriana are also quoted.

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Find out more on these composers at www.schott-music.com, www.universaledition.com and www.baerenreiter.com.

Tobias Picker
Romances and Interludes (1989)
2(afl).ca.2.2-4.0.0.0-timp.perc-hp.pno(cel)-str
24'

Jörg Widmann
Fieberphantasie (1999)
for piano, string quartet and clarinet in Bb(bcl)
13'

Jörg Widmann
Jagdquartett (2003)
for string quartet
12'

Mark-Anthony Turnage
Four-Horned Fandango (2003)
for four solo horns and orchestra
perc-hp.pno(cel)-str
15'

Heinz Holliger
Gesänge der Frühe (1987)
for chorus, orchestra and tape
4(2 pic, afl, bfl).2(2.ob. d'am).ca.4(4.bcl, 3.cbcl).3(3.cbsn)-5.3.3.1-timp.7perc-hp.pno-str
28'

Robert Schumann
Symphony No. 1"Spring Symphony " (1841)
orchestral instrumentation by Gustav Mahler
2.2.2.2-4.2.3.0-timp.tri-str
ca. 34'

Symphony No. 2 (1845/1846)
orchestral instrumentation by Gustav Mahler
2.2.2.2-2.2.3.0-timp-str
ca. 31'

Symphony No. 3 "Rheinische" (1850)
orchestral instrumentation by Gustav Mahler
2.2.2.2-4.3.2.0-timp-str
ca. 31'

Symphony No. 4 (1841-51)
orchestral instrumentation by Gustav Mahler
2.2.2.2-4.2.3.0-timp-str
ca. 28'

Beat Furrer
Ein Lied, das über das Ende des Liedes hinaus ein anderes Ende finden wollte (2000)
for ensemble
2.1.2.1-1.1.1.0-2perc-pno-2vn.va.vc.db
3'

Raymond Murray Schafer
Adieu, Robert Schumann (1976)
for voice and orchestra
songs by Robert Schumann and excerpts from the diary of Clara Schumann
2.2.2.2-2.2.2.0-2perc-pno-str
19'

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