Disjecta Membra: Robert Schumann on Beethoven
In 1833 Robert Schumann led a group of “young hotheads” in founding the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. It was an attempt “to restore the poetry of the art to its rightful place of honour!” In the pages of this new periodical, Schumann assembled the Davidsbund, a fantastical set of characters expressing Schumann’s own divergent views on art. The dialogue between the rapturous, impassioned Florestan and the measured, erudite Eusebius, mediated by old Master Raro, formed the heart of Schumann’s early music criticism. The task before them: to jolt the world out of the after-dinner stupor that had set in since the passing of the last generation of musical geniuses, above all Beethoven.
This was no easy task. The memory of Beethoven had a death-grip on the minds of musicians, composers, and critics of the period. Reading Schumann’s criticism, one gets the impression that there were “Beethoven fanatics” hiding in every nook and cranny of Germany, and Schumann was no exception. As Florestan would say, he liked Beethoven very much. But what is to be done when the great art of the past becomes inhibiting to the present?
In the following selections from Schumann on Music, Schumann takes the Beethoven fanatics to task. In Florestan’s Shrovetide Oration, the unruly Florestan addresses the Davidsbund following a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Written in the same year, 1835, ‘Fury over the Lost Penny’ lambasts those Beethoven fanatics who would dismiss Beethoven’s short, posthumous capriccio and forget “nature, nature, nature!” I must admit that I was more than a little perplexed upon reading these two short essays. I could sympathize with Schumann’s hatred for the superficial praises of Beethoven, but Schumann’s invective — nature, nature, nature! — puzzled me. I opened up the first YouTube video of ‘Fury over a Lost Penny’ and paced back and forth in my apartment as it played over my speakers, hoping the little diddle would give me some answers.
Listening, I closed my eyes and imagined Stieler’s dramatic Beethoven ditching his forest-of-the-gods for a bar, downing the first pint of beer he could lay his hands on, and yelling “I’m really unbuttoned today!”
In what was forgotten about Beethoven, Schumann excavated the umbilical cord between art and life for his time. Florestan’s Beethoven-loving concert goer is bewildered by the melody of “Freude, schöner Götterfunken” [from Ode to Joy] for the same reason the Beethoven fanatics cannot accept ‘Fury over the Lost Penny.’ It has not crossed their minds that a “little joke,” perhaps “a kind of nightwatchman’s song,” could be worthy of music. Against the Beethoven fanatics who insisted that his music lived in some divine realm, detached from quotidian existence, Schumann reminds us that great genius and beauty lie in the sensuous experience of this life, in rage over a lost penny, in a flash of lightning, in love for a friend, in diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!, in “nature, nature, nature!”
Beethoven still towers menacingly over musicians today, and in particular his grand symphonies, which have become the subject of popular myth. Though composers like Haydn and Mozart composed dozens of short symphonies, very few composers of note since Beethoven have been able to pen nine. Schubert left his 8th symphony unfinished and Bruckner died before finishing his 9th; Mahler and Shostakovich both made it over the finish line, but Mahler’s 9th was a “song cycle,” not a symphony, and Shostakovich’s 9th, reminiscent of Haydn’s style and dubbed by Leonard Bernstein an “anti-9th,” barely runs for half an hour. The ambition of writing a symphony at all, let alone one that could rival Beethoven’s, was almost completely abandoned by composers in the 20th century. There’s some Finnish guy alive and kicking who has written over 300, but hardly anyone seems to care. The tradition of writing symphonies today fusts in us unused, to say the least.
Compared to our own time, Schumann in Monument to Beethoven is radically optimistic, awaiting the day when Beethoven will rise again in the form of a new genius and overturn the slab of his monumental grave. Schumann later put his hopes in the young Johannes Brahms, who is said in retrospect to have been a grave disappointment. On some level, Schumann’s solution (nature, nature, nature!) didn’t work. Beethoven has not been forgotten, as Florestan had hoped, but the very phrase “the 9th” is still synonymous with his great masterwork. The compounding failure of several generations of composers ought to indicate to us the depth of the problem one faces in attempting to contribute to the history of music and renew its relationship to life. But what would it mean if Beethoven’s ghost still calls out for a companion? Even if nobody seems to be listening?
Today, music is completely enthralled to a past, perhaps the wrong past, and to its great detriment. New music holds tight to the musical dogmas of the 20th century like a dog that doesn’t want to give up a piece of trash it found on the ground. It has no audience but depressed 30-somethings on Soundcloud and the rarefied world of official “New Music,” kept on life support by an expert team of universities and NGOs. But I don’t know that it deserves a better audience. After a century of deafness to the task and ambition of music, composers may need to relearn how to learn before Schumann’s words can even begin to make sense. How can the music of the past free the music of the present? This is very nearly the only question with which music criticism in the present ought to concern itself — and predictably the first question it avoids.
Be bold, my friends! As for me, I don’t know the answer, but I must admit, I like Beethoven very much.
— Erin Hagood
Florestan’s Shrovetide Oration (1835)
(Delivered after a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony)
Florestan leaped up on the piano and said:
Assembled Davidsbündler, that is, youths and men dedicated to the destruction of Philistines, musical and otherwise, the bigger the better!
You know, men, that I am not one to rave about things. Truly, I know the symphony better than I know myself. Let us waste no words upon it. Least of all having just heard the real thing.
Nor was I the least bit annoyed, as little as I heard. Mostly I was laughing at Eusebius, and the way the rascal went after that fat man who asked him during the Adagio:
‘Tell me, sir, didn’t Beethoven also write a “Battle” Symphony?’
‘I think you mean the “Pastoral”, don’t you?’ suggested Eusebius, indifferently.
‘Ah, yes, of course,’ said the fat one, and resumed his meditations.
I suppose man deserves his nose; why else would God have given him one? These audiences endure a lot, about which I could tell you the most marvellous stories. For instance, that time, Kniff, when you were turning pages for me in a Field nocturne. Half the audience was already indulging in self-examination, i.e. they slept. I was playing one of the most dilapidated old pianos that ever imposed itself upon an audience. Unfortunately, my foot slipped, and I caught the Janissary stop instead of the sustaining pedal. It was soft enough, fortunately, so that I could turn an accident to profit and, by repeating it from time to time, give the impression of military music heard in the distance. Eusebius, of course, did his best to disseminate the truth, but the audience was ecstatic.
Henri Fantin-Latour, Around the Piano, 1885. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Many similar anecdotes occurred to me during the Adagio when suddenly my musings were interrupted by the crash of the first chord of the Finale. To a trembling neighbour I said:
‘What is it but a triad with a suspended fifth, somewhat awkwardly placed, since one doesn’t know which is the bass note, the timpani A or the bassoon F? Look at Türk, Section 19, Page 7!’
‘Sir, you are speaking very loudly and, most assuredly, joking!’
Speaking softly now, and in awesome tones, I whispered in his ear:
‘You must take care in storms, sir. Lightning sends no liveried messengers before it strikes—at best a storm cloud and a peal of thunder. That’s its way.’
‘Nevertheless, such dissonances should be prepared!’
Then came the next chord.
‘Sir, the beautiful seventh in the trumpet forgives you!’
I was exhausted by my own restraint. I had used my fists to administer caresses!
You gave me a beautiful moment there, Mr. Conductor! You caught the tempo of the deep theme in the basses so wonderfully that I forgot much that had angered me in the first movement where, despite the modestly veiled direction, ‘un poco maestoso’, one hears the deliberately striding majesty of a god.
‘What do you suppose Beethoven had in mind there in the basses?’
‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘that’s hard to say. Geniuses have their little jokes—maybe a kind of nightwatchman’s song.’
Gone was the lovely moment, and the devil loose again! I looked at those Beethoven-lovers, sitting there goggle-eyed and exclaiming:
‘That’s by our Beethoven. It’s a German work. There’s a double fugue in the last movement. They said he couldn’t do it, but he did it, and how! Yes, that’s our Beethoven!’
From another group:
‘The work seems to incorporate all the branches of poetry. The first movement is epic, the second comic, the third lyric and the last drama, a composite of all!’
Somebody else observed:
‘A gigantic work, colossal, comparable to the Egyptian pyramids!’
Others were graphic. The symphony represented the story of the origins of man—first chaos, then the divine ‘Let there be light!’ And the sun rose upon the first human, who was delighted with such magnificence—in short the whole first chapter of the Pentateuch!
I grew angrier — and quieter. And how they all eagerly scanned their texts and finally applauded! I seized Eusebius by the arm and dragged him down the steps past the smiling faces.
Jean-Pierre Dantan, La Loge Anglais, 1835. Daniel Katz Gallery.
Down below, in dim lantern light, Eusebius mused:
‘Beethoven, what the word alone contains! Just the deep sound of the syllables singing out to eternity. It’s as if there could be no other written symbols for this name!’
‘Eusebius,’ I said quietly, ‘do you, too, presume to praise Beethoven? He would rise up like a lion and demand: “How dare you?”’
I don’t really mean you, Eusebius. You are a good fellow. But must a great man always have a retinue of a thousand dwarfs? Do they who smile and clap really think that they understand one whose aspirations were so high and who fought those countless battles?
They, who could not explain to me the simplest musical law, presume to pass judgment on a master!
They, who would take to their heels were I to drop the word ‘counterpoint’ dare to say: ‘Ah, that’s to our taste!’
They, who talk of exceptions without knowing the rules, who treasure his excesses while ignoring his achievement of proportion in what would otherwise be merely gigantic — shallow creatures, wandering Werthers, depleted braggarts — they presume to love him and to praise him!!
Davidsbündler, I know of nobody at the moment who could do it with the possible exception of a Silesian landowner who recently wrote to a music-dealer as follows:
‘Dear sir — My music cabinet will shortly be in order. You should see how magnificent it is. Alabaster columns within, mirror with silk curtains, busts of composers; in a word, splendid! I would ask you to send me the complete works of Beethoven, as I like him very much.’
What more can one say?
The Cylix of Apollo, Attic, c. 460. Delphi Archeological Museum.
‘Fury over the Lost Penny’ (1835)
It would be hard to conceive of anything more amusing than this little escapade. How I laughed when I played it for the first time! And how astonished I was when, a second time through, I read a footnote telling me that this capriccio, discovered among Beethoven’s manuscripts after his death, bore the title: ‘Fury over the Lost Penny, Vented in a Caprice.’ …O! It’s the most adorable, futile fury, like that which seizes you when you can’t get a boot off, and you sweat and swear and the boot looks up at you, phlegmatically — and unmoved!
I’ve got you at last, you Beethoven fanatics! I’d like to vent my feelings about you in quite another fashion, and pummel you with the softest of fists when I see you beside yourselves, your eyes bulging, lost in rapture, and gasping: ‘Beethoven strives ever for the rapturous, from star to star he flew, free from this earth!’
‘I’m really unbuttoned today’, was his favourite expression when his spirits were high. And then he would laugh like a lion and let loose about him — for he was unruly in all circumstances.
Well, with this capriccio I shall be unruly with you, my friends. You’ll call it common, unworthy of a Beethoven, just like the tune to ‘Freude, schöner Götterfunken’ in the D minor Symphony, you’ll bury it deep under the Eroica.
Should there one day be a resurrection of the arts, and Genius hold the scales with the capriccio about the penny balanced against ten of the newest dramatic overtures, well, I tell you, the overtures would flip skyward!
And you composers, young and old, there is one essential thing that you could all learn from it, something you need to be reminded of from time to time: nature, nature, nature!
Pablo Picasso, Étude pour Mercure, c. 1924
A Monument to Beethoven (1836)
Four Views
I can see the mausoleum already, this object of our future veneration—a tolerably high stone slab, surmounted by a lyre with the dates of birth and death. Above it the sky, nearby a few trees.
A Greek sculptor, approached about a monument for Alexander the Great, suggested that Mount Athos be carved out to form his statue, a city held aloft in one of its hands. The idea was denounced as mad; I find it less so than these German penny subscriptions. O happy Napoleon, at rest far out in the ocean, how fortunate you are that we Germans cannot persecute you with a monument commemorating the battles you won from us and with us! You, too, would rise from the grave with the proud register, ‘Marengo, Crossing of the Alps, Cimplon, Paris’, and the mausoleum would ignominiously collapse. Poor Beethoven! Your Symphony in D minor, and all your fine songs of pain (and joy)—we do not consider them great enough to justify letting you off without a monument. Our homage is inescapable!
Eusebius, I see that you are annoyed, that from the goodness of your noble heart you would gladly let yourself be turned to stone as a statue for a Karlsbad fountain if it would only serve the committee. But do I not also bear the misfortune of never having seen Beethoven, of never having pressed my fevered brow into his hand—and would I not have given years of my life if only? …
I slowly climb the steps of No. 200 Schwarzpanierstrasse. Not a breath is stirring. I step into his room. He raises himself up, a lion, a crown upon his head, a splinter in his paw. He speaks of his sufferings. At that same moment thousands of delighted people are passing beneath the columns of the temple of his Symphony in C minor.
But the walls are about to collapse; he must leave. He complains that he is left so much alone, that one bothers about him so little.
At this moment the basses come to rest upon the lowest note in the Scherzo; not a breath; from a thread above a fathomless chasm are suspended a thousand hearts. The thread snaps, and the grandeur of the noblest things builds rainbow upon rainbow.
But we just dash through the streets. Nobody knows him, nobody greets him. …
The last chords of the symphony resound. The public claps its hands and the Philistine cries out: ‘That is true music!’
Thus you celebrate him in life! No one offers himself — or herself — as his companion. It was his tragedy to die like Napoleon, without a child at his heart, in the wilderness of a big city. Build him a monument, then, if you must; perhaps he earned it. But when one day this slab is overturned, let Goethe’s words be inscribed upon the ruin:
Solange der Tüchtige lebt und tut,
Möchten sie ihn gern steinigen;
Ist er hinterher aber tot,
Gleich sammeln sie grosse Spenden,
Zu Ehren seiner Lebensnot,
Ein Denkmal zu vollenden.
Doch ihren Vorteil sollte dann
Die Menge wohl ermessen,
Gescheiter wär’s, den guten Man
Auf immerdar vergessen.
(As long as one still lives and does,/a hail of stones is one’s reward;/at last when one is dead and gone,/a call goes out for sums of gold,/to build a splendid monument/in honour of his earthly woes./The world may judge your own return/from this acknowledgement of debt./’Twere shrewder far, I do believe,/the once forgotten to forget.)
FLORESTAN
Detail of Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze, 1902. Gustav Klimt Foundation.
[...]
III
One should move on tiptoe in church — but you, Florestan, offended me with your heavy tread. At this moment many hundreds are listening to me. The question is a German one. Germany’s noblest artist, the supreme spokesman of German thought and spirit — not even Jean Paul excepted — is to be commemorated. He belongs to our German art. A monument to Schiller has been under way for years. A statue of Gutenberg has just been begun. You all deserve the jibes of a French Janin, the abuse of a Börne, the kicks of a haughty Lord Byron if you let the project lapse or push it half-heartedly.
I hold a mirror up to your eyes. Look at yourselves! Four poor sisters came to Leipzig a long time ago from Bohemia. They played the harp and sang. They had talent, but of schooling not a trace. An accomplished musician took them in hand, instructed them, and made distinguished and happy women of them. The man had long since passed away, and only his nearest relatives remembered him. Some twenty years later there came a letter from the four sisters, now living in a distant land, providing enough money for the erection of a memorial to their teacher. It stands today under Bach’s windows. Those who come looking for the latter are immediately struck by the simple little statue, a touching remembrance both of the author of the good deed and of the gratitude with which it was rewarded.
Should not an entire nation, which teaches great aims and patriotism on every page, raise to a Beethoven something a thousand times grander? Were I a prince, I would dedicate to him a temple in the style of Palladio. Within would be ten statues. Thorwaldsen and Dannecker could not do them all, but they could supervise the work done by others. Nine of the statues would represent the nine muses and the nine symphonies. Clio would be the Eroica, Thalia the Fourth, Euterpe the Pastoral, and so on, with Beethoven himself as the divine Apollo. Here would be gathered from time to time the singing people of Germany. There should be contests and festivals, and his compositions played with the ultimate perfection. Or another idea! Take a hundred century-old oaks and replant them in a flat space in such a way as to spell his name in those colossal letters. Or one could picture him in a gigantic frame, like St. Borromeo on his island in the Lago di Maggiore, so that he might look to the mountains as he did in his lifetime. — And when the ships passed by on the Rhine, and strangers asked what the giant meant, any child could answer: ‘It’s Beethoven!’ — And the strangers would assume that it was a German Emperor. Or, if one were to prefer something useful to the living, found an academy in his honour, an ‘Academy of German Music’, in which his concept would be taught—that concept according to which music is not a thing to be practised by all and sundry like any common craft, but rather a hallowed realm to be administered by priests and reserved for the elect, a school for poets, or better, a school of music in the Greek sense. In a word: Get on with it, and remember that the memorial will be your own!
EUSEBIUS
Detail of Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze, 1902. Gustav Klimt Foundation.
IV
Your ideas have no handle. Florestan destroys, and Eusebius lets things drop. Surely, all this attests to our veneration and gratitude to departed and beloved heroes. Even you, Florestan, concede that we must somehow make an outward show of our homage, that if no beginning is made, another generation will condemn our indolence. And under the bold cloak that you throw over the whole thing, there may linger some base caution and greed, perhaps a nagging fear of being taken at one’s word if one goes about praising monuments too recklessly. So join forces!
Let there be collections in every German land, from hand to hand, recitals, concerts, opera performances, church musicals, and so on. [...] And so let a high obelisk or some pyramidal edifice proclaim to future generations that the contemporaries of a great man, contemporaries who treasured his works above all else, were mindful enough of their debt to acknowledge it by an extraordinary symbol.
RARO
From Robert Schumann. Schumann on music: a selection from the writings. Edited by Henry Pleasants. New York: Dover, 1988.