Violin Concerto (Schumann)
Encyclopedia
Robert Schumann
’s Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO
23 was his only violin concerto and one of his last significant compositions, and one that remained unknown to all but a very small circle for more than 80 years after it was written.
between 11 September and 3 October 1853 for the violinist Joseph Joachim
. He had just previously completed another work for Joachim, the Fantasie in C major, Op. 131. On 1 October, the young Johannes Brahms
entered the Schumanns’ life. It appears that Schumann composed the finale of the Concerto in three days: 1–3 October, after making Brahms’s acquaintance. Later in October, he collaborated with his new friend Brahms and his pupil Albert Dietrich
in the 'F-A-E' Sonata
for violin and piano, also written for Joachim.
, Joachim evidently suspected the Concerto was a product of Schumann’s madness and thought of the music as morbid. Joachim’s biographer Andreas Moser reproduced a letter in which Joachim discussed Schumann’s Concerto as showing ‘a certain exhaustion, which attempts to wring out the last resources of spiritual energy’, though ‘certain individual passages bear witness to the deep feelings of the creative artist’.
Joachim’s opinion prevailed on the composer’s widow Clara
and on Brahms, and the work was not published in the Complete Edition of Schumann’s works and was in effect kept secret throughout the 19th century. Brahms did however publish, in a supplementary volume of the Schumann Edition, ‘Schumann’s last musical thought’, a theme on which Schumann had begun to compose variations in early 1854. Schumann had thought the theme had been dictated to him by the spirits of Mendelssohn
and Schubert
, no longer recognizing that it was a melody he had used in the slow movement of the Violin Concerto. Brahms also wrote a set of piano-duet variations on this theme, his Opus 23.
in Berlin
, and stated in his will (he died in 1907) that the work should be neither played nor published until 100 years after the composer's death, i.e. until 1956. However in March 1933, during a spiritualist séance in London
attended by Joachim's two grand-nieces, the sister violinists Jelly d'Arányi
and Adila Fachiri
, a spirit-voice identifying himself as Robert Schumann requested Miss d'Aranyi to recover an unpublished work of his (of which she claimed to have no knowledge) and to perform it. In a second message, this time from the spirit of Joachim, they were directed to the Prussian State Library.
, the music-publisher in Mainz
, sent a copy of the score to Yehudi Menuhin
asking for an opinion. He played it through with Hephzibah Menuhin
, and reported to the conductor Vladimir Golschmann
in July 1937 that it was the historically missing link of the violin literature. Menuhin planned to deliver the world premiere at San Francisco, and announced it for 3 October, but was interrupted by the appearance of Jelly d'Aranyi, who claimed the right of first performance for herself on the basis of the spiritualist messages.
had worked on the score in some detail to render it playable, with Paul Hindemith
(who, though his own works were now prohibited from performance in Germany, prepared the violin-piano reduction) and with Georg Schünemann, and it was Kulenkampff who gave the first performance, on 26 November 1937, with the Berlin Philharmonic. Kulenkampff recorded it soon after the first performance. Menuhin gave the second performance, in the piano version, accompanied by Ferguson Webster, at Carnegie Hall
, New York
, on 6 December 1937, and repeated this with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra
under Golschmann on 23 December. Jelly d'Aranyi gave the first London
performance, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
at the Queen's Hall.
The concerto has only slowly made its way into the concert repertoire, partly due to the authority of Joachim’s judgement of it and a general critical perception that the first movement was too heavily scored; but it is now recognized as an important work of the composer. For a recording made in 1988 the German violinist Thomas Zehetmair
went back to Schumann’s original manuscript, correcting many errors in the published edition.
of 1850. Certainly the opening movement in D minor is conceived more on symphonic than concertante lines. Its powerful opening subject dominates the proceedings, and although the violin’s role is extremely taxing, its subordination to a ‘symphonic’ scheme is emphasized by the fact that there is no cadenza
. The slow movement, in B flat, has the character of an intensely lyrical intermezzo, and passes without a break into a vigorous and dance-like sonata-rondo finale in D major. An unusual feature of the movement is its strong polonaise
rhythm.
, who must certainly have seen Schumann’s Violin Concerto in the month of its completion, composed a Violin Concerto of his own in 1874, intended for Joachim, which is in the same key (D minor) and also has a finale in Polonaise rhythm. It is possible that it was influenced by his private knowledge of the unperformed work.
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
’s Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO
WoO
WoO is an acronym/abbreviation, derived from the German musical catalog phrase . WoO is a catalogue prepared in 1955 by Hans Halm and Georg Kinsky, listing all of the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven that were not originally published with an opus number, or survived only as fragments.The...
23 was his only violin concerto and one of his last significant compositions, and one that remained unknown to all but a very small circle for more than 80 years after it was written.
Composition
Schumann wrote it in DüsseldorfDüsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
between 11 September and 3 October 1853 for the violinist Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...
. He had just previously completed another work for Joachim, the Fantasie in C major, Op. 131. On 1 October, the young Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
entered the Schumanns’ life. It appears that Schumann composed the finale of the Concerto in three days: 1–3 October, after making Brahms’s acquaintance. Later in October, he collaborated with his new friend Brahms and his pupil Albert Dietrich
Albert Dietrich
Albert Hermann Dietrich , was a German composer and conductor, remembered less for his own achievements than for his friendship with Johannes Brahms.Dietrich was born at Golk, near Meissen...
in the 'F-A-E' Sonata
'F-A-E' Sonata
The F-A-E Sonata, a four-movement work for violin and piano, is a collaborative musical work by three composers: Robert Schumann, the young Johannes Brahms, and Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich. It was composed in Düsseldorf in October 1853....
for violin and piano, also written for Joachim.
Subsequent history and conflicting opinions
Though Joachim performed Schumann’s Fantasie, he never performed the Violin Concerto. After playing it through with the Hannover Court Orchestra (of which Joachim was the concertmaster) for Schumann in October 1853, Joachim retained the manuscript for the rest of his life. After Schumann’s attempted suicide in February 1854 and subsequent decline and death in a sanatorium in EndenichEndenich
Endenich is a neighborhood of Bonn, Germany, since 1904.The village of Endenich was founded in the 8th century, first mentioned in 804 as Villa quae vocatur Antiche .Today, about 12,000 people live in Endenich....
, Joachim evidently suspected the Concerto was a product of Schumann’s madness and thought of the music as morbid. Joachim’s biographer Andreas Moser reproduced a letter in which Joachim discussed Schumann’s Concerto as showing ‘a certain exhaustion, which attempts to wring out the last resources of spiritual energy’, though ‘certain individual passages bear witness to the deep feelings of the creative artist’.
Joachim’s opinion prevailed on the composer’s widow Clara
Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era...
and on Brahms, and the work was not published in the Complete Edition of Schumann’s works and was in effect kept secret throughout the 19th century. Brahms did however publish, in a supplementary volume of the Schumann Edition, ‘Schumann’s last musical thought’, a theme on which Schumann had begun to compose variations in early 1854. Schumann had thought the theme had been dictated to him by the spirits of Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
and Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, no longer recognizing that it was a melody he had used in the slow movement of the Violin Concerto. Brahms also wrote a set of piano-duet variations on this theme, his Opus 23.
Spirit voices
Joachim deposited the manuscript of the concerto with the Prussian State LibraryBerlin State Library
The Berlin State Library is a library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.-Buildings:The State Library runs several premises, three of which are open for users, namely House 1 in Unter den Linden 8, House 2 in Potsdamer Straße 33 and the newspaper archive...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, and stated in his will (he died in 1907) that the work should be neither played nor published until 100 years after the composer's death, i.e. until 1956. However in March 1933, during a spiritualist séance in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
attended by Joachim's two grand-nieces, the sister violinists Jelly d'Arányi
Jelly d'Arányi
Jelly d'Aranyi, fully Jelly Aranyi de Hunyadvár was a Hungarian violinist who made her home in London.She born in Budapest, the grand-niece of Joseph Joachim, and sister of the violinist Adila Fachiri. She began her studies as a pianist, but switched to violin at the Music Academy in Budapest...
and Adila Fachiri
Adila Fachiri
Adila Fachiri was a Hungarian violinist who had an international career but made her home in England. She was the sister of the violinist Jelly d'Arányi....
, a spirit-voice identifying himself as Robert Schumann requested Miss d'Aranyi to recover an unpublished work of his (of which she claimed to have no knowledge) and to perform it. In a second message, this time from the spirit of Joachim, they were directed to the Prussian State Library.
Menuhin's involvement
Yet no more was heard for four years, until in 1937 Schott MusicSchott Music
Schott Music is one of the oldest German music publishers. It is also one of the largest music publishing houses in Europe and is currently the second oldest music publishing house. The company headquarters of Schott Music was founded by Bernhard Schott in Mainz, Germany in 1770.Established in...
, the music-publisher in Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
, sent a copy of the score to Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE was a Russian Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985...
asking for an opinion. He played it through with Hephzibah Menuhin
Hephzibah Menuhin
Hephzibah Menuhin was an American-Australian pianist and human rights campaigner. She was sister to the violinist Lord Menuhin and to the pianist, painter, and poet Yaltah Menuhin...
, and reported to the conductor Vladimir Golschmann
Vladimir Golschmann
Vladimir Golschmann was a French conductor.-Biography:Vladimir Golschmann was born in Paris. He studied violin at the Schola Cantorum in Paris. He was a notable advocate of the music of the composers known as Les six. In Paris, he had his own concert series, the Concerts Golschmann, which began...
in July 1937 that it was the historically missing link of the violin literature. Menuhin planned to deliver the world premiere at San Francisco, and announced it for 3 October, but was interrupted by the appearance of Jelly d'Aranyi, who claimed the right of first performance for herself on the basis of the spiritualist messages.
First performances and recording
However, all of this was to no avail, for the world copyright to the concerto was held in Germany, and the German government insisted on the world premiere being given by a German. Georg KulenkampffGeorg Kulenkampff
Georg Kulenkampff was one of the world's most prominent concert violinists, one of the best-known German virtuosi of the 1930s and 1940s. Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Kulenkampff was known for his interpretations of works from the Romantic period...
had worked on the score in some detail to render it playable, with Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
(who, though his own works were now prohibited from performance in Germany, prepared the violin-piano reduction) and with Georg Schünemann, and it was Kulenkampff who gave the first performance, on 26 November 1937, with the Berlin Philharmonic. Kulenkampff recorded it soon after the first performance. Menuhin gave the second performance, in the piano version, accompanied by Ferguson Webster, at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, on 6 December 1937, and repeated this with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra based in St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1880 by Joseph Otten as the St. Louis Choral Society, the SLSO is the second-oldest symphony orchestra in the United States as it is preceded by the New York Philharmonic.-History:The St...
under Golschmann on 23 December. Jelly d'Aranyi gave the first London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
performance, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation and one of the leading orchestras in Britain.-History:...
at the Queen's Hall.
The concerto has only slowly made its way into the concert repertoire, partly due to the authority of Joachim’s judgement of it and a general critical perception that the first movement was too heavily scored; but it is now recognized as an important work of the composer. For a recording made in 1988 the German violinist Thomas Zehetmair
Thomas Zehetmair
Thomas Zehetmair is an Austrian violinist and conductor. He studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum, where both of his parents taught. His festival debut was at age 16. He was in master classes with Nathan Milstein and Max Rostal....
went back to Schumann’s original manuscript, correcting many errors in the published edition.
The music
The Concerto is in the traditional three-movement form, fast-slow-fast. It belongs less to the poetic and passionate style of Schumann's early masterpieces than to the more objective, classical manner of his later music, as ushered in by the 'Rhenish' SymphonySymphony No. 3 (Schumann)
Composed from November 2 to December 9, 1850, the Symphony No. 3 “Rhenish” in E flat major, Op. 97, is the last symphony that Robert Schumann composed, although it was not the last symphony that he published...
of 1850. Certainly the opening movement in D minor is conceived more on symphonic than concertante lines. Its powerful opening subject dominates the proceedings, and although the violin’s role is extremely taxing, its subordination to a ‘symphonic’ scheme is emphasized by the fact that there is no cadenza
Cadenza
In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....
. The slow movement, in B flat, has the character of an intensely lyrical intermezzo, and passes without a break into a vigorous and dance-like sonata-rondo finale in D major. An unusual feature of the movement is its strong polonaise
Polonaise
The polonaise is a slow dance of Polish origin, in 3/4 time. Its name is French for "Polish."The polonaise had a rhythm quite close to that of the Swedish semiquaver or sixteenth-note polska, and the two dances have a common origin....
rhythm.
Dietrich's concerto
Albert DietrichAlbert Dietrich
Albert Hermann Dietrich , was a German composer and conductor, remembered less for his own achievements than for his friendship with Johannes Brahms.Dietrich was born at Golk, near Meissen...
, who must certainly have seen Schumann’s Violin Concerto in the month of its completion, composed a Violin Concerto of his own in 1874, intended for Joachim, which is in the same key (D minor) and also has a finale in Polonaise rhythm. It is possible that it was influenced by his private knowledge of the unperformed work.
Sources
- Hans Gál, Schumann Orchestral Music (London: BBC Music Guides, 1979), 59-62.
- Clifton Helliwell, Music in the Air (Tabb House, Padstow 1989), pp. 87–89.
- R. Magidoff, Yehudi Menuhin: The story of the Man and the Musician (Robert Hale, London 1956), 182-187.
- Erik Palmstierna, Horizons of Immortality (London 1937).