John Sichel's Program Notes January 6, 2001 Clara Schumann Piano Trio

 
Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896):  Piano Trio in g minor, opus 17 (1842)

Clara Schumann was the ‘other half’ of the most famous husband-and-wife one-two punch in music history.  She was the  composer-pianist who married her piano teacher, who happened to be the great composer-pianist  Robert Schumann.  Robert was certainly one of the greatest of composers-- the intimate poet among the extraordinary generation of composers who make up Romanticism’s first wave (Berlioz, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner)  and Clara was one of the premiere pianists of her generation (and you can see she was in good company in that regard, too).  She is usually considered a kind of sideshow to her husband’s genius or a kind of feminist cautionary tale:  if only women were not discouraged from composition, there is no telling how high the Clara Schumanns and Fanny Mendelssohns of the world might have risen.  There certainly is an element of truth to this view, as Clara did give up on, or cut back on her composition after her marriage, and yet she did continue her career as a top-rate concert pianist and chamber musician-- while mothering eight children.  Furthermore this view to some degree sells short the small but fine body of work Clara did leave behind.  Perhaps most importantly, it is too easily forgotten that, in her guidance of her husband’s developement-- and that of his musical descendants-- she had a tremendous effect on the course of music in the nineteenth century.
 In her time, the Romantic period, music was, to a certain degree, in rebellion against the forms and techniques of the classical past.  In terms of the composers’ aims when composing, the emphasis had shifted from the abstract arguments and sophisticated forms of the eighteenth century to a greater premium on self-expression and a heightened chromaticism and tonal ambiguity, which in turn undermined the forms so central to the classical styleform. Critics said of Schumann’s, Liszt’s, Berlioz’ and Chopin’s music that it sounded like a cat walking up and down a keyboard, that no amount of study could prepare the listener to tell if a wrong note had been played, that it was all empty striving after effect-- all the things you’re used to hearing about new music.  Clara, and Mendelssohn, on the other hand, represented a retrenchment of sorts, not a rejection of romantic aesthetics, but an attempt to preserve, assimilate and use as models, the works of the classical greats.  This dichotomy (rebellion against classicism vs. assimilation thereof) was the fundamental aesthetic issue of the Romantic century, and it is in this regard that Clara had such a powerful impact on her husband’s work, for it was she who took the rhapsodic and highly experimental composer she married and urged him to master classical forms and techniques, advice which the highly intellectual and more-than-a-little obsessive Robert took to heart.  Before marrying Clara, Robert wrote only piano music, mostly with literary or programmatic titles: Kreisleriana, Butterflies, Scenes from Childhood, Carneval, and so on.  For two years after their wedding he wrote nothing but chamber music (his 3 quartets, the piano quartet, the piano quintet, the trios, etc.)  then he turned to orchestra music, writing all his symphonies and concerti.  So we have Clara to thank, in a way, for all the works of Schumann which have generic formal titles (rather than poetic ones): Symphonies, Concerti, Quartets and so on.  And, therefore, for all the classicism Schumann instilled in his acolytes--like the wild young Romantic who became Clara’s lifelong friend and, possibly, lover: Johnannes Brahms.  And, therefore, to the young Czech composer who took up the classical torch from his elder, Brahms: Antonin Dvorak.
 Clara’s preoccupation with mastering classical technique, and her involvement with her husband’s career also had an effect on her own work.  When Robert turned to chamber music in 1842, so did she, producing her one large-scale work of chamber music, the trio on today’s program.  And, indeed, in this work can be heard intimations of the works of the four Romantic classicists mentioned above: Her elders, husband Robert, and friend Mendelssohn, and those who would follow in her footsteps, Brahms and Dvorak (the latter just one year old when this work was written).
 In all four movements the trio shows Clara’s conscientious absorption and mastery of classical models.  Each movement follows the classical formal blueprint rigorously without giving way to sounding as if it were painted by numbers.  Among the many telling touches she pulls off are the extension of the first theme on the opening page, the piquant minuet, suggestive of a Dvorak Slavonic Dance, and the beautiful melody of the slow movement, Reminiscent of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words.  In the last movement there is a deft fugato, where the primary melody (play) is transformed into a subject for polyphonic imitation and an exciting coda, with a final gesture which lacks a strong dominant to tonic cadence, and is therefore strongly suggestive of more left unsaid-- perhaps the story of this composer’s life.