Programme Notes

Sample Note

Robert Schumann: Symphony no.1 in B-flat major, op.38 (‘Spring’)

Schumann’s B-flat major Symphony by no means represents his first sustained contribution to the genre. Parts of an earlier G minor Symphony, commonly known as the ‘Zwickau’, had received performances in November 1832 and April 1833 but, owing in part to a lukewarm critical reception, the work remains only a two-movement torso. It was not until his ‘discovery’ of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony in 1839 that Schumann developed a renewed interest in symphonic composition, and after attempts at a work in C minor in late 1840, the B-flat major Symphony was sketched in four days of feverish activity between 23 and 26 January 1841, orchestrated by mid-February, and received its first performance under Felix Mendelssohn at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 31 March.

The work was accorded unequivocal critical success and represents something of a watershed in Schumann’s career as a symphonic composer – the so-called ‘symphonic year’ of 1841 became one of intense compositional energy, resulting in the Overture, Scherzo and Finale, op .52, the D minor Symphony, a ‘Fantasy’ for piano and orchestra (the embryo of the Piano Concerto in A minor, op.50) and sketches for another C minor symphony.

Despite the evocative suggestiveness of the title ‘Spring’, Schumann was keen to underplay any association of his First Symphony with a direct programme, and later suppressed the titles he had originally provided for each movement – ‘Frühlingsbeginn’ (Beginning of Spring), ‘Abend’ (Evening), ‘Frohe Gespielen’ (Merry Playmates) and ‘Voller Frühling’ (The Height of Spring). Writing to Louis Spohr, Schumann claimed that ‘description and painting were not part of my intention, but I do believe that the season in which this symphony was born… helped to make it what it is’. But we should perhaps be wary of taking such a denial at face value: a later letter to the conductor Wilhelm Taubert implores him to ‘breathe a little of the longing for spring into the orchestra… I should like the very first trumpet entry to sound as if it came from on high, like a summons to awakening… I should like the music to suggest the world’s turning green, perhaps with a butterfly hovering in the air… and to show how everything to do with spring is coming to life!’

Indeed, such unbuttoned descriptiveness is perhaps appropriate given that Schumann’s self-avowed inspiration for the symphony was a poem by Adolf Böttger (who later worked with Schumann on his libretto for Das Paradies und die Peri), the final couplet of which underlays the opening brass call of the first movement:

‘O wende, wende deinen Lauf/ Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf!’
  [O turn, oh turn, reverse your course / Now blooms spring in the valley]

This declamatory brass summons (a gesture which recalls the horn opening of Schubert’s Ninth) acts as a motto that furnishes the rest of the movement with much of its thematic material. The introduction, echt-Romantic in its ruminative and evocative atmosphere, eventually accelerates and erupts into a buoyant Allegro, in which the vibrant insistence of the transformed motto theme is contrasted with a short theme in the minor (scored at first for clarinets and bassoons) reminiscent of Schumann’s many piano miniatures. The tonally vagrant development further expands the argument with a new, extended minor key theme underpinned by the motto rhythm, and a false recapitulation, before the persistent energetic sequences drive ever higher to usher in the true reprise with a majestic re-appearance of the opening brass motto, now harmonised and scored for the full orchestra. An exuberant coda propels the to the close, pausing only for a droopingly lyrical theme of exceptional beauty before a flurry of cadences concludes the movement.
 
The Larghetto takes up the lyricism hinted at towards the end of the previous movement in a sustained, prayer-like cantabile theme. This first gesangsperiode is presented in a series of varied orchestral textures almost as a ‘song without words’ (a procedure reminiscent of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony). The devotional character of this movement culminates in a passage for trombones (instruments traditionally associated with the church) that provides in outline the theme of the ensuing Scherzo, which runs-on attacca as the Larghetto fades away, poised on the dominiant.

In design, the Scherzo movement is remarkable on a number of accounts, its dynamism sprung into action by a surprising off-tonic beginning (G minor instead of D minor). The main section is alternated with two Trios, the first a delicate antiphonal exchange between woodwind and strings on an insistent dactylic rhythm, the second a dancing combination of ascending diatonic and descending chromatic scales, punctuated by ebullient cross-rhythms. The final return of the main ‘scherzo’ section metamorphoses seamlessly into a poetic coda via a re-scoring of its second part and a recall of the first Trio. An odd Berlioz-like chromatic meltdown spirals the movement to its close.

The concluding collapse of the Scherzo is paralleled immediately by the upward thrust of the Finale’s opening - yet another fanfare-style motto that will permeate the rest of the movement. This moment of unabashed grandioso is refuted by the skipping, almost Sullivanesque theme that begins the finale proper, but returns transformed in developmental passages of mock-darkness and a whirlwind coda to end this most exuberant of Schumann’s symphonies.

Dominic Grier © 2006