Programme Notes:
A musical soirée
November 2023

“What do these soirées offer us? They tell us a great deal about music, about how it leaves behind the rapture of poetry — about how one can be happy in pain, and sad in moments of happiness. Like buds — before they spread their colorful wings in open splendor — they are captivating to look at, like all the things that contain the future within themselves.” (Robert Schumann, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 12 September 1836.)

Clara Wieck-Schumann (1819–1896) completed her Soirées musicales Op. 6 in August 1836. It was published by Hofmeister in November — her first published work for which she was paid. This set of six pieces is comprised of a toccatina, nocturne, ballade, polonaise, and two mazurkas. These genres were popularized and cultivated during the time, and the influence of national dance forms in half of these pieces bears the hallmark of Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849). As early as her childhood, young Clara displayed an affinity for Chopin’s music — she was to program his works all throughout her career and teach much of it when she later established herself as a pedagogue in the Frankfurt Conservatory.

Although Clara did not meet Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel (1805–1847) until 1845, she often performed songs by both the Mendelssohn siblings throughout her childhood. Abraham Mendelssohn, the Mendelssohn patriarch, is often quoted to have said to his daughter, “Music will perhaps become [Felix’s] profession, while for you, it can and must remain only an ornament.” As these works programmed today will show, Fanny was a deeply gifted musician. When Clara finally met her in Berlin in 1845, she held her in high regard; for her, Fanny was “such an accomplished woman who could be a real friend,” and in fact, her presence was almost sufficient motivation for Clara to move to Berlin. At the time of Fanny Mendelssohn’s death in 1847, both Clara and Robert were distraught, and the former described Fanny as the “most distinguished [woman] musician of her time, and a very important person for musical life in Berlin.”

Nocturnes

“Do you know what I like most? Your Nocturne in F major. What do you think? It’s melancholic enough, I think.” (Robert Schumann, to Clara Wieck, February 1838).

Both these nocturnes exemplify the genre as cultivated by John Field and Chopin in its early years: arpeggiated textures in the left hand, which serve as a harmonic backdrop to the melody, inspired by the Italian bel canto, in the right. Where Clara’s figuration is more delicate, Fanny’s Nocturne (1838) is more intensely charged in its sweeping figuration, as well as harmonic turns and dissonances. Composed in the style of a barcarolle, its bittersweet character reflects Fanny’s longstanding wish to visit Italy — this wish was finally fulfilled a year after she composed this Nocturne.

Mazurkas

The genre of the mazurka was born out of the Polish folk dance from the Mazovian region, where Chopin spent his childhood. These dances are in triple meter, their distinctive feature being their irregular — and perpetually shifting — accents onto weak beats. With his 59 Mazurkas for solo piano, Chopin encapsulates the essence of this dance form, which was already growingly popular across ballrooms and salons of early-nineteenth-century Europe, thereby transferring and transforming it into a musical genre. As Nancy Reich notes, these Mazurkas also have another source of inspiration: the Polish composer Maria Szymanowska (1790–1832), whose polonaises and mazurkas were published and performed in Leipzig in the 1820s — the earliest years of Clara’s childhood.

Shortly before its publication, Clara had the opportunity to play her two Mazurkas to Chopin, which he expressed great enthusiasm for. Each of the Mazurkas in this program reflect the three main derivatives of these Polish folk dances. The first, Clara’s G minor Mazurka, is in the style of the Kujawiak: moderately slow, melancholic, and sorrowful. The second, Chopin’s C major Mazurka, is most characteristic of the Mazur in its liveliness. As is typical of his Mazurkas, there is extensive repetition, both of small phrases and of entire sections. Finally, Clara’s sprightly G major Mazurka has its roots in the Oberek: a rapid, whirling dance. The opening of this last Mazurka was adopted by Robert Schumann in the first of his Davidsbündlertänze, composed a year later.

Toccat[in]as

Derived from the Italian toccare, “[to] touch”, the genre of the toccata was primarily cultivated to display manual dexterity. A prominent precursor to the keyboard toccata can be traced back to the Baroque, particularly those written for the organ and harpsichord. Composed well after the advent of the fortepiano, these two works encourage us to conceive of “touch” as further encompassing an exploration of tonal color on the keyboard in a manner complementary to its chromaticism, as well as innovative and sudden turns in harmony.

Composed at the same time as Felix was beginning the revival of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, Fanny’s Toccata (1828) belongs to a set of six pieces inspired by the compositional styles and techniques of the North-German Baroque; its fugal textures reveal her mastery of counterpoint — a clear echo of her tutelage by the theorist Carl Friedrich Zelter. Clara’s Toccatina, composed nearly a decade later, is defined by a relentless moto perpetuo that persists even through its lyrical middle section. Here, we hear infusions of the melody from the opening of her Nocturne — this section was quite nearly Robert’s favorite of her Op. 6, second only to the Nocturne itself.

Clara Schumann Polonaise, Op. 6/6

The Polonaise was another traditional Polish dance form which Chopin played a seminal role in cultivating as a musical genre. While Chopin turned his attention to Polonaises in 1836 — the same time that Clara composed this Polonaise — Clara had begun experimenting with the genre as early as 1831, when she was just twelve years old. Her Op. 1 Quatre Polonaises follows on from an earlier tradition of keyboard composers working with these dance forms, including not just the Polish composers Szymanowska and Michał Ogiński (1765–1833), but also Bach, Telemann, Mozart, and Beethoven. Often embraced by the nobility, these dances are stately and dignified. Unlike Mazurkas, whose distinctiveness lie in their irregularity, the Polonaise has a much more consistent and regular rhythmic profile: a weightier and more pronounced first beat followed by even eights in the second and third beats.

Ballades

The ballade of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had its roots in poetry. Chopin’s First Ballade in G minor is believed to have marked the earliest application of the term in the musical domain. It was during this time that Clara also composed her Ballade Op. 6 No. 5; together with her two Mazurkas, she played this work to Chopin in November 1836 — all were met with approval, even admiration. As typical of the musical genre as it came into being, Clara’s Ballade is both lyrical and narrative, with each statement of the theme increasingly embellished. Pensive in character, this ballade eventually ends in quiet resignation.

Six years later, Chopin composed his Fourth Ballade in F minor — his last, and the apogee of his contribution to the genre. The Ballade opens suspended in a dream-like state, as though in media res; from a distance, it grows increasingly real, arriving onto its melancholic main theme which opens with a distinct tritone interval. In his narration, Chopin develops and transforms this theme with intricate sophistication, by means of increasing chromaticism and polyphony. The work is punctuated with moments of repose, whose beauty often lends it not just a distant, but ethereal, quality. It is in the work’s eventual turn to what Susan McClary hermeneutically refers to as the “never-never land of nineteenth-century musical imagery” — its submediant ♭VI — that we encounter the Ballade’s apotheosis: a special kind of recapitulation that not only presents, but further synthesizes, all the various elements of the earlier themes with harmonic richness and textual excitement, all while radiating a kind of hope that remains unparalleled. Alas, its growing intensity culminates in a harsh, stormy section whose momentum drives it towards a complete caesura. A brief chorale-like interjection not only provides a moment of respite, but almost an air of religiosity, only to be met with what Michael Klein aptly describes as a “tragic” return to F minor. The onset of this Coda signals the “failure” of this apotheosis; this fiery reaffirmation of the triumph of F minor confirms not only a lack of harmonic, but further emotional and narrative, resolution, as the work is propelled towards its inevitable ending.