28th November 2022
For fifty years Roger Norrington has been at the forefront of the movement for historically informed musical performance. He has sought to put modern musicians in touch with the style of the music they play.
Sir Roger sang and played the violin from an early age, and began to conduct at Cambridge. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London under Sir Adrian Boult. His Heinrich Schütz Choir made many recordings, and his London Classical Players achieved worldwide fame with their dramatic CDs of the 9 Beethoven Symphonies, and many other works, from Purcell to Bruckner.
As early as 1966 Norrington was made Music Director of Kent Opera. He conducted many hundreds of performances for the company and went on to work at Covent Garden and the English National Opera, for La Scala and La Fenice, and at the Vienna Staatsoper.
Norrington is a frequent guest with many of the world’s major orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and the Philadelphia and London Philharmonic Orchestras. He has had memorable tenures as Chief Conductor with the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra (13 years), the Salzburg Camerata (10 years), and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra (5 years).
Other permanent posts with orchestras have included Chief Conductor of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and Music Director of the Orchestra of St Lukes in New York. He is currently Conductor Emeritus in Stuttgart, Salzburg, Zurich, and at the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He has made over 150 recordings.
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I’m so pleased to speak with you today. I’ve been hoping to for such a long time.
I was very intrigued that these Schumann symphonies came first in your list of possible pieces to discuss. As you are well aware, they are often overlooked or even derided.[1] What initially sparked your interest in them?
I didn’t come across them for quite a long time. I remember going to a Prom rehearsal at the Royal Albert Hall when a conductor was trying to rehearse a Schumann symphony. It didn’t sound at all good – they were playing with a huge string section. At that time, the late 1960s, people didn’t play Schumann much – it was a kind of adventure to play him. But when I started to look at his symphonies later in the 1970s and 80s (when we were recording with the London Classical Players) I was just struck by their extreme attractiveness. I remember quite vividly hearing the opening of Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 playing on a little transistor radio (in the kitchen in Berkshire, where we were living). I thought, ‘what is this amazing music?’ – it was this extraordinary slow introduction. By the end, I was transfixed by the sheer calm of this music.
Beethoven tried to impress, but Schumann tries to delight you, maybe even more than Mendelssohn. He’s unusual in that respect. He was writing bang in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, so he’s representative of German Romanticism par excellence. Later on, things begin to get more depressive, with Brahms to a certain extent, certainly with Wagner and Mahler. But Schumann is still on that upwards movement of delight that filled the middle of the Nineteenth Century, before the guilt about industrialisation took over. His music is so attractive and pretty, but it’s also clever, unusually adventurous and experimental. I like that too.
In the introduction[2] you gave when you conducted all four symphonies with the Tapiola Sinfonietta (back in 2019), you briefly mentioned the reasons why the Schumann symphonies often don’t work in performance. One of them is the size of the venue. For example, the original Gewandhaus in Leipzig,[3] where three of these four symphonies were premiered, was a fairly small concert hall.
Yes. The first Gewandhaus held about 800-900 people, in a picture you can actually count the seats. The Mozarteum in Salzburg is the same cubic size. The orchestra was playing on the floor at one end, and there’s really not room for a bigger one than 8, 8.[4] I would use 8, 8, 6, 4, 4 ideally – that’s what we had in Finland with the Tapiola Sinfonietta. I like plenty of bass, so the cellos and bass together become 8 – that’s the same size as the first violins. The music sounds very good like that. Orchestras used that sort of formula, right back to Haydn’s time. Haydn had 3, 3, 2, 1, 1 for thirty years, and Mozart had 6, 6, 2, 2, 3 in Salzburg. The court orchestra in Vienna was 8, 8, 6, 4, 4. It was moved up to 12, 12 in 1870 but then they doubled the woodwind.
It’s also possible to play Schumann’s music with a larger orchestra, provided you double the woodwind. Schumann also did that in Düsseldorf where he worked as a conductor. In the summer they would have this big music festival and a sort of double orchestra. Instead of 8 they would have 16 like our modern orchestras, but they doubled the winds so they had 16 of them as well as 16 first violins. That seemed to be obvious to them. Everyone did it: Haydn did it with The Creation – in fact he had triple woodwind; Mozart did it occasionally with his symphonies, which he thought was a wonderful sound; and Beethoven did it in most of his concerts in Vienna. It was perfectly normal to have either 8, 8 or 12-16 and double woodwind.
The recordings I made with Stuttgart were with a large orchestra. We had 12 or 14 first violins but when there were quieter or soloistic passages we reduced the strings and the winds (then some people were sitting at the back not playing). So there are parts where the Leipzig orchestra is playing inside the modern orchestra. When the Vienna Philharmonic moved into the Musikverein in Vienna in 1870, they moved up to 12 for the first violins and immediately they doubled the woodwind – you can see from the names on the roster. This is a very important balance. I find Schumann works perfectly well like that, provided you do the gentler pieces with small numbers.
Brahms felt a similar way regarding orchestra size. I came across a review in The Times from around 1911. The Meiningen Court Orchestra came over with Steinbach. The orchestra was very much attached to Brahms, he sometimes conducted it (they premiered his Symphony No. 4). They offered the composer more strings for ‘your brand new symphony’. Brahms said, ‘no thank you. 8, 8 will be quite sufficient’.
You also mentioned the orchestra layout…
Yes, that’s right: double basses in the centre at the back; horns on my left (and the audience’s left); trumpets and trombones on the right; first violins on the left; cellos next to them; and the violas and second violins on the right. All orchestras in the Nineteenth Century (and many into the Twentieth Century) sat with the first and second violins opposite each other, and my teacher, Adrian Boult, always had the second violins on the right. So did Toscanini and Furtwängler. It was completely normal, because you get this dialogue between the two sections. It’s a marvellous dramatic situation, especially in a small concert hall because they’re quite near you. If you’re at the back of the Royal Festival Hall you don’t get the spatial feeling quite as much, but nevertheless it’s a dialogue. And there’s a dialogue between the horns and the trumpets too. Yes, seating is important.
Was your teacher, Sir Adrian Boult, interested in historically informed practice (HIP)?
Oh no. Adrian wasn’t terribly interested in it, apart from the layout and tempo.
Ah, I see. Schumann’s life is very well documented (for example, Robert and Clara kept a marriage diary). This makes reading about his life extremely interesting as you can really dive into the details.
Did this help a great deal when you were researching Schumann and the historically informed performance of his music?
Yes. I always find biographies really important. He was born in 1810, but look at the people that were born around him: Berlioz in 1803; Mendelssohn in 1809, one year before Schumann; Liszt 1811, one year after; Wagner in 1813, three years after. A group of absolutely amazing composers, all born at the beginning of the Nineteenth century. It’s remarkable, isn’t it?
This Schumann was a strange, bookish boy, born into a bookseller’s family but very musical. His father sent him off to study law in Leipzig but he immediately started studying piano with Friedrich Wieck. He wrecked his hand, which stopped the possibility of becoming a pianist, but he met Wieck’s daughter – the child piano prodigy, Clara. She was a remarkable woman. They married after endless wrangles with her father in the 1840s (when he was thirty and she was twenty) but she continued her major piano career. She really kept them in money. She composed, bore eight children (one of them died), and when Schumann died she was a widow for forty years.
Yes, widowed so young in her thirties.
Absolutely, but she went on playing all over Europe, and being a great friend of Brahms. Brahms helped when Schumann went to the asylum, and he was the one who was allowed to go and see Schumann (Clara wasn’t allowed to go because it might upset him – she only went the last time to say goodbye). So Brahms was the intermediary and became very attached to Clara. We don’t really know what came of it, but for the rest of his life they were great friends.
In 1854, Schumann was ill with anxiety and neurasthenia (he had these terrible depressions and dreams). He jumped into the Rhine. Some fishermen picked him up, but he jumped in again. He then asked to be committed to a mental hospital. That was when he was forty-four and he died two years later. It’s an extraordinary story, He probably had syphilis and mercury poisoning from the treatment. He had a sort of schizophrenia – hence the famous ‘Florestan’ and ‘Eusebius’ sides of his personality.[5] Like Brahms, Schumann was absolutely fascinated by ciphers and musical quotations.[6] In some musical works he actually signed passionate passages ‘F’, for Florestan, and dreamy ones ‘E’ for Eusebius. Did you know five of his children had names beginning with either E or F?[7] (laughs) He was somewhat obsessive!
Could we return for a moment to the new musical taste of the Romantic period which Schumann inherited?
Yes, that’s very important. After Beethoven’s death many musicians were relieved. None of the young composers after him – Weber, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann – followed his style. Sometimes you may see a programme note that says Schubert was trying to be like Beethoven. He wasn’t trying to be like Beethoven at all! In the great C major symphony he was showing us how to write a completely different kind of symphony – one that told stories that were full of colour; not full of Beethovenian argument. This was the world Schumann inhabited. He was inspired to it by himself discovering the C major, and hearing the first performance under his friend Mendelssohn.
Because of course, it was Robert who discovered Schubert’s great C major symphony. He was in Vienna, and went to see Schubert’s brother, Ferdinand. Schumann asked if he had any more music by his brother – he told him to look in a trunk in the corner. He found the great C major symphony, and the Unfinished. He asked to borrow them and took them off to Leipzig. He showed them to Mendelssohn, who conducted the first performance of the C major (with very heavy cuts because it was so long). That showed Schumann how one could write a beautiful symphony without being argumentative and without this “showing-off” quality that Beethoven had. Beethoven said ‘listen to me. Listen to me!’ These younger composers all wanted to write beautiful music. They went back, as it were, to Mozart – after all, Mendelssohn’s first symphony was written during Beethoven’s lifetime. It doesn’t sound at all like Beethoven, there was rather little influence. They ignored him, they thought he was a kind of Stockhausen!
(Laughs)
So they wrote beautiful music, but with more description, more stories?
Yes exactly; and I like stories, I must admit. Obviously, for something like Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, I’m almost conducting the film, not just the symphony! I can actually see it happening. But there are other very visual pieces, like Beethoven’s Pastoral. I even think his Symphony No. 5 is actually a story about Ulysses. No. 7 is very visual as well. So I like to look for that. With Tchaikovsky you don’t have to look very far, but even in Brahms there are also lots of inner stories.
Schumann was very inarticulate in some ways, but boy could he write beautiful music. And he could write it fast – in 1840 he composed over 150 songs, and in 1841 he dashed down three symphonies (two symphonies and a piece with three movements). He would put one down in a week – not the orchestration but the bones of the piece. Night and day, night and day, he was absolutely manic. But amazing music came out.
Each of the four symphonies has some sort of programmatic material. The first is ‘Spring’ – we know that the opening scene is from a poem.[8] That was clearly programmatic. Next time you listen to the first symphony, notice this wonderful thing: in every movement, just before the end, there is a completely new, extraordinary idea. In the first movement it’s [sings melody from bar 437 p.55] – absolutely magic. It happens in the first symphony in particular but a bit in some of the others.
The second symphony he wrote became known as No. 4. It was a ‘Clara’ symphony and ‘C_A_A’ comes in again and again in the first movement (in 1841, when they had been married a year, he said he would write her a symphony). It’s noticeable for having themes that run through all four movements, so there is none of the customary applause between them. Mendelssohn also tried having no applause in the ‘Scottish’ symphony.
The third symphony to be written was called No. 2. It, again, doesn’t have a title, but it’s clearly ‘Robert’ (to me, anyway) – Robert and ‘B-A-C-H’. It’s a symphony full of quotations. Surprisingly it begins by quoting the opening fanfare of Haydn’s last symphony, which then goes on to resonate through the four movements. But he had very serious mental trouble in 1845, a particularly bad depression. As he came out of it he played lots of Bach on the piano – he said that doing that and writing the second symphony cured him. Maybe he was bringing the ‘Eusebius’ and ‘Florestan’ sides of his personality together.[9] In that particular symphony, which I’m very fond of, you heard me talking about how the two personalities seem to inhabit the traditional first and second themes.[10] For instance in the first movement you’ve got this strong Florestan theme – a mazurka, and then this more gentle, dreamy Eusebius.
The menacing Scherzo owes much to Florestan. But in the extraordinary second trio of the Scherzo (p.90) – you suddenly get a sort of Bach chorale with a walking bass. And the notes B-A-C-H keep appearing – it’s very clear that Bach was inspiring him.
The third movement actually is a direct quotation of the Trio Sonata from Bach’s Musikalische Opfer. Of course, the last movement of No. 2 has this amazing moment when you think there’s going to be the recapitulation, and it’s one of the most touching moments in nineteenth-century music. We hear ‘Florestan’ (sings) dadedumdedumdedum pa daaa! (ending p.173 bar 393). What you expect now is the tonic with the first subject. But not at all, out comes the beautiful song ‘An die ferne Geliebte’ by Beethoven (bar 394). Nobody in the Nineteenth Century writes touching music like Schumann does. It’s personal, he’s a songwriter – it’s that extraordinary tenderness that you only get in Schumann. You get plenty of strength as well, but those moments of tenderness are quite unique to him.
The last symphony he wrote was in 1850 – a tremendously successful piece written on the Rhine in Düsseldorf. Once again it is quite descriptive, and indeed is called the ‘Rhenish’. The first movement beautifully conjures up the Rhine itself. In the second, one can imagine a stately dance, perhaps in a beer garden overlooking the river. I have wondered if the slow movement could be picturing the Lorelei – the famed siren who sang and lured boatmen to disaster:
Und dass hat mit ihrem singen
Die Lorelei getan
The highly unusual extra slow movement depicts an ecclesiastical ceremony in Cologne cathedral, which Schumann and Clara had attended. And the glorious finale returns us to a celebration of the Rhine with sympathy and triumph.
The Rhenish was superb, perfect – but that was the end of the road. In 1851 he was tinkering with the Fourth, the second symphony he wrote, thickening the orchestration and making the transitions better. Brahms thought that the first version was better, and he annoyed the hell out of Clara by publishing it. She was furious.
Yes. Where do you stand on the orchestration of that symphony?
Yes, quite. Well, I just don’t get the problem really. People just copy each other by saying the orchestration is terrible. But if you listen to it, it doesn’t sound muddy. It may look muddy on paper but it doesn’t sound it (especially if you have the right size orchestra, as we’ve said). I remember clearly when we played Schumann with the London Classical Players, in the late 1980s/early 1990s, we had the right sized orchestra sitting in the right positions. I tried to do suitable tempi – there was a good deal of discussion, of course. It sounded fine to us. When we played that concert in London, The Times review opened, ‘So Schumann was an orchestrator of genius. Or so we heard last night.’ That’s my feeling exactly: the orchestration is lovely. Maybe it’s thicker than it should be, but so what? It sounds great to me. Bach’s orchestration is pretty thick with lots of doubling, Handel as well. It’s just not a problem – get the right sized orchestra (small or large), decent tempi, phrasing, lightness of touch, good bowing of the early Nineteenth Century according to David and so on, and they all sound absolutely glorious.
Schumann’s revisions of his Symphony No. 4 showed his later preferences. Brahms preferred the first version, as you said. Bernstein recorded it as it was originally. George Szell did some of his own re-orchestrations. What did you choose to do?
I’ve recorded both versions. If you listen to the recording of the Symphony No. 4 with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony (we recorded all four symphonies) we did the first version. With the London Classical Players you can hear the second version. The transition from the slow to the fast section in the first movement (p.4-5) is unconvincing in the first version, I think. So Schumann was right to improve it.
Mahler spent months re-writing all four symphonies
Yes, you’re not impressed by his orchestrations, are you?
No, I don’t think they’re any better at all – he was wasting his time. Nobody plays them nowadays. Play Schumann. Believe in him. Love him!
Yes, you’re right. There are so many interesting harmonic moments and rhythms in these symphonies. They’re charming.
Extraordinary. They’re very experimental – it stands out – and that’s partly why he was ‘dropped’ around 1900. People stopped playing him – Brahms came along and he just kind of blew Schumann out of the water. Wagner was around making these huge waves, and so Schumann sounded a bit infantile, I suppose. But I like children!
(laughs) I spoke to your good friend Ben Palmer about the Haydn symphonies back in 2017. He was brilliant, and referred to how much you had taught him over the years. ‘The rules’ for playing Haydn were mentioned (his musicians would jokingly ask if any newcomers knew them). For example, he explained how with dynamics in Haydn’s music ‘there’s no motorway playing, it’s all country roads’.[11]
Do you think there are any ‘rules’ for playing Schumann?
Good question.
Let me just take a step back. For approaching any music of the past here are ‘Six Ss’: size, seating, sound, style, speed, and lastly, sources. For Mozart the source is obviously his father, for Beethoven you’ve got Louis Spohr. Schumann had David, his concertmaster in Leipzig who wrote about how to play. David published some string quartets by Mozart and Beethoven, and in each part he put a little wiggly line over a note where you might use a little bit of vibrato. On a typical page this would be in about three or four places – that gives you an idea of the sort of vibrato you’d use in 1850. That’s a great example of a source.
We’ve mentioned size and seating. Sound: of course there was no vibrato in an orchestra in Schumann’s time, and how glorious it sounds without. It’s part of the innocence that Schumann had. Style covers tons of things, like shape, phrasing, note length – all sorts of nerdish stuff in there, but it’s important. Speed is a bit of a problem with Schumann because he was a very bad conductor. He was actually fired in Düsseldorf – he was clearly very bad at it, whereas someone like Berlioz was brilliant (his metronome marks are extremely interesting). Schumann metronome marks in the first and second version of Symphony No. 4 are madly different from each other. It’s the same music – he really didn’t seem to have any idea how it should go! It’s a bit dodgy, I have problems being sure of what to do, which I don’t have with Beethoven, who put a reliable metronome mark for every single movement.
And then there are note lengths: how long are they? What’s the difference between on-the-string and portato (notes with the dots underneath and slurs over the top)? All of those things are very interesting. A lot of them are your decision, but it is crucially important to take the evidence seriously. When you’re playing early music up to Elgar, you have to ride two horses at once, like in the circus – you need one foot on a black horse and one foot on a white horse. The black horse is your fantasy, what you bring with your imagination. The white horse is the information. Those two horses have to be completely in balance. You mustn’t have too much fantasy so that it breaks the evidence, you mustn’t be so concerned about the evidence that you don’t use your imagination. A good performance of any eighteenth or nineteenth-century piece has a perfect balance between information, not breaking any of the rules, and bringing maximum fantasy to the performance.
With Romantic music, of course, that’s rather less clear, because the emotion is always getting in the way of the information, but you just have to believe in both. Tchaikovsky is a good example – it’s very classical music, written down very classically, but it’s full of intense emotion. But apparently, when he was conducting he was extremely cool and calm. His metronome marks were very interesting. For instance, in the Pathétique, in all the places where orchestras traditionally slow down and do a huge grinding of gears, if you look carefully you’ll find a slightly quicker metronome mark. In other words ‘DON’T GO SLOWER HERE!’ (laughs) But everybody does! You’ve got to believe what he says, and you’ve got to do what he says. The same applies with the size, the seating, speed, sound… Tchaikovsky didn’t hear vibrato. Please listen to the piece without vibrato – see what you think.
I use those same ‘Six Ss’ if I’m looking at Wagner, Mozart, Schumann… Some of them will be the same as before, others will be different, but I would say there are fewer rules in Schumann. I think there are fewer rules after Beethoven because the Classical style was incredibly well mannered. It was the end of the courtly world – in which you behaved or you were fired! Beethoven fired himself, as it were, but he went on using the courtly style to a considerable extent. After the French Revolution (and particularly after 1848) it was a very different world. It was much more open, so the rules are less stringent.
Yes, it’s as if there is less ‘etiquette’.
Yes. The etiquette is really important in Haydn. For thirty years he worked at Esterhaza, and when he came to London he was a free man. He was the most famous composer in the world, but he still stuck to the etiquette. Beethoven broke that and the composers who followed on felt much freer. There was a new Romanticism that came in like a breath of spring, so not surprisingly Schumann’s ‘Spring’ symphony was his first!
In the second symphony, as I said I was fascinated by the extraordinary prevailing presence of Eusebius and Florestan. It may not be that at all – of course it’s just my fantasy, but the programme feeling is very strong at the very end. The way he combines all the elements together and stamps Haydn on the top is incredible. It’s an amazing last movement, but ironically that’s partly why that symphony disappeared. No. 2 dropped out earliest because serious music scholars couldn’t make head nor tail of it. They couldn’t understand how you could have a symphony where there was no recapitulation in the final movement. It was like his orchestration, it’s impossible. But that’s all theoretical – in fact, what Schumann does at the end is magic.
It’s the only symphony where he suddenly says ‘sympathy is as important as being grand’. In the last movement it’s a bit like the return of the recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony, when there’s the little oboe solo [around 4 minutes in]. It’s that kind of idea – suddenly having a soft centre to something that is really tough. (It’s the shortest of all Beethoven’s symphony movements: 6 minutes, with the repeat – absolutely amazing.) The start of the last movement of Schumann’s second symphony sounds a bit hearty, like bad Mendelssohn for a moment or two, but it actually ends up by being incredibly tender and wonderful. But the serious critics thought it must be wrong, it didn’t fit into their picture.
Returning to Symphony No. 4: there seem to be many factors that aren’t always considered with regard to why his Symphony No. 4 wasn’t initially successful (when it was performed as No. 2). Hans Gál quoted (and agreed with) Albert Dietrich, who wrote ‘Schumann would always strongly condemn any excess. If himself at the time of his activity in Düsseldorf used to overorchestrate by thick doublings, I am inclined to think that the fault was with the deficient violins of the Düsseldorf orchestra, whose thin sound he tried to cover by added wind instruments’ (cited Gál 1979:20).
Yes, I think that’s very possibly true.
Mendelssohn was away for the first premiere. The programme for that night was extremely long, and the symphony was billed after the interval. The players and the orchestra (as well as the audience) were completely exhausted.
It’s wonderful to speak to a conductor who takes such a practical perspective on the history of the music he’s playing.
Well, you’ve got to be practical to solve problems of balance and so on, but you’ve also got to have fantasy. You’ve got to be emotionally exciting to an orchestra, then in the next minute you’ve got the make the right decision.
It’s good to have an Übermensch, a kind of consciousness which rises above everything and asks ‘are we doing this right? Is this really suitable?’ This music is not there to be indulged, to be treated like sweetmeats. Berlioz talked about the Paris audience – he thought they just wanted to be ‘amused’ by the music. He said there are things far more important than that – you should want to get up and walk around furiously because it’s so exciting. It’s not just fun; it’s serious fun.
All three of the Gewandhaus Halls in Leipzig have had a motto written over the stage (above the organ loft) in Latin:
Res severa est verum gaudium (True joy is a serious thing)
‘Music is serious’. Actually, in Germany that was often taken too far and the music was played terribly slowly. Conductors like Klemperer and Furtwangler did Beethoven at half the speed he asked for because they wanted it to be serious. There is a danger in thinking that res severa (very severe things) are important – when it gets to Bruckner it becomes a bit unbearable. I’m basically against that, but on the other hand, it is good to have it in mind – this is really some of the greatest art of any kind that’s ever been created by man. To be able to write a great symphony is an extraordinary achievement, it’s so difficult and demanding. You’ve got to be so sensitive and also so clever to do it.
That’s the exciting thing about it. You’ve got all of this information and then you get up there and make the music dance. Go! It needs to dance. Dance dominated the Eighteenth Century, and it’s still crucial in Haydn, Mozart and even Beethoven. It continues into the Nineteenth Century – in Dvořák, for example, there’s a strong feeling of dance.
… and the symphony evolved from the dance suite, so it would make sense that that would still be running through its blood.
It did. That’s right.
Of course, in Tapiola I was getting rather old and was sitting down – I was doing very little heavy conducting. But, as you heard, they played just as well. When I was younger I was more violent, you know? (laughs) It’s quite interesting to see how I’ve changed over the years.
Are there any particularly challenging sections in these symphonies for you, as the conductor?
They’re certainly tricky. There are tempo problems in Symphony No. 4 in the trio. In the second half of the scherzo in No. 2 (bar 318 p.96) – he puts in a rallentando, which is practically impossible. That’s a real problem for any conductor. There are odd corners, but it’s pretty obvious what those moments are.
The great thing is to believe in them, and to be delighted by them! Listening to serious music when you go to a concert and never dare to clap or laugh is OK. But it isn’t a class in musicology, it’s there to amaze you – that’s really important. It’s not meant to be good for you in the sense of taking medicine, it’s meant to be good for you because it liberates you. Schumann is very liberating.
Bibliography/Recommended Reading
Chernaik, J. Schumann: The Faces and the Masks (Faber and Faber Ltd., Croydon 2018)
Franke, V. M. Mahler’s Reorchestration of Schumann’s ‘Spring’ Symphony, Op. 38: Background, Analysis, Intentions in Acta Musicologica, 2006, Vol. 78 (1) pp. 75-109
Gál, H. Schumann Orchestral Music BBC Music Guides (BBC Publications, London 1979)
Kok, R-M. and Tunbridge, L. (eds) Rethinking Schumann (Oxford University Press, New York 2011)
Walker, A. The Great Composers: Schumann (Faber and Faber Limited, Cambridge 1976)
Worthen, J. Robert Schuman: The Life and Death of a Musician (Yale University Press, Hampshire 2007)
Schumann Symphony No. 1 Op. 38 (Ernst Eulenburg, Ltd.)
Schumann Symphony No. 2 Op. 61 (Ernst Eulenburg, Ltd.)
Schumann Symphony No. 3 Op. 97 (Ernst Eulenburg, Ltd.)
Schumann Symphony No. 4 Op. 120 (Ernst Eulenburg, Ltd.)
Schumann Symphony No. 1 (Tapiola Sinfonietta, cond. Sir Roger Norrington) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZOLFUIEnWA&t=163s
Schumann Symphony No. 2 (Tapiola Sinfonietta, cond. Sir Roger Norrington) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAnB45ZGIts
Schumann Symphony No. 3 (Tapiola Sinfonietta, cond. Sir Roger Norrington) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0gbgrNMgEw
Schumann Symphony No.4 (Tapiola Sinfonietta, cond. Sir Roger Norrington) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqDucfjKVPw
Sir Roger Norrington: Introduction to Symphony No. 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrgywUl2NEc
Sir Roger Norrington: Introduction to Symphony No. 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU6Tt15objc
Sir Roger Norrington: Introduction to Symphony No. 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSArajF9_-0
Sir Roger Norrington: Introduction to Symphony No. 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUes-2BON2s
[1] See Franke, V. M. Mahler’s Reorchestration of Schumann’s ‘Spring’ Symphony, Op. 38: Background, Analysis, Intentions in Acta Musicologica, 2006, Vol. 78 (1) pp. 75-109 (in particular p.75-81) for examples of these derisions.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrgywUl2NEc&t=39s (4m58s)
[3] There have been three Gewandhaus Halls in Leipzig. The first was constructed in 1781, the second opened in 1884, and the third in 1981.
[4] 8, 8 is shorthand, referring to the numbers of first and second violins in an orchestra.
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU6Tt15objc&t=509s (3m05s)
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUes-2BON2s&t=2s (5m10s)
[7] His children were called Marie, Elisa, Julie, Emil, Ludwig, Ferdinand, Eugenie and Felix.
[8] The first ‘Spring’ Symphony is said to have been inspired by Adolf Böttger’spoem Frühlingsgedicht. The closing lines of Böttger’s poem, ‘O wende, wende deinen Lauf, Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf!’ (‘O, turn, O turn and change your course, In the valley, Spring blooms forth!’) have often been associated with the symphony’s opening. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrgywUl2NEc&t=356s 10m19s
[9] Schumann wrote to D.G. Otten, conductor of the Music Society in Hamburg: ‘I wrote the symphony in December 1845 at a time when I was rather unwell, and I have a feeling this may be evident. It was only in the last movement that I started to feel better, and when I had finished the work , I was well again. But as I have said: it reminds me of a dark period’ (Gál 1979:23).
[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU6Tt15objc from 3m00s
[11] Click here to read the interview with Ben Palmer on Haydn’s 104 symphonies.