Sleep, Dreams, Fantasies: Three Very Short Essays on Schumann’s Kinderszenen
Robert and Clara Schumann (Wieck). Lithograph by Eduard Kaiser, 1847
Dear Reader,
I’d like to introduce to you to a piece by Robert Schumann, one of the most special and strange that he wrote. Schumann was a rather unusual composer. While other composers before him wrote their pieces with quill and ink, Schumann composed using magic. His head was constantly filled with stories and daydreams, and every now and then, one of them would find their way onto a piece of paper – this is how he wrote his pieces.
The most important character in these stories was his wife, Clara. She was one of the greatest pianist of her day, known by everyone in Europe since her first concerts as a little girl. Robert loved her very much, and wrote lots of pieces for and about her. One day, Clara told Robert jokingly that he “often seemed to her like a child” – Robert loved this idea very much, and, within 5 days at the beginning of 1838, he wrote 13 little piano pieces for her, which he called Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood).
In the end, it’s up to you to listen to the piece, and decide what exactly Schumann was trying to say. I’m going to simply give a few suggestions, and leave the rest to you…
Magic
Kinderszenen was one of the composer’s first major successes, and achieved widespread recognition upon its publication. Schumann’s earlier piano cycles were often met with confusion, even by those close to him. For listeners of his day, Schumann was thought of as a musical equivalent of Lord Byron. Just like in Byron’s poetry, throughout Schumann’s work there is an almost confessional urgency and passion, and in both cases audiences were quick to connect the extremes of their works with the artists’ own personal lives. It is this which audiences were unable to accept in Schumann’s music – upon receiving the score for Kreisleriana Clara wrote to Robert that “sometimes your music actually frightens me.”
However, this aspect of his personality is not the dominant voice behind Kinderszenen. There is deep feeling to be found in the work, for sure, but just as prominent is the sense of innocence and bliss, inspired by the “most beautiful state of excitement” of Robert’s meetings with Clara, maybe. The work acts as a prism which transforms the feelings and phenomena of our everyday world. Perhaps it’s this act of transformation that gives the work its quality of fantasy, the feeling that, when we listen to the work, we are stepping through the looking glass, or entering someone’s daydream, even though the contents of the fantasy are often of our own world – a game of tag, a fireplace, a hobby horse.
Fantasy
There are realms of fantasy within Kinderszenen’s world itself; the famous Träumerei (Dreaming) is one obvious example. In the preceding six movements, Schumann sets up a world of joy, and indeed Träumerei too begins and ends in this realm, like a sweet dream. But its middle section, which inhabits darker minor keys, explores feelings of sadness for the first time in the cycle. The child is exploring new emotional territory here, the act of dreaming instigating the expansion of the child’s world. But this turns out to be a mere glimpse of these distant places – the child soon awakes, and these feelings fade away.
I think that Fast zu ernst is also a dream, in all but name. With this movement, we find ourselves once again in unfamiliar waters – its key, G# minor, is very tonally distant from the preceding key of C major, and this contrast, as well the movement’s hypnotic off-beat rhythms, evoke a very strange mood indeed. Perhaps the title suggests an awareness of the limits of this childhood world, like a voice from beyond – “isn’t this a bit too serious to be a children’s piece?” Unlike with Träumerei, the remaining movements of the cycle seem preoccupied with the omen of this movement, the darkness never fully lifting.
Dreams
The key of E minor is an interesting character in the story of Kinderszenen. Let’s follow it, and see if it gives us any clues about what the cycle’s overall story might be. In the first few movements, E minor is repeatedly hinted at, but never confirmed fully, like an intrusive thought not yet ready to be confronted. The key first rears its head in the middle section of the first movement, but Schumann sidesteps the key soon after (the exact same happens in the next movement too).
Near the end of the cycle, E minor again appears Fürchtenmachen (Frightening), this time taking centre stage in the piece’s drama. In this movement, slower, tender sections alternate with faster outbursts of nervousness. A parent is trying to soothe a scared child, who perhaps imagines ghosts in the moving shadows, or creatures in closed cabinets. Throughout the piece, we as listeners are never sure until the very end whether the piece is in G major or E minor – the two keys alternate constantly, with E minor representing the child’s fears, and G major the parent’s consoling. It is not until the very last chords that the piece settles into G major. The parent has managed, apparently, to soothe the child.
The next and penultimate movement, Kind im Einschlummern (Child Falling Asleep), brings us inside the mind of the child. Situated securely in E minor – which, for the previous movement, was the key of the child’s fears and nightmares – this is the first time in the entire cycle where the key is fully confirmed. Has the child, then, finally come to peace with this fear which has always loomed over them? Or are they still being haunted by it? As the child fully confronts the presence of E minor for the first time, a threshold is also being crossed, a passage made from waking to sleep – from childhood to beyond, perhaps. Where does that leave the final movement, Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks), the most enigmatic, ethereal movement of them all?