
Schumann’s ‘Kinderszenen’: Testing the Grown-Up Player
SCHUMANN – KINDERSZENEN – ANALYSIS 2
Alfred Brendel
From Alfred Brendel, Music, Sense and Nonsense: Collected Essays and Lectures (London: The Robson Press, 2015) pp. 283-295
I. KINDERSZENEN – INTRODUCTION
‘Easy pieces for the pianoforte’ – What Schumann himself presented as easy, simple and childlike proves to be, for the performer, a trying task. In this music nothing can be concealed. Each note must speak with its particular significance, neither taken too lightly nor buried in ‘meaning’. There seems to be a prevailing attitude in the performances of Schumann’s Scenes of Childhood which, if I had to put it in one sentence, would read: ‘As naïveté cannot be forced, let us improvise and trust in God’. The results of such trust can be deplorable. What these miniatures need is affectionate care, loving detachment, an appearance of directness. The player should not turn himself into a child.

Odilon Redon, Portrait of Yseult Fayet, 1908
Where the artist mobilises childlike qualities in himself, he does so with artistic means to serve his artistic purpose. Alban Berg censured Hans Pfitzner for seeing in ‘Träumerei’ the prime example of ‘inspiration’, a melody sent down from heaven, rendering the analyst speechless. In Berg’s brilliant account of the compositional process of ‘Träumerei’, its motivic connections with other pieces in the cycle are not discussed. Before I try to deal with these connections, let me examine another area that links the pieces.

Odilon Redon, Portrait of Genevieve de Gonet as a Child, 1907
Over a few weeks during February and March 1838, Schumann composed ‘nigh on thirty quaint little things’, thirteen of which he put together as Scenes of Childhood. In this arrangement a magnetic cohesion seems to have taken hold of the pieces, pointing out relationships and turning them into components of a lyrical world bigger than the sum of its parts.

John Singer Sargent
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882 (detail)
Among performers, perceiving series of pieces as a complete whole is a relatively recent notion. Busoni seems to have been one of the first pianists to play Chopin’s Preludes and Etudes complete. Liszt, in his Leipzig performance of Carnaval, restricted himself to a selection of the pieces, and Clara Schumann in the same work simply left out ‘Florestan’, ‘Eusebius’ and ‘Chiarina’ – too intimately connected with her private life, according to Tovey.

Albert Besnard, Madeleine Gorges, 1872
Of the Scenes of Childhood, ‘Träumerei’ has achieved notoriety around the globe. I remember a villa in Buenos Aires which bore the inscription ‘Reverie’; it fulfilled the promise of its name by providing a musical-box performance of ‘Träumerei’ while the visitor entered the house. Standing on its own, the mauled piece seems to have changed its identity: it is strangely different from those thirty-two bars that occupy the central position (No. 7) in Kinderszenen. There, after the comic excitement of ‘Wichtige Begebenheit’ (Important Event), ‘Träumerei’ comes as a surprise in F major, an island of peace, a small domain of suspended breath and intangibly dislocated rhythmic emphasis, a delicately polyphonic dream, before the lively motion of ‘Am Kamin’ (By the Fireside) transfers the listener back to reality.

Ilya Repin, Dragonfly, 1884
Portrait of Vera Repina, the Artist’s Daughter
Within the whole course of Kinderszenen, ‘Träumerei’ is the first crucial turning-point. The reign of sharps during the first six pieces, in keys gathered around D major, has now been broken; only the next turning-point, No. 10, will bring them back. Here G sharp minor abruptly follows the C major close of ‘Ritter vom Steckenpferd’ (Knight of the Hobbyhorse, No. 9) – an event gently introduced yet traumatic in its impact. The new emotional state – ironically intimated by the title ‘Fast zu ernst’ (Almost Too Serious) – is maintained in all the remaining pieces. It manifests itself as nervous sensitivity in the increased complication and irregularity of musical phrases; as the inner unrest of syncopations and fermatas in ‘Fast zu ernst’; and as wavering between F minor and G major in ‘Fürchtenmachen’ (Frightening) – which, in spite of its soothing G major ending, remains rooted in its parallel E minor: the next piece, ‘Kind im Einschlummern’ (Child Falling Asleep), makes this evident. But here again the conclusion is not on the tonic E minor on which the piece started, more awake than asleep; it stops on a wonderful, truly romantic A minor chord that opens up like a mouth opened by sleep.

Joshua Reynolds, A Child Asleep, 1782
This mouth, to pursue the analogy, now begins to speak with the voice of the poet. In the last piece, ‘Der Dichter spricht’ (The Poet Speaks), the poet provides an epilogue, and answers the unresolved A minor question by leading back into the initial key of Kinderszenen, G major. We have come full circle: while in the preceding pieces the poet had seemingly turned into a child, the epilogue turns the child, as it were, into the poet.

John Everett Millais, A Souvenir of Velasquez, 1868
A cycle of smaller pieces challenges the performer to reconcile two points of view: the acute characterisation of the single piece and the pull of the whole. Cortot’s recording of Chopin’s Preludes is a perfect model. In it, each prelude instantaneously shows its own, unmistakable face. One follows the other almost without interruption, a credit to Cortot’s truly phenomenal command of character. The fact that each piece inhabits its own world, and the voyage through all the keys, become hallmarks of the Preludes’ organisation. In other cycles, constant looking back to the theme (variation form) or the common denominator of motifs may tie the complete work together. Usually in cyclical works the momentum of musical events is such that a quiet intake of breath between pieces is a rare occurrence. In Kinderszenen tiny separations before ‘Träumerei’ and after ‘Fast zu ernst’ are required. All the other pieces should lead into, or follow, one another without pause.

Edward Arthur Walton, Arthur Walton, the Artist’s Son, 1900
II. KINDERSZENEN – MOTIVIC CONNECTIONS
As usual, the very beginning presents the crucial motivic material. (My reference to the lovely opening phrase of the first piece as ‘motivic material’ will offend only those who believe that poetry and intellect are opposites; Romantic aesthetics should show them otherwise.)
KINDERSZENEN 1: ‘VON FREMDEN LÄNDERN UND MENSCHEN’ (OF FOREIGN LANDS AND PEOPLES)
The basic motif –

— reappears in the pieces that follow in a variety of shapes, always related to the notes of the melody but not to its rhythm. These notes are B-G-F sharp-E-D; we find them plain or in disguise, transposed or untransposed, varied in their order of succession (which Rudolph Réti1 calls ‘interversion’) or provided with additional notes (‘auskomponiert’, to use Schenker’s term). Two shapes of the basic motif may be distinguished by name. In the Original (OR) our motif recurs on its initial pitch independent of key – regardless of octave transpositions or added accidentals. The Transposition (TR) puts the initial notes into different keys and/or different degrees of the scale.
1 – In Réti’s The Thematic Process in Music (Faber & Faber, 1961) Kinderszenen is presented as a ‘theme with variations’. This seems to me to exaggerate the closeness of its pieces. As so often, Réti gets carried away by the notion of a near-complete motivic coherence. The results of my own independent investigation are, I think, more modest.
KINDERSZENEN 2 & 3: ‘KURIOSE GESCHICHTE’ (A DROLL STORY) | ‘HASCHE-MANN’ (CATCH ME IF YOU CAN)
From an ample number of examples, I should like to offer the following selection. In the openings of the second and third pieces there is an interaction between TR and OR.

‘Kuriose Geschichte’ (A Droll Story)

‘Hasche-Mann’ (Catch Me If You Can)
KINDERSZENEN 4 & 5: ‘BITTENDES KIND’ (ENTREATING CHILD) | ‘GLÜCKES GENUG’ (HAPPY ENOUGH)
The fourth piece, ‘Bittendes Kind’ (Entreating Child), has the OR, without any melodic change in the key of D major. After various transpositions in the fifth piece, the OR appears as its conclusion:

KINDERSZENEN 6: ‘WICHTIGE BEGEBENHEIT’ (IMPORTANT EVENT)
The beginning of the sixth piece combines two transpositions:

KINDERSZENEN 7: ‘TRÄUMEREI’ (REVERIE)
In the theme of ‘Träumerei’ the TR is easily audible.

KINDERSZENEN 8: ‘AM KAMIN’ (BY THE FIRESIDE)
The eighth piece contains, next to transposed interversions of the basic motif, the OR twice.

KINDERSZENEN 9: ‘RITTER VOM STECKENPFERD’ (KNIGHT OF THE HOBBY-HORSE)
In the first four bars of the ninth piece there is a TR in the background.

KINDERSZENEN 10: ‘FAST ZU ERNST’ (ALMOST TOO SERIOUS)
With the tenth piece the situation becomes more complex. The change of emotional climate has its motivic implications.

Starting with the two G sharps in bars 1 and 3, I hear their continuation in the fifth bar.

The figure returns very similarly later on.

KINDERSZENEN 11: ‘FÜRCHTENMACHEN’ (FRIGHTENING)
At the beginning of the eleventh piece there is, again, an opportunity to ‘listen ahead’.

A later version of the OR reads:

KINDERSZENEN 12: ‘KIND IM EINSCHLUMMERN’ (CHILD FALLING ASLEEP)
The penultimate piece distributes the OR between two voices.

KINDERSZENEN 13: ‘DER DICHTER SPRICHT’ (THE POET SPEAKS)
In the last piece the perspective has changed. The basic motif almost disappears. Four-note fragments can be spotted in the initial phase and, somewhat more distinctly, in the recitativo, while the complete transpositions are barely noticeable. Here the player should observe the part-writing with loving care; the ascent of the G sharp up to the E of the appoggiatura can easily remain obscure. I am still waiting for the edition that will visually clarify the matter and refrain from printing that last note of the turn underneath the anticipated E. Where Schumann’s notation errs, we are entitled to correct it. The entry of the appoggiatura, by the way, has to coincide with the C of the bass if the ascending interval of the sixth is to become clearly audible. In bars 18 and 23 we can detect two intertwined transpositions in the upper voice and one in the middle voice. Whether, and to what degree, such motivic procedures are produced intentionally is open to speculation. To me, devices of musical order are no less impressive if generated, or adopted, by the workings of the unconscious.

III. KINDERSZENEN – METRONOME FIGURES: A DIGRESSION
In Kinderszenen Schumann makes do without conventional tempo indications, although he elsewhere, whether in German or Italian, invariably adheres to them. Instead there are descriptive titles – ‘of course devised later’, as Schumann explains, ‘and actually nothing more than subtle hints at performance and conception’ – as well as metronome marks. The latter are contained only in subsequent editions of the first print, which has none. Malcolm Frager kindly told me about a copy of this Urtext of all Urtexts (in the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin) in which its owner, a certain Otto Boehme, had written: ‘The metronomes of Kinderszenen are neither by Schumann nor made with his knowledge and assistance. I got this information from the music dealer Friedrich Whistling of Leipzig (13.9.46), who in turn got it from Schumann himself.’

Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Master Bunbury, 1781
On the other hand, there is a comment by Brahms which refers to the preparation of a complete edition of Schumann’s works (Breitkopf & Härtel); in a letter to Clara Schumann of April 1879, Brahms writes: ‘Notify Härtel that the pedal and metronome markings in Kinderszenen have to remain. The volume delivered to me shows that Schumann himself owned such copies and had them bound’. (Brahms’s advice was not taken.) When we look at Mr. Boehme’s own insane metronome figure for ‘Träumerei’ ♩ = 132, we can quickly disregard him as a musical authority – unless he has mistaken quavers for crotchets. Whether authentic or not, I feel obliged to examine Schumann’s ‘original’ metronomes and try to make sense of them.

Henry Raeburn, Boy and Rabbit, 1814
I confess that I am more comfortable with the idea of a tempo, even if rather vaguely expressed by words like ‘allegro’ or ‘andante’, ‘sehr rasch’ or ‘mässig’, than with the outstretched finger of the metronomic prescription. Is the information conveyed by a figure really more precise? Does a minutely described fictional character come to life more vividly than one that leaves enough room for the imagination to fill in the details? I have met only one musician who possessed the equivalent of absolute pitch, an absolute memory for tempo. The ability of the late conductor Paul Paray to reproduce, and retain, a certain tempo evening after evening seemed unfailing even at the age of ninety. Other musical mortals, composers not excluded, are prone to considerable fluctuations in their perception of tempo, owing to hall, instrument, weather and well-being. (I shall not consider here the practice of modifying an initial tempo.) The player or listener may have very different memories of performances of the same piece, even if the stopwatch guaranteed that the duration was identical to the second; what dragged along yesterday seems fluent enough today.

Antonio Mancini, Boy with Toy Soldiers, 1876
Otto Klemperer in his old age hardly realised how slow his tempi were and how much they had slowed down since his earlier years. Béla Bartók, one of the most meticulous masters of notation, attended rehearsals of his works with the pocket metronome on alert, yet played in his commercial record three of the four movements of his Suite Op. 14 at least twenty beats faster than he himself had stipulated. And how embarrassing for conductors to learn after thirty-five years that the printed metronome figure for the second movement of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra – desperately adhered to against their better judgement – reflected the composer’s wish as little as did the verbal tempo indication (Allegretto scherzando ♩ = 74, instead of the authentic Allegro scherzando ♩ = 94). According to Leonard Stein, Schoenberg’s assistant in Los Angeles, Schoenberg’s as well as Stravinsky’s notions of tempo varied greatly over the years. In Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto Op. 42, judging by Eduard Steuermann’s performances, some metronome marks are ‘correct’ while others, ignored by Steuermann, are absurd and unplayable. On a tape of a performance by Steuermann and Hermann Scherchen (Frankfurt, 1955) the work lasts nineteen minutes and not twenty-eight – the preposterous figure put down by Schoenberg. A literal execution of Schoenberg’s metronome indications would render it even quicker.

Modigliani, Jeune fille au béret, 1918
The ‘right tempo’, fixed in figures, is hardly the key to the ‘right’ performance. Rather, the tempo will be a result of all factors combined: the formal and emotional attributes of the composition; its markings which, to a certain extent, regulate articulation, dynamics, character and atmosphere; the descriptive and programmatic indications, if at hand; the (at least approximate) playability; and, finally, the necessary degree of clarity and transparency within the acoustic surroundings of a concert hall.

Modigliani, Blue-Eyed Boy, 1916
That said, I should point out that I am not the sort of performer who would disregard the composer’s metronome marks untested ‘because they don’t work anyway’. I am already quite pleased if some of them sometimes do. In the case of Kinderszenen I do find a majority of the early metronomes convincing; I adhere to them, at least approximately, in nine out of the thirteen pieces. (Users of the Clara Schumann edition should realise that the metronomes offered in it, which rarely tally with the earlier ones, are of Clara’s own invention.) The quick tempo of ‘Hasche-Mann’ (♩ = 138) is more than justified by bars 15–16: here the sforzando octave in the bass has to be sustained by the pedal, which, if this were done in Clara’s ♩ = 120, would produce a clumsy blot. Equally indispensable is a fluent pace for ‘Bittendes Kind’ if one wants to take the ritards in bars 9–12 seriously. (Clara surpassed herself in reducing the ‘original’ ♪ = 138 to ♪ = 88!) In ‘Wichtige Begebenheit’ as well, ♩ = 138 seems to me nearer the mark than Clara’s ♩ = 120, which makes the middle section sound unduly pompous. When children come to relay some important news, they rush in and blurt it out.

Modigliani, Blue-Eyed Girl, 1918
The lively tempo of ‘Am Kamin’ (♩ = 138, slowed down by Clara to ♩ = 108) appears to me, after ‘Träumerei’, just right; instead of dozing off in a corner we enjoy the glowing fire, and manage to get the natural feel of the little retards in bars 16 and 22. Technically, a well-oiled player is needed to execute jumps, accents and polyphony with elegance.

Ilya Repin, Yurochka Repin, 1882
One of Clara’s most wilful infringements is her correction, in ‘Fast zu ernst’, of ♩ = 69 to ♩ = 104. Nothing could be less appropriate than to measure the pulse in quavers. Even Schumann’s crotchets appear to be an inadequate solution in a piece whose extended phrases reach over several bar-lines and steer towards its closing pause. (However, it is only at the repeat of this piece that I approach ♩ = 69, a tempo too agitated for its beginning.) The fluency of ‘Fürchtenmachen’ is also welcome: instead of an amiable idyll with scary episodes, a character is at once presented whose very timidity makes it liable to succumb to fright.

Paul Mathey, Fille en matelot, 1889
Four of the ‘original’ metronome figures have remained, to me, thoroughly implausible. The speed of the first piece, ‘Von fremden Ländern und Menschen’ (to which, in a rare feat of unanimity, Clara also subscribes), makes it scurry along with the industry of an ant; there is no time to relate to, take in or marvel at anything those unfamiliar shores may have to offer. (According to her best-known pupil, Carl Friedberg, Clara Schumann took it considerably more slowly in performance.) Equally mysterious remains ♩ = 100 for ‘Träumerei’. I am the last person to want this piece to reel in pink-and-purple affectation or collapse under the weight of its own ‘depth’. But even Clara’s ♩ = 80 sounds hurried and superficial. The cycle’s centrepiece and heart deserves better. In ‘Kind im Einschlummern’ the feverish speed of ♩ = 92 does not permit the child to breathe quietly. (Here Clara’s ♪ = 80 is preferable.) And the poet (‘Der Dichter spricht’, ♩ = 112) is prevented, even at Clara’s more moderate pace (♩ = 92), from accommodating the turns and syncopations of his epilogue poetically. My own approximate tempi for these pieces are: ‘Von fremden Ländern und Menschen’ ♩ = 76; ‘Träumerei’ ♩ = 69; ‘Kind im Einschlummern’ ♪ = 72; ‘Der Dichter spricht’ ♩ = 82.

Auguste Boulard, L’enfant du pêcheur, 1855
IV. KINDERSZENEN – IRONY: A BRIEF EPILOGUE
‘Glückes genug’ – a title that ironically contradicts the music. What happens in this composition rather reminds me of the line from the Swiss poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: ‘Enough can never ever satisfy’ (‘Genug kann nie und nimmermehr genügen’). Ceaselessly, the same motivic symbol of rapture reappears in all voices. And there is more to follow: a da capo of the entire piece. But even boundless happiness can overreach itself – within that da capo, I insist on skipping the repeat, which Clara Schumann, in her edition, chose to write out. Irony creates distance. In Kinderszenen there is an ironic distance between the child and the grown-up in ourselves. We do not identify with the child, and do not want to be hurtful. Schumann’s irony in this work is lovingly lenient. With Schumann we observe how a sheltered world turns vulnerable, or ‘fast zu ernst’, as he put it. If, in irony, things are not what they seem to be and do not mean what they seem to say, then ‘Fast zu ernst’, by its title and its music, strips the mask from an illusory security. With irony, we look back to ‘Glückes genug’. What appeared naïve proves to be, in Schiller’s distinction, sentimental. The Romantic humour of Jean Paul and his disciple Schumann betrays its dark core.

Auguste Boulard, L’enfant aux cerises, 1850
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