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APPENDIX A on the 150th Anniversary of Schumann’s Birth George Szell new york times, sunday, march 13, 1960 robert Schumann has not been faring too well at his recent anniversaries. In 1956 the centenary of his death was overshadowed by the bicentenary of Mozart’s birth. this year he has to share his 150th birthday with Chopin, who, as the only great composer of his nation, has a whole country and its government behind him. Schumann deserves better. for me he is the greatest purely romantic composer and his music the exponent of the more affecting traits of German character, nobly representative of a people of “Dichter und Denker,” before their fatal unification and their ominous entry into the arena of world politics. the originality of his musical thought and design, his imagination and his warmth, his tenderness and his fire, his solemnity, and also his frolicsome boisterousness, the infinite variety of characters populating his musical stage, have secured Schumann a place in the heart of every sensitive musician and music lover. While his position as a composer of piano music, of songs and also of chamber music seems established beyond doubt, I find Schumann’s merits and his influences as symphonic composer sadly underrated. I see in him the originator of the romantic symphony, the inventor not just of lovely tunes, but of interesting, novel designs of harmony and formal structure which have influenced and stimulated great composers after him. Berlioz’ device, prompted by a poetical idea, to link the various movements of a symphony by the red thread of a “leitmotiv” was taken over by Schumann, transformed and enriched and given purely musical motivation. In this, as in certain turns of phrase, Schumann’s influence on Brahms is too obvious to need further elaboration. less obvious, but equally provable, is Schumann’s influence on tchaikovsky—for better or worse. I could never help feeling that the device of sequential repetition, and the trend to rhythmical stereotype in some of tchaikovsky’s development sections, are due to the influence of Schumann, who for this mannerism has come in for severe strictures from pundits and pedants for more than a hundred years. 296 . appendix a But Schumann’s influence on tchaikovsky goes even deeper and can be shown in a striking similarity between the middle sections of two symphonic movements. the middle section of the second movement of Schumann’s third Symphony (“rhenish”), with its throbbing tympani-pedal built on the third of the relative minor chord, and its harmonization which oscillates between this chord and its neighboring diminished seventh, has indubitably inspired the corresponding middle section of the Allegretto con grazia movement of tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique.” the similarity of mood and of harmonic device are far too striking to be pure coincidence. * * * I want to say a few more words about the most misunderstood and misrepresented Schumann—the Schumann of the four symphonies. these four symphonies, full of the most glorious music, have occupied and should again occupy a permanent place in the ever-shrinking repertory of unhackneyed symphonies. they undergo eclipses not because of their intrinsic weaknesses, which are negligible, but because of the fallacy that Schumann did not know how to write for the instruments of the orchestra, that his scoring is “muddy,” and that it is “inflated pianoforte music with mainly routine orchestration,” as the contributor to the last edition of Grove’s dictionary puts it. this opinion is too fatuous to merit refutation. Schumann’s symphonies are orchestrally conceived, if not altogether expertly realized, and the inspiring image of orchestral sound can be found often enough even in his piano works. to be sure, a Schumann score is not as foolproof, as “self-rising,” as a score of Wagner or tchaikovsky or richard Strauss, nor has the musical substance of a Schumann symphony the kind of inexorable propulsion of some Beethoven symphonies, which will survive even a shabby performance relatively unharmed. But is it really Schumann’s fault that it takes a little trouble on the part of conductor and orchestra to make his symphonies come off? I know from experience, both as a performer and as a listener (remembering unforgettable performances under Weingartner, furtwaengler and Bruno Walter), that each one of the Schumann symphonies can be a thrilling experience to both performers and audiences if Schumann’s case is stated clearly and convincingly through the proper style of interpretation. * * * that Schumann didn’t know how to write for the instruments of the...

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