Great Violinists and PianistsFerris, George T. (George Titus)
History
Great Violinists and Pianists
Ferris, George T. (George Titus)
Pianists -- Biography; Violinists -- Biography
Hoping to overcome Papa Wieck's opposition by success, Schumann took
his new journal to Vienna, and published it in that city, carrying on
simultaneously with his editorial duties active labors in composition.
The attempt to better his fortunes in Vienna, however, did not prove
very successful, and after six months he returned again to Leipzig.
Schumann's generous sympathy with other great musicians was signally
shown in his very first Vienna experiences, for he immediately made
a pious pilgrimage to the Waehring cemetery to offer his pious gift of
flowers on the graves of Beethoven and Schubert. On Beethoven's grave
he found a steel pen, which he preserved as a sacred treasure, and used
afterward in writing his own finest musical fancies. He remembered, too,
that the brother of Schubert, Ferdinand, was still living in a suburb
of Vienna. "He knew me," Schumann says, "from my admiration for his
brother, as I had publicly expressed it, and showed me many things. At
last he let me look at the treasures of Franz Schubert's compositions,
which he still possesses. The wealth that lay heaped up made me shudder
with joy, what to take first, where to cease. Among other things, he
also showed me the scores of several symphonies, of which many had never
been heard, while others had been tried, but put back, on the score of
their being too difficult and bombastic." One of these symphonies, that
in C major, the largest and grandest in conception, Schumann chose
and sent to Leipzig, where it was soon afterward produced under
Mendelssohn's direction at one of the Ge-wandhaus concerts, and produced
an immediate and profound sensation. For the first time the world
witnessed, in a more expanded sphere, the powers of a composer the very
beauties of whose songs had hitherto been fatal to his general success.
During this period of Schumann's life the most important works he
composed were the "Etudes Symphoniques," the famous "Carnival" dedicated
to Liszt, the "Scenes of Childhood," the "Fantasia" dedicated to Liszt,
the "Novellettes," and "Kreisleriana." As he writes to Heinrich Dorn:
"Much music is the result of the contest I am passing through for
Clara's sake." Schumann's compositions had been introduced to the public
by the gifted interpretation of Clara Wieck, with whom it was a labor of
love, and also by Franz Liszt, then rising almost on the top wave of his
dazzling fame as a virtuoso. Liszt was a profound admirer of the less
fortunate Schumann, and did everything possible to make him a favorite
with the public, but for a long time in vain. Liszt writes of this as
follows: "Since my first knowledge of his compositions I had played many
of them in private circles at Milan and Vienna, without having succeeded
in winning the approbation of my hearers. These works were, fortunately
for them, too far above the then trivial level of taste to find a home
in the superficial atmosphere of popular applause. The public did not
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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