“The ball I threw while playing in the park
has not yet reached the ground.” |
Schumann composed Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Tales), four short pieces for clarinet, viola and piano, in early October 1853 during the first two weeks of his famous encounter with young Johannes Brahms. As such these pieces reflect Schumann’s first-hand acquaintance with the early style of Brahms. But, tragically, they are also among his last compositions before the rapid deterioration of his health from December 1853 through February 1854, when he was committed to the asylum at Endenich. The pieces’ musical character is distinctly valedictory.
Each of the four miniatures is self-contained, though they are tightly linked by a tonal scheme that begins and ends in the same key: B-flat major, G minor, G major, B-flat major. The opening movement employs an ascending motive as a springboard for the melody to rise, even soar. A simple accompanying arpeggio, surging in a wave-like rhythm, becomes itself a melodic thread. Schumann nicely contrasts staccato versus legato articulation to heighten the changing emotions of frivolity and earnestness.
The second piece, an ABA form, uses first a rising seventh interval and then an ascending four-note motive. Schumann gives weight and contrast through double chords in treble and bass register, lightened by a disarming figure in the clarinet. The whole of the A section is martial and can’t entirely shake off its “introductory” sound, while the B section is far more lyrical and grounded.
The third piece appears to begin “in medias res” (in the middle of things) as it points toward G major, with poignant inflections toward E minor. As the piece stretches ornamented seventh chords, it reaches the sublime and has the character of a secret discovery within the framework of the four movements. Schumann scholar John Daverio aptly remarks, “[Here] Schumann’s Eusebius persona removes us into a fairy-tale world by way of a deftly contrived musical texture, its elements consisting of a bass pedal, murmuring sixteenths in the right hand of the piano, and, hovering over it all, a gracefully shaped cantilena in the clarinet interwoven with the viola’s counterline, the whole luxurious sound structure a subject for rhapsodic variations.”
The closing movement returns to the home key with dotted rhythms and rising arpeggios in the clarinet; it contains a brief middle scene with a double melody in parallel sixths braced by a crisp rhythmic motive in the piano. The dotted figures announce the return of the ‘A’ texture as they draw the listener out of this penultimate reverie. Schumann’s exposure to Brahms (and vice versa) surely had its impact, and these delightful and often tender works, written from the precipice of the composer’s impending mental breakdown, poignantly testify to what Schumann had yet to achieve.
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