Etudes symphoniques, Op.13

Schumann completed his Etudes symphoniques in 1837, the year in which he got engaged to Clara Wieck. Exceptionally in Schumann’s work at this time, however, the Etudes have little to do with Clara. They have more to do with a former fiancée, Ernestine von Fricken, whose father was an amateur musician and the composer of a set of variations on a funeral-march theme in C sharp minor. In 1834 Baron von Fricken sent the manuscript of his variations to Schumann, who promptly set about writing variations of his own on the same theme. Although he abandoned the project almost as quickly as he abandoned Ernestine, he did not forget the theme.

He returned to the theme two years later, stimulated this time by his long-standing interest in the problem of writing technical studies which, like Chopin’s, are also “true poetic images.” He was concerned too that his studies should be part of a continuous “symphonic” construction. Variation form was clearly the answer. But of the ten variations he had written on the Fricken’s theme in 1834, only two were suitable for the new set of studies. One of them, originally intended as the finale, became the first study in the new set. Its place at the end was taken by a finale which owes its existence to the inspiration of William Sterndale Bennett’s visit to Leipzig in 1836. As a tribute to Bennett - “thorough Englishman, glorious artist, a beautiful and poetic soul” - Schumann devised a movement based on Ha, stolzes England, freue dich! (Proud England rejoice) from Marschner’s Ivanhoe opera Der Templar und die Jüdin.

The complete work, now consisting of a theme with eleven study-variations and the finale, was dedicated to Sterndale Bennett and published in 1837 under the title of Etudes symphoniques. In 1852 Schumann issued a revised version under the title Etudes en forme de variations, dropping the third and ninth studies, relabelling the studies as variations and tightening up the construction of the finale. The Etudes symphoniques title was reinstated in the posthumous edition of 1857 and is now used to identify the work in whatever version it is to be presented.

The version to be performed today is based on the 1852 edition but with the third and ninth studies retrieved from the 1837 version, with the cuts restored in the finale and with five of the variations which Schumann wrote in 1834 and subsequently rejected. These early variations were rescued by Brahms from Schumann’s posthumous papers and published by Simrock in his edition of the complete works - with Clara’s permission but much against her will. They are, after all, much more intimately connected with Ernestine von Fricken than most of the studies in the approved version and, since Schumann had a more sentimental than technical interest in the theme at that time, they are in a rather different style. In their youthful lyricism, on the other hand, they are difficult to resist.

Gerald Larner©

Schumann completed his Etudes symphoniques in 1837, the year in which he got engaged to Clara Wieck. Exceptionally in Schumann’s work at this time, however, the Etudes have little to do with Clara. They have more to do with a former fiancée, Ernestine von Fricken, whose father was an amateur musician and the composer of a set of variations on a funeral-march theme in C sharp minor. In 1834 Baron von Fricken sent the manuscript of his variations to Schumann, who promptly set about writing variations of his own on the same theme. Although he abandoned the project almost as quickly as he abandoned Ernestine, he did not forget the theme.

He returned to the theme two years later, stimulated this time by his long-standing interest in the problem of writing technical studies which, like Chopin’s, are also “true poetic images.” He was concerned too that his studies should be part of a continuous “symphonic” construction. Variation form was clearly the answer. But of the ten variations he had written on the Fricken’s theme in 1834, only two were suitable for the new set of studies. One of them, originally intended as the finale, became the first study in the new set. Its place at the end was taken by a finale which owes its existence to the inspiration of William Sterndale Bennett’s visit to Leipzig in 1836. As a tribute to Bennett – “thorough Englishman, glorious artist, a beautiful and poetic soul” – Schumann devised a movement based on Ha, stolzes England, freue dich! (Proud England rejoice) from Marschner’s Ivanhoe opera Der Templar und die Jüdin.

The complete work, now consisting of a theme with eleven study-variations and the finale, was dedicated to Sterndale Bennett and published in 1837 under the title of Etudes symphoniques. In 1852 Schumann issued a revised version under the title Etudes en forme de variations, dropping the third and ninth studies, relabelling the studies as variations and tightening up the construction of the finale. The Etudes symphoniques title was reinstated in the posthumous edition of 1857 and is now used to identify the work in whatever version it is to be performed.

Most modern performances are based on the 1852 edition but with the third and ninth studies retrieved from the 1837 version and the cuts restored in the finale. However, ever since Brahms included the long-since discarded 1834 variations in his edition of Schumann’ complete works (with Clara’s consent but much against her will) pianists have been moved by their youthful lyricism to find ways of incorporating some or all of them in the finished work. In today’s performance the fourth and fifth of the 1834 variations – both of them delightful examples of the spontaneity of Schumann’s initial reaction to Fricken’s theme – will be interpolated between the sixth and seventh variations of the 1852 edition.

Baron von Fricken’s theme, a somewhat rudimentary C sharp minor arpeggio, is divided into the conventional two parts of eight bars each, with a modulation to the dominant at the end of the eighth bar, but without the usual repeats. Schumann retains this basic shape in most of the succeeding studies. He sometimes repeats one or both eight-bar halves and he remains in C sharp minor or closely related keys.

His indecision as to whether his studies were variations or his variations were studies is readily understandable from the first five in the set. Only the third (omitted from the 1852 version) is an obvious bravura study and neither of the first two is an obvious variation: but for the C sharp minor arpeggios imposed on the first and the bass line in the second their relationship would not be clear to the ear. The fourth and fifth retain the equivocal balance. They are both linked attaca, one strict in form and march-like in character, the other a less formal scherzando.

However, the difference between Schumann’s sentimental interest in the von Fricken theme in 1834 and his later expermintal attitude become quite clear in the second half of the work. After the con gran bravura broken octaves of the sixth study, the only obviously virtuoso one is the presto possibile (omitted from the 1852 version). But only the eleventh study in G sharp minor, with its loving duet between the two independent melodies in the right hand, shares the intimate quality of the 1834 variations. From that G sharp dominant, Schumann does not return to C sharp minor but switches enharmonically to D flat major, which is quite different in psychological terms. The finale begins by presenting Marschner’s English tune as if it were another 16-bar variation on the original theme. But the von Fricken funeral march is alluded to only later, in the A flat major and G flat major episodes of what, it becomes increasingly clear, is a combination of rondo and triumphal march to lift the work onto another level of excitement.

The Etudes symphoniques are unusual among the works Schumann completed during the five years before his marriage to Clara Wieck in that they have nothing, or very little, to do with Clara. Like Carnaval (where Clara makes a brief appearance as Chiarina) they have more to do with Ernestine von Fricken, another of Friedrich Wieck’s pupils, to whom he was briefly engaged in 1834. It was in the summer of that year that her father, Baron von Fricken, an amateur composer, asked Schumman to comment on a set of variations he had written on a solemn theme in C sharp minor. While offering his expert advice, Schumman set to work on his own variations on Fricken’s theme, writing or at least sketching ten of them before shelving the project.

The Baron’s theme proved, however, to have more lasting interest for Schumann than his (as it duly turned out) illegitimate daughter. The composer’s enthusiasm was re-aroused, it seems, by Chopin’s visit to Leipzig in September 1836. Certainly, it was in that month that, according to his diary, Schumann was “composing études with great gusto and excitement.” The characteristic Chopin étude represented to Schumann - who been interested in the problem since he heard Pagannini in Frankfurt six years earlier - the ideal of the technical study that was also a “true poetic image.” By presenting his own virtuoso and yet poetic studies as a series of variations, scoring them for piano with a colour range aspiring to that of a whole orchestra, he could also achieve a symphonic kind of continuity and structural consequence.

With this new concept in mind Schumann discarded all but two of the 1834 variations and wrote ten new study-variations including a finale inspired by another distinguished composer who visited Leipzig in 1836. “A thorough Englishman, glorious artist, and beautiful and poetic soul,” William Sterndale Bennett must have been even thoroughly flattered to find himself celebrated in an extended and conclusive variation based not so much on Fricken’s theme as on Ha, stolzes England, freue dich! (“Proud England rejoice”) from Marschner’s Ivanhoe opera Der Templar und die Jüdin. The score was dedicated to Bennett and published as Etudes symphoniques, Op.13, in 1837.

There are edition problems here too, however. In 1852 Schumann issued a revised version, now under the title of Etudes en forme de variations, with the finale judiciously cut to concentrate the construction and the third and ninth studies removed entirely. Reluctant to lose the two studies from the 1838 edition, most pianists these days - like Andràs Schiff this morning - compromise by adding them to the 1852 edition while retaining the shorter form of the finale.

Fricken’s theme - three of the four four-bar phrases of which begin with a descending C sharp minor arpeggio - is rudimentary in harmony and not very interesting melodically. It does not, on the other hand, constrain Schumman’s imagination. It might have done in the earlier of the 1834 variations but in the last of them, which is presented here as the first study, he concentrates on the first two notes of the theme and uses the C sharp minor arpeggio discreetly but firmly to offset its capricious progress. In the second study the arpeggio is heard not in the passionate melodic line but only in the bass line as the hands join in the throbbing triplet chords in the middle of the texture. In the third it becomes a staccato violin accompaniment in the right hand to a chromatic cello melody in the left. In the fourth it is on the surface again as the theme of a canonic march in emphatically detached articulation.

The brilliantly scherzando fifth study, which follows without a break, begins like all its predecessors in C sharp minor but ends in the relative E major. One might have expected Schumann to have broken away from the tonic much earlier and more decisively than that. The con gran bravura sixth study, with its impatient left hand anticipating the arpeggio melody in the right, goes straight back to C sharp minor, however. Even the hyper-active seventh study, which could come from a different work but for the arpeggios imposed on its middle section, begins and ends in E major. The next three - an imposing study in baroque figuration, a high-speed shuttle between extreme dynamic contrasts, a surge of vigorous activity in dotted rhythms - are all in C sharp minor. The point of Schumann’s restraint can only be to offset the not very radical but miraculously effected change of key for the amorous duet, between two independent melodies in the right hand, which develops in the eleventh study in G sharp minor.

The finale does not return to C sharp minor but moves enharmonically into D flat major to present the Marschner melody as the main theme of what turns out to be a combination of rondo, with Fricken’s theme recalled in the episodes, and triumphal march.

Schumann completed his Etudes symphoniques in 1837, the year in which he got engaged to Clara Wieck. Exceptionally in Schumann’s work at this time, however, the Etudes have little to do with Clara. Like Carnaval (where Clara makes a brief appearance as “Chiarina”) they have more to do with Ernestine von Fricken, another of Friedrich Wieck’s pupils, to whom he was briefly engaged in 1834. It was in the summer of that year that her father, Baron von Fricken, an amateur composer, asked Schumman to comment on a set of variations he had written on a solemn theme in C sharp minor. While offering his expert advice, Schumman set to work on his own variations on Fricken’s theme, writing or at least sketching ten of them before shelving the project.

The Baron’s theme proved, however, to have more lasting interest for Schumann than his (as it duly turned out) illegitimate daughter. The composer’s enthusiasm was re-aroused, it seems, by Chopin’s visit to Leipzig in September 1836. Certainly, it was in that month that, according to his diary, Schumann was “composing études with great gusto and excitement.” The characteristic Chopin étude represented to Schumann - who been interested in the problem since he heard Pagannini in Frankfurt six years earlier - the ideal of the technical study that was also a “true poetic image.” By presenting his own virtuoso and yet poetic studies as a series of variations, scoring them for piano with a colour range aspiring to that of a whole orchestra, he could also achieve a symphonic kind of continuity and structural consequence.

With this new concept in mind Schumann discarded all but two of the 1834 variations and wrote ten new study-variations including a finale inspired by another distinguished composer who visited Leipzig in 1836. “A thorough Englishman, glorious artist, and beautiful and poetic soul,” William Sterndale Bennett must have been thoroughly flattered to find himself celebrated in an extended and conclusive variation based not so much on Fricken’s theme as on Ha, stolzes England, freue dich! (“Proud England rejoice”) from Marschner’s Ivanhoe opera Der Templar und die Jüdin. The score was dedicated to Bennett and published as Etudes symphoniques, Op.13, in 1837.

In 1852 , however, Schumann issued a revised version under the title Etudes en forme de variations, dropping the third and ninth studies, relabelling the remaining studies as variations and tightening up the construction of the finale. The Etudes symphoniques title was reinstated in the posthumous edition of 1857 and is now used to identify the work in whatever version it is to be performed. Most modern performances are based on the 1852 edition but with the third and ninth studies retrieved from the 1837 version and the cuts restored in the finale.

Fricken’s theme - three of the four four-bar phrases of which begin with a descending C sharp minor arpeggio - is rudimentary in harmony and not very interesting melodically. It does not, on the other hand, constrain Schumman’s imagination. It might have done in the earlier of the 1834 variations but in the last of them, which is presented here as the first study, he concentrates on the first two notes of the theme and uses the C sharp minor arpeggio discreetly but firmly to offset its capricious progress. In the second study the arpeggio is heard not in the passionate melodic line but only in the bass line as the hands join in the throbbing triplet chords in the middle of the texture. In the third it becomes a staccato violin accompaniment in the right hand to a chromatic cello melody in the left. In the fourth it is on the surface again as the theme of a canonic march in emphatically detached articulation.

The brilliantly scherzando fifth study, which follows without a break, begins like all its predecessors in C sharp minor but ends in the relative E major. One might have expected Schumann to have broken away from the tonic much earlier and more decisively than that. The con gran bravura sixth study, with its impatient left hand anticipating the arpeggio melody in the right, goes straight back to C sharp minor, however. Even the hyper-active seventh study, which could come from a different work but for the arpeggios imposed on its middle section, begins and ends in E major. The next three - an imposing study in baroque figuration, a high-speed shuttle between extreme dynamic contrasts, a surge of vigorous activity in dotted rhythms - are all in C sharp minor. The point of Schumann’s restraint can only be to offset the not very radical but miraculously effected change of key for the amorous duet, between two independent melodies in the right hand, which develops in the eleventh study in G sharp minor.

The finale does not return to C sharp minor but moves enharmonically into D flat major to present the Marschner melody as the main theme of what turns out to be a combination of rondo, with Fricken’s theme recalled in the episodes, and triumphal march.