Fantasy in C major, Op.17

Durchaus fantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen

(To be played fantastically and passionately throughout)

Mässig. Durchaus energisch

(Moderate. Energetic throughout)

Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten

(Slowly sustained. To be kept quiet throughout)

The Fantasie in C major has its origins in the “sad year” of 1836. That was when Friedrich Wieck, “carrying on like a madman” according to Schumann, forbade all communication between his sixteen-year-old daughter and a young composer who, as far as he could see, had many personal failings and no prospects. “You can understand the Fantasie only if you go back to the unhappy summer of 1836 when we were separated,” said Robert to Clara after the work was published in 1839. But she would have had no difficulty in understanding the import of the main theme of the first movement: the phrase of five adjacent notes in descending order, proclaimed here in loud octaves over an impulsive left hand in the opening bars, they both knew as a melodic symbol for Clara herself. She would probably also have associated that phrase with the motto, from Schlegel’s Die Gebüsche, that stands at the head of the score:

Durch alle Töne tönet Through all the sounds

Im bunten Erdentraum In life’s colourful dream

Ein leiser Ton gezogen Runs one soft sound

Für den, der heimlich lauschet. For him who quietly listens.

She might haven noted too, incorporated into the first subject, a veiled allusion to the melodic phrase which goes with the words “Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder” (“Take them then, these songs”) at the end of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved). And if she had missed it at this point she would certainly have recognised the direct quotation of the same phrase in the Adagio closing bars.

So the symbolism of the first movement - “the most passionate thing I have ever written, a deep lament for you,” as Robert told Clara - is clear enough. What is not clear, unless this movement was originally intended as a separate piece, is why Schumann interpolated a virtually self-contained ballade just before the recapitulation of an otherwise fairly normal sonata-form construction. As it is, the slow episode in C minor headed Im Legendenton (“in legendary tone”) - which has its own main theme, although it alludes to both the Beethoven phrase and the tender second subject of the first section - adds the dimension the movement would need if it were to stand alone.

It was probably only towards the end of 1836 that Schumann conceived the idea of extending the Fantasie into what he now thought of as a “Grand Sonata” in an inspired response to an appeal for funds (initiated by Liszt, the eventual dedicatee of the work) for the construction of a Beethoven monument in Bonn. To a movement he had always thought of as “Ruins” he added a “Triumphal Arch” and a “Starry Sky” - titles which are significant even though, like the “Grand Sonata” description, he eventually dropped them.

“Triumphal Arch” is a monumentally virtuoso march in the same key as Beethoven’s Eroica. It seems to have little to do with the foregoing until, in the slower middle section, the tender second subject of the first movement is recalled in rhythmic syncopations in A flat major: Clara, imagining Robert returning home as the triumphant hero, recognised herself here “standing among the maidens and crowning you my dear warrior and companion.” “Starry Sky” is an intimate nocturne, veering between Beethoven and Chopin in style and dreaming of two themes - one the descending Clara phrase from the first movement, the other a more virile rising theme - which are united in the course of a daringly spontaneous, essentially poetic construction.

Durchaus fantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen

(To be played fantastically and passionately throughout)

Mässig. Durchaus energisch

(Moderate. Energetic throughout)

Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten

(Slowly sustained. To be kept quiet throughout)

For Schumann, as for many of his younger contemporaries, a composer’s private life was an entirely legitimate, even desirable source of inspiration. It would have been unromantic to think otherwise. “Anything extraordinary that happens impresses me and impels me to express it in music,” he told Clara Wieck in 1838 and, although he was to outgrow that extreme of subjectivity, he never renounced it. As the first of the Fantasiestücke Op.111 clearly demonstrates, whatever the pain he suffered during the five years before his marriage to Clara in 1840, after eleven years of matrimonial respectability he was nostalgic for the impetuous spontaneity of that time.

The Fantasie in C major has its origins in the “sad year” of 1836 when Friedrich Wieck, “carrying on like a madman” according to Schumann, forbade all communication between his sixteen-year-old daughter and a young composer who, as far as he could see, had many personal failings and no prospects. “You can understand the Fantasie only if you go back to the unhappy summer of 1836 when we were separated,” said Robert to Clara after the work was published in 1839. But she would have had no difficulty in understanding the import of the main theme of the first movement: the phrase of five adjacent notes in descending order, proclaimed here in loud octaves over an impulsive left hand in the opening bars, they both knew as a melodic symbol for Clara herself. She would probably also have associated that phrase with the motto, from Schlegel’s Die Gebüsche, that stands at the head of the score:

Durch alle Töne tönet Through all the sounds

Im bunten Erdentraum In life’s colourful dream

Ein leiser Ton gezogen Runs one soft sound

Für den, der heimlich lauschet. For him who quietly listens.

She might haven noted too, incorporated into the first subject, a veiled allusion to the melodic phrase which goes with the words “Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder” (“Take them then, these songs”) at the end of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved). And if she had missed it at this point she would certainly have recognised the direct quotation of the same phrase in the Adagio closing bars.

So the symbolism of the first movement    – “the most passionate thing I have ever written, a deep lament for you,” as Robert told Clara – is clear enough. What is not clear, unless this movement was originally intended as a separate piece, is why Schumann interpolated a virtually self-contained ballade just before the recapitulation of an otherwise fairly normal sonata-form construction. As it is, the slow episode in C minor headed Im Legenden Ton (“in legendary tone”) – which has its own main theme, although it alludes to both the Beethoven phrase and the tender second subject of the first section – adds the dimension the movement would need if it were to stand alone.

It was probably only towards the end of 1836 that Schumann conceived the idea of extending the Fantasie into what he now thought of as a “Grand Sonata” in an inspired response to an appeal for funds (initiated by Liszt, the eventual dedicatee of the work) for the construction of a Beethoven monument in Bonn. To a movement he had always thought of as “Ruins” he added a “Triumphal Arch” and a “Starry Sky” – titles which are significant even though, like the “Grand Sonata” description, he eventually dropped them.   

“Triumphal Arch” is a monumentally virtuoso march in Beethoven’s heroic key of E flat major. It seems to have little to do with the foregoing until, in the slower middle section, the tender second subject of the first movement is recalled in rhythmic syncopations in A flat major: Clara, imagining Robert returning home as the triumphant hero, recognised herself here “standing among the maidens and crowning you my dear warrior and companion.” “Starry Sky” is an intimate nocturne, veering between Beethoven and Chopin in style and dreaming of two themes – one the descending Clara phrase from the first movement, the other a more virile rising theme – which are united in the course of a daringly spontaneous, essentially poetic construction.           

Durchaus fantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen

Mässig, durchaus energisch

Langsam getragen, durchweg leise zu halten

As an admirer of both Beethoven and Schubert, Schumann had a particular respect for the piano sonata. Once he had realised that the classical form was not for him, he preferred to call his extended keyboard works by some other name. As far as we are concerned, his Fantasy in C major is his greatest piano sonata. But, although it is a work of sonata length, it has an ecstatic Adagio as its third and last movement, a triumphal march in the middle and a movement-within-a movement to begin with. This was even as close the conventional sonatas as Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy - which is presumably why, when he had completed the work, Schumann decided to call it a Fantasy in spite of his original intentions. It was at one time going to a “grand sonata for the pianoforte for Beethoven’s monument,” in response to a call from Liszt for contributions towards the coast of a memorial in Bonn.

In the Fantasy as we know it there is little sign of the tribute to Beethoven. It is true that there is a fairly obvious quotation from Beethoven but that is only part of a whole complex of allusions the basic secret of which is not to be found in a study of sonata form or in the works of Beethoven. The Fantasy is another expression of Robert Schumann’s love for Clara Wieck in a spontaneously shaped construction and unified, from movement to movement, by one theme. As the motto from Schlegel says at the head of the score, “Through all the sounds of this colourful dreamworld runs one soft sound for him who quietly listens.”

In a letter he wrote to Clara in 1839, just after she had received the complete Fantasy from him, Schumann explained the motto by telling here that she was that “soft sound.” The first movement, written in the summer of 1836, when they were forcibly separated and could communicate only in music, was a “deep lament” for Clara, as he told her. Moreover, as he did not need to tell here, the main theme of the Fantasy is a variant of a theme which Clara herself had written and which is associated with here in many of the piano works Schumann wrote before their marriage in 1840. When the first movement ends with a quotation from the last song of Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte” the melodic phrase which goes with the words “Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder” “Take them then, these songs”) the message is clear.

So the first theme of the first movement, to be played “in a fantastic and passionate manner throughout,” is the first five notes in descending order, Schumann’s symbolic expression of his love for Clara. Linked with it, just before a ritardando, is the first distant allusion to the Beethoven theme. The main theme is immediately developed and other melodies grow from it, including a diminution in half the previous note values and an exquisitely tender second subject in D minor. In fact, the movement almost passes out with tender feelings and, in spite of deliberate efforts to rouse himself for a development section, Schumann dreams a ballade-within-a-movement.

The ballade proceeds at half the speed of the movement and seems to have little connection with it until a reference to the Beethoven motif indicates where its main theme comes from. Later Clara appears in her most tender manifestation (in D flat major this time). It is, however, only a dream: there had to be a recapitulation and the first them of the first movement must return. It is now more frustrated than ever, in C minor. The transition to the second subject comes much sooner and this time it is followed not by the dream of a ballade but by a direct statement of the Beethoven melody - an overt reference to the “distant beloved” and a moving integration of ideas so recklessly and so liberally offered earlier in the movement.

The last two movement are both dream of fulfilment. The first of them is a monumental march in the heroic key of E flat major. It reminded Clara of a warrior returning home triumphant and receiving tributes from the hands of admiring maidens. Her theme is more or less concealed in the left hand beneath the obsessively dotted rhythms of the second subject. She is more obviously present in the slow middle section in A flat where, she told Schumann, “I fancy myself standing among the maidens and crowning you my dear warrior and companion and,” she added ominously, “doing much besides.”

The final slow movement is a more peaceful vision. Clara is still there, of course, at first in the left hand and then high in the right, gently crossing the triplet rhythm in the left. But it takes two to create ecstasy. The other partner is a slightly quicker, perhaps more masculine, rising theme. It is the function of the finale to unite the one inseparably with the other.