Faschingsschwank aus Wien Op.26 (1839–40)

Mit grösster Energie

“Look Robert,” wrote Clara Wieck to her fiancé in April 1839, “couldn’t you just once compose something brilliant, easily understandable, and without inscriptions – a completely coherent piece, not too long and not too short? I’d so much like to have something of yours to play that’s specifically intended for the public. Obviously, a genius will find this degrading, but politics demand it every now and again.” In fact, Schumann had recently completed Arabeske and Blumenstück, both of them    shortish pieces which, though not “brilliant” in the virtuoso sense, were clearly designed to find favour with the public. At the same time he was working on his Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Jest from Vienna) with an Intermezzo fourth movement which, had it been a little longer, would have matched Clara’s prescription to perfection.

Allegro

Romanze: ziemlich langsam

Scherzino

Intermezzo: mit grösster Energie

Finale: höchst lebhaft – presto

Schumann’s visit to Vienna, between Sptember 1838 and April 1839, was not a completely fruitless enterprise. As far as he was concerned, it was a major disappointment, since he had failed in his primary objectives of securing a licence to publish his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik there and of finding a niche for himself in the musical life of the city. “Vienna,” he found, was “a sleepy backwater compared to Leipzig” – which, bearing in mind that Leipzig had recently acquired Mendelssohn whereas Vienna had no musician of anything like comparable stature, was probably true. He had not forgotten, however, that Schubert’s brother Ferdinand still lived there and on visit to him had discovered a pile of manuscripts, including the hitherto unknown Symphony in C major, which he promptly sent to Mendelssohn for a performance in Leipzig. He also had the time to get on with several works of his own, not least the Humoreske and the Faschingsschwank aus Wien.

In a letter to Simonin de Sire, the dedicatee of the Faschingsschwank aus Wien, he described it as “a great romantic sonata,” a pronouncement which is not at first sight easy to understand. It might have achieved that kind of status in Schumann’s mind when, back in Leipzig, he completed the last movement, the only one of the five in sonata form, but it seems to have been conceived in a quite different spirit. The B-flat-major Allegro with which it begins is just what the title of the work says, a “carnival prank from Vienna.” Clearly inspired by Schubert’s sets of triple-time dances, it is a sequence of valses nobles and valses sentimentales with the vigorous opening item recurring as a kind of ritornello. The construction relaxes its regularity as it goes on and some of the dance episodes are longer than others but it remains a Viennese carnival. The “jest” is that it briefly alludes to “La Marseillaise,” which was banned by the same Viennese authorities who were being awkward about giving Schumann his licence. (More will be heard of “La Marseillaise” at the end of this evening’s programme.)

When Schumann added the Romanze in G minor he obviously had a larger work in mind but still not a sonata. A ternary construction in miniature, poetically expressive though it is, the Romanze    is too short for a sonata slow movement. Similarly, the B-flat-major Scherzino, which lacks a trio section, is not, as its diminutive title suggests, a fully developed example of its kind. Where the work begins to assume the emotional (if not yet the structural) dimensions of a sonata is in th E-flat-minor Intermezzo, where the right hand projects its passionate, song-like melody over agitated triplet arpeggios and emphatic left-hand octaves. So with its sonata-form Finale – a tumultuous first subject in B flat major, a lyrical second subject in F major, an exposition repeat, a short but imaginative development. A regular recapitulation and a presto coda – a carnival jest becomes a “great romantic sonata.”