Manfred Overture, Op.115

Schumann used to like to read Manfred aloud to his friends. On at least one occasion, according to a witness, “his voice faltered, he burst into tears and was so overcome that he could read no more.” Like Tchaikovsky, another composer tormented by fears for his sanity, Schumann identified closely with Byron’s hero - “a kind of magician,” according to the poet, “dominated by a species of remorse, the cause of which is left half-explained.” Schumann started work on the Overture not long after he had completed his opera Genoveva and finished it in October 1848. At the same time he adapted Byron’s text for stage performance and wrote fifteen items of incidental music to go with it. “I never devoted myself to any composition with such lavish love and power as Manfred,” he is quoted as saying. To Liszt he wrote, “I commend especially the Overture to your heart. If I may say so to you I feel it is one of the strongest of my artistic children, and I hope that you may agree with me.”

Much of the thematic material of the Overture is presented first in the slow introduction. There is a very brief explosion of energy and then the oboe introduces a melody plaintively rising and falling in chromatic steps. Against that, as it is passed to clarinet, violins present the outline of a syncopated Mendelssohnian theme which later accelerates to become the first subject, presented in remorseful E flat minor harmonies, of the Overture. The second subject begins with a more Schumannesque theme with sorrowing arches of fifths and sixths on violins and woodwind. Another second-subject theme, an intimately expressive melody for violins, derives from the oboe melody of the introduction.

So far, apart from the tragic atmosphere, there has been no indication of any specifically literary inspiration behind the music. But in the transition to the development section chillingly hushed chords on trumpets introduce a sinister element that cannot be explained by sonata-form logic. It is particularly interesting in this respect that at the height of the recapitulation the trumpet chords are transformed into a short chorale - not in triumph, however, but quietly in E flat minor, in which key, and in the tempo of the slow introduction, Manfred quietly dies away.