Nachtstücke, Op.23

Mehr langsam, oft zurückhaltend

(Rather slow, often hesitating)

Markirt und lebhaft

(Marked and lively)

Mit grosser Lebhaftigkeit - noch lebhafter

(With great liveliness - still livelier)

Einfach

(Simple)

One of the many problems associated with Schumann interpretation is that what we know of the composer’s expressive intentions - or what think we know of them - is often difficult to reconcile with the music itself. It could be, as with Papillons, that the external evidence applies to an early concept rather than the finished work. It could be, as with Kreisleriana, that he made different statements to different people. Or it could be, as with Nachtstücke perhaps, that it is only marginally relevant to the musical reality.

This is what he wrote to Clara in April 1839 as he was working on what was eventually published as his Op.23: ‘I told you about a presentiment I had. It haunted me while I was absorbed in my new composition. There is a passage in it which always kept coming back to me, somebody seemed to be sighing from the bottom of his heart and saying “Ach Gott!” While I was composing I kept seeing funerals, coffins and unhappy, despairing faces, and when I had finished, and was trying to think of a title, the only one that occurred to me was Leichenfantasie.’ Between that nightmare experience and writing to Clara about it, he had received news that his brother Edward was dying. A few days later on his way home from Vienna, he told Clara, he distinctly heard a chorale played by trombones at the very moment of Eduard’s death.

There are actually few traces of morbidity in Op.23. Perhaps Schumann found, in the light of day, that his hallucinations were not very fruitful material. Certainly, he moderated the macabre suggestions of the title by changing it from Leichenfantasie (“Corpse Fantasy”) to Nachtstücke (“Night Pieces”) and he decided against presenting the individual pieces as, respectively, Trauerzug (“Funeral March”), Kuriose Gesellschaft (“Strange Company”), Nächtliches Gelage (“Night-time Feast”) and Rundgesang mit Solostimmen (“Roundelay with Solo Voices”).

It has always been assumed that the four movements of the published work are the same as those which at one time carried those descriptive titles and that they appear in the same order. But the only round in Nachtstücke is a canon at the octave in the middle of the first movement which, though undeniably a march, is surely not a funeral march. In its C major tonality and its almost playful rhythmic articulation (not to mention its melodic similarity to the first of the Kinderszenen) it is difficult to take it entirely seriously. The second movement is a rondo in F major based on a brisk variant of the foregoing march tune with contrasting episodes in A flat and D flat major - though perhaps not quite so contrasting as to amount to “strange company.”

The one movement with a convincing claim on any of the discarded titles is the third, which is an authentic “night-time feast.” A demonically inspired scherzo in D flat major, it incorporates a B flat minor trio with a broad sweep of melody sustained through the rolling arpeggios and a frantic coda. As for the Einfach last movement, it too is a march and, though it has little of the solemnity of a funeral march, it expresses a touchingly intimate pathos in its simple melody, its F major harmonies touching sensitively on D minor, and its lingering ending.