Symphony No.1 in B flat major (“Spring”) Op.38

When Schumann wrote his First Symphony he was an experienced composer in some respects and a beginner in others. In his mid-twenties and during the tormented years of his engagement to Clara Wieck he had written some of the most passionate and most original piano music that the nineteenth century was to produce - works like Carnaval, Kreisleriana and the Phantasie in C major. His happiness in the early months of his marriage in 1840 had inspired as many as a hundred and forty songs, including the Heine and Eichendorff Liederkreise and the Frauenliebe und -leben and Dichterliebe cycles. On the other hand, in spite of his own inclinations and much encouragement from Clara - “Your imagination and your spirit are too great for the weak piano,” she had told him in 1839 - he had composed nothing for orchestra since his disappointment with a Symphony in G minor he had written (and discarded) in his student days.

What moved him to get to work on his first mature symphony was, among other things, his discovery of the manuscript of Schubert’s “Great” C major Symphony in Vienna in 1838 and the revelatory experience of its first performance under Mendelssohn‘s direction in the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1839: “I was in seventh heaven,” he wrote to Clara, “and wished only that you should be my wife and that I also could write such symphonies.” She became his wife in the following year and, after his song frenzy in 1840, the Symphony No.1 in B flat major was started in January 1841 and completed within a month. Its first performance, under Mendelssohn’s direction in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, was received, according to Schumann, “with an amount of enthusiasm such as I don’t think has been accorded to any modern symphony since Beethoven.”

The immediate inspiration for the Symphony in B flat, as we know from Clara’s diary and a statement from Schumann himself, was a spring poem by his friend Adolf Böttger ending with the words “Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf!” (The valleys bloom with spring-time life!). The work opens with a fanfare for trumpets and horns - “a call to awaken” Schumann called it - based on the rhythm of those five German words. The equivalent of the horn theme at the beginning of Schubert’s Symphony in C major, it is the source of much of the melodic material of the quick movement that springs out of the stirrings of new life in the slow introduction. Although there is a contrasting second theme, quietly introduced by woodwind as the initial exuberance dies down, the Allegro molto vivace is dominated by its first theme, which is nothing other than an agitated version of the opening fanfare.

Before the end of the first movement, in a quiet episode in the middle of its animated closing stages, the strings introduce an expressive new melody which, though welcome for its lyrical freshness, seems out of place at this point. In fact, it turns out to be an anticipation of the lovely main theme of the second movement, the Larghetto, where it is introduced by violins in the opening bars. Although Schumann withdrew the title he originally attached to it, “Evening” is an apt description of a piece which, except briefly in the middle section, remains undisturbed in its idyllic tranquillity. Again, towards the end of the movement a new theme makes an unexpected entry - this time on the three trombones, in lugubrious anticipation of the rumbustious main theme of the Scherzo, which follows without a break.

This Molto vivace, at one time entitled “Merry Playmates,” is unusual among symphonic scherzos in that, instead of having just the one Trio section conventionally reserved for the middle of the movent, it has two. The somewhat quicker first Trio occurs just where Schumann’s contemporaries would have expected it. The busy second Trio, which follows a repeat of the first Scherzo section, was an inspired afterthought which, though it owes something to Beethoven, was an innovation in its day. So too was the poetically open-ended conclusion to the movement.

The theme rising forcefully through the orchestra at the beginning of the last movement does not occupy as much of the composer’s attention as the delicate dancing material that follows. It is significant, however, in that it lends its rhythm to a cheerful march tune and, in the middle of the movement, associates itself with a reminder of the opening fanfare of the work on trombones. Having sealed the unity of the symphony in this way, Schumann affirms its natural setting with woodland horn calls and a bird-like flute cadenza before recalling the main events of the finale.

Gerald Larner©