Theme and Variations in E flat major (“Geister-Variationen”)

The hallucinations that Schumann experienced while writing the Nachtstücke in 1839 were an early symptom of the mental illness that was to close in on him in Düsseldorf fifteen years later. By February 1854 he was hearing, at some times, “wondrously beautiful pieces of music, fully formed and complete” and, at other times, “the voices of demons with horrible music” telling him he was “a sinner” they would “hurl into hell.” On 17 February - ten days before the demon voices drove him into the Rhine to escape the torment - the angel voices dictated to him a melody which he was able not only to write down but also to elaborate in five variations.

In the few days between his rescue from the Rhine and his (voluntary) commitment to the asylum where he would remain to the end of his life, he was lucid enough to complete a fair copy of the variations and to dedicate the score to Clara. He was evidently unaware, however, that the melody was much the same as a theme in the slow movement of his recently completed Violin Concerto. Brahms, on the other hand, was aware of that, and it was presumably because he and Clara felt that neither the Variations nor the Concerto was worthy of their composer’s genius that both works were withheld from publication in the Complete Schumann Edition. While it is true that Schumann’s own Variations are not as resourceful as the piano-duet Variations (Op.23) that Brahms wrote on the same theme in 1861, they are far too interesting to ignore. The decorative triplet figurations of the first and third variations might not be very original and the canonic treatment of the theme in the second variation might be a little awkward but the Schumann personality - in the harmonic enterprise of the fourth and the expressive intimacy of the fifth variation - remains intact.