Robert Schumann
Schumann came to the orchestra late, after a decade of piano music and a year of songs. His symphonic writing keeps the habits of the piano composer: short rhythmic cells repeated insistently, inner voices that matter as much as the tune, and textures that fill the middle of the sound. Conductors have long argued about whether to lighten his orchestration; the doubling that makes it heavy is also what makes it his.
The First Symphony was written in four days of sketching in early 1841 and is openly programmatic in spirit, though Schumann removed the movement titles he first gave it. It opens with a brass call that returns, transformed, as the main theme of the fast section.
The Fourth is the structural experiment. Written in 1841 and revised in 1851, it runs as a single span with the movements joined, and the same few motifs supply material for all of them. The slow movement quotes the first movement's introduction; the finale takes its theme from the first movement's main idea. In this catalog it appears in three tracks because the last two run together.
What to listen for
- A short rhythmic figure repeated many times in a row. Schumann builds paragraphs out of one cell.
- The return of an introduction's material later in the work, especially in the Fourth Symphony.
- Inner parts: violas and second violins often carry something worth following.
- The joins in the Fourth Symphony, where one movement runs into the next without a break.
Source: Robert Schumann