The Piano Quintet in E major, Op. 44, by Robert Schumann was composed in 1842 and received its first public performance the following year. Noted for its "extroverted, exuberant" character, Schumann's piano quintet is considered one of his finest compositions and a major work of nineteenth-century chamber music. Composed for piano and string quartet, the work revolutionized the instrumentation and musical character of the piano quintet and established it as a quintessentially Romantic genre.

The autograph manuscript of the work is preserved in the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn.

Composition and performance

right|thumb|upright|Clara Schumann (née Wieck) in 1838. Robert Schumann dedicated the quintet to Clara, and she performed the piano part in the work's first public performance in 1843.

Schumann composed his piano quintet in just a few weeks in September and October 1842, in the course of his so-called Year of Chamber Music. Before 1842 Schumann had completed no chamber music at all, with the exception of an early piano quartet composed in 1829. Following his marriage to Clara in 1840, Schumann turned to the composition of songs, chamber music and orchestral works. During his year-long concentration in 1842 upon chamber music he executed the three string quartets, Op. 41, the piano quintet, Op. 44; the piano quartet, Op. 47; and the Phantasiestücke for piano trio, Op. 88. Schumann's work in that year was buoyant in character; John Daverio considers the Piano Quintet to be the "creative double" of the Piano Quartet that was written few weeks later, both displaying the "extroverted, exuberant side of the composer's creative genius".

Schumann dedicated the piano quintet to his wife Clara. She was due to perform the piano part in the first private performance of the quintet on 6 December 1842 at the home of Henriette Voigt and her husband Carl. However she fell ill and Felix Mendelssohn stepped in, sight-reading the "fiendish" piano part. Mendelssohn's suggestions to Schumann after this performance led to revisions to the inner movements, including the addition to the third movement of a second trio. A notable performance came in 1852, when Schumann asked that the younger pianist Julius Tausch replace Clara in the quintet, explaining that "a man understands that better."

Influences of Beethoven and Schubert on the piano quintet

Tovey remarks the formal influence which Beethoven exerted over the quintet. He argues that the final movement's lengthy coda is a typically Beethovenian device, and likens the quintet in this respect to the ninth and fourteenth string quartets. He writes that the scherzo so much reflects his style that it "might almost have come from Beethoven."

Daverio has argued that the quintet was influenced by Schubert's Piano Trio No. 2 in E major, a work Schumann had studied and performed intensively over several months in 1828-1829 and which he greatly admired, describing it as Schubert's "immortal trio."

Analysis

The piece has four movements in the standard fast-slow-scherzo-fast pattern:

I. Allegro brillante

left|thumb|350px|Movement 1, piano part, mm.1-8

The first movement's is marked Allegro brillante. This movement exposes much material which reappears later in the work. It sets in contrast exuberant material reflecting Schumann's brilliant, wild side, as described by Schumann in the character of Florestan, with slower, 'Eusebian' sections of great passion.

The movement's energetic main theme opens in minims, and characterized by wide, upward-leaping intervals. Tovey writes of the theme that its use of upward leaps is so striking that "it is impossible for the violoncello to throw in a casual leap of an octave in minims without implying the first theme". The contrasting second theme, marked dolce, is reached after a transitional section marked by glances at remoter flat keys. It is presented as a duet between cello and viola, and its "meltingly romantic" After the third and final appearance of the scherzo, a brief coda based on the scales concludes the movement, slipping in a recall of Trio I in the final bars.

IV. Allegro ma non troppo

thumb|350px|Schumann: Piano Quintet, finale, piano part, mm.1-4 (Theme A1)|alt=

The finale begins in G minor, on a C-minor chord, rather than in the tonic. The movement as a whole is cast in an unusual form that partly reflects, but ultimately triumphs over Schumann's frequent difficulties with the conventional sonata form in his larger-scale instrumental movements. The original handling of both form and key contrasts sharply with the largely conventional formal organization of the previous three movements.

A summary of the main themes and key areas follows:

: m. 1: G minor theme A<sub>1</sub>

: m. 21: E major theme A<sub>2</sub>

: m. 29: D minor A<sub>1</sub>

: m. 37: B major A<sub>2</sub>

: m. 43: G major theme B (with an important motive B′, first introduced by the viola in 54), B itself is a diminished version of A<sub>2</sub>.

: m. 77: B minor-major A<sub>1</sub>

: m. 114: E major-G minor theme C (accompanied by B′)

: m. 136: G minor A<sub>1</sub>

: m. 148: D minor A<sub>1</sub>

: m. 156: B major A<sub>2</sub>

: m. 164: B minor A<sub>1</sub>

: m. 172: G major A<sub>2</sub>

: m. 178: E major B recapitulated

: m. 212: G minor A<sub>1</sub>

: m. 224: E major theme D

: m. 248: Fugato on A<sub>1</sub>

: m. 274: E major C (B’) recapitulated

: m. 319: E major, fugato on A<sub>1</sub> combined with the opening theme of the first movement, Allegro brillante

: m. 378: E major D recapitulated

: m. 402: Coda

The main themes, A<sub>1</sub>, A<sub>2</sub>, B and C, are all introduced in the first 135 bars, making this opening roughly equivalent to a sonata exposition. The tonic key, however, is almost entirely absent, with the music mostly remaining in G minor/major until the introduction of the lyrical theme C in the remote key of E major at m. 114. The music modulates to G minor to begin what is essentially a recapitulation in m. 136, with B returning in E to finally establish the true tonic in m. 178, very late in a lengthy movement.

More than 200 bars remain to unfold, however, almost entirely in the tonic. During their course, Schumann introduces yet another theme, the syncopated D, gets around to recapitulating the lyrical theme C in the tonic, and develops the music further via two fugato passages, the second unexpectedly and impressively incorporating the principal theme of the opening Allegro brillante and combining it with the opening theme A<sub>1</sub>, finally heard in the tonic.

This coup may have been inspired by a similar confluence of themes in Mendelssohn's E quartet op. 12. It also, probably deliberately, evokes the climactic contrapuntal finales of works such as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. The movement as a whole can be noted for the rondo-like reappearances of the opening theme A<sub>1</sub>, which consistently avoids the tonic key until the final fugato; for its innovative key scheme, which combines the restless modulations of a traditional sonata development with the idea of recapitulation in the tonic; and for its successful integration of counterpoint within a non-contrapuntal formal structure.

Reception and influence

Schumann's piano quintet was widely acclaimed and much imitated. Its success firmly established the piano quintet as a significant, and quintessentially Romantic, chamber music genre. The Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 of Johannes Brahms, reworked from an earlier sonata for two pianos (itself a reworking of an earlier string quintet) at the urging of Clara Schumann, was one of a number of later piano quintets that show Schumann's influence and adopt his choice of instrumentation.

Schumann's Piano Quintet failed to please at least one discriminating listener: Franz Liszt heard the piece performed at Schumann's home in 1848 and described it as "somewhat too Leipzigerisch," a reference to the conservative music of composers from Leipzig, especially Felix Mendelssohn. Schumann took enormous offense at this remark, especially because Mendelssohn, who was a great friend of Schumann's and whom Schumann somewhat idolised, had died only a year earlier. By some accounts Schumann rushed at Liszt and seized him by the shoulders. Liszt eventually apologised.

Use in later art and music

The funeral march theme of the second movement is prominently used as the main theme of the film Fanny and Alexander by Ingmar Bergman, and is played on violin by Rutger Hauer's character Lothos while Buffy kills the vampire portrayed by Paul Reubens in the 1992 feature Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is also featured prominently on the all-classical soundtrack of the noted 1934 horror film The Black Cat. It is used several times in Yorgos Lanthimos' 2018 period piece The Favourite.

References

Bibliography

  • Schumann's Piano Quintet was first published in 1843. It was republished by Breitkopf and Hartel in Robert Schumann's Werke Serie V (1881).
  • Berger, Melvin. "Guide to Chamber Music", Dover, 2001, 404-405.
  • Chisell, Joan (1979). Schumann. London: J. M. Dent and Sons. .
  • Daverio, John (2002). Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Daverio, John. Robert Schumann: Herald of a "New Poetic Age." (1997, Oxford)
  • Daverio, John. "'Beautiful and Abstruse Conversations': The Chamber Music of Schumann." Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music. Ed. Stephen E. Hefling. New York: Schirmer, 1998: 208–41.
  • Nelson, J.C. ‘Progressive Tonality in the Finale of the Piano Quintet, op.44 of Robert Schumann’. Indiana Theory Review, xiii/1 (1992): 41–51.
  • Potter, Tully. Liner notes. SCHUMANN: Piano Quintet, Op. 44 / BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 2 (Curzon, Budapest Quartet) (1951-1952)
  • Reich, Nancy (2001). Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
  • Smallman, Basil. The Piano Quartet and Quintet: Style, Structure, and Scoring.
  • Stowell, Robin. The Cambridge Companion to the String Quartet.
  • Wollenberg, Susan. ‘Schumann's Piano Quintet in E flat: the Bach Legacy’, The Music Review, lii (1991): 299–305.
  • Westrup, J. ‘The Sketch for Schumann's Piano Quintet op.44’, Convivium musicorum: Festschrift Wolfgang Boetticher. Ed. H. Hüschen and D.-R. Moser. Berlin, 1974: 367–71.
  • Piano Quintet Op. 44: Schumann's autograph manuscript in the Bonn University and State Library
  • Performance of the Piano Quintet by the Steans Artists of Musicians from Ravinia from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in MP3 format
  • 8 June 2010 performance of the Piano Quintet at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival