Overture Magazine - 2014-2015 May-June 2015 | Page 27

program notes {
Symphony No. 2 in C Major

Robert Schumann

Born in Zwickau, Saxony, Germany,
June 8, 1810; died in Endenich,
near Bonn, July 29, 1856

In February 1854, after decades of mental
suffering, Schumann attempted suicide
by jumping from a bridge into the Rhine
River; he spent the last two and a half years
of his life in an asylum, where he died of
self-starvation at age 46. In 1844, a decade
before the suicide attempt, he endured the
worst breakdown of his life subsequent to
that catastrophic final one. Every effort
exhausted him, and composing became
a torment. Writing to a physician friend,
he recalled: “For a while I could not stand
listening to music. It cut into my nerves
like knives.” Schumann was tormented by
phobias — “melancholy bats,” he called
them — including fears of high places,
sharp objects, and medicines, which he
was convinced contained poisons. Worse
still for a musician were auditory hallucinations, described by Clara Schumann as a
“constant singing and rushing in his ears,
every noise would turn into a tone.”
Eventually, the symptoms lessened,
Schumann began to grow stronger, and his
creativity revived. First he completed his
popular Piano Concerto. By December,
he had entered one of his manic creative
phases and in just three weeks sketched the
Second Symphony, regarded by many as
his greatest. It is easy to hear Schumann’s
struggle against his illness in this symphony, as well as the joyous return of health
and strength in the finale. Through the
alchemy of art, the composer managed to
transform suffering into great music, especially in the extraordinary slow movement
that is the emotional heart of this work.
The sonata-form first movement
opens with a long and mysterious slow
introduction that contains the seeds from
which the symphony will grow. First we
hear a solemn fanfare in the brass, distant
and dreamlike, above strings wandering
in a dark maze. The woodwinds offer a
four-note dotted-rhythm idea. When the
tempo finally accelerates to Allegro, this
motive launches the movement’s main

theme, full of nervous struggle. Periodically, the violins arc upward on a tormented
wailing idea, which eventually grows
into a full-fledged new lyrical episode for
woodwinds and violins.

It is easy to hear Schumann’s
struggle against his illness in
this symphony, as well as the
joyous return of health.
More agitated still is the secondmovement scherzo with its fast, frenetic music for the violins. So difficult
is this to play that it is customarily
included in auditions for violinists seeking an orchestral position. Momentary
relief from this obsessive music comes
in two trio sections: the first a dialogue
between woodwinds and strings; the
second a lovely, flowing episode, rich in
fugal imitation, opened by the strings.
A loud return of movement one’s brass
fanfare closes the movement.
For the slow movement in C Minor,
Schumann created one of the most
heartbreakingly beautiful melodies in the
symphonic repertoire. Moving from one

solo woodwind instrument to another, it
seems to grow lovelier and more painful
with each repetition. When the violins
sing the melody, they twice add a chain
of shimmering trills — a sublime stroke.
With an upward-rushing scale and a
joyous wake-up-call of a theme in the
woodwinds, Schumann seems to bound
from his sickbed. The finale is the musical expression of the composer’s recovery,
with no lingering dark shadows. Listen for
the reappearance of the slow movement’s
poignant theme in the low strings, now
dancing along in quick tempo. Schumann
eventually turns it upside down, creating
a buoyant new tune that drives the music
forward for several moments. Yet another
melody is introduced by the woodwinds:
a soaring and uncomplicated hymn of
thanksgiving. So infectious is this melody
that Schumann forgets all the others and
builds the symphony’s conclusion around
this uplifting music. At the end, the opening brass fanfare reappears, transformed
into triumph.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two
trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, Copyright ©2015

Schumann

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