From SCHUMANN PROJECT Recital #8a
Robert Schumann: Sonata op. 11
Video of the lecture-recital by Fabio Grasso
Below, an English version of the Italian lecture
English version of the Italian lecture: "The
Sonata op. 11 between structural innovation and Goethean
inspiration"
English Resume of the Italian Lecture One of the most
famous passages of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre is the virtuoso dance performed by Mignon among
the eggs, described as “essential, severe, and in tender moments more solemn
than lovable”. and accompanied by a violin line, more and more fading at every
repetition. On a rare autograph fragment of Schumann’s Sonata op. 11, the
composer writes an allusion to Mignon’s dance at the beginning of the Allegro
of the first movement. Schumann’s inspiration always refers to some literary
hint, even in the compositions expected to be markedly academic, like
Sonata-forms. His interest in Mignon’s character is great and goes beyond the
Lieder (as testifies the Requiem für Mignon);
moreover we have to remember that the slow movements of the Sonatas op. 11 and
22 are solo piano arrangements of early Lieder. No wonder this Goethean reminiscence may have inspired the first theme of
the first movement of the first Schumann’s Sonata: this theme is so austere and
at the same time so rhythmically excited, that it seems to fit the description
of the dance perfectly. It is also noteworthy that all the most important
elements of the Sonata-form - first, second and third theme, modulating
transitions, the left hand’s jumping figuration - are more and more resigned,
melancholy and evanescent every time they appear, according to the idea of the
violin melody given by Goethe. We can think that this thematic system and its
treatment represent a sort of Sonata transposition of the well known Romantic
traits of Mignon’s personality: on the one hand the fatalistic acceptation of
an inexorable destiny, on the other the Sehnsucht,
the irrepressible longings for an utopian happiness. At the end of the first
movement the surviving A of the vanishing F-sharp minor harmony becomes the
bass for the theme of the Aria. This tendency not to interrupt the continuity
between the movements is a trace of the evolution towards a new macroformal conception, but in fact it is not such a new
idea, if we think to certain Beethoven’s Sonatas - such as op. 27 n. 1. The
real innovation is the thematic circulation, that expands through the
movements. The theme of the Aria is partially used in the middle part of the
slow Introduction to the first movement, and then in the first Intermezzo of
the Scherzo - a really joking piece to which the unpredictable second
Intermezzo gives a burst of lively Beethovenian irony. So we can say that the
Sonata op. 11 is the first step in the direction of the cyclical Sonata form,
the macroformal structure in which some entire themes
circulate through various movements. Here this kind of experimentation is
limited to the theme of the Aria, while other correspondances
concern only short motivic fragments - in particular
the ascending line F-sharp - G-sharp - A, basic cell for the main themes of the
first, of the third and the final movement, a majestic composition that
hybridizes Sonata-form and Rondò in a monumental
architecture with double development (read on this subject Charles Rosen, The
Sonata-forms). Schumann will reach the goal of the completely perfected
cyclical form with the Fourth Symphony, a structural model of reference for
important masterworks of the second half of the 19th century. We love to think
that the dedication to Schumann of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, the most complex
cyclical piano Sonata, is a sign of gratitude for the pioneering courage
necessary to trace this difficult way.
© Fabio Grasso 2021