Schumann: Symphony No.2 in C major, Op.61 (1845/6)

Sostenuto assai – Allegro, ma non troppo
Scherzo: Allegro vivace
Adagio espressivo
Allegro molto vivace

If Brahms, more than Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, or Bruckner, chose to see himself as the true bearer of Beethoven’s symphonic mantle as announced, finally, by his C minor first symphony in 1876, then perhaps Schumann tried the hardest to find an alternative means of absorbing that almost overbearing influence, initially by more or less turning his back on it for the first decade of his creative life and first focusing on piano music, then eventually evolving into the composer of the miraculous “song year” of 1840 – an immediate and impulsive response to his marriage to 21-year-old pianist Clara Wieck. Yet we know from his letters to her that he hankered after the production of symphonies – no doubt kick-started by his discovery of Schubert’s Great C major in 1838: “…I was totally happy, and wished only that you were my wife, and that I too could write such symphonies”. Sure enough, there followed the “Symphony Year” in 1841, which saw No.1 in B flat (“Spring”), the D minor (eventually published as No.4 in 1851), as well as the Overture Scherzo and Finale (Op.52) and the Phantasie in A minor – this to become the first movement of the much loved piano concerto four years later, then quickly followed by ideas for the present C major symphony. 

The intervening period had witnessed yet another year of concentration on one milieu (chamber music, 1842), the composition of his magnificent oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri, an intense study of Bach, a move from Leipzig to Dresden (currently the home of one Richard Wagner) – and ominous signs of the mental instability which would cloud the final decade of his life with increasing disquiet. Indeed, he writes that the symphony was composed “when I was rather unwell”, pointing to the “capricious and obstinate” first movement as representing the struggle for ascendency over his bodily weakness, adding that “it was only in the last movement that I started to feel better, and when I had finished the work, I was well again”. Deeply troubling though it is to read these words – notwithstanding their implied triumph over darkness – they do not necessarily help our understanding of this tremendous, towering work. Whilst the finale does indeed give us the full majesty and splendour expected from the key of Mozart’s “Jupiter” and Schubert’s Ninth, that “obstinate” first movement is actually chock full of feverish energy and fire, followed by a skittishly light-hearted and witty scherzo (even if it’s not much of a joke for the first violins….!). Above all, its utterly unforgettable Adagio plumbs depths that might have taken even the composer himself by surprise, its heart swelling with that Innigkeit so quintessentially characteristic of Schumann the dreamer – the “Eusebius” as he so often portrayed himself in earlier days.   

If Symphony No.2 reveals its great qualities a little less readily than some of its more familiar companions, perhaps a few pointers might be of assistance: not least to the thrilling conclusions of all three faster movements, brought about not just by the proven combination of sonorous brass and rhythmic drive, but even more so by a subtle piling up of sheer harmonic intensity – crowned in each case by the blazing fanfare of a motto theme, with which the symphony had earlier opened in noble solemnity. There are other bonding formal techniques at work, be it the skilful transformation of the Adagio’s yearning main theme into the joyous second subject of the finale (with its inversion for the recapitulation); or the obsessive dotted rhythms of the outer movements – seen by some commentators as a defect relating to his nervous condition, but by this writer as more to do with the exuberance of the “Florestan” side of his nature; finally, the huge coda – ushered in gently for us by a highly significant quote on the oboe from Beethoven’s song-cycle An die ferne Geliebte (familiar from its deployment elsewhere, for example in the great C major piano Phantasie and the F major string quartet): the seemingly disproportionate length of this closing section occupies more than half of the last movement itself, yet surely and deliberately crafted as a fitting apotheosis to the entire symphony.

© Alan George
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