Branching Out / Vol. 5

What to listen to next, based on our recent experiences with the music of Brahms and Wieck Schumann.

Caspar David Friedrich  (German, 1774–1840). Der einsame Baum (The Lonely Tree), 1822. Oil on canvas. Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Welcome to the fifth edition of Branching Out — where works recently featured in Shades of Blue become your launching point for discovering more melancholy music that cultivates calm, connection, and healing. (Head over here to explore previous installments.)

To grow our tree of classical music knowledge this month, we'll explore music based on our recent experiences listening to Johannes Brahms's lullaby of light and shadow, the Intermezzo in E-flat Major, and the rapturous aria for piano and cello at the heart of Clara Wieck Schumann's Piano Concerto. 

But we're going to do things a little differently this month: Rather than serving up works by other composers that swim in the same emotional pools as those pieces, I'm putting Johannes and Clara in conversation with each other. Neither of my previous essays touched upon the subject, but Johannes and Clara maintained a close relationship for more than 40 years — as friends, confidantes, and emotional support systems (and perhaps even lovers, though there's no definitive proof).

Clara and her husband, Robert Schumann, first met Johannes in October 1853 when the 20-year-old composer-pianist visited the couple in Düsseldorf while on a concert tour. Johannes impressed the Schumanns with performances of his music, and the three forged an instant bond. Clara wrote in her diary how Johannes's work revealed a "superabundant fantasy, most intimate feelings, and mastery of form" while Robert soon published an essay extolling the young composer's range, how every piece "seemed to stream from its own individual source," yet "all united by him into a single waterfall."

But tragedy would soon strike the Schumann home. In February 1854 Robert, who had long suffered from mental illness, attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Rhine River. Rescued by a boatman who had seen the composer fling himself from a bridge, Robert admitted himself to a sanitorium, where he remained until his death two years later, at the age of 46.

With Robert in the hospital, Johannes moved to Düsseldorf to support his friends — helping Clara take care of the couple's seven children, managing family finances, and keeping watch over the household when Clara, now the family's sole earner, resumed her concert tours. Because Robert's doctors forbade Clara from visiting her husband, it was Johannes who frequently visited the hospital. (She was allowed one visit to say a bedside farewell, days before Robert's death.) He dedicated himself to the Schumann family for more than two years, largely neglecting his own work as a result.

After Robert's death, Johannes and Clara remained fixtures in each other's lives. And while Johannes had deep romantic feelings for Clara, there's no solid evidence that she reciprocated his feelings or that the two elevated their relationship beyond a platonic companionship. Regardless, the two were incredibly close until Clara's death in May 1896. (Johannes died just 11 months later.)

As one would expect from two composers, their language of friendship and love was music, so let's take a look at two works Johannes and Clara dedicated to each other.

Johannes Brahms / Theme and Variations, from String Sextet No. 1

Despite the many successes Johannes achieved early in his career, by his late 20s he still hadn't officially entered the world of chamber music — those intimate works for small ensembles to which composers often turn to express their deepest emotions. He had particularly avoided publishing any music for string quartet, a form that had come to be synonymous with Ludwig van Beethoven, whose 16 quartets established a new bar of excellence for Austro-German chamber music. Haunted by Beethoven's shadow, Brahms wrote to a friend:

"You have no idea how the likes of us feel when we can constantly hear such a giant tramping behind us."

So for his first major chamber work, Johannes turned to the string sextet, which called for pairs of violins, violas, and cellos. The first of two sextets Brahms would compose is an example of the composer at his most light-hearted and elegant, teeming with lilting melodies and animated rhythms. At the center of this genial work, however, lies a drama of white-hot intensity that unfolds in the slow second movement — a set of six variations on a brooding, minor-key theme. 

First introduced by the viola's warm, burnished tenor, the primary theme evokes those "black wings" of melancholy Johannes always felt flapping above him. With each passing variation, the music moves through different emotions — sometimes a grave lament, other times anxiety or fiery rage. (Just listen, about halfway through, to those sinister, slithering scales that rise and fall in the cellos against desperate cries from the violins!) 

But all is not darkness here: In the fourth variation, Johannes gently transports us to a major key. Sunlight breaks through the shadows in a moving chorale led by the violins, offering us tender respite, though not for long. In a haunting whisper, the opening theme reappears in the first cello at the start of the final variation, like a phantom of sorrowful memories hovering in the doorway, ready to usher the movement to its quiet conclusion.

The sextet proved a huge success for the composer after its 1860 premiere. Among the work's earliest fans was Clara, who told Johannes that it had exceeded every one of her already high expectations. Touched by this tender and supportive reception, Johannes transcribed the theme and variations movement for solo piano and gifted her the manuscript for her 41st birthday.

Take a listen to the movement in both forms. Which do you prefer?

Clara Schumann / Romance in A Minor

1855 wasn't a very happy year for Clara. He husband was in a mental hospital, the doctors prohibited her from visiting him, and she now bore the pressure of being the sole provider for her family — which, for a concert pianist, meant traveling across Europe on extensive concert tours. But there was one event in early May that lightened her spirits: Johannes's 22nd birthday. Friends and family gathered for the celebrations, after which Clara wrote of the event:

"I seemed to grow younger, for [Johannes] whirled me along with him and I haven't spent so cheerful a day since Robert fell ill."

Among the birthday presents Johannes received was the manuscript for a Romance in A Minor Clara had recently composed for him. The work flowed from her pen in just one day, while her dear friend was visiting Robert in the hospital. Clara wrote in her journal about her new composition:

"Its tone is sad, because I was sad when I wrote it."

That overwhelming sadness saturates Clara's romance, from the melancholic sighs that permeate the opening melody to the thick chords that thunder with both passion and frustration, her heartbreak etched into every bar. Flickers of hope appear in the animated middle section, where the music flows with the serenity of a babbling brook. But when the opening theme returns, the music is no longer resigned — it's despondent, the weight of its emotions amplified by an accelerated pulse and increasingly dissonant harmonies. Exhausted by the turmoil expressed, Clara ends the work with a moment of transfixing stillness, followed by one final chord that remains suspended in mid-air, slowly decaying into deafening silence.

Clara published the romance in 1855 as part of her Three Romances, Op. 21. And though she lived for another 41 years, these were among the final works she wrote and published during her lifetime. The manuscript bears a dedication to Johannes, which the composer took to heart — it was the one work of Clara's that Johannes regularly performed in public.

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