[Illustration]
THE HIDALGO.
My days I spend in courting, With songs and hearts a-sporting, Or weaponed for a fight!
(_Der Hidalgo_).
[Illustration]
A DAY WITH ROBERT SCHUMANN BY MAY BYRON
[Illustration]
LONDON HODDER & STOUGHTON
_In the same Series._ _Mozart._ _Beethoven._ _Mendelssohn._ _Schubert._ _Chopin._ _Wagner._ _Gounod._ _Tschaikovsky._
A DAY WITH SCHUMANN.
It is an April morning in 1844, in the town of Leipzig,--calm, cool, and fraught with exquisite promise of a prolific spring,--when the Herr Professor Doctor Robert Schumann, rising before six o'clock as is his wont, very quietly and noiselessly in his soft felt slippers, dresses and goes downstairs. For he does not wish to disturb or incommode his sleeping wife, whose dark eyes are still closed, or to awaken any of his three little children.
The tall, dignified, well-built man, with his pleasant, kindly expression, and his air of mingled intellect and reverie, bears his whole character written large upon him,--his transparent honesty, unflagging industry, and generous, enthusiastic altruism. No touch of self-seeking about him, no hint of ostentation or conceit: he is still that same reticent and silent person, of whom it was said some years ago by his friends,
"Herr Schumann is a right good man, He smokes tobacco as no one can: A man of thirty, I suppose, And short his hair, and short his nose."
That, indeed, is the sum total of his outward appearance: as for the inward man, it is not to be known save through his writings. Literature and music are the only means of expression, of communication with others, which are possessed by this modest, pensive, reserved maestro, upon whom the sounding titles of Doctor and Professor sit so strangely.
In the unparalleled fervour and romance of his compositions,--in the passionate heart-opening of his letters,--in the sane, wholesome, racy colloquialism of his critiques,--the real Robert Schumann is unfolded. Otherwise he might remain a perennial enigma to his nearest and dearest: for even in his own family circle, tenderly and dearly as he adores his wife and children, his lips remain sealed of all that they might say: and the fixed, unvarying quietude of his face but rarely reveals the least suggestion of his deeper feelings.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: A Day with Robert Schumann by Byron
- 2: Schumann is solely and pre eminently a composer
- 3: This disastrous attempt deprived the world of a good pianist
- 4: Illustration THE LOTUS FLOWER
- 5: Those compositions are my poor
- 6: In the opinion of all conventional musicians
- 7: The Davidsbund has a very definite meaning
- 8: In the course of the morning Schumann
- 9: Is occupied with creative work
- 10: To France were returning two Grenadiers
- 11: Page 23 fruehstueck changed to Fruehstueck