Chapter 21

CHAPTER XIII

SCHUMANN AND MENDELSSOHN

In distinction from pioneers like Schubert, slightly tinged with
Romanticism, and Weber who, though versatile, was somewhat
lacking in creative vigor, Schumann (1810-1856) stands forth as
the definite, conscious spokesman of the Romantic movement
in German art just as Berlioz was for art in France. He was
endowed with literary gifts of a high order, had a keen critical
and historical sense and wrote freely and convincingly in sup-
port of his own views and in generous recognition of the ideals
of his contemporaries. Many of his swans, to be sure, proved
later to be geese, and it is debatable how much good was done
by his rhapsodic praise to young Brahms; whether in fact he
did not set before the youngster a chimerical ideal impossible of
attainment. Schumann early came under the influence of Jean
Paul Richter, that incarnation of German Romanticism, whom
he placed on the same high plane as Shakespeare and Beethoven.
An intimate appreciation of much that is fantastic and whimsi-
cal in Schumann is possible only through acquaintance with the
work of this Jean Paul. Schumann’s first compositions were for
the pianoforte—in fact his original ambition[190] was to be a
pianoforte virtuoso—and to-day his permanent significance de-
pends on the spontaneity in conception and the freedom of form
manifested in these pianoforte works and in his romantic songs.
Here we have the “ipsissimus Schumann,” as von Bülow so well