realise that the D minor Symphony was composed in the same
year as the B-flat major. It was afterwards revised and pub-
lished as No. 4, but the vitality and spontaneity of its themes
come from the first gush of Schumann’s inspiration.]
The Fourth Symphony is an uneven work, for there are many
places where Schumann’s constructive power was unequal to
his ideal conceptions. We often can see the joints, and the
structure—in places—resembles a rag-carpet rather than the
organic texture of an oriental rug. But the spontaneous out-
pouring of melody touches our emotions and well-nigh disarms
criticism. Schumann had constantly been striving for a closer re-
lationship[198] between the conventional movements of the sym-
phony; and his purpose, in the structural treatment adopted, is
indicated by the statement published in the full score—“Introduction,
Allegro, Romanze, Scherzo und Finalein einem Satze”i.e., the
work is to be considered as acontinuous whole and not bro-
ken up into arbitrary movements with rigid pauses between.
The long drawn-out Introduction,[199] with its mysterious har-
monies, leads us into the land of romance, and a portion of
this introduction is happily carried over and repeated in the
Romanze. The First movement proper, fromLebhaft, seems at
first as if it were to be in the customary Sonata-form; the Expo-
sition beginning with two themes in the normal relationship of
minor and relative major, though to be sure the second theme is
more of a supplementary expansion of the first than one which
provides a strong contrast. But after the double bar and repeat,
this first theme is developed in a free preludial manner as if it
were continually leading up to a climax. We are finally rewarded
by a new theme of great warmth which amply makes up for any
lack of individuality in the second theme proper,e.g.
[Music]
[Footnote 198: We find traces of this tendency in the First Sym-
phony, where the Slow Movement and the Scherzo are linked
together, likewise in the Second, where the motto of the first
movement is repeated at the end of the Scherzo.]
[Footnote 199: The analysis is based, as usual, on the orchestral
score; for class-room study there are excellent editions for two
and four hands.]
The rest of the movement consists of additional improvisations,
rather too rigidly sectionalized, on the first theme and a second