Liszt sent a copy of his Sonata to the Schumann house in Düsseldorf where it arrived on
25 May 1854. This was eleven months after the drowsiness incident and Brahms, who
was staying at the Schumann’s as a house guest, played the Sonata through for Robert’s
wife Clara, herself a concert pianist and composer.
Clara wrote in her diary: ‘I received a friendly letter from Liszt today, enclosing a sonata
dedicated to Robert and a number of other things. But what dreadful things they are.
Brahms played them to me and I felt quite ill. It’s much ado about nothing – not a single
sound idea, but altogether confused, and not a clear harmonic expression to be found
anywhere! And now I even have to thank him for it [the dedication], it is truly
appalling.’
To be fair to Clara, her husband, two months earlier, after an unsuccessful attempt to
drown himself, had been taken to a mental hospital at Endenich near Colditz Castle
leaving her with seven children to support. Bear in mind also that Brahms was, and
always remained, a close friend of Clara’s.
Robert Schumann never recovered from his mental illness which was caused by tertiary
neuro-syphillis, and he died at Endenich, probably from self-starvation, two years later,
on 29 July 1856. One imagines that Brahms had told Schumann about Liszt’s Sonata
when, as William Mason recounts, Brahms visited the Schumanns at their Düsseldorf
home shortly after the drowsiness incident. This visit took place in September 1853 and
in the present writer’s view, would tend to contradict the view expressed by some
commentators that Schumann never knew of the dedication of the Sonata to him or even
of its existence.
Louis Kentner, in his chapter in ‘Liszt’ edited by Walker, wrote that Schumann heard
Liszt play the Sonata. This notion appears to originate in Göllerich’s ‘Liszt’ where Liszt
recalled such an incident. No corroboration can be found and it is possible that Liszt had
confused Schumann with another composer, particularly after the passage of more than
thirty years.
SCHYTTE
Ludvig Schytte was born in Aarhus, Denmark, on 28 April 1848 and died in Berlin on 10
November 1909. He studied in Copenhagen with Niels Gade and Edmund Neupert, and
then with W. Taubert in Berlin. In 1884 he studied with Liszt in Weimar, although
Walker does not note him as a Liszt pupil. He taught at Horak’s Institute, Vienna, in
1887-89, remaining in Vienna until 1907 when he took a teaching post in Berlin.
Originally trained as a pharmacist he was a successful concert pianist and teacher and a
prolific composer.
His works include a piano concerto in C sharp minor, which had its first British
performance in 1902 at the London ‘Proms’, a Sonata in B flat among numerous other
piano works, and works for two pianos. His shorter piano works are still used as