Robert Schumann: Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Opus 63
Program note written for the San Francisco Symphony.
Robert Schumann wrote his D-minor trio in 1847, a tragic time in an often tragic life. In 1844, he had suffered from serious depression and one of his “nervous episodes,” marked by tremors, auditory hallucinations, and severe phobias. By 1847 he had mostly recovered, but the constant threat of ill health remained. Bookending the summer of 1847 were the untimely deaths of composers Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn, the sibling duo whom Robert and his wife Clara counted among their closest friends. Most tragically, Robert and Clara’s first son Emil died at 16 months old on June 22, less than a week after Schumann had completed the sketch of the trio.
After Schumann’s “nervous episode” in 1844, his doctor prescribed total rest and forbade composition. Schumann could not bear this and discovered a workaround by learning to compose in his mind. He wrote later in life: “I used to write most, practically all of my shorter pieces in the heat of inspiration; many compositions were completed with unbelievable swiftness.... Only from the year 1845 on, when I began to invent and work out everything in my head, did a completely new manner of composing begin to develop.”
In addition to developing a more deliberate compositional method, Schumann dedicated the entire year of 1845 to the study of counterpoint, calling it his Fugenpassion (fugue fever). With his wife Clara, one of the great concert pianists and herself a formidable composer, he undertook a deep study of J.S. Bach’s Art of Fugue and Well-Tempered Clavier. In the D-minor trio we can clearly hear his recent obsession with counterpoint and the intricacy of the music also points to his slower compositional process.
Schumann’s D-minor trio is clearly inspired by three other trios written by his contemporaries: Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s D-minor trio and Felix Mendelssohn’s D-minor trio, which he called “the master trio of our time.” The third, and strongest, influence belongs to Clara, who wrote her G-minor trio as a seventh wedding anniversary present to Robert in 1846. In response, Robert presented her with this D-minor trio for her 28th birthday the following year.
Right from the start, we hear the influence of Schumann’s fugenpassion. The violin spins a dark, chromatic melody that the bass of the piano echoes in counterpoint, building to a forceful dotted rhythm played by all three instruments. The music transforms quickly in mood and then hangs on a high note for a moment, questioning, before introducing the uplifting second theme in the piano. Here too Schumann treats the theme as contrapuntal material, giving the cello pieces of it with which to urge on first the piano and then the violin when it takes the theme. The development gives us a particularly extraordinary new theme—distant, with an otherworldliness created through tinkling chime-like chords in the upper register of the piano combined with ponticello strings (bowed near the bridge of the instrument). In the recapitulation, all proceeds almost as usual with the return of themes in sonata-form style, but the ending of the movement throws off predictability, giving us a brief memory of the mystical theme from the development and ending uncertainly.
The scherzo chortles nervously with dotted rhythms until the trio section in the middle smooths everything over with a glassy surface. Again we see the study of counterpoint reflected in Schumann’s use of canon, increasing the urgency and excited agitation that is prevalent throughout the movement. In the tempo marking of the third movement, the heart of the piece, Schumann writes “mit inniger Empfindung” (with utmost feeling). Unsurpassed tenderness intermingles with winding chromatic lines. We are swept away for some time in the middle section with moving chords in the piano, and then return to thoughtful introspection until Schumann once again poses a question. The answer this time is the finale, marked “Mit Feuer” (with fire). Its central melody has a celebratory and open-hearted quality though it is constantly disturbed by aching melodic interjections, agitated murmurings, and other contradictory ideas. The interplay between the instruments builds at last to a bubbling up of D major and the dark clouds, for now, are vanquished.