in point of fact, he never set foot on English ground.
As far, therefore, as making a home for himself went, his half-year's stay in Vienna was without result. But without doubt Schumann received impulses and incitements towards further progress as a musician through his acquaintance with Vienna life. A work which is to be referred directly to this influence is the 'Faschingsschwank aus Wien' (op. 26, published by Spina in 1841). In the first movement, which seems to depict various scenes of a masquerade, there springs up quite unnoticed the melody of the 'Marseillaise' (p. 7, bar 40 etc.; Pauer's edition, vol. iii. p. 596, l. i), at that time strictly forbidden in Vienna. Schumann, who had been much worried by the government officials on account of his newspaper, took this opportunity of playing off a good-tempered joke upon them.
It was very natural that, with his enthusiastic admiration for Schubert, he should take pains to follow out the traces of that master, who had now been dead just ten years. He visited the Wahring cemetery, where Schubert is buried, divided by a few intervening graves from Beethoven. On the tomb of the latter a steel pen was lying; this Schumann took possession of, and being always fond of symbolical associations and mystic connections, used on very special occasions. With it he wrote his Symphony in B♭ (op. 38), and the notice of Schubert's C major Symphony, which is found in the 'Zeitschrift' for 1840.[1] And here we encounter one of the chief benefits which Schumann received from his stay in Vienna. He visited Franz Schubert's brother Ferdinand, who showed him the artistic remains of his too early lost brother, and among them the score of the C major Symphony. This he had composed in March 1828, but never lived to hear it performed entire, and no one had since cared to take any trouble about it. Schumann arranged for the score to be sent to Leipzig, and there on March 21, 1839, it was performed for the first time under Mendelssohn's direction. Its success was very striking, and was of great influence on the more thorough and widespread appreciation of Schubert's genius. Schumann retained pleasant memories of Vienna throughout his life, in spite of the little notice he attracted on this occasion, and the meagre success of a concert consisting of his own works, which he gave with his wife on a subsequent visit in the winter of 1846. In the summer of 1847 he even wished to apply for a vacant post on the board of direction at the Conservatorium, but when the year 1848 came, he was extremely glad that the plan had come to nothing.
At the beginning of April 1839 Schumann returned to his old life in Leipzig. He devoted himself with new zest to the interests of the journal, and delighted in once more being associated with prominent and sympathetic musicians. In the summer he paid a short visit to Berlin, which pleased and interested him from its contrast to Vienna.
Unfortunately Wieck's opinion as to the match between Schumann and his daughter remained unchanged, and his opposition to it became even stronger and more firmly rooted. Since persuasion was unavailing, Schumann was forced to call in the assistance of the law, and Wieck had to account for his refusal in court. The case dragged on for a whole year, but the final result was that Wieck's objections to the marriage were pronounced to be trivial and without foundation. A sensitive nature such as Schumann's must have been deeply pained by these difficulties, and the long-delayed decision must have kept him in disastrous suspense. His letters show signs of this. For the rest, his outward circumstances had so much improved, that he could easily afford to make a home without the necessity of such a round of work as he had attempted in Vienna. 'We are young,' he writes on Feb. 19, 1840, 'and have hands, strength, and reputation; and I have a little property that brings in 500 thalers a year. The profits of the paper amount to as much again, and I shall get well paid for my compositions. Tell me now if there can be real cause for fear.' One thing alone made him pause for a time. His bride-elect was decorated with different titles of honour from the courts at which she had played in her concert-tours. He himself had, it is true, been latterly made a member of several musical societies, but that was not enough. In the beginning of 1840 he executed a scheme which he had cherished since 1838, and applied to the university of Jena for the title of Doctor of Philosophy. Several cases in which the German universities had granted the doctor's diploma to musicians had lately come under Schumann's notice; for instance the university of Leipzig had given the honorary degree to Marschner in 1835, and to Mendelssohn in 1836, and these may have suggested the idea to him. Schumann received the desired diploma on Feb. 24, 1840. As he had wished, the reason assigned for its bestowal is his well-known activity not only as a critical and æsthetic writer, but as a creative musician.[2] At last, after a year of suspense, doubts, and disagreements, the marriage of Robert Schumann with Clara Wieck took place on Sept. 12, 1840, in the church of Schönefeld, near Leipzig.
The 'Davidsbündlertanze,' previously mentioned, bore on the title-page of the first edition an old verse—
In all und jeder Zeit
Verknüpft sich Lust und Leid:
Bleibt fromm in Lust, und seyd
Beim Leid mit Muth bereit;
which may be rendered as follows:
Hand in hand we always see
Joy allied to misery:
In rejoicing pious be,
And bear your woes with bravery.
And when we observe that the two first bars
- ↑ See also the 'Gesammelte Schriften.' iii. 195.
- ↑ Qui rerum Maris sacrarum et artifex ingeniosus et judex elegans modis musicis tum scite componendis tum doctis judicandis alque præceptis de senen pulchritudinis venustatisque optimis colendis magnam nomminis famam adeptus est, says the original in its flowery Latin.
