I may add some other scenes. This repetition however did not take place in Schumann's lifetime. He fulfilled his scheme of adding several scenes; and in 1853 pre-fixed an overture to the whole work, which was divided into three parts. It was not published complete until two years after his death.
In the meantime, Schumann's health had again improved, as was evident from his augmented creative activity. Indeed his eager desire for work increased in a way which gave rise to great apprehensions. In the year 1849 alone ne produced thirty works, most of them of considerable extent. It had never seemed so easy to him to create ideas and bring them into shape. He composed as he walked or stood, and could not be distracted, even by the most disturbing circumstances. Thus he wrote Mignon's song 'Kennst du das Land' at Kreischa, near Dresden, in the midst of a group of his noisy children. And in a restaurant near the post-office, much frequented by the artistic society of Dresden, where he used to drink his beer in the evening, he would usually sit alone, with his back to the company and his face to the wall, whistling softly to himself, and developing his musical ideas all the time. No preference for any particular form of art can be traced in Schumann's work at this time. Pianoforte works and chamber trios, songs and vocal duets, choruses, choral works with orchestra, concertos with orchestra, compositions for horn, clarinet, oboe, violoncello, or violin, with pianoforte accompaniment, even melodramatic music—all these thronged as it were out of his imagination in wild and strange succession. Among all the beautiful and important works produced at this time, the music to Byron's Manfred deserves especial mention. The first stage performance of it was given by Franz Liszt in Weimar on June 13, 1852. For that occasion the drama was adapted for the stage by Schumann himself, in an arrangement which is printed as a preface to the score of the work. The first performance of the music at a concert took place at Leipzig on March 24, 1859.
Dresden was Schumann's place of residence until 1850. In the latter years of his stay there his outward life was more active than before. No journeys of note were made, it is true, with the exception of those to Vienna and Berlin already mentioned, and a longer expedition undertaken in 1850 to Bremen and Hamburg, where many concerts were given. He avoided the passing disturbance occasioned by the Dresden insurrection of 1849, by leaving the town with his family. Though no revolutionary, like Bichard Wagner, scarcely even a politician, Schumann loved individual liberty and wished others to enjoy it also. But what gave a different aspect to his life as a musician in the last years of his stay in Dresden, was his occupation as a conductor. Ferdinand Hiller had conducted a choral society for men's voices; and when he left Dresden to go to Düsseldorf as municipal director of music, Schumann succeeded him in his post. He conducted the society for some time with great interest, and was glad to find that his capacity for conducting was not so small as he had generally fancied it to be. He was even induced to write a few works for male chorus. Three songs of War and Liberty (Kriegs- und Freiheitslieder, op. 62) and seven songs in canon-form, to words by Rückert (op. 65), were written in 1847, and a grand motet for double chorus of men's voices (op. 93) in 1849. But a nature like Schumann's could not thrive in the atmosphere of a German singing club. He was in all respects too refined for the tone of vulgar comfort, and often even of low sentimentality, which pervades these assemblies, and they could not but be irksome to him. 'I felt myself,' he says, in a letter to Hiller written on April 10, 1849, after his withdrawal, 'out of my element; they were such nice (hübsch) people.' This is even noticeable in his compositions for male chorus; they are not of the right kind, and have in consequence never been much sung. Of greater artistic importance was a society of mixed voices, which was constituted in January 1848, and of which Schumann was asked to take the lead. It was not very large—in 1849 it numbered only 60 or 70 members—but these were efficient, and Schumann was able 'to perform correctly any music he liked with pleasure and delight.' It was this society that gave the first performance of the third part of 'Faust's Salvation' in June 1848, at a private party; Schumann was induced to write many new compositions for them, and they did much service in promoting a knowledge of his music in Dresden by two performances of 'Paradise and the Peri' on Jan. 5 and 12, 1850. They even succeeded in drawing him into social amusements. In August 1848 a general excursion was arranged, in which Schumann took what was, for him, a lively interest. He even invited David and his wife to come over from Leipzig for the occasion, writing, 'Listen; on Sunday week we are going with the choral society for a trip of pleasure and music to Pillnitz. It will be great fun; there will be some pretty women and plenty of singing. How would it be, David, if you were to come too? Much indeed depends upon the weather, but the party will only be put off in case of heavy rain.'
That Schumann, after so successful a beginning in the art of conducting, considered himself fitted to undertake the direction of performances on a larger scale, is evident from the following circumstance. After Mendelssohn's death the Gewandhaus concerts were conducted by Julius Rietz, who until 1847 had been at work in Düsseldorf. In the summer of 1849 a report reached Dresden that Rietz was going to succeed O. Nicolai as royal Capellmeister at Berlin. Schumann thereupon applied for the post of concert director at the Gewandhaus. Dr. Hermann Härtel was to be the medium of communication, and Schumann, with a well-founded expectation that the choice would fall upon him, gave himself up for a time with great pleasure to the idea of becoming the successor of the honoured Mendelssohn. 'It would give me great pleasure,' he wrote, 'if the thing came to pass. I long for
