ultimately came to nothing, chiefly because of the refusal of Buxton, the proprietor of the publishing firm of Ewer & Co., to bring out 'Paradise and the Peri' with English words. Still Schumann, even long after, kept his eye steadily fixed on England. He was delighted at being told that Queen Victoria often listened to his music, and had had the B♭ Symphony[1] played by the private band at Windsor, and he contemplated dedicating his Manfred music (op. 115) to Her Majesty, but the idea was given up.
Instead of going to England, they at length paid a visit to Vienna in the winter of 1846. Here again Schumann conducted his B♭ Symphony, and his wife played his Pianoforte Concerto. This was on Jan. 1, 1847. But the public were perfectly unsympathetic, and justified an earlier utterance of Schumann's that 'The Viennese are an ignorant people and know little of what goes on outside their own city.' Nor were matters much more satisfactory in Berlin, whither they went from Vienna to conduct 'Paradise and the Peri'; while in Prague, where they performed on their way, they met with the warmest reception.
The year 1844 was the last of Schumann's residence in Leipzig; for in October he left the town where he had lived and worked with short intervals for fourteen years, and moved to Dresden. He had given up the editorship of the 'Neue Zeitschrift' in July, and from April 3, 1843, had held a Professor's chair in the Conservatorium, founded at Leipzig by Mendelssohn's exertions, and opened on that date. [See vol. ii. 115, 281 a, 282a.] He was professor of pianoforte-playing and composition; but his reserved nature was little suited to the duties of a teacher, though his name and the example afforded by his work were no doubt highly advantageous to the infant Institution. Schumann had no disciples, properly speaking, either in the Conservatorium or as private pupils. In a letter to David from Dresden he incidentally mentions Carl Ritter as having instruction from him, and as having previously been a pupil of Hiller's; and he writes to Hiller that he has brought young Ritter on a little. But what the style of Schumann's teaching may have been cannot be told; and a single exception only proves the rule.
The move to Dresden seems to have been chiefly on account of Schumann's suffering condition. His nervous affection rendered change of scene absolutely necessary to divert his thoughts. He had overworked himself into a kind of surfeit of music, so much so that his medical attendant forbade his continually hearing it. In the musical world of Leipzig such a prohibition could not be strictly obeyed, but at Dresden it was quite different. 'Here,' he writes to David on Nov. 25, 1844, 'one can get back the old lost longing for music, there is so little to hear! It just suits my condition, for I still suffer very much from my nerves, and everything affects and exhausts me directly.' Accordingly he at first lived in Dresden in the strictest seclusion. A friend sought him out there and found him so changed that he entertained grave fears for his life. On several occasions he tried sea-bathing, but it was long before his health can be said to have radically improved. In February, 1846, after a slight improvement, he again became very unwell, as he did also in the summer of the following year. He observed that he was unable to remember the melodies that occurred to him when composing; the effort of invention fatiguing his mind to such a degree as to impair his memory. As soon as a lasting improvement took place in his health, he again devoted himself wholly to composition. He was now attracted more powerfully than before to complicated contrapuntal forms. The 'Studies' and 'Sketches' for the pedal-piano (ops. 56 and 58), the six fugues on the name of 'Bach' (op. 60), and the four piano fugues (op. 72), owe their existence to this attraction. The greatest work of the years 1845–6 however, was the C major Symphony (op. 61), which Mendelssohn produced at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Nov. 5, 1846. Slight intercourse with a few congenial spirits was now gradually resumed. Among those whom he saw was the widow of C. M. v. Weber (the 'Lina' of Weber's letters), whose fine musical feeling was highly valued by Schumann. The first year in Dresden was spent with Ferdinand Hiller, who had been living there since the winter of 1844. Their intercourse gradually grew into a lively and lasting intimacy. When Hiller was getting up subscription concerts in the autumn of 1845, Schumann took an active share in the undertaking. With Richard Wagner, too, then Capellmeister at Dresden, he was on friendly terms. He was much interested in the opera of Tannhäuser, and heard it often, expressing his opinion of it in terms of great though not unqualified praise.[2] But the natures of the two musicians differed too widely to allow of any real sympathy between them. Wagner was always lively, versatile and talkative, while, since Schumann's illness, his former silence and reserve had increased, and even intimate friends, like Moscheles and Lipinski, had to lament that conversation with him was now scarcely possible.
At the end of Schumann's collected works we find a 'Theaterbüchlein' (1847–50) in which are given short notes of the impressions made upon him by certain operas. From this we learn that in 1847 he went comparatively often to the theatre; the reason being that at that time he himself was composing an opera. He had long cherished the idea. So early as Sept. 1, 1842, he writes, 'Do you know what is my morning and evening prayer as an artist? German Opera. There is a field for work.' He concludes a critique of an opera by Heinrich Esser in the number of the 'Zeitschrift' for September 1842 with these significant words,—'It is high time that German composers should give the lie to the reproach that has long lain on them of having been so craven as to leave
