Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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790 SYMPHONY
Symphony being definitely ao called ; and their
development depends rather upon an emotional
than an intellectual basis ; as it seems most just
that a slow movement should. His object
appears to have been to find some noble and
aspiring strain of melody, and to contrast it
with episodes of similar character, which carry
on and bear upon the principal idea without
diverting the chain of thought into a different
channel. Hence the basis of the movements is
radically lyrical ; and this afibrds an important
element of 'contrast to the first movement, in
which there is always an antithetical element
in the contrast of the two principal subjects.
The romanze of the D minor is constructed on
a different principle ; the sections and musical
material being strongly contrasted ; this may
be partly owing to the closeness of its connection
with other parts of the symphony, as will
be noticed farther on. The scherzos, including
that in the 'Overture, Scherzo, and Finale'
(op. 52), have a family likeness to one another,
though their outlines are different ; they all
illustrate a phase of musical and poetical
development in their earnest character and the
vein of sadness which pervades them. The
light and graceful gaiety of most of the minuets
of Haydn and Mozart is scarcely to be traced
in them ; but its place is taken by a certain
wild rush of animal spirits, mixed up in a strange
and picturesque way with expressions of tenderness
and regret. These scherzos are in a sense
unique ; for though following in the same
direction as Beethoven's in some respects, they
have but little of his sense of fun and grotesque,
while the vein of genuine melancholy which
pervades them certainly finds no. counterpart
either in Spohr or Mendelssohn ; and, if it may
be traced in Schubert, it is still in comparison
far less prominent. In fact Schumann's scherzos
are specially curious and interesting, even apart
from the ordinary standpoint of a musician, as
illustrating a phase of the intellectual progress
of the race.
Schumann belonged to the order
of men with large and at the same time delicate
sympathies, whose disposition becomes so deeply
impressed with the misfortunes and unsolvable
difficulties which beset his own lot and that of
his fellow-men, that pure unmixed lighthearteduess
becomes almost impossible. The poetical
and thoughtful side of his disposition, which
supplied most vital ingredients to his music,
was deeply tinged with sadness ; and from this
he was hardly ever entirely free. He could
wear an aspect of cheerfulness, but the sadness
was sure to peep out, and in this, among
thoughtful and poetically disposed beings, he
cannot be looked upon as singular. Hence the
position of the scherzo in modem instrumental
music presents certain inevitable difficulties.
The lively, almost childish, merriment of early
examples cannot be attained without jarring
upon the feelings of earnest men ; at least in
works on such a scale as the symphony, where
the dignity and importance of the form inevitably
produce a certain sense of responsibility
to loftiness of purpose in the carrying out of
the ideas. A movement corresponding to the
old scherzo in its relation to the other movements
had to be formed upon fer more complicated
conditions. The essential point in which
Schumann followed his predecessors was the
definition of the balancing and contrasting
sections. The outlines of certain gi'oups of bars
are nearly always very strongly marked, and
the movement as a whole is based rather upon
effects attainable by the juxtaposition of such
contrasting sections than upon the continuous
logical or emotional development which is
found in the other movements. The structural
outline of the old dance-forms is still recognisable
in this respect, but the style and
rhythm bear little trace of the dance origin
or at least the dance quality has been so far
idealised as to apply rather to thought and
feeling than to expressive rhythmic play of
limbs. In Schumann's first Symphony the
scherzo has some qualities of style which connect
it with the minuets of earlier times, even
of Mozart ; but with these there are genuine
characteristic traits of expression. In the
later scherzos the poetical meaning seems more
apparent. In fact the scherzo and the slow
movement are linked together as the two sections
of the work most closely representative
of human emotion and circumstance ; the first
and last movements having more evident dependence
upoifwhat are called abstract qualities
of form. In its structural outlines Schumann's
scherzo presents certain features. In the Symphonies
in B|> and C he adopts the device of two
trios. Beethoven had repeated the trio in two
symphonies (4th and 7th), and Schumann advanced
in the same direction by writing a second
trio instead of repeating the first, and by making
the two trios contrast not only with the
scherzo, but also with each other ; and as a
further result the trios stand centrally in relation
to the first and last statement of the
scherzo, while it in its turn stands centrally
between them, and thus the whole structm'e of
the movement gains in interest. It is worthy
of note that the codas to all Schumann's scherzos
are specially interesting and full ; and some
of them are singular in the fact that they form
an independent little section conveying its own
ideas apart from those of the principal subjects.
His finales are less remarkable on general
grounds, and on the whole less interesting
than his other movements. The difficulty of
conforming to the old type of light movements
was even more severe for him than it was for
Beethoven, and hence he was the more constrained
to follow the example set by Beethoven
of concluding with something weighty and
forcible, which should make a fitting crown