Piano Quintet

The Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44, by Robert Schumann was written in 1842. Like most piano quintets, it is written for piano and string quartet (two violins, viola and cello).

Background

The work was composed in just a few weeks in September and October 1842, during his "Chamber Music Year." Prior to that year Schumann had completed no chamber music at all with the exception of an early piano quartet (in 1829). However, during his year-long concentration on the genre he wrote three string quartets and a piano quartet in addition to his popular piano quintet.

Schumann was one of the first significant composers to pair the piano with the string quartet. By 1842, the string quartet was well established as the most important chamber music ensemble, and advances in the design of the piano had expanded its power and dynamic range. In combining these instruments, Schumann's piano quintet took full advantage of the expressive possibilities of string quartet and piano, alternating between conversational passages between the five instruments and more concertante passages in which the combined forces of the strings are massed against the piano.

"In the first happiness of reunion with the piano, his creative imagination took on a new lease of life," writes Joan Chisell.^[1]

Schumann's work established the quintet for piano and string quartet as a major Romantic genre. Later works for piano quintet written under its influence include those of Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, César Franck, Edward Elgar, and Dmitri Shostakovitch.

Form

The piece is in four movements, in the standard quick-slow-scherzo-quick pattern:

1. Allegro brillante
2. In modo d'una marcia. Un poco largamente
3. Scherzo: Molto vivace
4. Allegro ma non troppo

First Movement: Allegro Brillante

The tempo marking for the first movement is "Allegro brillante". The Italian adjective "brillante" means "glittering" or "sparkling".

Second Movement: In modo d'una marcia. Un poco largamente

This movement, in C minor, is like a funeral march. Before the faster section of this movement, there is the same sequence of octaves in the piano as in the first movement before the piano solo.

Third Movement: Scherzo: Molto vivace

A lively movement built almost entirely on ascending and descending scales. There are two trios. The first trio is a lyrical canon for violin and viola. The second trio is a heavily accented perpetual motion.

Finale: Allegro ma non troppo

Cyclic structure in the Schumann piano quintet.

The finale begins in C minor rather than in the tonic. At the end of the piece, the last movement's main theme is combined with the first movement's main theme in a double fugue.

Reception

Clara Schumann, the composer's wife and a noted pianist, premiered the work on 8 January 1843, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and often played the work throughout her life, despite criticism of her performance from her husband late in his life and a statement that only a man could understand it (it is said, though, that Schumann said this in a moment of jealousy, as it is well known that he sometimes had problems with being "Mr. Clara Schumann", husband of the renowned virtuoso). Despite its popularity, Franz Liszt heard the piece at the Schumanns' home and was distinctly unimpressed by it, dismissing it as being "too Leipzigerisch", a reference to the conservative musical style of composers from Leipzig, especially Felix Mendelssohn.

Footnotes

Bibliography

• The quintet was first published in 1843. It was republished by Breitkopf and Hartel in Robert Schumann's Werke Serie V (1881). It is also available in editions by Peters and Henle (Urtext).
• Berger, Melvin. "Guide to Chamber Music", Dover, 2001, 404-405.
• Daverio, John. “'Beautiful and Abstruse Conversations': The Chamber Music of Schumann.” Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music. Ed. Stephen E. Hefling. New York: Schirmer, 1998: 208–41.
• Nelson, J.C. ‘Progressive Tonality in the Finale of the Piano Quintet, op.44 of Robert Schumann’. Indiana Theory Review, xiii/1 (1992): 41–51.
• Wollenberg, Susan. ‘Schumann's Piano Quintet in E flat: the Bach Legacy’, The Music Review, lii (1991): 299–305.
• Westrup, J. ‘The Sketch for Schumann's Piano Quintet op.44’, Convivium musicorum: Festschrift Wolfgang Boetticher. Ed. H. Hüschen and D.-R. Moser. Berlin, 1974: 367–71.
• Tovey, D.F. Essays in Musical Analysis: Chamber Music. London: Oxford, 1944: 149–54.

External links

• Piano Quintet: Free scores at the International Music Score Library Project.
• Performance of quintet by the Steans Artists of Musicians from Ravinia from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in MP3 format