Aida, by Giuseppe Verdi: a plot summary

Giuseppe Verdi was born near Busseto, Italy, in October 1813 and died in Milan in January 1901. He wrote more than 30 operas, Aida being one of the most celebrated. The book was written by Antonio Ghislanzoni, and the opera was commissioned by the Khedive of Egypt. The first production was in Cairo on 24 December 1871 and it has been an operatic standard ever since at opera houses all over the world. However, some of the most remarkable performances have been in the open air with the Pyramids as the backdrop, which would seem to be the most appropriate setting of all.

Act 1, Scene 1. The Palace of the Pharaoh of Egypt, Memphis

Rhadames, a warrior, is delighted to learn that he has been chosen to lead the army against the Ethiopian enemy, because he hopes that he will thus be able to win Aida, a slave girl, as his prize for victory in battle. However, the king's daughter, Amneris, has set her mark on Rhadames, and his coldness towards her confirms her suspicions that he loves someone else. When the king and his court enter, with Aida in attendance, everyone rejoices at the news of Rhadames's command, with one exception. Aida is the captured daughter of the Ethiopian king, Amonasro, and she fears that either her lover or her father will be killed in battle.

Scene 2. The Temple of Ptah

Nothing much happens as Rhadames's weapons are consecrated for battle.

Act 2, Scene 1. The Quarters of Princess Amneris

The Princess has learned that Rhadames has been victorious and her maidservants dress her to impress the returning hero. Aida enters and Amneris tells her, falsely, that Rhadames is dead. The display of grief shown by Aida is enough to show that Rhadames is more than just a warrior hero to her. What a cow that Amneris is.

Scene 2. Thebes

Pharaoh and his court receive triumphant Rhadames, who is asked to name his reward. Also present are the captured Ethiopians, including Aida's father, King Amonasro, although he has disguised his rank. The crowd call for the prisoners to be killed, but Rhadames asks that, as his reward, their lives be spared. Pharaoh agrees, and gives him the hand of Amneris for good measure, plus naming Rhadames as his own successor as Pharaoh.

Act 3. By the River Nile

Amneris, on the night before her marriage to Rhadames, has come to pay her vows to the goddess Isis. Aida has followed her, in the hope of seeing Rhadames for the last time. However, she is found by her father, who urges her to act as a spy and betray the movements of the Egyptian army. Aida refuses. (The plot thickens). However, Rhadames turns up and, as King Amonasro hides, the former tells Aida what the latter wanted to know. Amonasro now presents himself to Rhadames, out of disguise, and urges the warrior to change sides and support Ethiopia, for the reward of the hand of Aida. He should have known that that was never going to work. Things are made worse when Amneris now appears and denounces everyone else. Rhadames urges Aida and her father to escape, but he himself stays behind to be arrested.

Act 4. Scene 1. In the Royal Palace

Amneris has had second thoughts, possibly having worked out that, if you want to get your man, having him arrested for treason is not the best plan. She tells Rhadames that King Amonasro has been killed, but that Aida is alive. The deal is that if Rhadames agrees to forget about Aida, she, Amneris that is, will obtain a pardon from the Pharaoh. Oh dear, what a dilemma. As might be expected, Rhadames will have nothing to do with it, and Amneris is furious with him. If she can't have her man, nobody else can, and Rhadames is thus condemned to death.

Scene 2. The Temple, with the crypt below

Rhadames is condemned to be bricked up alive, but before the vault is closed Aida joins him to share his fate. As they sing a last farewell, Amneris can be seen in the Temple above. Once again she has repented of her actions, but this time it is too late to make a difference. What was that about Hell having no fury like a woman scorned?

© John Welford

Giacomo Puccini, a great opera composer

Giacomo Puccini was one of the greatest opera composers of all time. He was unusual among modern composers in writing no mature works that were not operas, having committed himself to this medium from an early age.

He was born in Lucca, Tuscany, Italy, on 22^nd December 1858, the fifth of seven children of the organist and choirmaster of Lucca’s San Martino Cathedral. This was a position that had been held by the Puccini family for four generations and Giacomo was pencilled in as the next incumbent. However, his father died when Giacomo was only five and he was sent to study with his uncle, who had taken over the position until Giacomo would be old enough to move into his father’s job.

However, Giacomo saw a production of Verdi’s “Aida” at Pisa in 1876 and decided that opera was far more interesting to him than being an organist. He therefore enrolled at Lucca’s Conservatorio Pacini, completing his studies in 1880. He then moved to Milan, which was the Mecca for all budding opera composers, and studied at the Conservatorio Reale between 1880 and 1883.

While there he entered a competition for a one-act opera, sponsored by a music publisher. His opera was “Le Villi”, but when the results were announced Puccini’s name was not even mentioned as an “also ran”. However, when he played and sang some of the music at a party where a number of influential people were present, the reception was so enthusiastic that arrangements were made to stage the opera anyway.

The Milan music publisher Giulio Ricordi acquired the rights to “Le Villi” which Puccini expanded to two acts, and also commissioned a new opera from him. This was “Edgar”, which was far less successful, mainly because the subject matter was not conducive to Puccini’s talents. The opera was staged in April 1889 but was coolly received and was lost soon afterwards.

It was at this time that Puccini fell in love with Elvira Gemignani, a married woman, whom he was only able to marry in 1904 after her husband had died.

His next project was much more to his liking and much more successful. This was “Manon Lescaut” which was staged in February 1893 and made his name known throughout Italy and beyond. He was widely hailed as the true successor to Verdi.

While still working on this opera, Puccini had bought a house at Torre del Lago near Lucca. The house overlooked a lake which attracted thousands of ducks and geese, which appealed to Puccini’s other passion of wildfowl shooting. He lived in this house until 1921, composing his operas with a shotgun by his side so that he could open the window and bag a duck or two when he needed a break.

  

Puccini’s next three operas are among his greatest, namely “La Bohème” (first staged in 1896), “Tosca” (1900) and “Madame Butterfly” (1904). He employed two librettists, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, who produced their scripts jointly; Illica would draw up the scenario and invent plot details, in prose, and Giacosa would produce a version in verse. Puccini also had a lot to say about the script and there were many arguments among the three of them. However, Puccini, like Wagner, had a very strong theatrical sense and knew instinctively what would work from a dramatic point of view. The composer’s view always prevailed.

In these and his other operas it is noticeable that Puccini’s heroines are more important than his heroes; indeed, of his twelve major operas seven are named after the heroine. He had a gift for understanding the female psyche and, although they come to tragic ends, his heroines are portrayed with true affection.

“The Girl of the Golden West” (1910) was set in the 1849 Californian gold rush and used American and Native American tunes. It was premiered in New York and went down far better with the public than with the critics.

“La Rondine” (1917) was the least successful of Puccini’s mature operas and it also caused him some political difficulties in that its resemblance to a Viennese opera was regarded by some as being unpatriotic at a time when Italy was fighting on the side of the Allies (Britain, France, Russia, etc) against the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. 

“Trittico” (1918) was a venture along the lines of Parisian “Grand Guignol” in which three contrasting one-act plays or operas were presented in sequence. Puccini’s triptych was “Il Tabarro”, “Suor Angelica” and “Gianni Schicchi”, although these days they are rarely performed together as originally intended.

Puccini’s final opera, which was incomplete at his death, was “Turandot” which is often regarded as his greatest masterpiece, despite various problems with its plot. It combines the heroic, the lyrical-sentimental, the comic-grotesque and the exotic. It contains one of the greatest of all tenor arias, namely “Nessun dorma” which was brought to wide public attention in 1990 when Luciano Pavarotti’s recording was used as the theme of the BBC’s World Cup coverage.

Puccini died from cancer of the throat on 29^th November 1924, with the final two scenes sketched but not completed. “Turandot” was performed at La Scala, Milan, on 25^th April 1926 under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, ending at the point where Puccini’s score ended, with Toscanini announcing the fact as he laid down his baton. However, the following evening it was performed in its completed version, the final scenes having been written, based on Puccini’s sketches, by Franco Alfano.

The legacy of Giacomo Puccini is a succession of operas that provide wonderful spectacle and drama as well as music of the highest quality and the opportunities it provides for the world’s greatest opera singers, of all voices, to display their talents to the utmost. Puccini’s works will surely be heard throughout the world for many years to come.

© John Welford

John Taverner, Tudor composer

There are two English composers with the name John Taverner or Tavener. The latter, who died in 2013, claimed to be (indirectly) descended from the former. It is the pre-Elizabethan forebear who is the subject of this article.

John Taverner’s origins are obscure, although it seems likely that he was born in Lincolnshire, probably Boston, in about 1490. He was apparently a boy chorister of exceptional talent, although it is not known where, and it is not until 1524 that his name appears on any official record, when he is known to have been an adult member of the choir of Tattershall College in Lincolnshire. The reference is to “Master Taverner”, which suggests that he was highly regarded as a singer.

It would appear that he was producing music of his own during his time at Tattershall College, before he left to go to Oxford in 1526. The choir comprised sixteen men and ten boys, and Taverner composed a number of masses and antiphons for them.

Taverner’s reputation was such that he was invited to become the Master of Choristers at Cardinal College, Oxford, which was being founded by Thomas Wolsey, the Cardinal Archbishop of York and Chancellor of England. The college has been known as Christ Church College since 1546. Taverner was initially reluctant to make the move and he had to be persuaded to do so.

Taverner was able to recruit one of the largest choirs in the country, comprising 26 men and 16 boys, for which he composed works that fully exploited the resources under his command. He made excellent use of melody and counterpoint in his masses and other works which were sung in the college chapel that was later to become Oxford Cathedral.

Among the choristers that John Taverner had brought with him from Lincolnshire were two men who were members of a covert cell of Lutherans. They were appointed as lay clerk and chaplain of the new choir. Taverner’s involvement in the cell was minimal, but he did later admit to hiding heretical books under the floorboards of the choirboys’ practice room, to protect another member of the cell, John Clerk, who was a senior canon of the college.

In February 1528 the cell was exposed and Taverner was one of those taken in for questioning. However, Thomas Wolsey was prepared to be lenient towards non-clerical heretics and Taverner escaped any punishment. The experience clearly scared him and he was careful to avoid any contact with Lutherans or other unapproved sects in future.

Despite this adventure, Taverner was well regarded by Wolsey for his work with the choir and he was invited to take a quartet of choirboys to sing for the Chancellor at Hampton Court later in 1528.

However, Cardinal Wolsey’s fall from power in November 1529 was followed by a decline in status for Cardinal College, and John Taverner decided to leave in April 1530 as he was not getting the same level of support for the choir that he had enjoyed formerly.

His immediate movements on leaving Oxford are uncertain, but he was clearly back in Boston by 1538 and had probably been there for a number of years before he is recorded as having been a tenant of a property owned by the Guild of St Mary, which was established at St Botolph’s Church in the town.

The Guild supported a choir of up to twenty men and up to ten boys, and it is probable that Taverner had been running this choir since leaving Oxford. The choir became highly regarded under Taverner’s leadership, and it was probably for this choir that he wrote what many think of as his masterpiece, the mass “Corona Spinea” (“Crown of Thorns”).

However, in 1534 King Henry VIII broke with Rome and the Guild was no longer able to earn an income from selling masses and indulgences. John Taverner had been highly paid for his services, but by around 1536 or 1537 it is clear that they could no longer afford to employ him and he left their service. In 1538 he decided to give up writing church music to order.

He was now a wealthy man and could afford to step back and follow his own interests. It is not known when he married, but his wife Rose could possibly have brought a reasonable dowry with her. The couple took a large property in the town of Boston and appear to have lived in considerable comfort.

Taverner had known the King’s new chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, from his time at Oxford, and he now took steps to cultivate the latter’s favour. He used this advantage on behalf of the Boston friars whose friaries had been suppressed and who were now without a home. Taverner wrote to Cromwell on their behalf and he and another local businessman were given permission to buy the friaries from the crown.

Taverner was closely involved in local affairs and was highly regarded by his fellow townsfolk, being personally generous and acting on behalf of several people who called on him for help. He later served as an alderman when Boston was granted its first municipal charter in May 1545.

Despite his retirement from leading the St Botolph’s choir he continued to compose occasional pieces for them, although it appears that the choir had lost its boys’ section so that Taverner’s final works were for men’s voices only.  He also composed some secular songs.

In August 1545 his health started to fail, and he died on 18^th October, being buried beneath the tower (the “Stump”) of St Botolph’s Church.

John Taverner is remembered as a pioneering and innovative writer of church music as it moved away from plainchant and towards polyphony. He had a considerable influence on the composers and musicians who followed him, and some of his works are performed down to the present day.

In 1972 Sir Peter Maxwell Davies completed a two-act opera, “Taverner”, that was loosely based on the life of John Taverner, but which cannot be relied upon for biographical accuracy.

© John Welford

Jacques Offenbach, composer of comic operas

Jacques Offenbach was born on 20^th June 1819 in Cologne, Germany. He was originally given the names Jacob Levy, and his family name had been changed by his father from Eberst because he had moved from the town of Offenbach am Main and thenceforward had been known by everyone as “Der Offenbacher”.

The Offenbach family was Jewish and Offenbach senior had moved to become cantor at the local synagogue, as well as giving violin lessons. Jacques joined the musical endeavours of the large family (he was the seventh child) and gave his first concert, as a cellist, when he was 12.

Jacques moved to Paris when he was accepted to study cello at the Conservatoire in November 1833. However, he did not distinguish himself and left after only one year, becoming a cellist in the orchestra of the Opéra-Comique.

While at the Opéra-Comique he formed a partnership with the young composer Friedrich Flotow, producing a series of pieces for cello and piano which they played in recitals.

He later wrote incidental music for performances at the Palais Royal, and a large number of songs, but he found that playing the cello was more remunerative. He made several concert tours and played before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in London in 1844.

When he felt that he had made enough money from performing he returned to Paris and devoted himself to composition, as well as converting to Catholicism and marrying a Spanish lady named Herminie de Alcain. His aim was to write a box-office hit of a comic opera, but his early efforts were disappointing and he was unable to get anything staged.

He returned to Cologne during the revolution in France of 1848, only trying his luck again in Paris in 1849, when he was appointed conductor of the Comédie Française, a post which he retained for five years. This position did however give him the opportunity to slip some of his own pieces into performances as incidental music.

His frustration at not getting his operatic work performed on stage, apart from a few minor performances, eventually led to him taking the plunge and, in 1855, leasing his own theatre, a very small one in the Champs-Elysées where the licence only allowed productions that had no more than four speaking/singing parts.

Later that year he moved to another theatre which he renamed the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens and which soon acquired a reputation for lively entertainment comprising humour, dance and song.

Offenbach wrote quickly and could produce up to seven complete productions in a year. He engaged up-and-coming scriptwriters and some of the best singing talent around, and his shows became very successful. Some of his shows were exported to London with Offenbach conducting them in person.

His first major success was “Orphée aux Enfers” (Orpheus in the Underworld) in 1858, a highly satirical work that poked fun at some of the leading figures of the day, as well as including suggestive dances such as the can-can. Needless to say, a show with such a terrible reputation encouraged everyone to flock to see it, and it still plays to packed houses to this day despite the satirical barbs being lost on modern audiences.

Offenbach was far more successful as a composer of light music than as a theatre director, as he had no money sense and spent far too much on such things as stage sets and costumes. Despite his huge popularity and growing reputation he was never a rich man.

Other operettas that are still staged today include “La Belle Hélène”, “La Vie Parisienne” and “La Périchole”. The music is always tuneful and often lively, although with no great depth. This is, after, the music of comedy and farce rather than tragedy.

In the 1870s Offenbach made many visits to Vienna where it is said that he persuaded Johann Strauss to venture into operetta. He certainly influenced many other composers of light music in Vienna and elsewhere, such as Franz von Suppé. The Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were England’s answer to Offenbach, given that French naughtiness was not quite the thing for Victorian London.

Offenbach had much less success in the United States, where American audiences failed to appreciate French wit. He also nearly died from the effects of the sea voyage across the Atlantic.

Like many composers of light music, Offenbach dreamed of writing something more serious, and his “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” was supposed to fill this gap in his output. However, although he lived to complete it he was never able to see it performed because he died, from heart disease, on 4^th October 1880 at the age of 61.

Offenbach’s reputation rests on the works mentioned above, although his output was considerably greater, with nearly a hundred operettas being credited to him. These pieces are largely forgotten due to their having been written for the immediate purpose of putting bums on seats in a Paris theatre. Also ignored today are his ballet music and his many pieces for solo cello.

However, even if all that had survived of his output was “Orphée aux Enfers”, that one comic masterpiece should be sufficient for Offenbach’s name to be remembered with affection.

© John Welford

Alessandro Scarlatti, 17th/18th century Italian composer

Alessandro Scarlatti was born on 2^nd May 1660 at Palermo on the island of Sicily. He was the eldest son of Pietro Scarlatti and Eleonora D’Amato.

Very little is known about his early life, apart from an entry in a church archive in Rome, dated 27^th January 1679, that refers to an oratorio being commissioned from “Scarlattino, alias the Sicilian”.

Alessandro married Anatonio Anzalone, a native of Rome, in April 1678 and they were to have a large family that included Domenico, born in 1685, who was destined to become even more celebrated as a composer than his father.

Some of Alessandro’s earliest compositions were operas that were well received when first performed and which led to his appointment as maestro di capella at the chapel of the royal palace in Naples.

In 1702 he travelled to Florence and then to Rome, where he became firstly assistant maestro di capella and later maestro at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Some of his best chamber cantatas and operas date from this time.

In the autumn of 1707 he returned to Naples where in 1709 he resumed his old job at the royal palace, at an increased salary. His large-scale opera “Tigrone” was composed at this time. He was honoured by the King of Naples with a knighthood.

In 1717 he was granted leave of absence to visit Rome, where his final series of operas was produced, this period marking his full artistic maturity. His last full-scale opera, his 114^th, was “Griselda”, produced in 1721. He also wrote a large amount of church music including an orchestral mass for St Cecilia’s Day and, in 1721, a pastoral to mark the accession of Pope Innocent XIII. He returned to Naples either in late 1722 or early 1723.

During his last years Scarlatti was noted as a teacher of younger musicians and a music theorist, for example expounding his ideas on accompaniment in a treatise entitled “Regole per Principianti”.

Alessandro Scarlatti died in Naples on 24^th October 1725, aged 65, and was buried in the church of Montesanto.

As well as his operas, Scarlatti composed nearly 700 cantatas that are known today, and many more might have been composed but have since been lost. It is for his operas and cantatas, both sacred and secular, that he is best known, although he did also write some purely orchestral and instrumental pieces that are of lesser importance. His keyboard pieces are of far less consequence and quality than those of his son Domenico.

Alessandro Scarlatti is an important figure in the development of European opera, being the leading figure of the Neapolitan Opera School which influenced composers including Handel. He was a master of melody and developed a more modern style in which the orchestra assumed a greater importance. His later operas also show a greater degree of emotional content than had been apparent in operas prior to this time.

His cantatas, which were written for a variety of instruments and soloists, were widely regarded for their beauty and originality. Many later composers were influenced by them and were not averse to stealing whole passages for inclusion in their own works.

Alessandro Scarlatti is therefore an important figure in the history of music, not only for his prolific output but also because he was an innovator who developed the art of composition along new lines and moved away from the formulaic rigidity that marked the works of his predecessors. He can therefore be seen as a transitional figure between the Baroque and Classical periods of musical composition.

© John Welford

Bela Bartok, a great Hungarian composer

Bela Bartok was born on 25^th March 1881 in the village of Nagyszentmiklos in Hungary. However, the upheavals caused by wars and other events in Central Europe in the intervening years mean that this village, and several other places associated with Bartok, are no longer in Hungary. His birth village is now in Romania and named Sannicolaul-Mare.

Bartok’s father was the director of an agricultural college and a talented amateur pianist, although he died when Bela was only seven. Along with his younger sister, Bela spent his early life moving from place to place as his mother tried to find permanent work as a teacher. His health was poor, and childhood illnesses stunted his growth and prevented him from mixing with people of his own age.

Bela showed early musical ability and he began composing at the age of nine. He gave his first concert as a pianist when aged ten.

He entered the Budapest Music Academy in 1898 but ill health forced him to interrupt his studies three times and he gave up composing until 1902, when he discovered the music of Richard Strauss which inspired him to produce a flood of new pieces, including the “Kossuth” Symphony.

In 1904 he first became seriously aware of Hungarian folk music, and he began to tour the region armed with recording equipment with which he collected hundreds of examples of songs and music sung and played by peasant people. His trips eventually took him as far as North Africa and Turkey. As well as making an extremely valuable collection of recordings from the ethnographic point of view, this music influenced everything he was to write from 1908 onwards.

In 1907 Bartok began teaching at the Budapest Academy and he continued to do so until 1934. However, he only taught piano and refused to teach composition, preferring not to share his increasingly experimental techniques. Having moved away from his “Straussian” period he was now producing works that were not so easily understood by his audiences and he faced growing opposition. Works from this period included his opera “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle”, the ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin” and a lot of piano music.

By the early 1920s the future was looking more promising for new styles of music, and in 1922 he made a prominent contribution to an international festival of modern music at Salzburg. He toured widely as a concert pianist and composed new works for performance, including piano concertos and solo piano works such as the “Improvisations”. He also wrote pieces that did not involve the piano, notably a series of highly regarded string quartets. He made his first visit to the United States in 1927.

The 1930s were a difficult period for Bartok as he watched the rise of the Nazis and deplored the support they received from the government of Hungary. As a protest he refused to give concerts in Germany. However, this did not prevent him from producing some of his greatest works, including the fourth and fifth string quartets, the “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” and the “Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion”.

With the outbreak of war in 1939, and the death of his mother, Bartok reluctantly decided to make a fresh start and emigrated with his family to the United States, settling in New York where he spent the rest of his life. He never really took to life in the States, where he was celebrated as a performer but less well received as a composer.

He had a late flowering with three major works between 1943 and 1945, namely the “Concerto for Orchestra”, a sonata for solo violin and his third piano concerto. However, by this time his health was failing, from undiagnosed leukaemia, and he died in New York on 26^th September 1945 at the age of 64.

Bela Bartok is one of the greats of 20^th century music, having a truly original style that owed little to earlier traditions except those of folk music. The music of his maturity combined passion with constructions that were highly intellectual. Some of his works strained tonality to the limit, but he never gave way to complete atonality, nor did he dabble with Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method. Even today much of his music is an acquired taste but, once acquired, it is extremely rewarding.

In his personal life Bartok was quiet and introverted, the passionate side of his nature only being revealed at the keyboard. He was awkward in company and preferred that of women to men. He was twice married, both times to pupils who were much younger than himself.

© John Welford

Robert Schumann, 1810-56

Robert Schumann is justly famed as being one of the central figures of German Romanticism in music, although he was far from the ideal of the romantic hero in his personal life, being regarded as dull by his two greatest contemporaries, Liszt and Wagner. Although he died, romantically enough, in a lunatic asylum, and he once attempted suicide by throwing himself into the River Rhine, his symptoms were more likely to have been caused by syphilis than romantic angst.

Robert Schumann was born on 8^th June 1810 in Zwickau, Germany. His father was a well-to-do bookseller and publisher, and Robert was able to gain a broad knowledge of European literature from his father's bookshelves. His early ambition was to be a writer, but he also showed promise as a pianist and his parents encouraged him to develop this talent. At least, this was the case until his father died when Robert was aged 16, at which point his mother decided that the law would provide a more secure future for him.

He therefore started law studies at Leipzig University and then at the more distant Heidelberg University, this move coming about because Robert knew that the law professor there, Anton Thibaut, was also a keen musician. Having absolutely no interest in law, Robert gradually persuaded his mother to let him take up music as a career, and in 1830 he went to live in the Leipzig home of a celebrated piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck.

Schumann had composed a few songs and piano pieces before his move to Leipzig, but after this point he produced a large number of compositions, mainly for the piano. These included "Carnaval", "Symphonic Studies" and three sonatas. He had hoped to combine composing with a career as a concert pianist, but this hope was dashed in 1832 when he damaged his right hand, either due to the use of a device designed to improve the movement of his fingers or (more probably) as a side-effect of treatment for syphilis that included the use of mercury. Whatever the reason, Schumann was now forced to concentrate on composition as his means of earning a living. He also fulfilled his early ambition to be a writer by contributing large quantities of music criticism to journals, especially the "Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik" which he helped to found and later edited.

Another consequence of Robert's residence at the house of Friedrich Wieck was that he got to know Friedrich's young daughter, Clara, and slowly became besotted with her (and she with him), although she was nine years his junior. Clara was a promising piano virtuoso and her father had no intention of allowing her to throw away her career by marrying one of his pupils. He did everything he could to frustrate the young couple's plans, firstly throwing Robert out of his house and then opening his letters to Clara, followed by a campaign of personal vilification of Robert's character. The couple were eventually married on 12^th September 1840, the day before Clara's 21^st birthday.

Clara Schumann had a considerable influence on Robert's development as a composer. He had often dreamt of writing symphonies, but she pushed him to realise that dream (in particular the "Spring" Symphony of 1841). He also produced a wealth of songs in the months before and just after their marriage (including "Dichterliebe" and "Frauenliebe und Leben"), and in 1842 he turned to writing chamber music.

However, the marriage also brought new pressures to bear on Robert, not least because he needed quietness in order to compose and Clara needed to practice the piano. As a virtuoso pianist in great demand, Clara performed concert tours on which Robert accompanied her, but he found it uncomfortable to have to play a supporting role. This exerted a strain on his mental health and he began to suffer from aural hallucinations, caused in part by his pre-existing syphilis. In 1844 the couple moved from Leipzig (where Robert had been teaching at the conservatory) to Dresden, where it was hoped that the less frenetic atmosphere of the quieter city would restore his health.

For a time the move did the trick, and new compositions followed, including the 1845 Piano Concerto, his Second Symphony (1845-6), an opera ("Genoveva", 1847-8), and more songs and piano music. He also composed for the local choral society, becoming their conductor in 1847.

However, he was not happy living in Dresden, partly through feeling overshadowed by the rising genius of another Dresden resident, Richard Wagner, with whom Schumann did not get on. In 1850 he was glad to be able to accept an invitation to move to Dusseldorf as the city's Director of Music.

This proved to be a bad move, due mainly to the requirements of the post including conducting the city's choir and orchestra, a task for which Schumann was not suited. Although he made a promising start things soon went wrong, not helped by Schumann's declining mental health, and he was eventually forced to resign in 1853. During these years he continued to compose, producing his Cello Concerto and Third Symphony (the "Rhenish") in 1850 and his Violin Concerto in 1853, along with piano music and lieder. However, he was now finding it difficult to concentrate for long enough to produce consistently good work, and flashes of brilliance were countered by long periods when he produced work of indifferent quality.

The hallucinations mentioned earlier became worse, and he imagined that he was being assailed by angels and demons. On 27^th February 1854 he threw himself into the Rhine but was rescued and committed to a lunatic asylum near Bonn. His last years were confused and miserable, and he died without regaining his sanity, or composing anything new, on 29^th July 1856 at the age of 46.

Robert Schumann's reputation as a great composer rests on his early (pre-1841) songs and piano music and a handful of later works, most notably his symphonies. He was able to combine great beauty with wit and inventiveness, his major innovation being, in lieder writing, to make the piano an equal partner with the singer. As with any great artistic genius whose life is cut short by accident or disease, one is left wondering how they might have developed. In Robert Schumann's case, one also wonders whether his marriage to Clara, despite the positive influence she had on his ambition to branch out into new areas of composition, did not also have a negative effect by limiting his production of some of the greatest lieder ever written.

© John Welford