Schumann: Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 47

The Quartet for piano, violin, viola, and cello by German composer Robert Schumann (1810–56) is the first significant piano quartet of the Romantic era, bringing an entirely new character to the traditional medium, as established by Ludwig van Beethoven and, before him, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. One notices immediately the integration of piano and strings, drawn from Schumann’s achievement in his preceding Piano Quintet (1842). And, as with the quintet, the brilliant piano writing was inspired by his wife Clara Schumann’s playing—and was always intended for her.

Introduction

Like the Piano Quintet, the Piano Quartet is written in the conventional four movements and their conventional outward forms, but with several innovations. It is more broadly laid out than the quintet—more leisurely in manner, with fewer extremes of emotion—and has a clarity of writing for the instruments combined, a profusion of technical features, and deeply expressive themes—not least in the slow movement, based on a memorable cello theme that alone guarantees the work its place in the repertoire.

History

The Piano Quartet was composed in 1842, immediately after the Piano Quintet and equally as quickly (sketched between October 24th and 30th and copied out between November 7th and 26th).

Following the first private performance in St. Petersburg, during Clara Schumann’s tour of Russia with Robert, the public premiere was given on December 8,1844, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Clara Schumann played with the orchestra’s concertmaster Ferdinand David, cellist C. Wittmann, and Schumann’s friend the Danish composer and violist Niels Gade—all still reading from the manuscript score.

Schumann: Quartet in E-flat major for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 47

Form

The formal scheme slightly varied that of the Piano Quintet: a first movement in sonata form (“Allegro ma non troppo”) with a slow introduction (“Sostenuto assai”); a slow movement in ternary (three-part) form (“Andante Cantabile”), with variations in the reprise; a scherzo (“Molto vivace”) with two trio sections (as is usual with Schumann); and the finale (“Vivace”) as a continuous sonata form, with the first idea treated like a fugue and a clear central section—an A–B–A sectional scheme.

Analysis

Innovation of form is apparent from the start. Though the slow introduction is not without precedent (Beethoven’s piano quartet in the same key has the same feature), the role it then plays certainly is, thus creating a completely individual scheme. This introduction reappears at the end of the exposition, taking the music straight back to its opening idea and key, as though to prepare a recapitulation. But instead, this is just a break in the continuity before the repeated opening idea wings the music into the development section and, subsequently, to a grand reprise—though, even after this, the opening shape reappears before an agitated coda. Despite there being two marked trios in the scherzo, the animated main theme, in triple time, penetrates everything to make a continuous movement, even in the apparent chordal contrasts of the second trio. In the finale—adopting a large A–B–A form outline—the exposition of lyrical ideas is prefaced by a fugue-like exposition which, with its introductory gesture, provides the substance for a brilliant confluence of brief thematic motives throughout. A climax is reached, as the introductory motive is increasingly hammered out—even in augmentation (notes of double length)—creating stretto (themes piled up for conclusion, in obvious homage to fugue tradition).

In the Piano Quartet, as with the Piano Quintet, thematic growth is paramount. In the first movement, the main idea draws directly from the slow introduction and generates the subsequent ideas, though there is no clear second theme or group of themes. Pure melody comes to the fore in the beautiful slow movement, which adapts its ternary form to include a variation of the first section, further elaborated in the reprise with a memorable violin countermelody, after a clear middle section in G-flat major (a major third down from the home key). In the coda, the cello tunes its lowest string from C down to B-flat, allowing the piano to reflect at length, in the upper texture with both hands, on the preceding ideas. (The extent and imagination of this coda pedal—its sustained low note—anticipates Johannes Brahms). This movement has other beautiful moments of textural nuance in the outer sections—whether the blending of cello and violin, or of violin and viola in the reprise.

The role of the piano is also distinctive. As well as serving its essential harmonic function, it initiates many ideas, especially in the first two movements. The righthand figure provides the connecting link between the slow introduction and the main theme (which is frequently repeated), and presents most of the ideas of the exposition. In octaves doubled by the cello, the piano presents the main theme of the scherzo and those of both trios. Even in the slow movement, it gives a countermelody to the viola.

Critical Thoughts

Given that this work was written immediately after the Piano Quintet, in the same key, and for an almost identical medium, comparisons are bound to come to mind. But though history has often placed it in the shadow of Schumann’s earlier work—listeners generally hearing it as less spontaneous, less emotionally powerful—such a judgement is superficial. One gains a sense that, having become totally absorbed in the expansive opportunities of his new quintet medium, Schumann was now able to relax into a celebration of ideas that were compressed and intensified to give the quintet its focus and drive. And he was especially happy to relax into a celebration of counterpoint (fugues being the ultimate example), to which he had devoted so much study—here, in the spirit of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony (No. 41) finale, which also features a fugue. And perhaps he also was looking back to his much earlier essay in this form, the Piano Quartet in C minor (a youthful work from 1828–29)—not least in its scherzo, which certainly shows the imaginative seeds of his later efforts.

Legacy

Like his Piano Quintet, the Piano Quartet had direct influence on his followers. Most notable was his protégé, the German composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), whose three piano quartets are unimaginable without this work. Indeed, Brahms even made a piano four-hands arrangement of the work in 1858, after Schumann’s death. Followers of Brahms’s piano quartet tradition included those in his particular cultural succession—Robert Fuchs, Friedrich Gernsheim—as well as Antonín Dvořák (who wrote two), Ernst von Dohnyáni, Béla Bartók, and many others. But outside the German sphere, the passionately lyrical two piano quartets by the French composer Gabriel Fauré look more directly back to Schumann’s example.

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Article by Michael Musgrave