© Robert W. Eshbach, 2019

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The 31st Lower Rhine Music Festival

Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?
—William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing II, iii (1598)

The Tonhalle, Düsseldorf, 1852

On May 17, 1853 Joachim played the Beethoven concerto in what would prove to be a defining event in his career. The occasion was the 31^st Lower Rhine Music Festival, held in Düsseldorf from May 15-17, under the direction of Robert Schumann. Schumann’s invitation was issued on April 17 (or perhaps the 12th — the letter seems to be misdated), a mere month before the event. “I think they will be happy days,” he wrote, “and there will be no shortage of good music. You will certainly also encounter many of your acquaintances here. So come, and don’t forget to bring your fiddle and the Beethoven concerto, which we all would love to hear.”

Joachim replied: “I am naturally always prepared to accept an invitation from you… You will believe the heartfelt delight that I felt, to be remembered by you, revered master. I had thought that it would be left to chance, to recall my name to you. How much nicer that it is otherwise…” [i] Schumann wrote again on the 18th with details of the contract: Joachim was requested to play on the third festival day for a fee of 12 Friedrichsdor — the same as David had received on a previous occasion. “My wife also requests that you come,” Schumann added. To afford Joachim sufficient privacy, Schumann arranged for him to stay nearby with a banker named Scheuer, who was a widower and agreed to put his house at Joachim’s disposal. [ii] Schumann promised to meet him at the train.

On May 9, Joachim wrote again, offering his services as a tutti player for the other performances. “The orchestra parts for the Beethoven concerto are ready,” he promised. “My violin is also in order, and looks forward with me to the rich days of music with you and your wife…” Though the Schumanns had known Joseph in Leipzig as Mendelssohn’s protégé, in Düsseldorf they would come to know and esteem him in his young maturity. In those “happy days” in May, their acquaintance would develop into a warm friendship, and, for Clara, a partnership that would sustain her through hard times to come.

Since their founding in 1818, the Lower Rhine Music Festivals had been a vital feature of German cultural life, an outgrowth of the prodigious passion for music amongst the Rhine Province’s socially vibrant and increasingly affluent middle class. The large choral and orchestral festival took place annually at Whitsuntide (the seventh Sunday after Easter), its venue alternating each year amongst the Rhenish cities of Düsseldorf, Cologne and Aachen. What had begun as an amateur festival under municipal sponsorship had gradually taken on a more professional aspect under the direction of such conductors as Felix Mendelssohn (who conducted seven times between 1833 and 1846), Louis Spohr, and Gaspare Spontini. The 1853 Musikfest was, in a way, a rebirth of the festival; due to the mid-century political troubles, it had occurred only once (1851) since 1847. Though the trend toward professionalism continued, both the chorus of 490 voices and the orchestra of 160 players were still largely made up of amateur musicians. As municipal music director in Düsseldorf, Robert Schumann was chosen to lead the event.

Like the other festivals in recent years it was a three-day affair, and programming followed a well-established pattern: the first day’s concert typically featured an oratorio (Mendelssohn’s Paulus had been composed for, and premiered at, the 1836 festival); a Beethoven symphony anchored the second day’s program, and the third day was given over to a display of “artists” (i.e. professional soloists), with attendant flower-throwing and laurel-crowning. The 1853 festival opened with the premiere performance of Schumann’s revised Fourth Symphony, paired with Handel’s Messiah. The second day’s offerings included works by Weber, Mendelssohn, Hiller and Gluck, and concluded with a performance of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. The lengthy artists’ concert opened with Handel’s Hallelujah chorus, and concluded with Schumann’s Rheinweinlied, specially composed for the occasion. Clara Novello was among the singers, Clara Schumann performed Robert’s piano concerto, and Joachim played Beethoven and Bach. Schumann led the first day’s performances, and Ferdinand Hiller conducted on days two and three.

The concert venue was prettily situated among hedges and walks in a park facing the court gardens, just outside the city limits about a dozen blocks from the Schumann’s Bilkerstrasse home. This garden spot had long been a popular recreational destination, and a privately maintained concert hall had existed there at least since 1816 (originally Jansen’s Lokal; then, after 1830, Anton Becker’s Gartensaal, and after about 1850 Geisler’s Gartensaal). [iii] Since 1818, it had been home to the Lower Rhine Music Festival in Düsseldorf. The hall was rebuilt and expanded several times. In 1852, a large new Tonhalle was erected in anticipation of an immense men’s choral contest, the “Sängerfest des Männergesangvereins” that drew vocal groups from as far away as Vienna, and overwhelmed the city with festivities from August 1-4 of that year. The Tonhalle was a rustic affair, described in 1863 as “only a provisional wooden structure, of the roughest workmanship, isolated without the necessary adjoining rooms; in bad weather not even to be reached with dry feet, not weatherproof, and, in the course of time, of very dubious safety.” [iv] Nevertheless, it had the advantage that the performances could be heard in the gardens outside its plank walls, and, for some, the added delight that the nightingales that gathered in the surrounding trees at Whitsuntide felt emboldened to join in the music making, loudly audible through the cracks and windows to the audience within.[v]

An English visitor (“ONE OF THE IDLE”) gave a charming description to the Musical Times of the festival’s cheerful, unbuttoned ambiance: “…for those who were partakers in this delightful meeting, there remains an unfading recollection of excellent music enjoyed at leisure, associated with the beaming and friendly faces of appreciating listeners. The executants and audience have an equally large appetite for music, if we judge by the length of each programme, but the way of getting through the appointed quantity conveys nothing of the business-hurry which attends your English Festivals. Here, in Germany, are long intervals for Mai-trank drinking, for smoking, and for friendly greetings in the garden-walks surrounding the Concert-Hall. At Birmingham last year there were but two rehearsals for seven concerts, — but here seven grand orchestral rehearsals, besides numerous previous small practice-meetings, are appointed for the two first concerts. Most of the chorus-singers and orchestra-players are amateurs in every sense of the word, and seem to live in the gardens while the Festival lasts, lunching and dining, and never in a hurry — the early morning hour of eight, finds them punctually present, and at the end of a long evening rehearsal, they seem as eager and as much awake as their deliberate natures will permit.” [vi]

Despite the overall cheerfulness of the event, Schumann’s direction on the first day was an embarrassment. Taciturn and bewildered, he proved to be so incapable of making his musical intentions known to the performers that they privately agreed to ignore him and follow concertmaster Hartmann instead. When the evening’s performance concluded without the anticipated disaster, Schumann responded dryly to a friend’s congratulations: “Oh, one only congratulates women after childbirth.” [vii] The critics were devastating. “Regarding the peformance of the Messiah, we have to confess, we have seldom heard one that is more inadequate,” wrote “H. W.” in the Süddeutsche Musik-Zeitung. “And why, exactly? Because Schumann is no conductor. Schumann possesses absolutely none of the characteristics that qualify a practical conductor; least of all does he understand how to lead large forces securely. As the saying goes, he “lets God be a good man” — if it goes well, all is well, if it does not go well, all is well too, at least for him. […] We are not alone in this opinion; it is already well-known in Düsseldorf — indeed, very well known — and we have only spoken clearly what others have until now dared only to insinuate. Furthermore, even aside from issues of conducting technique, Schumann’s conception of the oratorio was no less inadequate — indeed, [it was] faulty — the execution, with few exceptions, practically disgraceful.” [viii]

By comparison, the second day’s performance of Beethoven’s ninth symphony was a triumph for Ferdinand Hiller. “What a different ensemble from yesterday!” wrote “H. W.” “What completely different leadership, too!” [ix] Ludwig Bischoff, writing in the Rheinische Musik-Zeitung, noted with particular pride the reaction of the visitors from France. “With great satisfaction we heard from all directions the judgments of the foreign musicians and conductors, who were all in agreement that such a “virtuoso orchestra” was a rarity. The Parisian musicians in particular, who attended all the rehearsals and performances with greatest attention, were rapturous.” He quoted them saying: “we must freely admit, we do not have anything like it in France. We cannot therefore do better than to visit our neighbors on the Rhine in order to learn, for in music they are, for once, our masters.” With Hiller at the helm, he wrote, and Hartmann, Pixis and Joachim on the first desk, “a more consummate performance of this work, which demands the highest level of artistic training from all the musical forces, is in fact hardly to be approached; it is, as with everything superhuman, only imaginable.” [x]

Bischoff also noted the importance of the third-day “Artists’ Concert” (a feature of the festivals since Mendelssohn introduced it in 1833) for the education of the public and the general elevation of musical standards: “for without virtuosi there can be no virtuoso orchestra, and the heroes of the performing art belong, with their exemplary performances most particularly in a music festival where hundreds of art lovers converge, who, in their modest spheres of influence have no opportunity to hear anything so excellent.”[xi]

At 22, Joseph was no longer a child prodigy, and the expectations that he had to satisfy were daunting. Writing in 1897, Wilhelm von Wasielewski recalled: “He already enjoyed a widespread reputation in the musical world commensurate with his high artistic standing. It is therefore understandable that the musicians of the Rheinland, who had not yet had an opportunity to hear him, were extraordinarily curious about his accomplishments, but not in a wholly impartial way. Namely, it was supposed that his reputation was in part artificially created through partisanship, and to some extent exaggerated. His first appearance in the Rheinland was therefore awaited with a certain prejudice, seemingly as an opportunity for sizing him up in the most hypercritical way. Even the decent concertmaster Hartmann from Cologne, who led the festival orchestra, was to some extent disfavorably influenced by this attitude.” [xii]

At the rehearsal, the young concertmaster from Hanover created a buzz of excitement. Yet, with all the pressure of the day’s events, Joseph’s pre-concert thoughts were with Liszt. “Dear, honored friend,” he wrote. “There would not be time for me to tell you how it is that I am writing to you from here, for the concert that I am obliged to play in will begin in a few minutes. This is my first time at a Rhenish music festival, and the whole thing has interested me greatly; I shall tell you more in person, for I shall depart very early tomorrow morning, and after staying a few necessary hours in Hanover will immediately leave for Weimar and the Altenburg. I accept with thanks your kind offer to live there; it is the best means of enjoying a great deal of your company, and therefore the most welcome. In haste From my whole heart, your devoted Joseph Joachim.” [xiii]

“A truly tropical swelter prevailed in the concert hall, which was filled with more than 2,000 people,” wrote Wasielewski. “This heat, growing with every quarter-hour, became even more palpable on the raised stage than in the audience. Many soloists would have been ill at ease under such circumstances, but Joachim strode like a youthful hero before the audience, with his own innate, aristocratic bearing, as his turn came in the second half of the concert. Then, as the audience listened with reverential silence to the sublime, almost transfigured melodies of Beethoven, carried by Joachim’s silver tones, suddenly, as in his debut in Leipzig, the E-string broke. That the most beautifully progressing pleasure could be interrupted and disturbed by such an absurd accident led to a scene of awkward tension. Involuntarily, one wondered what would happen next. Pixis, Cologne’s second concertmaster, who was standing at the first stand of violins, helped him out of the bad situation. Fortunately, he had a good, true string on his violin, which he gave to Joachim, who after a few minutes again stood before the audience and began the concerto once again from the beginning. His unique playing was magnificent beyond description and, even with regard to intonation, left not the least thing to be desired, even though the newly-stretched string did not keep its pitch in consequence of the tropical heat in the room, and had to be tuned up in convenient moments. During the Larghetto, poetically animated by the soloist, many became misty-eyed with emotion, and even the worthy concertmaster Hartmann was so overcome that bright tears ran down his cheeks. A more beautiful compliment for the celebrated master of the violin could not be imagined. A storm of applause lasting many minutes with elemental force broke out after the finale. The audience could not be quieted, and let it be known, through sustained applause, that Joachim should give them something more… and so, despite his overheated and wearied state, Joachim had in the end to comfort them with an encore, which was nothing less than Bach’s Ciaccona for violin solo. It was, under the circumstances, an astonishing achievement.” [xiv]

In the ensuing days, the international music press was full of praise for Joachim’s performance. “As for the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Major, we confess that we have never yet heard anything more perfect,” wrote “H. W.” in the Süddeutsche Musik-Zeitung. “Such a work, performed with such mastery, with such profound penetration into the spirit of the composition, is a pleasure that, in our time, is like an oasis in the desert. We wish to acknowledge the individual merits of all our German masters of the violin; but we have never heard any of them play ‘Beethoven’ in such a way as Joachim does. Here is Classicism from the first to the last stroke; not a Classicism that coquettes with form — no, such as it is ‘in spirit and in truth.’” [xv] Again, the German press seemed to take particular pride in foreign opinion. The Zeitung für Norddeutschland quoted the Indépendance Belge: “The ‘lion’ of the festival is Joachim. We have known his name for a decade. Mendelssohn took him under his wing in London, where the young Joachim accomplished wonders. Since then, the Wunderkind has become an artist, a very important artist. A pupil of David and Spohr, matured through the advice and friendship of Mendelssohn and Liszt, Joachim already realizes the highest ideal that one can dream of. Under his magical bowstroke, the colossal concerto of Beethoven becomes even more powerful. The master’s nobility of style, grandeur of expression, profundity of thought — all this, Joachim has understood, and he renders it all with the simplicity of genius and the warm and intimate passion of the great poet.” [xvi]

Clara Schumann, who, in the practice of the time accompanied Joachim for the Chaconne, afterward recalled: “Joachim was the glory of the evening. Though the rest of us also got applause to be sure, and though after Robert’s concerto I got a laurel wreath from the orchestra and much applause from the audience, nonetheless Joachim won the victory over us all with the Beethoven concerto — but he also played with a perfection, and with such deep poetry, with such soul in each little note, really ideal, that I have never heard such violin playing, and I can truly say that I have never received such an unforgettable impression from a virtuoso. And how the great work was accompanied — with what perfection! It was as if a holy devotion possessed the whole orchestra.” [xvii]

Carl Reineke, who was also present on the occasion, recalled the event many years later: “What a different person, how much greater he had become in the meantime. Once an acolyte of virtuosity, now a priest of art. He played the Beethoven violin concerto, hitherto unapproached by any interpretation, and recognized in its full greatness only from that moment on, since Joachim made it his own. Like a youthful hero, nobly, but modestly, he appeared on the podium… It is an idle thing to describe such consummate playing. But even today, after fifty six years, I remember clearly that I stole through the loneliest walks of the court gardens, to relive this artistic event inwardly.” [xviii]

“I don’t care to think of any other violin,” Clara wrote in her diary the day after the festival. That day, she and Joseph had performed Schumann’s a minor sonata for a small circle of friends. Joseph had played “so wonderfully that for the first time the work had created the impression that I had always imagined it could.” “It is not just as an artist that we have come to know Joachim, but also as a sweet, genuinely modest person. He has a nature that requires a longer and closer acquaintance to be properly appreciated, which is, in fact, the case with all excellent people!” [xix] Robert noted a simple mnemonic in their Haushaltsbuch: “18. May 1853 Joachim’s performance of my sonata.” Several years later, in the asylum at Endenich, the memory of the performance had not left him. Visiting him there, Brahms wrote to Clara: ”Of Joachim he spoke with an enthusiasm he normally reserves only for speaking of you. He spoke a lot about the Music Festival, how wonderfully J. played even in the rehearsal. That no one had ever had any idea the violin could produce such a tone.” [xx]

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An Joachim.

könnt’ ich Dir’s mit Deiner Sprache sagen,
Was ich gefühlt bei Deinen Zauberspiel:
Das wär’ ein Lied, das über Erdenklagen
Wie ein geheimnissvoller Schleier fiel!

Hielt mich ein fabelhafter Traum umschlungen,
Der mir Elysiums Gefilde wies? —
Du hast den Traum mir in die Brust gesungen,
Den Traum der Seligkeit, so mild, so süss!

Wie oft sich mischt in uns’rer Kindheit Thränen
Der liebevollen Mutter Schmeichelwort,
So lösest Du des ersten Mannes Sehnen
In einen sanften, weichen Moll-Akkord. —

Des lichten Traumes Bilder sind zerronnen,
Vorbei die süssen, holden Melodie’n,
Doch lange werden der Erinnrung Wonnen
Mir wunderkräftig durch die Seele ziehn!

Cöln                                                           G. H.

[Rheinische Musik-Zeitung für Kunstfreunde und Künstler, Vol. 4, No. 209, (December 31, 1853), p. 1464]

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See posts:

Concert: Düsseldorf, May 17, 1853 Dwight’s Journal of Music, vol. 2, no. 11 (Boston, 18 June, 1853), pp. 86-87.

Concert: Düsseldorf, May 17, 1853 Rheinische Musik-Zeitung, Vol. 3, No. 154 (June 11, 1853), pp. 2128-2129.

Concert: Düsseldorf, May 17, 1853 Zeitung für Norddeutschland; Hannoversche Morgenzeitung, No. 1137, (Sunday, May 22, 1853).

Concert: Düsseldorf, May 17, 1853 Süddeutsche Musik-Zeitung, Vol. 2, No. 24 (June 13, 1853), p. 95.

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[i] “Daß ich recht von Herzen erfreut war, daß Sie, verehrter Meister, meiner sich erinnern, werden Sie mir wohl glauben; schon hatte ich gemeint, es würde dem Zufall überlassen bleiben, meinen Namen Ihrem Gedächtnis einmal zurückzurufen. So schöner, daß es anders kömmt!” Moser/JOACHIM 1908, I, p. 150. Joachim/BRIEFE I, p. 53.

[ii] There were two bankers named Scheuer residing in Düsseldorf at the time: one who lived in the Kasernenstraße, and one who lived in the Carlsplatz. They were both within blocks of the Schumann’s Bilkerstraße home, and both were convenient to the concert venue.

[iii] See: Bernhard R. Appel, Geislers Saal und die Tonhalle. Zur Geschichte zweier Konzertsäle in Düsseldorf (1818-1864), in: Neue Chorszene, Vol. 16, No. 1 (January 2012), 34-42.

[iv] … “nur ein provisorisches Bauwerk von Holz, in der rohesten Bearbeitung, isoliert ohne die notwendigen Nebenräume; bei schlechtem Wetter nicht einmal trockenen Fußes zu erreichen, undicht und im Laufe der Zeit von sehr bedenklicher Sicherheit.” Apel/GEISSLER’S p. 41. “Zit. nach Hugo Weidenhaupt, Mit Jansens Garten fing es an, in: Tonhalle Düsseldorf Vom Planetarium zur Konzerthalle, Düsseldorf 1978, S. 56.

[v] Clara Novello: “In summer we went to Düsseldorf, for the Festival, Schumann conducting; he was beginning already to give signs of the sad mental illness which overcame him later, and was shy and strange in many ways. One evening a pretty incident happened: a number of nightingales came and perched on the high windows above the orchestra, and seemed excited to outsing Alceste’s divine song — till the audience and I turned our attention in delight to them.” Clara Novello, Clara Novello’s Reminiscences, London: Edward Arnold, 1910, pp. 152-153.

“Düsseldorf is encompassed by extensive park-like shrubberies, occupying the site of the old fortifications, where singing birds become tamest of the tame. At Whitsuntide nightingales abound, and day and night maintain their tuneful contests. Their reputed love of solitude seems not to hold good here, for they continue their song in loudest combination with the laughter and gossip of the festival-keepers. In the more piano passages of the concerts, the bird-songs made themselves audible; and the audience were enthusiastic when two nightingales poured forth their insisting notes close to the windows, joining in the passionate recitatives of Gluck’s Alceste: ‘Three nightingales at once’ burst forth in a shout, as the opportunity offered to vent their delight at the clear high notes of Clara Novello. At a moment of intense enjoyment how electrical is the effect of any additional accident which brings in new joy! Weak, indeed, are words to record the excitement of such a moment … ” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, Vol. 5, No. 109 (June 1, 1853), p. 197

[vi] “The Niederrheinisches Musik-Fest,” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, Vol. 5, No. 109 (June 1, 1853), 197.

[vii] Wasielewski/SCHUMANIANA, pp. 39-40.

[viii] “Das 31. Niederrheinische Musikfest zu Düsseldorf,” Süddeutsche Musik-Zeitung, Vol. 2, No. 23 (June 6, 1853), p. 90.

[ix] “Das 31. Niederrheinische Musikfest zu Düsseldorf (Schluss),” Süddeutsche Musik-Zeitung, Vol. 2, No. 24 (June 13, 1853), p. 94.

[x] “Das 31. niederrheinische Musikfest,” Rheinische Musik-Zeitung für Kunstfreunde und Künstler, Vol. 3, No. 50 (June 11, 1853), p. 1225-1127, passim.

[xi] ibid. p. 2127, recte: 1127.

[xii] Wasielewski/SIEBZIG p. 80.

[xiii] Weimar GSA 59/19, 15

[xiv] Wasielewski/SIEBZIG pp. 81-82.

[xv] “Das 31. Niederrheinische Musikfest zu Düsseldorf (Schluss),” Süddeutsche Musik-Zeitung, Vol. 2, No. 24 (June 13, 1853), p. 95.

[xvi] Zeitung für Norddeutschland, No. 1137 (May 22, 1853).

[xvii] Litzmann/SCHUMANN II, p. 278. [m. t.] To Hermann Härtel, she wrote [19 May]: “Joachim played the Beethoven concerto with a perfection such as I have hardly heard from a violinist, with such genius, so nobly, so simply and yet moving to the core! He also received an ovation such as I have never yet experienced; was deluged with flowers, and then played the Chaconne of Bach as an encore.” Schumann/TALENT, p. 105.

[xviii] Reineke/ERLEBNISSE, pp. 261-262. m.t.

[xix] Litzmann/SCHUMANN II, p. 278. [m. t.]

[xx] Avins/BRAHMS, p. 95.

The pontoon bridge at Düsseldorf
Steel engraving by Emil Höfer (1845)

Cliffs of Fall

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there.

                                                            —Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Albert Dietrich to Joseph Joachim [i]

                                                                        Düsseldorf, 28 February [1854]

Beloved friend,

I have infinitely sad news to communicate to you and our Johannes. Pardon me for withholding the specific details at the moment—I am still too upset to write them down. In a recent letter to Brahms I hinted at Schumann’s dire nervous condition. This has deteriorated, day by day. He heard music incessantly, often of the most beautiful kind, often also excruciatingly hideous. Later, spirit-voices joined in, which, as he believed, told him the most dreadful and the most beautiful things. A week ago Saturday, came the first violent attack of despair. Since then, Schumann was clearly mentally disturbed; the spirits allowed him not a moment of peace. I was with him 3 times daily; usually he appeared to be in a calm state; only occasionally did he indicate that something horrible might happen, which the spirits urged him to carry out—and he has attempted it;—on Monday—yesterday—at about noon he found a way to sneak out of the house—Hasenclever, I and a number of others searched until nearly 1:30 without success. Around this time he returned, brought by 4 boatmen;—they had rescued him from the Rhein; he had plunged in from the middle of the pontoon bridge. Now he is apparently sane as before, and yet so mentally disturbed that he is not expected to recover in the near future—although the doctors have not yet given up hope.—His wife is, as you might well imagine, hysterical with pain and despair; still, we were able to conceal the worst of it from her. Nevertheless, she seems to have an inkling—she shall not find out—since then, she is not allowed to go to him, but lives with Frl. Leser and consumes herself with longing. Only I, and no one except the doctors and caretakers are allowed to go to him—he will likely be taken to a well-run sanatorium.

What I have suffered, you may well imagine. I was very sick and am still ailing, so that I am often seized, as with fever shivers. I hope that I will soon be able to send you better news—I will send news again soon.

Schumann was not able to look at your Overture. I studied it thoroughly until Monday. I admire the sublime work most profoundly—will gladly write you quite a lot about it—but today it is impossible.

Your

Faithfully devoted

Albert Dietrich.

Schumann’s doctor, Richard Hasenclever, was an acquaintance of Dr. Franz Richarz, the proprietor of a private mental hospital at Endenich near Bonn, an eight-hours’ journey along the Rhine from Düsseldorf. The Endenich facility, situated on a seven-acre garden estate, had been a stately summer home before Richarz purchased it and converted it into an asylum. Schumann was taken there at his own request on Saturday, the 4^th of March, never again to return. His daughter Marie recalled how the children looked down from an upper window as the Droschke arrived in the courtyard and her father, Dr. Hasenclever and two attendants got in. They had been told that their father would soon return, cured — but the maids stood by and wept. On the journey, he held a bouquet of flowers that Clara had gathered for him.

The entry for that date in the asylum’s register offers a provisional diagnosis: “Schumann Dr Robert/Music Director in Düsseldorf/melancholy with delusions.” Melancholy — the poet’s disease. [1] It is a poignant indication of the esteem that both Clara and Robert Schumann had for their young friends that from that day until Schumann’s death nearly two and a half years later, Brahms and Joachim were virtually the only visitors that Schumann saw. [2] Clara, with her personal love for Brahms and deep affection for Joachim, relied on them heavily; they were Schumann’s only lifeline to the outside world, and her help in time of need. For much of the time, they possessed knowledge that even Clara was unaware of. This immense, unimaginable responsibility, coupled with the heartbreak and horror that they, too, were experiencing, was a profound psychological burden for two young men in their early twenties to carry.

Johannes Brahms to Joseph Joachim

                                                                        Düsseldorf, 3 March 1854

Herzliebster Joseph,

Do come Saturday; it comforts Frau Schumann endlessly to see familiar faces. With Schumann, things are going somewhat better. The doctors are hopeful; nevertheless, one may not go to him.

I was already with Frau Schumann.

Though she wept a lot, she was nevertheless very pleased to see me and to be able to expect you.

We await you on Sunday morning, and Grimm on Wednesday.

your

Johannes.

Shaken, Joseph made plans to depart. He wrote to Arnold Wehner: “Poor Schumann, poor wife and children, poor music, that had to take refuge in a bizarre spirit-world, instead of spreading vibrant beauty and nature among us.” [iii] He also sent a quick letter to Gisela, who had been plaguing him to send her his overture. Her letter to him does not survive, but a later one exists, in which she blames his tardiness and inability to bring things to completion on his “Jewish nature,” as she clearly did in this instance: “Have a little patience with my poor self!” he wrote. “I thought you to be so preoccupied with the Demetrius that I imagined everything else would be of no matter to you. Forgive me if I am wrong. In recent days I have experienced so much of the most emotionally wrenching nature. I have learned to censure myself in some things and still to respect myself. Oh, good Gisela, I could write the whole night long and I still wouldn’t tell you enough about what I have gone through inwardly in Berlin and afterward. I dare say I’m 20 years older. I was a true child in life! … What I said in Weimar has come to pass. I am so agitated; for, other than the direst events that call me to Düsseldorf… I am still plagued by small miseries: in spite of my agitation, I still have to play publicly, still have to pack, etc. So then, very briefly: the copyist is still not finished with the overture, even though he has already had it for 3 weeks. I must hear it first; if I like it, I will send it to you and Herman, and if you then want to Jew-bait me, go ahead. Neither I, nor the work, will be the worse for it. I long indescribably to hear my sounds — I think they would drown out my inner agitation.” [iv]

After the evening concert, Joseph took the night train to Düsseldorf, arriving at around 7 a.m. “The good soul!” wrote Clara. “How this touched me! In the morning, he was with me for several hours, during which we naturally spoke only of him, the dearest one. In the afternoon and evening, I decided to make music with Joachim; we played music by him…” [v]

The next day, Joseph wrote to Clara’s half-brother Woldemar Bargiel: “Schumann was no longer in Düsseldorf when I arrived; he had been taken to a pleasantly situated place near Bonn, where, one hopes, he will gradually become calmer, since everything that could remind him of his misadventure is carefully being kept from him. Your sister, who has not yet been told the worst, is more collected than I imagined, due to your mother’s presence and the care of loving friends. Music brings her consolation and firm confidence in the future. Before his harrowing episode, Schumann had such sublime moments of peace that he completed for his wife some variations on a theme he had heard during his first illness from ‘angels as a greeting from Mendelssohn and Schubert.’ Schumann had put his domestic affairs in order, down to the minutest details, as though he had had some sort of premonition; in the end, he had even added the most detailed instructions to all of his manuscripts. In one of his earlier notebooks, which he had filled with remarks of all sorts, there is the sentence: ‘As an artist, one should beware of losing touch with society, otherwise one founders, like me.’ It gave me the shivers, and I can think of nothing but my deepest grief over the Ideal that has, in such a heart-rending way been driven from beauty to the hideous.” [vi]

“Monday, the 6^th of March, I began once again to give lessons!” Clara wrote in her diary. “And oh, it was a hard battle! But on the one hand I felt that only strenuous activity could sustain me now, and on the other, I had a double responsibility to earn…. Joachim came around 11 o’clock, and, together with Brahms and Dietrich, we went through Robert’s ‘Das Glück von Edenhall’ and ‘Des Sängers Fluch.’ We were all deeply moved! … In the evening, Hasenclever returned from Endenich… and told me how much he approves of the asylum! The whole Siebengebirge range can be seen, lying before one. Robert has the morning sun in his window, and the view of the Kreutzberg. The doctor received Robert very affectionately, and gave him an attendant for himself alone, whom he promptly came to like. In the evening, we made music — Joachim and I — again at Fräulein Leser’s (I couldn’t bring myself to do it at my house) until 9 o’clock, when Joachim departed. The good, true soul had to play a concert on Saturday, immediately afterward traveled through the night to get here, and now again travels through this night. We played Robert’s Third Sonata in a minor, and today for the first time we both played it with just the right spirit. I had already absorbed it before, but the last time, in Hanover, Joachim had not been able to find his way into it at all. Today, he was inspired, and I with him. — It is the one thing that can bring me relief — His music! I am absorbed in it, it moves me in the deepest way, alleviates my pain, but still only for minutes, after which, when I am finished, the pain of course returns the louder, and then I feel the doubled impact of the hard fortune, no longer to be able to press his hand with admiration — no longer to be able to tell him myself how much his works inspire me.” [vii]

Back in Hanover, Joseph wrote to Julius Grimm (who was in Düsseldorf with Brahms and Dietrich, and in close contact with Schumann’s doctor) that he was looking for an “anchor of hope,” however flimsy. Bettina had spoken with Count Ferencz Szápáry [3] concerning his “magnetic cures,” and was promoting the practice to Schumann’s friends, among them Woldemar Bargiel, who doubtless passed her suggestion on to Joseph. [viii] Joseph wrote: “… I do not believe strongly in Magnetism, but listen: I got a letter from Berlin saying that in Paris a Count Sagadie (the name is not very clearly written, he could be called Saparin), finds that, with his magnetic power, he has saved the lives of people on whom the doctors had given up hope. He is supposed to have discovered this power through his own child, whom he saved from death, and since he is very religious and previously wanted to go to a monastery, he now devotes his life, gratis, to the healing of the sick. The friend who told me of this matter named with names many people that he knows personally who have been helped by the magnetic cure, but he tells me primarily of a professor who was depressed for 8 years (as the doctors said, in consequence of a stroke and a softening of the brain which they declared to be incurable) and is now completely restored to health, after Count Sagarin treated him. — This is the news from Berlin — Now, what do you think, dear friend? In any case, the matter appears important enough to me that we should at least communicate it to Dr. Hasenclever. Discuss it with Dietrich, to whom I send warm greetings, and, if possible, let me know what Hasenclever says about it — though one may bow ever so obediently to destiny, one’s own worries cannot be assuaged — one mourns and hopes continually in ebbs and floods.” [ix]

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[1] From time immemorial, melancholy has been associated with creative genius. The concept of melancholy derives from the theory of four humors; the word comes from μελας, melas, “black”, and χολη, kholé, “bile.” Aristotle noted the correlation between an excess of black bile and distinction in poetry, philosophy and politics. Renaissance thinkers and artists from Ficino to Dürer advanced a like theory of a connection between melancholic illness and artistic eminence. Schumann seems to have exemplified this ancient observation, and, in a time when mental illness was widely viewed as a shameful condition, melancholy was perhaps the most positive face that those who loved him could put on his terrifyingly unknowable condition. In Eduard Bendemann’s portrait, based upon Johann Anton Völlner’s 1850 Daguerreotype, Schumann is shown with head on hand, in the classic pose of the melancholic. The picture is strongly reminiscent, for example, of Dürer’s etching Melencolia I. Clara Schumann praised it as the best likeness of her husband. [see: Appel/SCHUMANN, pp. 18-21, 495-497.]

[2] Schumann had just three other personal visitors: Bettina and Gisela von Arnim visited once, in April, 1855, and Clara was allowed to see her husband only in the three days prior to his death.

[3] Ferencz Szápáry (1804-1875), author of the Katechismus des Vital-Magnetismus zur leichteren Direction der Laien-Magnetiseurs (Leipzig, Wigand, 1845), and Magnetisme et Magnetotherapie (Paris, 1853) directed a clinique magnetique in Dresden in the 1840’s, and later practiced his magnetic cures in Paris.

[i] Joachim/BRIEFE I, pp. 165-166.

[ii] C.f. Brahms/LETTERS, p. 747.

[iii] Joachim/BRIEFE I, p. 168.

[iv] Joachim/BRIEFE I, p. 170.

[v] Litzmann/SCHUMANN II, p. 304.

[vi] Joachim/BRIEFE I, p. 171.

[vii] Litzmann/SCHUMANN II, pp. 304-305.

[viii] See Bargiel’s letter to Mariane Bargiel in: Appel/SCHUMANN, p. 75 f.

[ix] Joachim/BRIEFE I, pp. 176-177.

© Robert W. Eshbach 2017

The Kaffeter

In 1843, the three Arnim sisters, Maximiliane, Armgart, and Gisela, together with Caroline and Wilhelmine Bardua, [1] Ottilie von Graefe [2] and Marie Lichtenstein formed a literary-artistic club — a Jungfrauenorden — which they called the Kaffeter. It was an unusual company of women: at the time, Caroline Bardua was sixty-one years old, and her sister “Mine” forty-five. At fifteen, Gisela was the youngest. In her memoirs, Maxe von Arnim tells how the idea arose:

One day in March, when the Bardua sisters were visiting Mother, I read them . . . a few things out of [Johanna] Mathieux’s interesting letters from Bonn — among other things about the “Maikäferbund,” composed of intellectually spirited young men who (in June 1840) gathered around Mathieux as “Directrix.” Each member was required to bring to the weekly meetings an anonymous literary contribution of his own, which was criticized, and eventually collected in Maikäfer: A Journal for Non-Philistines. The members were young scholars and students, whose names later acquired a good reputation, among them University Lecturer for Protestant Theology Gottfried Kinkel, who was at that time composing his delightful epic “Otto der Schütz,” Jakob Burckhardt, later culture- and art historian in Basel, the Hallenser theologian Willibald Beyschlag, the poet Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter, the chemist Karl Fresenius and others. Their high intellectual niveau did not prevent this fraternity from taking pleasure in singing and also much merry “Firlefanz,” as die Mathieux called it; so, for example, on meeting days each member had to wear the Order of the Maikäfer from early morning on, even to class.
I had hardly finished my reading when Giesel cried out: “We could also do that here, actually!” and the always-enterprising Mine Bardua concurred enthusiastically. So it was agreed that we would gather suitable girls for members, the Barduas from their circle of close friends, and we from ours. [i]

The first official meeting of the Kaffeter took place on March 30 at Ottilie von Graefe’s Berlin home, Behrenstraße 48. Officers were elected, and each Kaffeologe took a ceremonial name. Maxe von Arnim was elected “President Maiblümchen” (“lily-of-the-valley,” literally: “May-blossom”). With the exception of Maiblümchen, all the members took on male aliases. Mine Bardua, the true presiding spirit of the Kaffeter, became “Minus,” and was named to the post of recording secretary and editor of the group’s journal, the Kaffeterzeitung. As “Altmeister Bardolio,” Caroline would provide a folio frontispiece for each issue of the Kaffeterzeitung. On account of her bossiness, Armgart von Arnim became “Lord Armgart.” Ottilie was “Sir Odillon,” and Marie “Marius.” Gisel originally took the name of “Herr Giseloff,” but changed it later to “Marilla Fittchersvogel,” and finally “Spatz von Spatzenheim,” after the title of her fairy tale Aus den Papieren eines Spatzen (From the Papers of a Sparrow).

[ii]
President Maiblümchen
(Maxe von Arnim)
Drawing by Ottilie von Graefe for the Kaffeterzeitung

Before long, others were eager to join the circle, which had only two ironclad rules for membership: Kaffeologen must be unmarried and female. Over the course of six years, members included:

Valeska von Grabow [3] (“Valescus”)
Pauline (“Paulus”) and Anna (Annollo”) von Wolzogen [4]
Nina (“Ninus”), Marie [5] (“Mario”) and Hedwig (“Hektor”) von Olfers
Louise Bardua [6] (“Lucio della strada di Lenné”)
Amalie von Herder (“St. Malo”) [7]
Fernanda von Pappenheim (“Schwälble”)
Countess Elisabeth von Königsmarck (“Meister von Kannix,” “Elias Drosselmaier”) [8]

The group also included some non-resident members:

Marie von Guaita, a cousin of the Arnims who lived in Frankfurt am Main (“Sepperle vom Berge”)
Johanna Mathieux, who lived in Bonn
Mathilde Krummacher, who lived in Elberfeld

Various married women were invited as visitors. The name Kaffee-Tanten was given up as hideous, and the title Patroness settled upon. Among the Patronessen were:

Bettina (“Princess Dodona”)
Frau Savigny
Frau von Bardeleben
Frau von Olfers

Not to be overlooked was the Bardua’s dog, Beauty, an honorary member and occasional contributor to the Kaffeterzeitung via Gisela.

[iii]
St. Malo
(Amalie von Herder)
Drawing by Ottilie von Graefe for the Kaffeterzeitung

The members took turns hosting the Kaffeter. At first, only coffee and breakfast rolls were served — simple fare, such as would not distract the Kaffeologen from their artistic concerns. But little by little the rules were bent, and flights of fancy did not appear to suffer as hot chocolate replaced the coffee, and cakes and tortes supplanted the rolls. After refreshments, Maxe, arrayed as Maiblümchen in a high, pointed cap of white fabric, would take up her scepter, a white staff to which blossoms were entwined with a pink ribbon, and call the meeting to order. The other sisters wore similar hats of brown glazed paper. Affixed to the peak of each cone was a pink veil, to help a bashful maiden conceal her embarrassment or steady her nerves. Minus would then read the minutes of the last meeting, done up in humorous mock-ceremonial style, after which the girls would gather round to admire Altmeister Bardolio’s latest frontispiece for the journal. Each Kaffeologe would present an example of her work. Poems and tales were read, artwork viewed, musical compositions sung. Critical judgement, so important to the gesellige ethos of the time, was passed on each effort. Each sister was issued a ratchet-noisemaker with which to express disapproval — and a toy trumpet to administer praise. Contributions of a particularly distinguished nature were rewarded with a charm strung on a pink ribbon: the order of the golden coffee pot was reserved for founding members, and the order of the silver coffee pot for the others. All members were given a miniature silver coffee spoon as a token of their belonging.

Herman Grimm
Etching by Ludwig Emil Grimm, 1848

It was Gisela who first broached the question of relaxing the all-female rule. Early on, Hans Christian Andersen (“Anderlein”) had been admitted as an honorary member, but Gisel agitated to have her best friend, Herman Grimm, admitted as a regular. After considerable debate, it was decided that “male individuals” might be acceptable, but only those who “were not dangerous.” Soon after, the Kaffeterkreis acquired its first male Kaffeologe, and one of its most talented and enthusiastic members: the fourteen year-old “Laban Habelmann” (Hermann Grimm). Apparently, only two others were benign enough to be admitted: the poet Emanuel Geibel [9] (“Götz mit der eisernen Hand”) and Gebhard von Alvensleben (“Apollo Plüsch”).

Maxe:

“After the principle of female exclusivity in the Kaffeter had been breached, the onrush of male applicants was no longer to be withstood. Especially after the king had publicly praised the Kaffeter, we could hardly ward off the many lieutenants, each of whom reckoned it an honor when a contribution that he had sent in was included in the Kaffeterzeitung. The Kaffeter was now no longer a violet that bloomed in secret; rather, it had become a kind of celebrity in Berlin.” [iv]

[v]
Sir Odillon leaves the Kaffeter
(Ottilie von Graefe, upon marrying Hermann von Thile)
Frontispiece for the Kaffeterzeitung by Caroline Bardua

The Kaffeter would occasionally host parties for the court, at the home of Bettina’s brother-in-law, minister Karl von Savigny. Princes and princesses, counts and countesses, ministers, and even a Catholic prince-bishop were among the attendees. In 1845, the King and Queen themselves were fêted by the Kaffeter. On this occasion, Caroline Bardua created tableaux, and, at the King’s request, Das Band, a pastoral play by Gellert, was performed. Bettina (“Princess Dodona”) painted sets, and created a fairy garden out of colored paper. Marie von Olfers appeared as a shepherdess, singing arias in her bright soprano and leading her three year-old brother Enne, “das Kaffeterkind,” on a pink silk ribbon as her sheep.

The Kaffeter was a casualty of the March revolutions of 1848. During those turbulent times, regular meetings ceased. On April 28, 1848, Maxe and Mine published a “manifesto” in which they state: “Our beloved Kaffeter was carried off by the merciless teeth of the Present in the scarcely unfolded bloom of its sixth year. It was too good for this world. Peace to its ashes.” [vi]

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[1] Caroline (11 November 1781 — 2 July 1864) and Wilhelmine (26 May 1798 — 17 June 1865) Bardua lived together as unmarried sisters. Caroline, a professional painter, trained with Heinrich Meyer in Weimar and Gerhard von Kügelen in Dresden. She belonged to Goethe’s circle of friends. Wilhelmine had a beautiful voice, and in her youth had wanted to become a professional singer. As members of the Berlin Singakademie, the Bardua sisters were close friends of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdys. Their Berlin salon lasted from 1819 to 1852, with occasional long interruptions. Included among their circle of guests were Hans Christian Andersen, the Arnims, Adalbert Chamisso, Emanuel Geibel, Franz Grillparzer, Herman Grimm, the Mendelssohn-Bartholdys, Leopold von Ranke, Pierre Rode, Karl August and Rahel Varnhagen, and Carl Maria and Caroline von Weber.

[2] Ottilie von Graefe (1816-1898), daughter of Carl and Auguste von Graefe, later married Hermann von Thile (1812-1889)

[3] Lady-in-waiting to the widow of King Friedrich Wilhelm III.

[4] Daughters of General Ludwig Freiherr von Wolzogen. Anna was soon to become “Exkaffeologe Annollo” on account of her engagement to Marcus Niebuhr.

[5] Poet and painter, Marie von Olfers died in 1924 at age 97. (27 Oct. 1826 Berlin-8 Jan. 1924 Berlin). The von Olfers sisters were the granddaughters of noted salonnière Elisabeth von Staegemann, in whose salon such notables as E. T. A. Hoffmann, Heinrich von Kleist, Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano were guests. Elizabeth’s daughter Hedwig (1799-1891) became the playmate of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, as well as Luise (Lulu) von Kleist (daughter of the playwright), and Princess Elisa Radziwill. It was not uncommon for the daughters of salonnières to host salons of their own under their mothers’ tutelage. In 1816, Hedwig gathered a group of younger artists, poets and musicians in her mother’s home, including future historian Friedrich Förster (1791-1868), poet Wilhelm Müller (1794-1827), artist Wilhelm Hensel (future husband of Fanny Mendelssohn, 1794-1861), poet Luise Hensel (younger sister of the artist, 1798-1876), and writer and musician Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860). Also included were two older men, writer Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) and composer Ludwig Berger (tutor to the Mendelssohn children, 1777-1839). It was at a gathering of Hedwig’s salon that an improvised Singspiel was performed, later formalized by Müller into the poems that Schubert immortalized in his song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin.

[6] Niece of the Bardua sisters.

[7] Granddaughter of the theologian and philosopher  Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803).

[8] (1825-1901), Married Gustav Gans Edler zu Putlitz, Hoftheaterintendant in Karlsruhe.

[9] Margaret von Olfers refers to him as an “honorary member” only.

[i] Werner/MAXE, p. 103.

[ii] Werner/BARDUA, opp. p. 176.

[iii] Werner/BARDUA, opp. p. 176.

[iv] Werner/MAXE, p. 106.

[v] Werner/BARDUA, opp. p. 193.

[vi] This account of the Kaffeter relies mostly on information gleaned from Werner/BARDUA, pp. 175-184.

[vii] Werner/BARDUA, p. 182.

[viii] Werner/BARDUA, p. 183.

© Robert W. Eshbach 2015

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Baptism / Taufe

Ägidienkirche (Lutheran), Hanover

Bombed 8-9 October, 1943

Since 1952 a memorial for victims of war and violence

Shortly before noon on May 3, 1855, Joseph walked to Hanover’s Ägidienkirche, where he was met by the church’s minister, Pastor Ludwig Flügge, and his friend from Göttingen, Arnold Wehner. [1] At a quarter past the hour, Wehnner’s wife, Pauline, joined them, and at half past, the King and Queen arrived, alone and without retinue, from their customary mid-day walk. They all went into the small sacristy where the baptismal font stood, and seated themselves facing the little altar, with Joachim in the middle, the Wehners on one side and the Royal couple on the other. Pastor Flügge spoke. Joseph then affirmed the creed that the Pastor had recited to him, knelt and was baptized Georg Maria Joseph Joachim, adjoining to his the names of the Royal couple, who stood as godparents. His friend Wehner dried his hair with a small towel, and they all went out into the main sanctuary — Pastor Flügge in the lead, followed by Joachim, the Royal couple and the Wehners. There, Joseph knelt to receive his first communion, followed by the pastor’s blessing. After the prayer of thanksgiving, Pastor Flügge presented Joseph with a Bible, bound in silk and secured with a gold clasp, inscribed with his name and the date, and containing a dedication from the Queen. The King gave Joachim a repeating watch, engraved with the ornate initials: G. M. J. — Georg Maria Joseph. He also presented Joseph with a stone from the garden of Gethsemane. [2] Afterward, there were congratulations and touching pleasantries, and then the King and Queen left as they had come — alone. Pauline Wehner recalled seeing the Queen remove her white gloves as she left the church, and change into colored ones. “You really cannot imagine,” she wrote to her brother, “how moving it all was; the preacher is quite excellent. Joachim is such a dear friend to us, and then the wonderful King and Queen, who were so modest and so warmly sympathetic. Afterwards the Queen said to Arnold that she had been pleased that Flügge prayed for us — she would also have done so most sincerely.”

Ägidienkirche, Entrance

The bell is a gift from the City of Hiroshima

Joachim claimed that his decision to embrace the Lutheran confession was a conscientious one. [3] The way to that decision had been prepared by a progression of respected mentors and relatives: the Böhms, strict Catholics who had answered “to the dear Lord God” for their care of the “heathen” boy, Magister Hering in Leipzig, who, according to Moser, had instructed his young charge as to the nature of Christianity and the character of Christ, the Wittgensteins, who had converted before him and who largely regarded their Jewish heritage as a misfortune that they had overcome, and the Mendelssohns, Protestants who looked upon Christianity as a historical extension of Judaism. [4] As a teenager, Joseph had frequented Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, where he had imbibed the music of J. S. Bach, studying with Thomaskantor Moritz Hauptmann in Bach’s old apartment in the Thomasschule. He had participated in performances of the Mendelssohn oratorios, and mingled with the Christian congregation.

In a letter of April 26^th, he told Herman Grimm how his baptism came about:

“I am pleased by the pure kindness of the King, who recently (when I had an audience with him regarding musical matters) was prompted by my remarks on Bach to ask how I, who had been born in a Catholic country, valued his spirit so highly; and when I told him of my Jewish origin and other details of my life, he wanted to know the reasons that prevented me, with my “Christian” nature, from adopting the Christian religion. My main reason, that I dislike calling outward attention to purely spiritual concerns, he disposed of by the way he asked whether he might be my godfather. I feel as though, for the first time, I am free of bitterness, and justified in the struggle against everything that is unattractive about Judaism, against which I become more antagonistic, the more I have to heal the inner, personal damage that I had to suffer, at first unconsciously and later consciously, from my Jewish upbringing. To give oneself freely to the spirit — a joyous martyrdom for it: this seems to me to be the essential character of the religion of Christ — compared with that, everything else is simply immaterial to me — I wished for you and Gisel to be my godparents in any little village church, so romantic am I.” [5]

Ägidienkirche, Sanctuary

The baptism, according to Moser, [6] was intended to occur privately, to keep it temporarily from his parents, and was disclosed only to a few close friends. [7] The news leaked out, however, eventually reached the press:

Joseph Joachim to his parents [undated] [8]

Beloved parents

A newspaper was sent to me anonymously from Pest, with the news that I have converted to the Protestant church, and in addition — that I am engaged to a Hanoverian court lady, the daughter of Bettina v. Arnim. The second report is a falsehood, and I don’t know who could have taken pleasure in circulating it, and in tying it to my Christian confession. I am not thinking of marrying, and there is no Hanoverian court lady named Arnim.

About my conversion to the Lutheran confession, I owe you, my dear parents, an explanation. I have put off letting you know about it, because I have dearly wished to do it orally in Pest, where I had hoped to see you and my dear siblings in the course of the year, as I still hold out the hope of a visit in Pest around Autumn. I regret with all my heart that you have learned of this important step early, and in such an indelicate manner; I did everything that I could in order to avoid it — and I beg you not to ascribe to a lack of filial respect that which alien curiosity and lack of delicacy may have offended. Presentient fear of such tactlessness [breaks off]

Many greetings to all loved ones. Have you seen and heard Frau Schumann — and how did she please you?

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Geliebte Eltern

Mir wird eben anonym aus Pesth eine Zeitung zugeschickt, mit der Nachricht daß ich zur protestantischen Kirche übergetreten sei, und außerdem noch — verlobt mit einer Hannoverschen Hofdame, der Tochter der Bettina v. Arnim. Die zweite Nachricht ist eine Unwahrheit, und ich weiß nicht wer sich den Spaß gemacht haben kann, sie zu verbreiten — und mit meinem Bekenntnis zur christlichen Kirche in Verbindung zu bringen. Ich denke nicht daran mich zu verheirathen, und eine Hannoverschen Hofdame, die Arnim hieße giebt es gar nicht.

Ueber den Uebertritt zur lutherischen Confession bin ich Ihnen, meine theuren Eltern, Manches zu sagen schuldig. Es ward von mir eine Mittheilung darüber bis jetzt verschoben, weil ich sehnlich gewünscht hatte, Sie Ihnen mündlich einmal in Pesth zu machen, wo ich Sie und die lieben Geschwister im Laufe des Jahres zu sehen hoffen durfte; wie ich denn noch das Vorhaben eines Besuches in Pesth gegen den Herbst hin, hege.

Daß sie den wichtigen Schritt vorher und auf so unzarte Weise durch öffentliche Blätter erfahren haben, bedauere ich von Herzen; was von mir geschehen konnte, es zu vermeiden, hatte ich gethan — und ich beschwöre Sie nicht dem Mangel an kindlicher Ehrfurcht zuzuschreiben, was fremde Neugier und Mangel an Zartgefühl verbrochen haben mögen. Vorahnende Furcht vor solche Taktlosigkeit [abgebrochen]

Viele Grüße allen Lieben. Haben Sie Frau Schumann gesehen und gehört — und wie hat Sie Ihnen gefallen?

[This letter is somewhat inaccurately transcribed in Borchard/STIMME, pp. 104-105, and inexplicably given the date Berlin, 23.11.1855. The letter itself is undated. A notice of Joachim’s conversion and engagement was published with virtually identical wording in several Viennese Newspapers in February, 1856: “Der Violinvirtuose Joachim, der kürzlich zur protestantischen Kirche übergegangen war, wird sich demnächst mit einem k. hannoverschen Hoffräulein, einer Tochter der Bettina v. Arnim (Goethe’s Bettina) vermählen.” (Morgen-Post, February 21, 1856; Blätter for Musik, Theater und Kunst, February 22, 1856; Fremden-Blatt, February 23, 1856; etc.]

Ägidienkirche, Sanctuary

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[1] This description follows closely that given in a letter of Pauline Wehner to her brother, Wilhelm Pfeiffer, quoted in Moser/JOACHIM 1908, II, pp. 70 ff. Moser claims that Countess Bernstorff was also present. Moser gives the date of Joachim’s baptism as 1854, but this is clearly wrong, as indicated by letters from Joachim to Herman Grimm in BRIEFE I, pp. 280-285. The correct date is confirmed by reference to Spohr’s precisely-dated letter on p. 281. Thanks to Styra Avins for catching this error.

[2] This stone is still in the possession of Joachim’s descendants. See: Schäfer/GÖTTINGEN, p. 156.

[3] “[…] Joachim felt himself more and more drawn to the religion in which the highest ideal is the love of one’s neighbours. In his innermost heart he had long since been a follower of this sublime teaching, when he told the king, in confidence, of his wish to really become a Christian by baptism.” Moser/JOACHIM 1908, p. 177.

[4] In a letter to his daughter Fanny at the time of her confirmation, Abraham Mendelssohn wrote: “Does God exist? What is God? Is a part of ourselves eternal and does it live on after the other part is gone? And if so, where? And how? — I do not know the answers to any of these questions and have therefore never taught you anything concerning them. But I do know that there exists in me and in you and in all human beings an everlasting inclination to everything that is good, true and right, and a conscience which admonishes us and guides us when we depart from the good. I know this, believe in it, and live in this belief; it is my religion. This I could not teach you, and no one can learn it; everyone has it who does not deliberately and knowingly cast it away. […] This is all that I can tell you about religion, all that I know about it. […] The form in which your religious instructor has conveyed it to you is historical, and like all the creations of mankind is changeable. Several thousand years ago the Jewish form was the dominant one, then the pagan, now it is the Christian. We, your mother and I, were born in Judaism and raised in it by our parents, and without having had to change this form we have followed the God in ourselves and our own consciences. We have raised you and your brothers and sisters in Christianity because it is the form of religion accepted by most civilized men and contains nothing that might lead you away from the good; on the contrary, much that guides you toward love, toward obedience, toward tolerance and toward resignation — even if only in the example of the Author of the religion, an example recognized by so few and followed by still fewer.” [HENSEL/Mendelssohn, Vol. I, pp. 79-80].

[5] Mich freut die reine Güte des Königs, der neulich (als ich in musikalischen Dingen Audienz bei ihm hatte) durch meine Äußerung über Bach zur Frage kam, wie ich, in katholischen Landen geboren, so dessen Geist würdigte, und da ich ihm meine israelitische Abstammung und anderes aus meinem Leben erzälte, die Gründe erforschte, die mich bei meinem “christlichen” Wesen abgehalten hätten, die christliche Religion anzunehmen. Meinen Hauptgrund, die Scheu vor allem äußerlich Auffallenden bei rein seelischen Vorgängen, hob er durch die Bitte, die ihn zu meinem Pathen gemacht hat. Mir ist, als wär’ ich erst jetzt recht frei von Bitterkeit und kampfberechtigt gegen alles Unschöne des Judenthums, dem ich so feindlicher mich gesinnt fühle, je mehr ich eigne Schäden in mir zu heilen habe, an denen ich früher unbewußt, später bewußt durch jüdische Erziehung zu leiden hatte. Freies Hingeben an den Geist, ein freudiges Martyrthum für ihn scheinen mir die Grundzüge der Christus-Religion — dem gegenüber ist mir alles Übrige unwesentlich vor der Hand — Ich wollte, die Gisel und Du wären meine Pathen in irgend einer Dorf-Kirche, so romantisch bin ich.” Joachim/BRIEFE, I, p. 284.

[6] Moser 1898 p. 159-160.

[7] Joseph Joachim to Herman Grimm, April 22, 1855: “Ich bin fleißig und fange erst jetzt an aus einer Apathie in Betreff meiner Wenigkeit zu erwachen, in die ich mehr, als ich selbst ahnte, seit lange verfallen war. Ein schritt, der damit zusammenhängt — erschrecke nicht — ist: daß ich im Laufe der nächsten 14 Tage zum Christenthum übertreten werde. Es ist heraus: ich bitte Dich aber es keiner Menschenseele anzuvertrauen: es wird hier in aller Stille geschehen in ziemlich romantischer Weise. Wie — das möcht’ ich Dir gelegentlich erzählen.” Joachim/BRIEFE I, p. 280

[8] British Library MS 42718 (56); translation © Robert W. Eshbach 2015

 

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Previous Post in Series: First Gewandhaus Concert. Pauline Viardot-Garcia

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The Wittgensteins

Hermann Christian Wittgenstein (1802-1878) 

[1]

Emancipated Jews did not merely shed their old clothes in order to put on new, but attempted to become radically changed men and women.

                                                                        — George L. Mosse [2]

The man that Joseph still called “Herr Wittgenstein” must have been an imposing presence to young Joseph. Wittgenstein was a self-made man — a businessman, not a musician — with an unsentimental outlook on the world. He was a man who placed great store by his ability to succeed — or, as Ludwig Wittgenstein’s biographer Brian McGuinness characterized it, his capacity etwas durchzusetzen: to see something through. “I began my career in other and troublesome circumstances,” he wrote in his last will and testament. “Thrown back upon my own powers, I was never despondent, never solicited nor received any man’s favor, and endeavoring to emulate my betters, I never became an object of their contempt.” [3] This was doubtless a common sermon in the Wittgenstein household; one that received a mixed reception among his children. “I can’t actually imagine myself feeling comfortable in his company,” wrote his granddaughter Hermine, “I always sense the somewhat rigid and dignified manner that my mother later found so alienating and that caused my father, who was nothing less than rigid, to dub the family lunchtime “high mass.” [4]

The artistic and irrepressible Fanny had not been attracted to Herman at first; in fact, she had been repelled by the “severe, cold, yes, even gruff expression on his face.” One wonders what their conversation consisted of that evening in 1838 when her brother Gustav brought Hermann to dinner at her father’s house. Would she not rather have spoken with Mr. Nellison, his handsome, lively Dutch business associate? Seated next to Fanny, Hermann spoke exclusively about serious matters. “…you can imagine how strangely this apparition […] affected me, in comparison with our men, who only swim on the surface of things,” she wrote to a friend. [5] Whatever his ability to make a good first impression, Herman was a man of practical decision, who would always remain confident that he could bend her will to his. “Fill your house with guests and you’ll settle your daughters,” ran the old Viennese-Jewish adage. Within a matter of days Hermann had asked for Fanny’s hand.

To her friend, Fanny wrote: “I can imagine your astonishment; I, myself, feel as though I am only playing a role in some sort of fairy tale — the whole matter has fallen so out of the clear, blue sky.” [6] The two men had returned on another day, and this time Wittgenstein had seemed more agreeable. The entire company rode out to Baden, where they spent several days together at the Figdors’ summer home. There, Hermann and Fanny came to know one another better, and Wittgenstein began to thaw. One day, he arrived for lunch alone. “I found that completely incomprehensible,” wrote Fanny; “imagine my surprise when, after he had left, Nanette confided in me that, that same morning, he had spoken with Papa, and formally asked his permission to marry me. Now it came down to my consent, — and for the first time I felt no positive antipathy. This was already a lot — so I let the matter take its course… and whether it was his admirable nature, or his assurances of sincere love, enough, I didn’t feel in the mood to say no, though not exactly yes, since Papa had spoken not a syllable to me — which, furthermore, you will hardly believe, has not happened yet. […] I would only like to know how Wittgenstein would appeal to you. You have good judgment. The other members of my family like him, for he has great savoir vivre, and he has, (not only in my opinion) great understanding. He is a man of 35 or 36 years, and by no means handsome. Given the circumstances, think what a tense mood I am in!” [7]

Fanny Wittgenstein with her children: Anna, Marie and Paul 

[8]

Prior to their wedding in 1839, Hermann and Fanny joined the swelling numbers of upper-middle-class Jews who were converting to the Protestant faith. Fanny’s conversion to Lutheranism was likely prompted by her impending marriage: Hermann may have been baptized as early as 1811 (Christian was his baptismal name), and mixed marriages were illegal at that time. Reportedly, the Wittgensteins had ambivalent feelings about their Jewish ancestry. Hermann in particular seems to have viewed it as a misfortune to be overcome through hard work and honorable living. Fanny’s attitude may have been like that of many Viennese Jews, who — unlike their enlightened Berlin counterparts — seemed prepared to leave the fold primarily in pursuit of the secular rewards of freedom and prosperity. As Hans Tietze expressed it: “The Viennese Jewry were an elite of the rich and those who had the capacity to become rich if they could establish a foothold in the new terrain; nothing bound them to their peers except a residue of oppression, and nothing to Judaism except fading memories of hometown ghettos, whose dreariness contrasted so starkly with their bright new surroundings.” [9] Whatever their motivations, Hermann and Fanny raised their children with a Christian identity. It is said that Hermann forbade his children to marry Jews, a stricture that only his son Karl had the courage to breach.  According to family lore, the renunciation of their Jewish patrimony was so complete that daughter Milly one day felt compelled to ask her brother Louis whether it was true that they were Jewish. “Pur sang, Milly, pur sang,” Louis replied.

Hermann Christian Wittgenstein (1802-1878)

 [10]

With his own children, Hermann was a formidable, controlling figure who brooked no opposition within his household. Punishments for the children were severe, and included occasionally locking them away in a dark room. This strictness, combined with Fanny’s nervous energy may help to explain certain characteristics of the Wittgenstein siblings that Joseph also shared. “They had exceptional loyalty to chosen friends but also a nervousness and a degree of sensibility which… made many of them difficult to live with save for a companion endowed with an unusual placidity of temperament,” wrote Brian McGuinness. “It was hard for die Geschwister Wittgenstein to keep or restore a friendship when it fell away from complete intimacy, hard to overcome the series of offences too small for comment and too large not to be felt that in time diminish most human relationships.” [11] This same nervous temperament, this same insatiable need for reassurance and compulsion to feel loved, is to be found in the Joachim family letters, and may well have been a Figdor family trait. In a famous letter, written in 1880 and produced at the divorce proceeding between Joseph and his wife Amalie, Joachim’s once-intimate friend, Johannes Brahms, wrote of “that unhappy character trait with which Joachim tortures himself and others so irresponsibly. Friendship and love I want to breathe as simply and freely as the air. When I sense that lovely feeling in a complicated or artificial form I skirt it with diffidence, particularly when sustained and heightened by pathological, embarrassing agitation. I abhor useless scenes evoked by someone’s imagination. In friendship, too, a partial divorce is sad, but it is possible just the same. And with Joachim I rescued just a small portion [of our friendship] by exercising caution; without that, I would have been left with nothing long ago.” [12]

In the case of the Wittgenstein’s son Karl, born in 1847, the irresistible paternal force met an immovable filial object as soon as Karl grew old enough to rebel. Headstrong like Hermann, a talented musician and free spirit like Fanny, Karl made his first, unsuccessful, attempt to run away from home at age eleven. At seventeen, he wrote an essay denying the immortality of the soul — an act that earned him dismissal from school. Herman hired tutors for his wayward son, but Karl was now old enough to run away for real. With nothing but a forged passport and his violin, he set off for New York, where he kept his family in the dark about his whereabouts as he waited tables and tended bar, taught mathematics and German and Latin and Greek, and played and taught violin and horn.

If Karl had his mother’s independence and love of art, he also inherited his father’s business sense. Returning to Austria after two years abroad, he pursued a technical training, and was hired as a draughtsman by his sister’s husband, the son of Schubert’s friend Leopold Kupelwieser. Karl entered the steel business while it was still in its infancy, and became, by century’s end, one of Europe’s wealthiest and most important industrialists — the Andrew Carnegie of Austria. He sold his business interests at the age of 52, and had the prescience to invest his money abroad, thus preserving the family wealth through the economic vicissitudes of the coming decades. Partly through Joachim’s influence, Karl and his wife, the accomplished pianist Leopoldine “Poldi” Kalmus Wittgenstein, became important patrons of music, art and architecture in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Their magnificent mansion was a center of music-making by, among others, Joachim, Clara Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Josef Labor, Bruno Walter, Erica Morini and Pablo Casals. Through the intercession of his daughter Hermine, Karl Wittgenstein became a patron of Gustav Klimt. He financed the building of the Vienna Secession, and later commissioned Klimt to paint the famous wedding-portrait of another of his daughters, Margarete. Karl, who shared much of his father’s paternal rigidity, likewise had trouble with his sons. In 1902, his oldest, Hans, drowned in Chesapeake Bay, a presumed suicide. Two other sons committed suicide as well: Rudolf in 1904 and Kurt in 1918. The two sons who remained to him achieved a permanent place in history: the pianist Paul, who, after losing his right arm in World War I, continued to commission and perform an impressive repertoire for the left hand alone; and the youngest, the philosopher Ludwig.

The values and aspirations that Hermann and Fanny sought to impose on Karl were the same as they first held for Joseph—inherently respecable objectives pressed with a vehemence and rigidity that would eventually bring both boys to the point of rebellion. We find them expressed in the letter that Fanny wrote to Karl’s fiancée Poldi Kalmus on the occasion of their engagement: “Karl has a good heart and a clear head, but — he left the parental home too early. — A finished education, regularity, order, self-discipline, these are things that I hope he will learn through your loving companionship.” [13] The lesson that Hermann had ultimately hoped to impress upon his son — that “he must be brought to see that a goal can be reached only by work and that it can actually be reached by that means…” [14] — was a familiar household refrain. “I certainly wish [Joseph] well,” he once wrote to Fanny, “but he should consider that a person is often thrown, by fate or caprice, from the arms of prosperity onto the pavement of the hardest want, against which there is no protection but stoicism — that is to say, inurement. Beside this, if not before, comes keeping busy….” [15]

In these disciplinary efforts, the Wittgensteins were not very different from the Böhms, or, for that matter, Joseph’s own parents. And in a sense, they succeeded — Karl grew rich and successful in business, and Joseph achieved greatness as a musician. All his life, Joseph would carry a censorious conscience with regard to his own diligence. But no love of work, no joy in art could come from capitulation to the dutiful, unbending Wittgenstein manner. That would come instead from the strict but loving ministrations of the one man who would ever win Joseph’s lasting and unconditional love: Felix Mendelssohn.

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Next Post in Series: Mendelssohn

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[1] This picture available from the Wittgenstein website http://www.wittgen-cam.ac.uk/. The Wittgenstein Archive 
3 Anderson Court
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 Cambridge 
CB3

[2] Reinharz/RESPONSE, p. 1.

[3] McGuinness/WITTGENSTEIN, p. 3.

[4] Wittgenstein/FAMILIENERINNERUNGEN, pp. 15-16.

[5] Wittgenstein/FAMILIENERINNERUNGEN, p. 7.

[6] Wittgenstein/FAMILIENERINNERUNGEN, p. 6.

[7] Wittgenstein/FAMILIENERINNERUNGEN, p. 8.

[8] This picture available from the Wittgenstein website http://www.wittgen-cam.ac.uk/. The Wittgenstein Archive 
3 Anderson Court
 Newnham Road
 Cambridge 
CB3 9EZ 
England Tele.: 0044 (0) 1223 328200

[9] Tietze/JUDEN, pp. 146-147.

[10] Wikipedia

[11] Wittgenstein/WRITINGS, p. xxi.

 

[12] Brahms/LETTERS, p. 572

[13] Wittgenstein/WRITINGS, p. xxv, xi.

[14] McGuinness/WITTGENSTEIN, pp. 10-11.

[15] McGuinness/WITTGENSTEIN, pp. 10-11.

© Robert W. Eshbach, 2014

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“A Very Agitated Evening” [1]

On June 9, 1848, Liszt arrived unexpectedly at the Schumanns’ home in Dresden. As they had not seen one another in nearly seven years, [2] Liszt was received with delight, though with no little consternation when he expressed his wish to hear some of Schumann’s chamber music later that evening. While Robert took Liszt to visit Wagner, Clara had but a few hours to gather the musicians and guests [3] for the evening’s festivities. “It was difficult to get four other artists to come at such short notice,” she later told Edward Speyer, “but I took a cab and drove about until I was fortunate enough to succeed in my mission.” [4] Liszt, for his part, made other plans for the early part of the evening, writing to Georg von Seydlitz: “Unfortunately I will only be able to spend a few moments with you, since I have asked Schumann to show me his new trio. [5] The Schumanns seem to me to be people who go to bed early, and so I will be obliged to arrive at your place at 8:00 o’clock.” [6]

The party started badly, with the guest of honor nowhere to be seen. After more than an hour of waiting, the disappointed guests began to make music without him. As they reached the last page of Beethoven’s D Major trio (“Ghost”), Liszt “stormed in the door,” two hours late. He seemed to enjoy the ensuing performance of Schumann’s trio, but his host’s quintet he belittled as too “Leipzigerisch.” “No, no, my dear Schumann, this is not the real thing,” he is reported to have said. “It is only Kapellmeister music.” [7] After dinner, Liszt sat down to play, in Clara’s words, “so disgracefully badly […] that I was really ashamed to have to stand there and listen, and not to be able to leave the room immediately, as Bendemann did.” [8] When he finished playing, Liszt gave an after-dinner speech, declaring that new trails were being blazed for music everywhere, and even that which a few years before had evoked the admiration of the world was already Rococo. [9] He tactlessly praised the music of Meyerbeer at the recently-deceased Mendelssohn’s expense, heedless of Schumann’s well-known aversion to Meyerbeer’s music and his esteem for his departed friend. Schumann flew into a rage, seizing Liszt by the shoulder and shouting: “And Mendelssohn? Is he also Rococo? Meyerbeer is a runt compared to Mendelssohn, who was an artist who made an effect, not only in Leipzig, but throughout the entire world, and Liszt should hold his tongue.”  [10] After more similar abuse, Schumann retreated to his bedroom. Liszt made an attempt to downplay the event, but eventually gave up and left the party, saying to Clara as he departed “Tell your husband that there is only one man from whom I would so calmly accept words such has he has just said to me.” [11] Liszt drove home with Wagner in a state of “amused embarrassment.” Wagner wrote: “I have seldom seen Liszt so boisterously cheerful as on this night, in which, clothed only in a thin tailcoat against the severe cold, he alternately accompanied me and concertmaster Schubert home.” [12] Later, Liszt admitted to Lina Ramann that they had “suffered through a very agitated evening together — which was my fault.” [13] “It wounded Robert too deeply for him ever to be able to forget it,” Clara wrote afterward, saying of Liszt: “I have broken with him for all eternity.” [14]

Schumann eventually re-established relations with Liszt, though the former cordiality never returned. A year later, in May of 1849, Schumann was still smarting from Liszt’s assessment of his music. Liszt, trying the door that had been slammed in his face, inquired through Carl Reineke whether he might perform Schumann’s Faust at Weimar’s upcoming Goethe celebration. Schumann replied: “But, dear friend, wouldn’t the composition perhaps be too Leipzigerisch for you? Or do you indeed hold Leipzig to be a miniature Paris, [15] in which one can also accomplish something?” He then went on to defend himself and Leipzig against Liszt’s criticisms that Leipzigers were concerned only with perpetuating dead forms, and that their music consequently sounded too much alike. “Seriously — I might have expected something different from you, who knows so many of my compositions, than to lump them all together, [16] expressing such a judgment of a whole life in art. […] And, truly, those who were together in Leipzig weren’t so bad after all, — Mendelssohn, Hiller, Bennet, et al. — we could hold our own with the Parisians, Viennese, and Berliners. […] So much for your comment, which was unjust and insulting. For the rest, let us forget the evening — a word is not an arrow — and the main thing is to strive forward.” [17] Liszt replied: “Highly honored friend, above all, allow me to repeat to you what, after a long time, you should actually know best beside me: that no one admires and respects you more sincerely than my humble self. Certainly, we can find a time to have a friendly discussion about the meaning of a work, a man, or indeed a city […]” [18]

Despite Schumann’s stated wish, the memory of their “agitated evening” was still green in his mind in early February, 1851, when he found himself seated next to the pianist Marfa Sabinina following a concert in Düsseldorf. “He also told me about Liszt,” Sabinina later wrote, “and in particular about a quarrel with him concerning Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer. During the course of the conversation, Schumann reiterated that he could not stand the music of Meyerbeer. […] Then, Frau Schumann joined our conversation; she spoke intensely against Liszt, particularly as a composer. It is clear that two such dissimilar natures as Clara Schumann and Liszt could not agree. […] Robert Schumann did not share his wife’s opinion, though; he felt that Liszt ‘was a intelligent pianist and person.’ This fair-minded opinion notwithstanding, Schumann, influenced by his wife, distanced himself from Liszt, or — more precisely — he kept to the Leipzig music world in which he had grown up, and had not a few friends.” [19]

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[1] This account is pieced together from numerous narratives, diary entries, reports of conversations, etc. While precise words vary, the gist and tenor of the story is consistent from source to source.

[2] In Leipzig, December, 1841.

[3] Liszt later told Lina Ramann that Wagner had been among the evening’s guests. [Franz Liszt and his World, ed. by Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley, Princeton 2006, p. 406 n. 17.] See also: Wagner, My Life.

[4] Speyer/LIFE, p. 82. Speyer, who heard this story directly from Clara Schumann, nevertheless mistakenly places it in Leipzig instead of Dresden.

[5] Opus 63.

[6] Quoted in Seibold/BEZIEHUNGEN, p. 193.

[7] ibid.

[8] “[…] so schändlich schlecht […] daß ich mich ordentlich schämte, dabeistehen zu müssen und nicht sogleich das Zimmer verlassen zu können, was Bendemann tat.” Litzmann/SCHUMANN, vol. 2, p. 121.

[9] Richter/GLANZZEIT, p. 74.

[10] “Und Mendelssohn? Der also ist auch Rokoko? Meyerbeer sei ein Wicht gegen Mendelssohn, letzterer ein Künstler, der nicht nur in Leipzig sondern für die ganze Welt gewirkt hätte, und Liszt solle doch lieber schweigen.” Richter/GLANZZEIT, p. 74.

[11] “Sagen Sie Ihrem Manne, nur von einem in der Welt nähme ich solche Worte so ruhig hin, wie er sie mir eben geboten.” Litzmann/SCHUMANN, vol. 2, p. 122. Speyer quotes Clara Schumann that Liszt said: “I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of such an unleasant incident. I feel I am in the wrong place here; pray accept my humble excuses and allow me to depart.” Speyer/LIFE, p. 82]

[12] “Ich habe selten Liszt so ausgelassen aufgeräumt gesehen als in dieser Nacht, wo er mich und den Konzertmeister Schubert bei empfindlicher Kälte nur im dünnen Frack gekleidet, abwechselnd von einem zum andern nach Hause begleitete.” (Wagner 1963: 435f.) (quoted in Seibold/BEZIEHUNGEN, 194-195). Dresden concertmaster Franz Schubert (1808-1878).

[13] Gibbs and Gooley/LISZT, p. 406, n. 17.

[14] “Robert hatte das zu tief verletzt, als daß er es jemals vergessen könnte. Ich habe für ewige Zeit mit ihm abgeschlossen.” Litzmann/SCHUMANN, vol. 2, p. 122.

[15] A reference to the Auerbachs Keller scene of Goethe’s Faust, in which the character Frosch says: “Mein Leipzig lob’ ich mir! Es ist ein klein Paris und bildet seine Leute.” (“I praise my Leipzig! It is a little Paris and educates its people.”)

[16] His expresion was “Im Bausch und Bogen.” Goethe: “Nehmt nur mein Leben hin / in Bausch
 und Bogen, wie ich´s führe;
 / Andre verschlafen ihren Rausch,
 / meiner steht auf dem Papiere.”

[17] “Aber lieber Freund, würde Ihnen die Komposition nicht vielleicht zu Leipzigerisch sein? Oder halten Sie Leipzig doch für ein Miniaturparis, in dem man auch etwas zustande bringen könne? Und wahrlich, sie waren doch nicht so übel, die in Leipzig beisammen waren — Mendelssohn, Hiller, Bennett u. a. — mit den Parisern, Wienern und Berlinern konnten wir es ebenfalls auch aufnehmen. […] So viel über Ihre Äußerung, die eine ungerechte und beleidigende war. Im übrigen vergessen wir des Abends — ein Wort ist kein Pfeil — und das Vorwärtsstreben die Hauptsache.” Litzmann/SCHUMANN, vol. 2, pp. 122-123.

[18] “Hochverehrter Freund, Vor allem erlauben Sie mir Ihnen zu wiederholen, was Sie eigentlich nach mir am Besten seit langer Zeit wissen sollten, nämlich, dass Sie niemand aufrichtiger verehrt und bewundert als meine Wenigkeit. Gelegentlich können wir allerdings über die Bedeutung eines Werkes, eines Mannes, ja sogar einer Stadt, freundschaftlich discutiren […].” Franz Liszt’s Briefe, ed. by La Mara (Marie Lipsius), vol. 1, Leipzig 1893, p. 78.

[19] “Er erzählte mir auch von Liszt, und zwar von einem Streit mit ihm über Mendelssohn und Meyerbeer. Dabei äußerte Schumann erneut, er könne die Musik von Meyerbeer nicht ertragen. […] Nun schloß sich Frau Schumann unserem Gespräch an; heftig redete sie gegen Liszt, insbesondere als Komponisten. Es ist klar, daß zwei so verschiedene Wesen wie Clara Schumann und Liszt sich nicht finden konnten. […] Robert Schumann teilte aber die Meinung seiner Frau nicht, er fand, Liszt ‘sei ein geistreicher Klavierspieler und Mensch.’ Dieser gerechten Meinung ungeachtet, hielt sich Schumann, von seiner Frau beeinflußt, Liszt fern oder — besser gesagt — er hielt sich an die Leipziger Musikwelt, in der er aufgewachsen war und nicht wenige Freunde hat.” Schumann Studien, ed. by Gerd Nauhaus, Sinzig: Studio Verlag, 1997, vol. 6, p. 212.

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Previous Post in Series: Hauser and Hellmesberger

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Study With Joseph Böhm

[i]

Photo: Emil Rabending, k. k. Hof-Photograph, Vienna

What an intimate friendship customarily exists between the earnest teacher and the attentive student! It is the communion of minds, and they tread in a relationship like that of father and son. [ii]

— Simon Sechter, 1841

An important teacher, [Leopold] Joseph Böhm is known today as the father of the Viennese school of violin playing. His pupils included some of the leading artists of the age: Ernst, Joachim, Georg Hellmesberger senior, Adolf Pollitzer [1], Eduard Rappoldi, Ede Reményi (Eduard Hoffmann), Ludwig Straus, [2] Edmund Singer, Jakob Dont and Jakob Grün. In 1819, Böhm was named the first professor of violin at the recently-founded Vienna Conservatory, a position he held until 1848. His pupils Grün and Hellmesberger later joined him on the Conservatory faculty. In the days of Richter and Mahler nearly all the violinists in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra were scions of this distinguished musical family, as they continue to be today. Grün’s pupil Franz Mairecker taught, among others, the Philharmonic’s 20th-century concertmasters Walter Barylli, Willi Boskovsky and Franz Samohyl. Samohyl’s pupils include more than twenty of the Philharmonic’s current members. Numerous others, past and present, are descendants of the Hellmesberger branch, including Arnold Rosé, Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Gerhart Hetzel. [3] Böhm’s violin playing was said to be “exquisitely pure and delicate,” and full of “soulful intimacy.” The unique beauty of the Philharmonic strings is often traced to the dark, voluptuous Hungarian sound introduced to Vienna by Böhm in the days of Beethoven and Schubert.

“Böhm’s personality was utterly endearing,” recalled Edmund Singer in his memoirs. “He was distinguished; seemingly cool, but never stiff. And he was never impatient, not even when he required this or that passage to be repeated a dozen times, until it turned out the way he thought it should […]. Occasionally moved to anger, he nevertheless was never provoked into an offending remark. A pupil of Rode, his method was a combination of the German and French schools. He frowned upon nothing so much as mawkish, mannered playing. ‘You’re feeling awfully sentimental again today,’ he would say. ‘An artist must have healthy playing, healthy feelings, healthy technique; only then is he an artist.’”

“Böhm’s instruction was very inspiring,” Singer continued, “although the master seldom took violin in hand to demonstrate. One knew, however, that he, himself, assiduously practiced all of the pieces that he taught, and I, like many others of his students, often stood before the doors of his room and evesdropped on his magnificent playing. He never played in concert, because appearing in public made him nervous; it was even said that his agitation immediately before a concert once reached such a degree that he fell into a faint, and that, as a consequence, he once and for all gave up appearing before a larger audience.”

Joachim’s training under Böhm was a true apprenticeship. In accepting Joseph as a student, Böhm and his wife agreed to take the “Pester Buam,” [4] as they called him, into their home on the Glacis, two blocks from the Schwarzspanierhaus where Beethoven had lived and died. [5] For the next three years, for all but the summer months, they would raise him in loco parentis, and train him in the practical skills of a professional violinist.

[6]

Joseph Joachim
From a daguerreotype

Once a “Pester Buam” himself, Böhm might have had a particular sympathy for young Joachim. Böhm had been born in Pest on March 4, 1795, and had studied violin with his father, a violinist in the local theater. As a boy, he practiced guitar as well as violin, and by the age of 12 he was able to earn money giving guitar lessons. He later took violin lessons with Pierre Rode, practicing so faithfully that he was banished to the attic by the other residents of his house. Rode, a principal representative of the bold new French style of playing, was then on the cutting-edge of violin pedagogy. Rode’s caprices and concerti are still studied today by every aspiring violinist. Together with selected works of Mayseder, they formed an important part of Joseph’s technical and musical training. In later life, Joachim was capable of playing from memory pieces by Viotti, Rode or Mayseder that he had studied with Böhm, though he had not practiced them since. “I have gone through a good school,” he said. “The rest has been given by a benevolent God.” [iii]

As a teacher, Böhm was able to help Joseph remedy the defects in his bowing that Hellmesberger had found so ruinous. “Based on an unfailing left hand and ideally smooth bowing, Böhm possessed an art of phrasing that enabled him to realize anything that he envisioned or felt,” Joachim later recalled. [iv] “In Böhm’s school Joachim’s bowing had become broad and free,” wrote Moser, “and he had acquired a degree of skill which in a few years was to lead to complete mastery. His pre-eminent power—later so conspicuous—of giving to each bowing its distinctive individuality; the absolute repose in his manner of drawing a long note; the incisiveness and pith of his half-bow; his spiccato, in all its shades, from “snow and rain to hail”; his equality of tone in all parts of the finger-board; in short, all the characteristics which adorn Joachim’s violin-playing, owe their origin to Böhm’s splendid method of teaching.” [v] “For the rest of his life,” Moser tells us, “Joachim could not say enough commendable things about the manner of [Böhm’s] instruction. Rigorous, serious and objective, it was at the same time loving and encouraging in every respect.”

As Catholics, the Böhms endured some criticism over their parental solicitude for Joseph; it was surely unusual in those years for a Jewish boy to live with a Catholic family. Moser claims: “Joachim was the butt of much harmless teasing at home on account of his Jewish descent.” Joachim also recalled to Moser how Frau Böhm would occasionally frighten him by saying: “Well, Pepperl, today the Chaplain gave me another good dressing-down because we have a heathen like you in our house. But don’t worry — practice like a good boy. We’ll answer to the dear Lord God for the rest.” [vi]

Though not a violinist, Frau Böhm played a critical role in the Joseph’s musical upbringing, attending his lessons, and taking personal charge of his practicing. Moser affords us a telling glimpse of their domestic life: “While Böhm was teaching in the Conservatoire, or discharging his duties in the orchestra of the Imperial Chapel, Pepi had to practice his assignment at home, and Frau Böhm would sit down, needle-work in hand, and supervise the boy’s practice. She would correct him with a ‘Pepperl, weißt, das war aber gar nit gut, und schöner klingen muß es auch noch… ’ (Viennese dialect: ‘Pepperl, look, that wasn’t at all good, and it must sound more beautiful still. You must practice such a passage repeatedly until you can manage it smoothly and without effort, etc.’).”  If he did not respond to Frau Böhm’s cajoling, “it might happen that the curtain was drawn back from the glass door of the adjoining room, and Böhm’s Mentor-head, with its strict but loving demeanor, would appear; or the door would open and the stern Herr Professor would call into the studio: ‘confounded boy, will you play that properly?’ This usually helped.” [vii]

Supervised practice was a critical element in Joseph’s success.  “For a long time, I […] was not allowed to practice alone,” Joachim wrote to Clara Schumann in 1861. [viii] Böhm employed a different approach to supervision with his conservatory pupils: an adaptation of the Lancasterian Monitorial System, a method developed by the British pioneer of mass education, Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838). Following Seneca’s motto, Qui docet, discit (“He who teaches, learns”), Lancaster’s system employed advanced students as peer tutors to help the less experienced members of the class. [7] According to one of Joachim’s fellow students, Adolf Grünwald, Böhm had his students play duets “for months together, so that the pupils became perfectly familiar with this form of music, indeed thoroughly tired of it.” [ix]

Not all Conservatory pupils thrived under this system. Karl Goldmark, who briefly studied with Böhm in 1847, gives an insight into this tiered system of instruction as Böhm practiced it: “Joseph Böhm was an extraordinary teacher. Great virtuosity, combined with thorough musical culture, were the results of his instruction. He spoke but little—his censure was a scornful smirk; it was devastating. In the five months that I attended school in his upper class, I only got to see how one holds the violin. And yet, from this class the greatest violinists emerged: for example, Ernst, Joachim, Auer, Ludwig Strauss, Singer, etc. Admittedly, only his private students got to hear him. And we learned from them.” [x]

[xi]

Joseph Böhm

Though Böhm no longer gave solo performances, he could nevertheless look back upon a distinguished performing career. He made his début in Vienna at the age of twenty-one, and two years later toured Italy with the piano virtuoso Johann Peter Pixis (1788-1874). Böhm and Pixis were still playing together in September, 1823, when a reviewer in Frankfurt am Main described Böhm’s playing of his own violin concerto in D Major and a Rondo brillant of Mayseder: “clarity, security, beautiful tone, [8] excellent facility and variety of interpretation; Herr Böhm possesses all of these characteristics. Particularly surprising was his articulate staccato in the quickest tempo.” [xii]

As a member of the Imperial Hofopernorchester from 1821 to 1868, Böhm played in many historically significant concerts, including a performance of Beethoven’s 9th symphony under the composer’s direction. He became an early advocate for Schubert’s chamber music, and on March 26, 1828 he gave the premiere of Schubert’s opus 100 trio.  Together with Holz, Weiss and Linke of the original Schuppanzigh Quartet, he performed Beethoven’s string quartets under the composer’s supervision, [9] in venues that included a popular series of morning concerts in a coffee house in Vienna’s beautiful Prater. The 8:00 a.m. concerts commenced on the first of May, when there was still a chill in the air. “This is the way to hear Beethoven’s and Mozart’s quartets!” exclaimed the Vienna Musikzeitung in 1821. [xiii]

For Joachim, this direct personal and musical connection to Beethoven held a great and abiding significance. “I cannot think back upon it without emotion,” he told Moser:

how Böhm recounted the course of a rehearsal with Beethoven of one of his last quartets [10], around the year 1820. How the stone-deaf man sat and stared with wide-open mouth, and could only deduce which passages they were playing from the gestures of the players’ bowing. How, from time to time, he grabbed the arm of one or the other of them and sang for him, with horrible expression in impossible intervals, reading in the faces of the quartet players whether they had understood him or not. In the one case he rubbed his knee and smiled to himself with satisfaction; in the other, however, he strode across the room with agitated steps, fists clenched across his back, muttering unintelligible words to himself. How he ranted and cursed when, despite his careful correction of the parts, the players nevertheless found errors, or when one of them gathered up the courage to declare that this or that passage could not be performed in the prescribed way, even with the best of intentions. On the other hand, he could smile unbelievably indulgently and thankfully when one described a passage as particularly well-written, or offered the opinion: only ‘he’ could have composed something like that.

But Böhm was always honest enough to admit sincerely that neither he nor his colleagues — Schuppanzigh not excepted — had comprehended Beethoven’s genius during his lifetime to the extent that it was known after his death, when the composer could no longer torment them with his often completely unfulfillable demands, but instead, having entered into immortality, holds watch over the performance of his works as an invisible spirit. He assured me repeatedly that upon hearing the last quartet played by the elder Hellmesberger’s quartet a generation after Beethoven’s passing, he saw the form of the Titan so vividly before him as though it had been yesterday, and that he would not have wondered at all to see him enter the hall and to hear him argue about many things which were not to his liking in the otherwise truly outstanding performance. [xiv]

In this story we have a palpable representation of what Carl Dahlhaus claims as one of Beethoven’s signal contributions to the art of music:

Beethoven, virtually in one fell swoop, claimed for music the strong concept of art, without which music would be unable to stand on a par with literature and the visual arts; […] Beethoven’s symphonies represent inviolable musical “texts” whose meaning is to be deciphered with “exegetical” interpretations; a Rossini score, on the other hand, is a mere recipe for a performance, and it is the performance which forms the crucial aesthetic arbiter as the realization of a draft rather than an exegesis of a text. […] That a composer who did not care a whit about Ignaz Schuppanzigh’s “wretched fiddle,” as Beethoven called it, could successfully demand that performances be a function of the text, rather than vice versa, can only have astonished early-nineteenth-century contemporaries; and even though this view is now taken for granted among the artistically well educated, historians ought to receive it in its original spirit. The new insight that Beethoven thrust upon the aesthetic consciousness of his age was that a musical text, like a literary or philosophical text, harbors a meaning which is made manifest but not entirely subsumed in its acoustic presentation — that a musical creation can exist as an “art work of ideas” transcending its various interpretations. [xv]

From the earliest age, then, Joseph’s involvement in Beethoven’s circle taught him important artistic lessons: from Beethoven, through Böhm, he was imbued with the notion that the greater meaning of a work resides in the score itself, not as a “recipe for a performance” but as a text to be construed (here, after all, was the stone-deaf composer, nevertheless insisting on the finical interpretation of what he had written); that great music is not always easily understood or realized, even by distinguished musicians; and that a musical artwork possesses a quality of timeless “truth” that can be viewed sub specie aeternitatis — under the aspect of eternity. It is in that sense that the composer remains personally invested in his work, holding watch over it in spirit, even after death.

Böhm continued to be an enthusiastic quartet player at home. His informal performances with colleagues formed an important part of Joseph’s musical education:

Even today, I still have the liveliest recollection of the manner in which he played Beethoven quartets with his colleague friends on Sundays at his apartment. Indeed, they were the first truly great artistic impressions of my life. For what I heard my teacher Serwaczynski do in the house of Count Franz von Brunswick when I was a child in Pest has naturally nearly fully escaped my memory. I still remember only darkly that several times I had to jump in for the missing or sick second violinist in quartets by Beethoven and quintets by Onslow.

I remember all the more thankfully the affectionate care with which Böhm went through the second violin part of the F minor quartet, op. 95, with me one day […] Since the experiment was carried off to the satisfaction of my teacher and his companions, I was invited to participate more and more frequently, and in this way — already in my childhood — I learned a not insubstantial part of the quartet literature.

Indeed, it had the consequence that, spoiled by Böhm’s superior ability to give shape to the music, I could not be particularly satisfied by either the quartet-playing of the elder Müller brothers [11] or, later, that of Ferdinand David. The former only used to play single movements of the “late Beethoven” now and then, and even these were done in what seemed to me an insufficiently incisive way, while David very often played them in questionable taste, especially when Mendelssohn was away from Leipzig, sojourning on the Spree,[12] since he felt it was necessary to spruce them up with all manner of coquettish gimmicks. In general, he felt things absolutely correctly and, for the most part, he knew what was what, but sometimes he could not help overdoing it.

It was only in the fifties, when, together with Wieniawski and Piatti, I joined the quartet of the London Beethoven Society under H. W. Ernst’s leadership that I came to love and honor in the latter an artist that not only accorded with my ideals, but in certain points even exceeded them.

Admittedly, Ernst was also a pupil of Böhm’s and as truly devoted to him as I; indeed it was he who led me to become his student. [xvi]

“For Joachim,” writes Moser, “these gatherings in the Böhm household were an inexhaustible source of recollection about an epoch in the performing arts that has found its conclusion with his passing; and for me an object of inestimable edification when we later worked together on our shared edition of the Beethoven string quartets.” [xvii

[xviii]

Joseph Böhm

© Robert W. Eshbach, 2013.

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Next Post in Series: Conservatory Student  

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Addendum: Joseph Böhm in Concert

Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, No. 66 (16 August 1823), p. 528.

Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, No. 80 (4 October, 1823), p. 640.

Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, No. 84 (18 October, 1823), p. 680

Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, No. 97 (3 December, 1823), pp. 769-771.

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