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18 SCHUMANN_Fantasie & Kreisleriana
Fantasie
in C major op.17
Schumann had to face the most appalling torments in the hope of being accepted
by the father of the young and famous virtuoso Clara Wieck, with whom he was
madly in love. In 1836, Friedrich Wieck – his piano teacher – imposed a year of
painful separation on the future couple. All the works he wrote then were marked
by the personality of Clara (her absence, the period of passionate waiting that was
so hard to bear). The
Fantasie
op.17 was in fact intended as Schumann’s contribution
to Liszt’s project of erecting a monument in Bonn to commemorate the tenth
anniversary of the death of Beethoven. A supremely successful example of large-
scale form for the keyboard, this three-movement score became established as a
keywork in the piano repertory and an emblemof the Romantic soul.The immense
first movement (marked ‘to be played with fantasy and passion throughout’) is
the most developed and the richest in content, like ‘an approximation of a sonata’
(Marcel Beaufils). In spite of the violence of tone and the frequent breaks in the
discourse, a febrile tension is constantlymaintained right fromthe opening phrase,
a ‘long cry of love to Clara’ which is temporarily interrupted only by the appearance
of a melody, a quotation from Beethoven’s song cycle
An die ferne Geliebte
(To the
distant beloved) of which Liszt had made a transcription for his instrument; it is
thus a double tribute to the latter, dedicatee of the
Fantasie
, and to Clara (for she
truly was the Distant Beloved!). Light and hope at last invite themselves into the
work – but perhaps this is simply a homage to Beethoven’s Sonata op.111, which
also ends in the piano’s low register with a tranquil hymn to the night.