Lithograph of Robert Schumann / Joseph Kriehuber, 1839

Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony has long been a staple in the orchestral repertoire. Its one-movement structure is practically unique among symphonies.

Music history textbooks label most of the nineteenth century as the Romantic era. In fact, Schumann was one of the few composers who identified so completely with literary Romanticism that he described himself as a Romantic composer.

Among other characteristics, Romantic music broke away from the formal restraint of the Classical period. Emotional expression replaced formal structure as the focal point of musical composition.

Following his year of songs (1840), Robert  Schumann turned his attention to orchestral music in 1841. It took him all of four days in January to complete the first draft of his First Symphony. The Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, with Felix Mendelssohn conducting, presented the premiere to great acclaim on March 31.

Schumann started on his second symphony, which turned out to be his fourth in order of publication, on May 30. The next day, his wife Clara noted in her diary that it would be a symphony in one movement. He completed it during the first week of June and finished the orchestration early in October.

Premiere and reception of Schumann’s Fourth Symphony

Robert and Clara Schumann in 1847, lithograph with a personal dedication

The new symphony greatly contrasted with the first. And that meant more than just its revolutionary structure. Instead of a sunny invocation of spring, it was a more brooding and dramatic work in D minor.

If he expected to duplicate the success of his first symphony, he was disappointed. The relative failure did not result from a lack of effort. He enlisted Franz Liszt to perform a duet with Clara, herself a famous virtuoso, on the December 6 premiere of the symphony.

Mendelssohn, however, was not available to conduct that concert. Concertmaster Ferdinand David prepared the symphony. Clara complained that the orchestra under his leadership did not play it well.

Nonetheless, the symphony received favorable reviews. Schumann’s publisher, however, declined to accept it. The First Symphony was selling very well. A new symphony so soon after a lackluster premiere might interfere with sales. So Schumann set it aside for more than ten years. During the interval, he composed and published two more symphonies.

Revision and success

After the completion of the last of these, Schumann began to prepare for posthumous publication of a D minor symphony by Norbert Burgmüller. That work inspired him to return to his own D minor symphony, but he didn’t simply dust it off and have it performed. He revised it considerably.

The premiere of the new version on May 13, 1853 at the Lower Rhine Music Festival met with great enthusiasm. It was one of the last public triumphs of his career before he descended into madness.

Clara Schumann considered the revision far superior to the original. Johannes Brahms, on the other hand, preferred the first version. Over Clara’s objections, he had it published. Today, the revised version is the more often performed and recorded, but the original version still has its champions.

Analysis of Schumann’s Fourth Symphony

The standard four-movement symphony opens with a movement in sonata form. It’s usually a fast movement that may or may not have a slow introduction. A slow movement usually comes second. Classical symphonies usually used a minuet for the third movement. Multiple forms served for the fourth movement.

Except for his first and eighth symphonies, Beethoven substituted a much faster movement in triple time for the minuet. In the second and third symphonies, he labeled it “scherzo.” Although he didn’t call his other similar symphonic movements scherzos, it became a common designation.

Schumann discovered and promoted Schubert’s Great C Major Symphony, usually numbered the ninth. It follows that standard form, with a scherzo.

All of Schumann’s symphonies show Schubert’s influence and all have scherzos, although, except for the first symphony, he does not use the standard order of movements.

The D minor symphony marks Schumann’s most radical departure from the model he inherited from Beethoven and Schubert. Most analyses I have seen describe it in four movements played without pause, but from the start, Clara Schumann described it as a single movement.

Not quite the first movement

Incipit of Schumann’s Fourth Symphony. The descending four-note figure is the Clara Theme

It opens with what seems like the standard slow introduction and moves to what seems like the opening of a fast movement. The opening is based on the so-called Clara Theme. Clara wrote Romance varié for solo piano and had it published as her op. 3 in 1833. Robert Schumann and Brahms both used the theme extensively. It appears in various guises throughout the symphony.

A standard first movement of a symphony would introduce a theme in the tonic and move to a new theme in a contrasting key. There would be a development followed by a recapitulation of the basic thematic material, all in the tonic. That’s not what happens.

The opening section does indeed modulate to the contrasting key of  F major, but it doesn’t introduce a new theme. In this way, it resembles the monothematic sonata forms of Haydn. In the revised version, but not the original, this opening section repeats.

It’s what looks on the surface like a development section that introduces new thematic material. The trombones proclaim a dramatically dissonant theme before more lyrical music, a typical second theme, appears. This section eventually winds up in D major.

Not quite the second and third movements

Instead of providing the expected recapitulation, Schumann moves immediately to the slow Romanze. Most of it comprises an oboe and cello duet, but the center section returns to the Clara Theme of the slow introduction. Then a totally new violin solo leads back to the duet.

The scherzo, like standard scherzos, introduces a very fast dancelike idea and moves to a middle section. Except this one uses the violin solo from the Romanze, now played by all the violins, for that purpose. The opening of the scherzo reappears as expected, but so does the violin melody.

Finale, but not quite the fourth movement

A quiet passage that corresponds to nothing in a standard symphony leads back to the finale. But it starts out with some of the new themes introduced in the “development.” The finale provides the recapitulation expected earlier, except it omits much of the expected thematic material. Much of it is also in D major, sort of an extended Picardy third.

The recapitulation of an ordinary sonata form resolves all the dramatic tension that comes earlier. Schumann’s doesn’t. The open ending may be one of the most thoroughly Romantic aspects of his radical form.

Sources:

Radical romanticism: Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 / Calvin Dotsey, Houston Symphony Orchestra. October 2018
Schumann and Brahms: musical depictions of Clara / Timothy Judd, The Listener’s Club. September 9, 2019
Schumann: Symphony no. 4 in D minor, op. 120 (final version) / C. Kenneth Woods. October 2013