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Robert Schumann and the History of the Nocturne

(Robert Schumann in 1839)

(9.5.2023) The literal meaning of ›nocturne‹ (or ›notturno‹) is: ›becoming night‹/›night falling‹. But hearing of the musical genre of the nocturne, one does rather think of night than dusk. Does it matter, if a lyrical piano piece is to be associated with night/darkness or with dusk/twilight? For German composer Robert Schumann it did matter. And Robert Schumann, in the history of twilight, which means: also in our history of the blue hour, is not anyone. Perhaps German composer Robert Schumann is even to be seen as one of the main protagonists of that history unfolding, since he might have been one of the artists who have shaped our ideas of twilight and everything associated with it and thus influenced the history of mentalities and emotions. And we may start with stating that Robert Schumann, composer, but also writer, and also diarist, was a connoisseur of twilight (in its most ambiguous sense) indeed.

1) A Connoisseur of Dusk and Dawn

As I am studying the diaries of Robert Schumann in search of twilight, I feel like a pioneer. Perhaps nobody has ever researched the diaries of Robert Schumann in search of twilight. But there it is, in 1828, and with Schumann making clear that, here, twilight was a state of mind rather than an actual time of day or night. Since he is stating (I am paraphrasing): if he loved, everything was twilight around him, but dawn; and if he had nothing (to love) and he wept, everything was twilight, but dusk.
If being in a dreamy state of mind, one might paraphrase, the emotional mood was either ›being full of enthusiastic hope‹, which was instigated by love, or › full of despair‹, if nothing was there to hope for.
This might be a passage in which Schumann is speaking in very basic emotional categories, but twilight does also appear, in the context of his diaries, as something that was just part of the day, but something he noted: Dämmerungsstunde, Dämmerungsdialoge, and, in 1829, he watched twilight, as he noted, for a long, long time at the window. In such passages, one might say, we see him from another angle: as someone drawn to explore the actual twilight hour, respectively dusk, without stating, however, how he felt (at that particular day). In 1842 twilight surprised him. His eyes were hurting, and, addressing Clara in written form (since they kept a common diary), he begged for a kiss.

As I am studying the writings of Robert Schumann, his reviews for example, which are often witty, playful and spirited, I feel that we are coming closer his actual musical existence, while we are still researching his more intellectual addressing of twilight and of music. Of course we know that Schumann is also a composer of night music (his Nachtstücke come to mind), and that one of his characteristics is that he had this double nature, a wild extrovertedness at times, and a more introspective dreamy side, for which the characters of Florestan, respectively Eusebius, whom he did invent, and whom he had also write his reviews at times, do stand. And perhaps his iconic Träumerei can be named a musical expression of a dreamy state of mind per se.

(John Field in c. 1835)

In the context of his writings (and of course also in his diaries), it may be, that also the emotional conventions of his day do appear, since we may not be sure that dusk was associated per se, and for everyone at all times, with a general melancholy. But if someone like Robert Schumann associated dusk with a certain unspecified wistfulness (as in the review of a concert by W. Taubert), this might have been an impact on how again posterity felt or tended to feel, posterity who might be, perhaps, under the spell of that composer, the embodiment of the romantic composer, who did also put the iconic Zwielicht (the poem by Eichendorff, which addresses a more toxic, dangerous twilight) into music (see the excerpt of the piano score above).

2) ›Night is Falling‹ Instead of: ›Night has Fallen‹

And now the history of the nocturne: because it was in a review of one of the nocturnes by Irish composer-pianist John Field, the ›inventor‹ of this particular piano genre, in which Schumann made that difference between music of the night and music of dusk. For dusk stood John Field, a composer Schumann loved and appreciated. And it seems to me that it was nocturne number 17 which Schumann reviewed in 1835 (a nocture pastorale), but I am not completely sure. For a music of the night, late night, in that review, stood Frédéric Chopin (and it has to be reminded that Schumann once even planned to write variations on a nocturne by Chopin, which, however, remained one of his unrealized projects).

(Picture: Jason Pratt)

Thinking about the difference Schumann made here, I tend to think that the nocturnes by Chopin are indeed too refined, too elegant, too operatic and, occasionally: too extroverted pieces of music, to be called music of dusk. And the one nocturne by Field that Schumann reviewed strikes me as a more improvised, pensive, and yes, more monotonous piece. Hence the difference is for me: a music which is an expression or a musical equivalent of dreamy introspection, which is (yet) lacking refinement and form, and is or seems rather improvised, and a music like that of Chopin which offers the most elegant melodies which, as one might say, are meant to glow in the night and seem to come from a stage, with an audience listening. A music of dusk, one might say, rather could be named a speaking to oneself, as a composer-pianist improvises into dusk and into the night, with himself being or seeming to be the only listener. Since introspection and extroverted addressing of an audience do not go together well – it does make sense to me to make a distinction between music of dusk and music of night, while both might be part of the history of the nocturne.

(Picture: entomart.ins)

3) Flowers and Insects

In his review Robert Schumann showed his enthusiasm for Field also by stating that he wished to make him a wreath of flowers, naming a flower called Abendviole. Which is a flower, today being called Nachtviole. It is one of the flowers that tend to smell more intensely, as evening is coming, and the change in name is indicating that we have the possibility to associate evening with night, or with day. We could be reminded that Schumann lived in the pre-electricity age; and night, then, certainly had a different quality, and, perhaps, the effects that nature had to offer, the spectacle that nature had to offer, were/was being perceived more prominently and intensely than today (or perhaps more routinely), since effects of artificial light, and the style of living, associated with artificial light, were not yet, as one may say, outshadowing the spectacle of nature. And perhaps we should honor Schumann also for reminding us that, apart form emotional moods, dusk and dawn had and have a natural history, with flowers, but also insects – the Dämmerungsfalter – being part of it. Cultural and natural history, as in the history of the blue hour, show to be deeply intertwined.