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The Blue Hour in Robert Schumann

(Robert Schumann in 1850)

(23./24.5.2023) It was in 1853, roughly in the middle of the nineteenth century, that Robert Schumann composed his Gesänge der Frühe, a collection of five piano pieces, meant to express the ›sentiments while awaiting morning to come, and while seeing morning grow‹. And originally Schumann had had a dedication – ›To Diotima‹ – in mind, which he dismissed, apparently after realizing that his younger comtemporaries, Brahms as well as the violinist Joseph Joachim, seemed not able to do anything with this reference. Which means that Schumann had actually been looking back – since Diotima is a figure, a name in Hölderlin –, Hölderlin, who is also a name in the history of the blue hour. And that Schumann, at the same time, literally, composed five times ›looking forward‹. Since this is the quintessence of awaiting a morning. With mixed feelings, certainly, late in his career, and shortly before his suicide attempt, but not in total resignation, since five piano pieces represent sentiments of awaiting morning in five very different ways. We look at this composition here, also with the aim of looking back in mind – looking back to Hölderlin –, but also with the aim of looking forward, in our history of the blue hour. From Schumann to the end of the nineteenth century, to other composers, and also to playwright Anton Chekhov.

1) To Diotima

It is worth noticing that Robert Schumann did not expressively associate his Gesänge der Frühe with the German writer Jean Paul. Why is this odd? This is odd for two reasons: on the one hand Jean Paul was actually his literary saint, and on the other hand the German writer Jean Paul was obsessed with twilight, obsessed with dusk and dawn, and thus an expert for dusk and dawn. And Schumann knew this very well, since one of the most important Jean Paul references for him was the novel Die Flegeljahre (1804/05), with the two main protagonists Walt and Vult, after which Schumann modelled his two fictional characters of Eusebius and Florestan, and Jean Paul did characterize Walt and Vult in the following way:

»Die Dämmerung konnte Vult kaum erwarten, um ein Dämmerungsfalter zu werden und auszuflattern; Walt zählte ebenso stark darauf, um ein Dämmerungs-, ein Nacht- und ein Tagfalter zugleich zu sein, aber nur geistig und nur daheim.«

No, Robert Schumann actually had had in mind, before dedicating the cycle to Bettina von Arnim, to dedicate his Gesänge der Frühe to Diotima. And why Diotima?
We can only speculate. Diotima was a character in Hölderlin’s Hyperion novel (1797; 1799); and Hyperion, the character Hyperion, loved Diotima, the Greek girl. How do we know that? Because the novel is made out of letters Hyperion sent to a friend, and in this letters, as one may say, Hyperion idealized and celebrated his love to Diotima, the Greek girl, by staging his love, not only, but also in sceneries of twilight. Actually the ›blue twilight‹ is even named by Diotima herself, but everything that is said in Hyperion and by characters in Hyperion, is actually made up in the mind of Hyperion. Hyperion, the person, is staged in the novel as the one staging, idealizing and telling about a past love (because Diotima died), in retrospect. In retrospect, just as Robert Schumann, in 1853, did look back and did recall Diotima, probably the figure in the novel, perhaps also the name in Hölderlin’s Diotima poems (in which Diotima, as a name, as a reference, as a person, has a similar function as in the novel).
›To Diotima‹ would thus have meant: in memory of what was said, transmitted by Hyperion on Diotima, and in memory of the ways the novel Hyperion did once move or inspire the composer Robert Schumann. What is told in Hyperion is, all in all, the story of an inspiring love that made the lover Hyperion a poet (because Diotima wished him, muse-like, to be a poet). And experiencing the twilight, to be in twilight moods, was part of that love story. And now he have to turn to the Gesänge der Frühe, to the actual piano cycle, respectively to ways of seeing it, of interpreting, of hearing it.

2) A Young Person’s Awaiting of Dawn and A More Experienced Person’s Awaiting of Dawn

How often did I pass these two stone lions. When by bike, and often before dawn, I had to ›go‹ to school, and passed this entrance to a property with these two stone lions. Youth may be the age of idealization, when one is inclined to idealize (the love to a girl, respectively the girl), and in my youth I did not think much of the two lions. But now, many years later, the two lions are still there, and in a way they have aged with me, but in a way they are still the same two lions.
I do not recall that, while ›going‹ to school, often before dawn, I did spend much time thinking about dawn. No, awaiting the morning was rather: preparing for what was to come, in school, next, if there was time, for growing up, and for everything that had to do with growing up, and yes, for idealization and future projects. And certainly did I not await dawn while musing on things past, on the ambiguities of failed projects, failed love affairs, and with the mixed emotions of a more experienced person. Who already had experienced failure, disappointment, but perhaps also enthusiasm and success. No, youth means: all this one might, somehow, vaguely, be expecting to come. But experience, on which one does look back, there is only more or less to draw on.
The piano cycle Gesänge der Frühe by Robert Schumann is made of five pieces, and this is important to note. Because what Schumann does give is ambiguity. All these pieces are, if we follow the composer, expressions of sentiments while awaiting a morning. But these five pieces are not five times the same chant. Schumann shows different ways of awaiting dawn: and yes, also more lively, in some sense: youthfully energetic ways. The Gesänge der Frühe are not mere resignation, although resigned mood is also part of the cycle. And also this ›falling into mechanic defiantly repetitive movement‹, as if obsessively repeating what is recognized to be false, again and again (as also in one piece of the Humoreske). Elegy is there, in the cycle, but also prospects and future projects. Because liveliness and vitality as such, while awaiting dawn can also be interpreted as ›still having projects‹. It can yet be interpreted as ›living through projects, in retrospect‹, and everything in the cycle can be interpreted that way. But making the cycle, composing and playing it, is decidedly more, in itself, that mere resignation.

3) The Future Perspective – The Future Blue Hour

The Gesänge the Frühe, as musicology has noted, are partly also rather modern, partly anticipating pieces by Alexander Scriabin. And I am thinking also of Anton Chekhow, the playwright: because in his play The Cherry Orchard (1904), in the first scene, various protagonists are awaiting the morning to come, and we have various perspectives, various moods, as in the piano cycle by Schumann. Dawning has begun, very early in the hours of actual night; one is expecting the return of the owner of the estate with the cherry orchard, and there is talk of future projects and prospects, of marriages particularly. And there is also resignation, perhaps embodied by the servant who says that, when the owner of the estate, the lady, has returned, it will be possible for him to die. And in his case this might even be named a sort of happy resignation.
Schumann has given us not only five compositions, but the prospect to multiply perspectives (after Jean Paul had doubled the perspectives from one to two). As we have seen the painter Max Klinger, was to show multiple ways of dreaming in his painting Die Blaue Stunde, decades later. And thus we may link Hölderlin with Schumann, with Klinger, Scriabin and with Chekhow, and what we find is – a history of twilight, a history of the blue hour (that we are writing here). And if you may ask: but where is the blue in Schumann? With the 20th century composer Olivier Messiaen we might identify harmony with color. Messiaen seems to have identified the A-Major chord with the color blue. And this, as one particular mood, we may also find in Schumann, naturally, but most of all we find retrospection, we find energy for future projects, and we find the future ways, in Chekhow, in Messiaen, the future ways of making what poets, composers have to make of twilight, of the blue hour, which is poetry.