Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn) are nearly the last coherent piano works he wrote – he would attempt to drown himself only days after completing them, and would die three years after. The Op.133 is rarely performed, perhaps because of the prevailing opinion that Schumann’s increasing insanity significantly affected the quality of his musical output after 1850, or because, on a purely musical level, it is pretty hard to parse.
In fact, this anti-reductive quality is what makes the Op.133 one of the most moving collections of pieces ever written for solo piano: this is not a mind unraveling as much as expanding into a whole new kind of life. To be sure, the Op.133 is difficult. It is wayward, with cadences that refuse to appear, opaque melodies, emotional complexities that branch, estuary-like, into more emotional complexities, and even the pieces in major keys contain a kind of resignation that is hard to immediately understand. But all this a pretty natural culmination of Schumann’s style, which always leant toward the fantastic, and almost always eluded easy characterization. In the Op.133 we see these hallmarks raised to an extreme pitch – the music is so emotionally inbent, so personal and vulnerable, that it’s almost obscene.
No.1, Im ruhigen Tempo. A deeply moving chorale where dissonances resolve into dissonances, and whose main tone is one of reverential stillness: the main idea is repeated 5 times with slight development, growing into a stretto at the end. The skill of the contrapuntal writing here is and in the next piece shows that even though Schumann struggled in composing this work, he was still entirely capable of producing work of great complexity.
No.2, Belebt, nicht zu rasch. An extraordinary work: the music is so wrapped in itself, so obsessively circling in search of resolution, that it’s basically impossible to understand on a first hearing. It’s rhythmically complex – the little pause that opens the piece throws you off, as do the constant syncopation and gaps in the melody – and harmonically restless, hiding its true key until very late in the piece. The counterpoint is dense, with the melody first appearing in the middle voice and the bass providing a kind of loosely muted imitation that eventually takes over – for a while, at least. The tone changes abruptly too, with staccato and semiquaver passages emerging without any preparation, pointed dotted rhythms interrupting the flow of triplets, and sforzandi scattered about.
No.3, Lebhaft. This work sounds like it ought to be the most straightforward of the set, with a galloping rhythm that persists throughout the whole piece, but its surprisingly complex and shifting harmonies make this something more than what you’d expect of a stereotypical “Morning-Song”.
No.4, Bewegt. A work which could be called Mendelssohnian, if not for its weirdly itinerant melody. The 32nd notes lend an unceasing undercurrent of restlessness which turns into full-blown agitation at the climax.
No.5, Im Anfange ruhiges, im Verlauf bewegtes Tempo. The final piece, like the first, has a texture that is rather chorale-like, although its dotted rhythms give it a sense of movement and a more warm, homely sound. This all changes with the entrance of a gently luminous semiquaver accompaniment and a sudden shift to B – the piece is now tender, anticipatory in a way that never receives fulfillment. Fittingly, a plagal cadence brings this piece (and the set) to a close, as it does the one before it.