Piano Quintet (Schumann)
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The Piano Quintet by Robert Schumann was written in 1842. It is in the key of E flat major and is his opus 44. Like most piano quintets, it is written for piano and string quartet (two violins, viola and cello).
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Background
The work was composed in just a few weeks in September and October 1842, also known as his "Chamber Music Year". Before that year, Schumann had completed no chamber music at all with the exception of an early piano quartet (in 1829), but he now concentrated on the genre, writing his three string quartets and the piano quartet in the same year.
Form
The piece is in four movements, in the standard quick-slow-scherzo-quick pattern:
- Allegro brilliante
- In modo d'una marcia. Un poco largamente
- Scherzo: Molto vivace
- Allegro ma non troppo
Finale: Allegro ma non troppo
At the end of the piece, the last movement's main theme is combined with the first movement's main theme in a double fugue.
Reception
Clara Schumann, the composer's wife and a noted pianist, often played the work throughout her life, despite criticsm of her performance from her husband late in his life and a statement that only a man could understand it. Despite its popularity, Franz Liszt heard the piece at the Schumanns' home and was distinctly unimpressed by it, dismissing it as being "too Leipzigerisch", a reference to Johann Sebastian Bach.
Bibliography
Daverio, John. “'Beautiful and Abstruse Conversations': The Chamber Music of Schumann.” Nineteenth-Century Chamber Music. Ed. Stephen E. Hefling. New York: Schirmer, 1998: 208–41
Nelson, J.C. ‘Progressive Tonality in the Finale of the Piano Quintet, op.44 of Robert Schumann’. Indiana Theory Review, xiii/1 (1992): 41–51.
Wollenberg, Susan. ‘Schumann's Piano Quintet in E flat: the Bach Legacy’, The Music Review, lii (1991): 299–305.
Westrup, J. ‘The Sketch for Schumann's Piano Quintet op.44’, Convivium musicorum: Festschrift Wolfgang Boetticher. Ed. H. Hüschen and D.-R. Moser. Berlin, 1974: 367–71.
Tovey, D.F. Essays in Musical Analysis: Chamber Music. London: Oxford, 1944: 149–54.