Symphony No.2

Few works were produced in the following year, but in September 1845 he first mentions conceiving a new work: In my last days something noisy drums and trumpets in me... I do not know what will come of it. Sketches of the C-Major Symphony are dated between 12 and 18 December, Schumann says: I drafted it when I was in physical distress, and I can boldly assert that it was a resistance of the spirit which is clearly manifested here, and by which I tried to combat my condition. The first part is full of this struggle and is very variable and contradictory in its nature. By the end of December, the manuscript of the entire symphony was completed, and beginning on February 12, 1846 Schumann spent most of the next year orchestrating. Due to depression and ill health (including constant ringing in his ears), he was only able to complete the score on October 19. On November 5 it was premiered by the renowned Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Felix Mendelssohn. Five years earlier, the same orchestra had performed Schumann's two previous symphonies, which, however, were received rather differently - Symphony No.1 in B flat major, under Mendelssohn's baton, was a great success, while the following Symphony in D minor, conducted by the orchestra's concertmaster Ferdinand David, was coolly received. And although Schumann valued it no less than the First, it was not published and not performed for ten years. It was not until 1851 that the composer returned to it again, but in its new version it became the Fourth. Thus the Symphony in C major was adopted as the Second. In it, Schumann seemed to have sought to remove himself from his painful personal experiences and to build a sweeping epic canvas, in the development of which - from the drama of the first movement, through the anxiously paced Scherzo and the expressive lyricism of the Adagio - he reached the enlightened final hymn, like Beethoven's principle of from darkness to light. But in the restless, complex construction of the work are, in the words of German scholar Hermann Kretschmar, “mixed pearls and grains of sand".