In 1839 Clara Wieck wrote in her diary, “it would be best if ROBERT SCHUMANN composed for orchestra; his imagination cannot find sufficient scope on the piano. /…/ All his compositions are orchestral in perception.”
Schumann’s oeuvre is a flourishing piano genre, bursting with romantic ideas, impulses and inventions of genius. At the expense of chamber music, symphonic music seems to have taken a back seat: the early solo-minor symphony remained unfinished, and it was not until 1841 that his Symphony No. 1, “Spring”, was born, followed by other symphonic opuses: the Symphony in D minor, the Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra, the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, and the Symphony in C minor (unfinished).
At the end of the 1840s Schumann left his native Saxony, left the Leipzig Conservatory where he had worked at Mendelssohn’s invitation, and gave up the publication of the music journal Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, which he himself founded and filled with his own articles. Between 1848 and 1853 he accepted the position of General Musical Director in Düsseldorf after his friend Ferdinand Hiller vacated the post. Among his opuses was the Symphony No. 3 “Rhenish”. Scholars have described his works from this period as “heaps of ruins among which only traces of former splendour can be found” (Hermann Abert).
The Symphony No. 3 reflects the Schumann’s impressions of Dusseldorf and the Rhine, “grave and proud as our German God” (Schumann). Although Schumann never gave his symphony a name, the title “Rhenish” was added after its premiere on 6 February 1851.
The Rhine and the district around the river provoke the creative imagination of dozens of artists and act as a national symbol. This can be traced in Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, in Byron’s Childe Harold’s Wanderings, in Schumann’s music based on Heinrich Heine’s poem Auf dem Rhein, and in Jacques Offenbach’s opera Les fées du Rhin.
Overall, the “Rhenish” Symphony reflects the impression of the architecture of Cologne Cathedral, specifically reflected in the fourth movement. It also brings to life the composer’s adolescent impressions when, at the age of 18, he first gazed upon the river and was filled with elation. The river also plays a dramatic role in his life. Emotionally depressed, according to his contemporaries, he made an unsuccessful suicide attempt, throwing himself into the Rhine on February 27th, 1854.
The Symphony No.3 provides grounds for thematic parallels with the symphonies of Beethoven, Haydn and Mendelssohn. One of the themes in the first movement has its source in Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. In the second movement, the scherzo, the image of Rhine comes to life again. Schumann originally gave the title ‘Morning on the Rhine’, which he subsequently changed. The third movement is a romantic meditation, a short three-movement nocturne or intermezzo, also with analogies in Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words. The fourth movement originally had the programmatic title ‘In the nature of an accompaniment to a solemn ceremony‘, abbreviated by the composer to ‘Feierlich’ (‘solemn’), for which he had a specific event in mind – the installation to the cardinalate of the Archbishop of Cologne. It is written in the rarely used key of E flat minor, in baroque style and again with reference to Mendelssohn’s music (from the Reformation Symphony, for example). The climax of the Adagio connects the movement with the finale, the fifth movement. It is thematically summative, as in the symphonic tradition of Schumann, and forms an arch with the first movement.
Amid the modest success of the Schumann Symphony in Germany, Tchaikovsky was its ardent admirer. He wrote of the Fourth Movement: ‘Nothing more powerful and profound has ever been born in human artistic creation. Although centuries have passed since the creation of Cologne Cathedral, and many generations have put their labour into the realisation of this grand architectural conception, a page of the great musician inspired by the majestic beauty of the cathedral will leave for future generations an unfading monument to the depth of the human spirit just like the cathedral itself.”