‘The most companionable composer’: sociability, Robert Schumann, and his chamber music

This thesis explores the notion of sociability as a framework by which to interpret Robert Schumann’s ‘chamber music year’ of 1842. Schumann’s own sociability is examined both biographically and through music analysis. The first part of the thesis is a case study, tracing Schumann’s friendships during his youth in Zwickau and his first year in Leipzig, and analysing his first completed chamber work, the Piano Quartet in C minor, which can be understood as a tribute to his friends. The second part examines Schumann’s subsequent years in Leipzig, establishing that he was a sociable and active contributor to a circle of friends around his wife Clara Schumann, the Gewandhaus director Felix Mendelssohn, and the violinist Ferdinand David. This part of the thesis concludes that, especially in the context of chamber music making within this circle, the spheres of social and musical interaction merged. These findings are contextualised through discussions of musical salon culture in Germany and the distinctions made between public and private spheres. In the third part of the thesis, musical sociability is discerned as a musical motivic web in connection with narrative strategies of evoking a past tense, which is complemented by a discussion of narrative theories in nineteenth-century music. Through the analysis of Schumann’s three String Quartets, op. 41, and the Piano Quintet, op. 44, I suggest that, ultimately, Schumann exemplified the Romantic ideal of chamber music making by portraying his circle of friends in these chamber works. This interpretation of Schumann’s chamber music through a biographic lens exemplifies the importance of and serves as a model for the notion of sociability when writing about nineteenth-century music in general and chamber music in particular.