Original concepts

During the 1840s, a quarter of a century after Beethoven’s last purely instrumental symphony and the subsequent local developments by lesser masters (which in themselves are not without interest), a new era dawned in the symphonic genre. Thanks to the works of Felix Mendelssohn (the completion of his Scottish Symphony) and Robert Schumann (B-flat major and D-minor symphonies), the dominant central idea and perspective again were allotted greater significance in the symphony. And the first symphonic work by Niels Gade also saw the light of the musical world: it was greeted wildly with thunderous applause. During this epoch, the romantic element in the music gradually broke away from the classical.
A completely new idea of the symphonic genre was now beginning to assert itself, slowly but surely. An idea that would have been almost unthinkable without Schubert’s Great C-major Symphony, which aimed at opening up new dimensions of expression and achieved these mainly thanks to changes within the inner structure of the individual movements. An observation that one can apply especially to Schumann’s Symphony No. 1: here, for example, during the course of the first movement the shaping component is formed by the theme of the slow introduction – a more or less extraterritorial element, when seen in relation to the sonata form. And Schumann’s Spring Symphony announced, as it were, a new spring in the symphonic genre. That same year, 1841, he wrote the first version of the D-minor Symphony in Leipzig. Thus, as far as chronology is concerned, this is in fact Schumann’s second symphonic work. Nevertheless, ten years later, the composer came up with a new version of the work in Dusseldorf; and, in accordance with Schumann’s wishes, it is in this form that the work - published in 1853 - has been categorized as his Symphony No. 4. On the title-page he wrote “Symphonic Fantasy for Large Orchestra”, adding below “sketched in J. 1841. Newly instrumented in 1851.” In the end, he left intact the basic central idea of the work, although he augmented the instrumentation.
As far as form is concerned, the four movements of the D-minor Symphony are in accordance with symphonic tradition; nevertheless, the idea of a “one-movement symphony” overlies the structure. Thus, the movements are intended to follow on one another without an interval, which emphasizes Schumann’s intention of breaking open, or “opening up”, the symphonic form, which tended to be tectonically “closed”. With regard to the form, Siegfried Oechsle recognizes that Schumann wanted to “create the large structure, so to speak, out of ‘urmotiv-like’ nuclei”. Thus, the links between the themes expand horizontally, like a web, over the movements. The endings to the first three movements are not really endings – the composer refuses to provide the harmonic sequences according to the rules. Only in the Finale does Schumann compose a true ending, although this does not manage to truly increase the musical value of the previous musical processes and events.
Chronologically speaking, the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97, known as the Rhenish, composed in 1850 during his Dusseldorf period, is Schumann’s last contribution to the genre. As in the previous symphonies, Schumann finds in this five-movement work an original implementation of the cyclical idea: the interval of a fourth is the motivic foundation on which all movements are constructed and, as such, the decisive and simultaneously fusing element. Besides, the development of the tempo is completely geared towards the Finale, as the movements become increasingly slower with regard to the tempi, before finally erupting into the last movement. In the Finale, Schumann’s combination of the various idioms of the movements is highly successful. What can one add to Clara Schumann’s assessment of the Rhenish: “I cannot say which of the 5 movements I prefer... However, the fourth is the one which I find hardest to grasp as yet: it is extremely artistic, that I can hear, yet I cannot truly follow it; whereas hardly a bar is unclear to me in the other movements - certainly, this symphony, especially the second and third movements, is also very easy for the layman to follow.”

top