Schumann Quotes

Schumann was a typical Teuton in his introspective disposition, his mystic imaginings, his depth of earnestness.  The rhythmic side of music did not appeal to him with anything like the elastic, nervous intensity with which it excited a Pole [Chopin], but rather with the solemnity and orderliness of a German waltz.  His natural sphere was rather the type of  music which belongs to the reflective mind; and the types of thought, both emotional and noble, which appeal to a cultivated intellectualist.  As it was not intended to make music his life's occupation, his education in the art was not as complete and thorough as that of many other composers; but it brought him into closer contact with the expression of human feeling in poetic forms and in general literature, and forced him to take an unconventional view of his art.

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Schumann, like Beethoven, revels in a mass of sound.  But his sound is far more sensuous and chromatic.  He loved to use all the pedal that was possible, and had but little objection to hearing all the notes of the scale sounding at once...Chopin's style has coloured almost all pianoforte music since his time, in respect of the manner and treatment of the instrument; and many successful composers are content merely to reproduce his individualities in a diluted form.  But Schumann has exerted more influence in respect of matter and treatment of design.  With him the substance is of much greater significance, and he reaches to much greater depths of genuine feeling.  There must necessarily be varieties of music to suit all sorts of different types of mind and organisation, and Chopin and Schumann are both better adapted to cultivated and poetic natures than to simple unsophisticated dispositions...There are natures copious enough to have full sympathy with the dreamers as well as the workers; but as a rule the world is divided between the two...But as illustrating the profusion of sensations, the poetic sensibility, and even the luxury and intellectuality, the passion and the eagerness of modern life, Chopin and Schumann between them cover the ground more completely than all the rest of modern pianoforte composers put together.

Hubert Parry, The Art of Music (London: Kegan Paul, 1901), 300-03.