The critical writings of Robert Schumann: polyphony, elision and subjectivity

Abstract

This paper is part of a broader research project, which aims at the historical revitalization of a 19th Century document: the translation into Brazilian Portuguese, with the notes and comments of Martin Kreisig (1914), of the Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker (Collection of Writings on Music and Musicians) of the German composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856). Sharply attuned to the aesthetic ideals of his time – the fluid transition from Classicism to Romanticism in Germany – Schumann registers in his writings his impressions and comments about the musical scene from the first half of the 19th Century in Germany. As in the composer’s musical pieces, the critical texts reveal an assemble of voices, which contend for primacy in text, as well as the impatience of an author, expressed between lines, that had in mind a public composed by a small group of coreligionists, by the adepts of the old times and by those who cultivated virtuosity and music for entertainment.