Chapter II: Part 2

The Schumanns would have been glad to see Robert occupied with some regular work outside his compositions and his writings for the _Neue Zeitschrift_. Clara felt that her husband ought to be occupying an important conductor position. She would like to have seen him in such a post at the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts, which his friend Mendelssohn had raised to such a level of distinction. “Don’t be too ambitious for me”, gently chided Robert, who realized that he was not cut out for a conductor. Yet this ambition was one of Clara’s tragic failings. We have to thank it for Schumann’s later misfortunes when he let himself be stampeded into accepting a batonist’s post at Düsseldorf which probably accelerated his final breakdown. “I wish no better place for myself than a pianoforte and you near me”, he had said not long after they were married. But Clara was to be incorrigible. She was one of those typical ambitious wives who drive their husbands into careers for which they know themselves to be totally unfitted. Yet the greater the inroads made by Robert’s deep-seated malady on his nervous system the more incapable he seemed of resisting Clara’s urging.

What promised to be a solid and permanent position for Schumann materialized in the spring of 1843 when Mendelssohn founded the Leipzig Conservatory. Robert was given charge of the classes in piano playing; and he taught private composition. His colleagues were men like the theorist Hauptmann, the violinist, Ferdinand David, Moscheles, Plaidy, Richter, Klengel and others of distinguished standing. But it does not appear that Schumann’s actual teaching can have amounted to much. For he was growing more and more uncommunicative and the fitness as a pedagogue of such a silent teacher may be doubted. In 1844 his duties at the Conservatory were interrupted for four months when he accompanied Clara on a concert tour to Russia and finally ceased in the autumn when he suffered a severe nervous breakdown which led to his removal to Dresden. Some months earlier he had renounced the editorship of the _Zeitschrift_. To his friend, Verhulst, he wrote in June, 1844: “I have given up the paper for this year and hardly think I shall ever resume it. I should like to live entirely for composition”. Shortly afterwards the _Zeitschrift_ passed into the hands of Liszt’s friend, Franz Brendel.

Schumann was now definitely a sick man. Clara wrote in her diary that she feared he would not survive the journey to the Harz mountains and to Dresden which they had planned in the hope of restoring him; “Robert did not sleep a single night, his imagination painted the most terrible pictures, in the early morning I generally found him bathed in tears, he gave himself up completely”. The change of scene and society helped him, however, and they resolved to settle permanently in Dresden, whither they moved in the last days of 1844.

* * *

A period of fertile productivity lay behind him. If 1840 was Robert’s “song year”, 1841 was his “symphony year” and 1842 his “chamber music year”, though this should not be taken as meaning that his creations at this time were limited to a few works in these genres exclusively. First of all came the B flat Symphony—the “Spring” Symphony—which Schumann wrote down with a steel pen he had found in Vienna in the Währinger Cemetery, on Beethoven’s grave. The “Spring Symphony”, though it had its detractors, put Schumann on the map, so to speak, more almost than anything else he had written heretofore. Immediately after the symphony came two other large-scale works—the so-called “Overture, Scherzo and Finale” (which modern conductors have singularly neglected) and a Phantasie in A minor, for orchestra and piano, which was to become the first movement of the glorious Piano Concerto—for not a few musicians the greatest of its kind in existence!

On the heels of this soaring masterpiece Schumann embarked on another symphony. “As yet I have heard nothing about it”, wrote Clara in her diary, “but from Robert’s way of going on and the D minor sounding wildly in the distance, I know that another work is being created in the depth of his soul”. Less than four months later Robert handed his wife as a birthday gift the score of the D minor Symphony. It was not to see the light of publicity for some time, however. Before Schumann had put the finishing touches on it his thoughts began to be occupied with the subject of “Paradise and the Peri”, from Thomas Moore’s “Lalla Rookh”, and he opined that “perhaps something fine can be made out of it for music”. He was right, though the beautiful oratorio—one of the finest yet (in America) least familiar of Schumann’s major works—was not completed for nearly two years more. When it finally appeared the composer described it as “an oratorio for cheerful people, not for the place of prayer”.

In the spring of 1842 Robert and Clara had been occupied with the study of the string quartets of Haydn and Mozart. The following October he wrote to the publisher, Haertel: “During the summer months I worked with great zeal at three quartets.... We played them several times at David’s and they seemed to please players and listeners alike, in particular Mendelssohn....” They are the Quartets in A minor, F major and A major, Op. 41. For one thing, they contain some of the most unusual effects of syncopated rhythm to be found in the entire range of Schumann’s compositions. On the heels of the quartets came the most popular sample of Schumann’s chamber music, the E flat Piano Quintet, Op. 44, the first movement of which is perhaps as fine a thing as its creator ever achieved. Other chamber works followed—the E flat Piano Quartet, Op. 47, the so-called Phantasiestücke, for piano, violin and cello, Op. 88, none of them, however, rising above the level of the Quintet.

The first of the Schumann children, Marie and Elise, were born in 1841 and 1843, respectively. The succeeding ones were Julie, Emil, Ludwig, Ferdinand, Eugenie and Felix. Alone, Marie and Eugenie lived to what one can call a ripe old age. The hereditary Schumann illness passed on to another generation.

* * *

Dresden promised to be a pleasant home for the Schumanns and their growing family. The town was a center of art and literature. Painters, sculptors, architects, writers, musicians assembled there, lured by an art-loving Court. Among the prominent musical figures of the town were Ferdinand Hiller, Karl Gottlieb Reissiger and Richard Wagner. Reissiger was, of course, a mediocrity of the sorriest kind. Hiller, on the other hand, was a pupil of Hummel and a friend of Berlioz, Liszt and Mendelssohn and the Schumanns were thoroughly at home in his company. Wagner was a horse of another color! It is everlastingly to be regretted that temperamental differences kept him and Schumann from amalgamating, for their liberal artistic slants and their incorruptible idealism should have made them fellow fighters in the cause of musical progress. Unfortunately the pair seemed almost to bristle at each other’s approach. Had Wagner matured in his art as early as Schumann in his, or could they have known one another in the fine frenzy of Schumann’s early Davidsbündler days the story might have been of an inspiring artistic relationship.

Wagner had been a contributor to Schumann’s _Zeitschrift_ and had entertained a flattering idea of some of Robert’s earlier music. Rightly enough, he noted in it “much ferment but also much originality”. He continued to like “Paradise and the Peri” and the Piano Quintet and, afterwards, during his Swiss exile, he went so far as to entreat Clara to play at one of her Zurich concerts the “Symphonic Studies”. But thrown frequently together in Dresden the two repelled rather than attracted each other. Wagner, who talked incessantly, complained that one could get nowhere with a person who refused to open his mouth; Schumann, that one could not possibly exchange ideas with a man who never allowed one the opportunity to say a word. Moreover, Wagner’s far-darting and flamboyant ideas were unintelligible to poor Schumann and even frightened him. And so the two seemed everlastingly at cross purposes.

Wagner gave Schumann a score of his “Tannhäuser” as soon as it appeared in a lithographed form. Writing to Mendelssohn Robert repudiated the music as weak, forced, amateurish, deficient in melody and wanting in form. Not long afterwards he went to hear the work and took back much of what he had said, declaring that the impression created by a stage performance was very different and that, though the score did not radiate the “pure sunlight of genius” the opera, nevertheless, exercised on the hearer “a mysterious magic which held one captive”. He had been deeply moved by much of it; and he praised the technical effects and above all the instrumentation (a thing for which Schumann himself had always been reproved). Yet in another missive he declared that Wagner could not write four consecutive bars of “correct” music, that he was, all in all, a “bad musician”. From the viewpoint of his own art Robert was to a certain degree logical in his claims. But his prophetic vision and artist’s conscience refused to let him reject the work outright. Nor should we judge him too severely for his conclusions. After “Tannhäuser” he never heard a note of Wagner’s music. However he might have reacted to “Tristan” it is hardly possible that Schumann could have brought himself to dismiss Wagner as a “bad musician” if he had been spared to hear “Die Meistersinger”!

Schumann was present when Wagner read one evening to an assemblage of acquaintances his “Lohengrin” libretto. Like a number of other listeners he could not grasp just what method Wagner could employ in setting such a text to music. Furthermore he was upset that another had beat him to the subject of the swan knight, which he had half a mind to utilize for an opera himself.

* * *

Ill health pursued Schumann more and more implacably during the six odd years of his Dresden sojourn. He had moments when things seemed to brighten. At other times the slightest mental effort produced sleepless nights, auricular delusions, new and terrifying symptoms which came to haunt him as others disappeared. He was morbid, irritable, had visions of “dark demons” and was assailed by “melancholy bats”.

Music sometimes helped and sometimes hindered. Nevertheless the Dresden period saw the creation of some of his greatest works—the completion in 1845, of the A minor Piano Concerto, by the addition of the Intermezzo and the Finale to the Phantasie written in 1841; the magnificent C major Symphony, with its melting Adagio, its breathless scherzo, its resplendent finale; the “Scenes from Faust”, the Overture and incidental music to Byron’s “Manfred” and the opera, “Genoveva”.

Limitations of space forbid us to consider in any detail works like the Piano Concerto, the C major Symphony and the rugged “Manfred” Overture—so different in its sombre, moody character from the romantic effusions of Schumann’s earlier day. But the opera, “Genoveva” though branded a failure contains superb music, beginning with the overture which, in its different fashion, ranks with the one to “Manfred”. The prayer of the fated Genoveva in the last act is a long _scena_ comparing in its far-flung lyric line with the noblest vocal pieces Schumann ever wrote.

* * *

Clara cared tenderly for her ailing husband and left nothing undone to comfort him. She would use all her culinary skill to make it certain that his meals would be bright spots in his often troubled days. A friend who met her returning from market in one instance inquired what she was carrying in a strange-looking packing. “Something to tempt my poor husband’s appetite—mixed pickles”, she answered. They had friends in a certain Major Serre and his wife who had a country estate at a place called Maxen, near Dresden, and she took Robert there from time to time to benefit by the pleasant country surroundings. But his stay in Maxen was spoiled by the view from one of the windows of a lunatic asylum nearby. And as the years passed and his condition deteriorated the sight of an asylum brought his melancholy to an almost intolerable stage.

It was to Maxen that Clara brought him and her children when, during the revolutionary uprising in May, 1849, they found it necessary to flee from Dresden till order was restored. Pretending to take her husband for a walk she picked her way at sundown through the fields and hills surrounding the city and reached the Serre estate in the small hours of the morning, terrified by the armed mobs they continually met and the sounds of shooting in the distance. Then, without waiting to rest or refresh herself, Clara had to set out for Dresden once more to bring the children to a place of safety. Back in Maxen she restrained her feelings with difficulty when she was met by contemptuous allusions from her aristocratic hosts to “canaille” and “rabble”. “How men have to fight for a little freedom!” she confided in her diary. “When will the time come when all men will have equal justice? How is it possible that the belief can so long have been rooted among the nobles that they are of a different species from the bourgeois?”

In the fall of 1849 Schumann received a letter from Ferdinand Hiller, on the point of leaving Düsseldorf, inquiring whether he would be disposed to succeed him as Musical Director in that Rhenish town. The salary was good, the duties heavy but stimulating. Schumann reflected that Dresden had never shown itself in the least inclined to give the illustrious artist couple within its gates the faintest official recognition. Hiller’s offer seemed promising. Robert started to look up information about Düsseldorf. In an old geography book he found that the town’s attractions included “three convents and a lunatic asylum”. Nevertheless, they decided in its favor.

They took a cool farewell from Dresden and arrived in Düsseldorf on Sept. 2, 1850. They were greeted with extreme cordiality, wined and dined, serenaded and threatened with the exhausting honors of dances, picnics and excursions. Until they could find a suitable house and garden they were lodged in the best (and most expensive!) hotel. The Music Committee turned itself inside out to make life pleasant for its new conductor and his illustrious artist-wife. Robert was forty, seemingly in the prime of life but actually past his best creative period, and glad that an apparently desirable opportunity was opening up to him at last.

* * *

Tragic deception! Whether or not Schumann realized it from the first, the Düsseldorf period was the beginning of the end. It quickly became obvious that Robert had no ability whatever as a conductor, none of the dominating qualities to impose his wishes on orchestras or choral masses. He could think of no better methods of correcting a defect of execution than to ask his players or singers to repeat a passage over and over, without ever making plain to them what he wanted. The performers became listless, inattentive or downright rebellious. Things grew progressively worse and the decline of musical standards in Düsseldorf became town talk. The worry and physical strain involved told sorely in Schumann’s afflicted nervous constitution. He developed an embarrassing habit of dropping his baton at rehearsals, till he hit on the scheme of fastening it to his wrist with a piece of string! “There, now it can’t fall again!”, he sheepishly told a friend who gazed at his arm in questioning wonder. His mental ailment bit by bit robbed him of the alertness, concentration, presence of mind, “even the ability to speak audibly”. Clara, unable apparently to recognize the truth, suspected intrigues on every hand. Her blood “boiled” over the “disrespectful behaviour of some of the choir” at a rehearsal of the “St. Matthew Passion” and she developed a particular enmity against the well-meaning if uninspired conductor, Julius Tausch, who gradually took over some of Schumann’s most taxing labors.

Robert’s taciturnity had been growing on him for years but it finally took utterly fantastic forms. We are told that in Düsseldorf he could not say: “Ladies and gentlemen, our next rehearsal will be tomorrow at seven”, without breaking down once or twice. In another case a certain Carl Witting was commissioned to visit Schumann in order to settle a debated point about the tempi in the “Manfred” Overture. After putting his question to the composer who was smoking a cigar (Robert had been an inveterate smoker from his youth) he received for all answer only the query: “Do you smoke?” Witting said he did and waited respectfully. Schumann neither offered a cigar nor gave a reply. Two more inquiries brought only another “Do you smoke?” The persistent silence finally impelled Witting to take his leave, thinking one knows not what. Still another idiosyncrasy of Robert’s later days was to frequent a restaurant, order a glass of wine or beer and leave without attempting to pay. The proprietor was not disturbed, but simply gave Schumann what amounted to a charge account and sent the bills to Clara.

One of the first excursions Robert and Clara took after their arrival in Düsseldorf was to Cologne. Schumann was charmed by the surrounding countryside and deeply impressed by an ecclesiastical ceremony he witnessed in the Cologne Cathedral. The visit provided the inspiration for the Symphony in E flat, the so-called “Rhenish”, published as the third, actually the fourth in date of composition (if we except the 1851 revision of the earlier D minor). The resplendent work has a freshness and a youthful ardor which seem to belie the composer’s encroaching mental impairment. The climax of the symphony is its monumentally conceived fourth movement in which Schumann strove to picture the solemnity he had witnessed in that stately fane. The other movements abound in those shifted accents and other rhythmic surprises which were always a hallmark of the composer’s style.

One marvels at the quantity if not always at the quality of Schumann’s Düsseldorf compositions. These include overtures to Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, Goethe’s “Hermann und Dorothea” and Schiller’s “Braut von Messina”; the “Pilgrimage of the Rose”, the “Peri”; a fine Cello Concerto in A minor, and a violin concerto in D minor, written for Joseph Joachim, but secreted for years in the Berlin State Library and, though once tried out by Joachim, never played or published till recent years on the plea that it might by its weakness diminish Schumann’s reputation. As a matter of fact the concerto, which is typical late Schumann, seems to have been much too severely judged by Joachim and even Clara herself.

* * *

The impossible situation in Düsseldorf could not continue. At first the Schumanns resolved to leave and settle down in Vienna. But that scheme proved impractical. The sorry conductorship came to its inevitable end. The Schumanns, much relieved, set out on a tour of Holland which had triumphal results for Clara. Back in Düsseldorf, though no longer in an official capacity, Robert on Sept. 30, 1853, was handed a card inscribed “Herr Brahms from Hamburg”. Next day he scribbled in a diary: “Visit from Brahms (a genius)”. And there began one of the most touching friendships in musical history, one that long survived the mortal Schumann and continued for the duration of Clara’s years on earth.

To Joseph Joachim, who had armed the twenty year old North German with the introduction he presented, Robert instantly wrote “in prophetic style” the words: “This is he who should come”. And only a few days later, another concerning “Johannes the true Apostle—the young eagle that has flown so suddenly and unexpectedly from the hills to Düsseldorf....” Then snatching his long unused editorial pen he began that famous essay, “New Paths”, published on Oct. 28, 1853, in the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_, and which definitely started Brahms on the path of glory leading to deathlessness.

Brahms, Joachim, Albert Dietrich, J. O. Grimm—these perhaps more than any others were the men whose friendship was the chief solace of Schumann in his now rapid decline. He still took his walks with Clara and the children. With his lips pursed as if whistling and his hands clasped behind him he was a familiar figure as he wandered in a kind of abstraction through the parks of Düsseldorf. New and alarming symptoms steadily manifested themselves. In 1854 he had “marked and painful auditory sensations”, including a maddening affliction that took the shape of hearing melodies in two conflicting keys at once. His speech was heavier and his demeanor grew more and more apathetic. With increasing hallucinations he developed a morbid enthusiasm for spiritism and table rappings. He had dreams in which the spirits of Schubert and Mendelssohn dictated musical themes to him; or else he heard angelic voices which presently changed to the howling of demons threatening him with torments. On Feb. 26, 1854, he rose in a state of terrible melancholy, begged to be sent to an asylum and began to pack up the things he wished to take with him. Clara, wishing to speak to their friend and physician, Dr. Hasenclever, left the room for a moment. Suddenly Schumann opened his bedroom door and—vanished! A few minutes later he was brought back, dripping with water. Half clad, he had gone out, thrown himself into the Rhine but was saved from drowning by some fishermen who had seen the suicidal leap. On March 4 he was taken at his own wish to the private asylum of Dr. Richarz at Endenich, near Bonn. He left in a carriage accompanied by two doctors. Clara, from whom he took only a perfunctory leave, stayed behind, crushed. Someone had handed Schumann flowers as he drove away. He gave a few of them to Dr. Hasenclever, who afterwards took them to Clara. For a while his condition seemed to improve. He worked now and then at his music, composed a few variations on the theme he claimed to have received from the spirit of Schubert and wrote a piano accompaniment for some of the Paganini Capriccios. But by 1855 all hope was abandoned and in 1856 Clara, on a concert tour in England, was informed that Robert was “irretrievably lost”. Soon a telegram summoned her to Endenich “if she still wanted to see her husband alive”. With Brahms, who for nearly two years had watched over Robert and the sorely tried Clara with unexampled devotion, she went to the sanatorium, saw Robert and believed that, though he seemed to converse with spirits, he recognized and welcomed her after the long separation. On July 29, 1856, he was, in Clara’s words “to be freed from his troubles; at four in the afternoon he passed gently away. His last hours were peaceful and so he passed in sleep, unnoticed—nobody was with him at the moment. I saw him half an hour later. Joachim had come from Heidelberg on receiving our telegram....”

* * *

Two days afterwards Schumann was laid to rest in the lovely Old Cemetery at Bonn. Members of the Düsseldorf “Concordia”, which had serenaded the Schumanns on their arrival from Dresden six years earlier, were the pallbearers. Hiller, Joachim and Brahms walked in front, Clara, alone and unobserved, far behind—“certainly as he would have wished”. Forty years later, on Whit-Sunday, 1896, she was reunited with him in the same tomb, in the presence of her surviving children and a few friends, chief of these the faithful Brahms, himself barely a year from his end.

COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
_by_
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

COLUMBIA RECORDS

_Under the Direction of Bruno Walter_

Barber—Symphony No. 1
Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolf
Serkin, piano)
Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)
Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor
Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F major
Beethoven—Violin Concerto in D major (with Joseph Szigeti)
Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)
Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1
Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)
Mahler—Symphony No. 5 in C minor
Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)
Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo (with Nathan Milstein,
violin)
Mozart—Cosi fan Tutti—Overture
Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551
Schubert—Symphony No. 9 in C major
Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)
Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)
Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz

_Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski_

Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III)
Bizet—Symphony in C major
Brahms—Symphony No. 1 in C minor
Brahms—Symphony No. 2 in D major
Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)
Gershwin—American in Paris
Ibert—“Escales” (Ports of Call)
Liszt—Mephisto Waltz
Moussorgsky—Gopak (The Fair at Sorotchinski)
Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition
Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5
Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor (with Gyorgy Sandor, piano)
Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in C minor (with Robert Casadesus, piano)
Saint-Saens—Concerto No. 4 in C minor (Robert Casadesus, piano)
Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor
Tschaikowsky—Nutcracker Suite
Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana”
Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathetique”)
Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III, Scene 2) (with Helen
Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor)
Wagner—Lohengrin—Elsa’s Dream (Act I, Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel,
soprano)
Wagner—Siegfried Idyll
Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano)
Wagner—Die Walkure—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and
Herbert Janssen, baritone)
Wagner—Die Walkure—Duet (Act I, Scene 3) (with Helen Traubel, soprano
and Emery Darcy, tenor)
Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne”, Overture

_Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz_

Herold—Zampa—Overture
Khatchaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite Dances
Khatchaturian—Ballet Suite No. 2
Shostakovich—Symphony No. 9
Wieniawski—Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor (with Isaac Stern, violin)

_Under the Direction of Darius Milhaud_

Milhaud—Suite Francaise

_Under the Direction of Leopold Stokowski_

Khatchaturian—“Masquerade Suite”

_Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky_

Stravinsky—Firebird Suite
Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)
Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods
Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)
Stravinsky—Scenes de Ballet
Stravinsky—Suite from “Petrouchka”
Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements

_Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_

Bach-Barbirolli—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday Cantata”)
Berlioz—Roman Carnival Overture
Brahms—Symphony No. 2, in D major
Brahms—Academic Festival Overture
Bruch—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)
Debussy—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet)
Debussy—Petite Suite: Ballet
Mozart—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano)
Mozart—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183
Ravel—La Valse
Rimsky-Korsakov—Capriccio Espagnol
Sibelius—Symphony No. 1, in E minor
Sibelius—Symphony No. 2, in D major
Smetana—The Bartered Bride—Overture
Tschaikowsky—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G)

_Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham_

Mendelssohn—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”)
Sibelius—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”)
Sibelius—Symphony No. 7, in C major
Tschaikowsky—Capriccio Italien

_Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz_

Gershwin—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant, piano)

VICTOR RECORDS

_Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini_

Beethoven—Symphony No. 7, in A major
Brahms—Variations on a Theme by Haydn
Dukas—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Gluck—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits
Haydn—Symphony No. 4, in D major (The Clock)
Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo
Mozart—Symphony in D major (K. 385)
Rossini—Barber of Seville—Overture
Rossini—Italians in Algiers—Overture
Rossini—Semiramide—Overture
Verdi—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and III
Wagner—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Götterdämmerung—Siegfried Idyll

_Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_

Debussy—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2)
Purcell—Suite for Strings with four Horns, Two Flutes, English Horn
Respighi—Fountains of Rome
Respighi—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the
Philharmonic-Symphony League of New York)
Schubert—Symphony No. 4, in C minor (Tragic)
Schumann—Concerto in D minor (with Yehudi Menuhin, violin)
Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini—Fantasia

_Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg_

J. C. Bach—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major
J. S. Bach—Arr. Mahler—Air for G string (from Suite for Orchestra)
Beethoven—Egmont Overture
Handel—Alcina Suite
Mendelssohn—War March of the Priests (from Athalia)
Meyerbeer—Prophete—Coronation March
Saint-Saens—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel)
Schelling—Victory Ball
Wagner—Flying Dutchman—Overture
Wagner—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)

Special Booklets published for
RADIO MEMBERS
of
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

POCKET-MANUAL of Musical Terms, Edited by Dr. Th. Baker (G.
Schirmer’s)
BEETHOVEN and his Nine Symphonies by Pitts Sanborn
BRAHMS and some of his Works by Pitts Sanborn
MOZART and some Masterpieces by Herbert F. Peyser
WAGNER and his Music-Dramas by Robert Bagar
TSCHAIKOWSKY and his Orchestral Music by Louis Biancolli
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and a few of his major works by Herbert F.
Peyser
SCHUBERT and his work by Herbert F. Peyser
MENDELSSOHN and certain MASTERWORKS by Herbert F. Peyser

These booklets are available to Radio Members at 25c each while the limited supply lasts.

_During its 18th consecutive year on the_ CBS network, _the regular Sunday afternoon broadcast series of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra again proved to be an “unforgettable demonstration of the power of music in a democracy.” These broadcasts represent the oldest continuous series of serious music in American radio._

_Much of the immortal music performed by world-famous artists on these broadcasts may he permanently preserved in the brilliant recordings available on_ Columbia Masterworks Records. _Among the various works of Schumann included in the Columbia Masterworks Catalog are_:

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97 (“Rhenish”). Bruno Walter conducting the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York. _Set MM-464_

Dichterliebe. Lotte Lehmann, soprano, with Bruno Walter, piano.
_Set MM-486_

Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44. Rudolf Serkin, piano, with the Busch Quartet. _Set MM-533_

Scenes of Childhood, Op. 15. Maryla Jonas, piano.
_Set MX-290_

Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (Eight Fantasies). Arabesque in C Major, Op. 18, Claudio Arrau, piano. _Set MM-716_

Transcriber’s Notes

--A few palpable typos were silently corrected.

--Illustrations were shifted to the nearest paragraph break.

--Copyright notice is from the printed exemplar. (U.S. copyright was not
renewed: this ebook is in the public domain.)