HD LIVE Robert Schumann. Humoreske, op. 20 - Veniamin Blokh

The Humoreske in B flat major, Op 20, is not, as its title might suggest, a short and capricious character piece like the examples by Dvořák, Grieg, Reger and others, but a piano cycle on a scale to match that of the Davidsbündlertänze. Schumann’s choice of the word ‘humoreske’ (he was to use it again for the second of his four Fantasiestücke, Op 88, for piano trio) is explained in a letter to Clara of 11 March 1839:

“Not to have written to you for a week, is that right? But I have been rhapsodizing about you, and have thought of you with a love such as I have never experienced before. The whole week I have been sitting at the piano, composing and writing, laughing and crying all at once. All this you will find nicely portrayed in my Op 20, the grand Humoreske, which is also about to be engraved. You see, that’s how quickly things go with me: conceived, written out and printed. And that’s how I like it. Twelve sheets completely written out in a week”

The conflicting emotions Schumann felt while composing his Humoreske are reflected in the music’s contrasting moods, or ‘humours’. In a letter of 15 March 1839 to his Belgian follower Simonin de Sire, Schumann provided a hint as to the meaning of the work’s title when he pointed out that the word ‘humoreske’ couldn’t adequately be translated into French. ‘It is a pity’, said Schumann, ‘that there are no good and apt words in the French language for such deeply ingrained characteristics and concepts as Gemütlichkeit, and for humour, which is the happy fusion of the gemütlich and the witty. But it is this that binds the whole character of the two nations together.’ The previous year, in drawing de Sire’s attention to his F sharp minor sonata, Op 11, and the Fantasiestücke, Op 12, Schumann told him: ‘The human heart sometimes seems strange, and pain and joy are intermingled in wild variegation.’