Have you ever heard Robert Schumann's last composition?
The Ghost Variations, aptly named, I think. It's haunting, isn't it?
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCmMYh6S5XA]
On the night of 17 February 1854, Schumann, suffering from severe aural hallucinations, claimed that he heard angels dictating a theme to him. If Clara Schumann’s diary entries are to be believed, Schumann immediately wrote down the theme, and on either 22 or 23 February started writing variations on it. At 2 in the afternoon of 27 February Schumann tried to drown himself in the icy Rhine; he was rescued by bargemen who dragged him ashore. The next day he returned to these variations and (it seems) completed them. He sent the work to Clara, but by then she had already left to stay with a friend at the advice of a doctor. On 4 March Schumann voluntarily committed himself to an asylum in Endenich, where he would die just a little over 2 years later.
The Ghost Variations are Schumann’s last work. He did not seem to realize that the lovely chorale theme that he wrote down was one he had used several times before. Clara forbade the publication of the work (we don’t know why – possibly they were too personal, possibly she thought it was not musically up to par with Schumann’s earlier work), and it was only until 1939 that the work saw print, although Brahms wrote a set of 4-hand variations on Schumann’s theme in 1861.
The Ghost Variations are, like most of Schumann's late work, extraordinarily intimate.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCmMYh6S5XA]
On the night of 17 February 1854, Schumann, suffering from severe aural hallucinations, claimed that he heard angels dictating a theme to him. If Clara Schumann’s diary entries are to be believed, Schumann immediately wrote down the theme, and on either 22 or 23 February started writing variations on it. At 2 in the afternoon of 27 February Schumann tried to drown himself in the icy Rhine; he was rescued by bargemen who dragged him ashore. The next day he returned to these variations and (it seems) completed them. He sent the work to Clara, but by then she had already left to stay with a friend at the advice of a doctor. On 4 March Schumann voluntarily committed himself to an asylum in Endenich, where he would die just a little over 2 years later.
The Ghost Variations are Schumann’s last work. He did not seem to realize that the lovely chorale theme that he wrote down was one he had used several times before. Clara forbade the publication of the work (we don’t know why – possibly they were too personal, possibly she thought it was not musically up to par with Schumann’s earlier work), and it was only until 1939 that the work saw print, although Brahms wrote a set of 4-hand variations on Schumann’s theme in 1861.
The Ghost Variations are, like most of Schumann's late work, extraordinarily intimate.
