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These lines, first published in the periodical
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
, are
taken from an article entitled ‘Neue Bahnen’ (New paths) that Robert
Schumann wrote about Johannes Brahms just a few weeks after their first
meeting on 1 October 1853.
That initial encounter with one whom Schumann immediately dubbed ‘the
young eagle’ was something of a
coup de foudre
: a lightning flash, a shock
whose impact was so powerful that its equivalent could only be sought in
the natural world. Schumann’s lyrical enthusiasm bears faithful witness to
the love he felt for the talent of this twenty-year-old virtuoso with a ‘still
almost boyish appearance, with his high-pitched voice and long, fair hair,
dressed in his plain grey summer jacket . . . his energetic, characteristic
mouth and his deep, serious gaze’.
But Schumann also touched on a truth that the younger composer’s future
works would never contradict: there is in them something of a force of
nature (and also something that would draw its force from nature itself – as
was more or less obligatory at this period, one is almost tempted to add).
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GEOFFROY COUTEAU