26 / 68
26 ROBERT SCHUMANN
Let’s come back to the masks, the contrasts of characters. What’s your
feeling about the way these are used in
Carnaval
?
Carnaval
offers an extraordinary gallery of portraits:
commedia dell’arte
with
Pierrot
et Arlequin
and
Pantalon et Colombine
, real people like Chopin and Paganini, but
also Clara and Ernestine, who become
Chiarina
and
Estrella
. In the end, one might
imagine that all these protagonists are masks with Schumann hiding behind
them. And, above all, in
Carnaval
, wemeet the composer’s two alter egos, Eusebius
and Florestan – Jean Paul’s characters Walt and Vult are succeeded by creatures
of Schumann’s own imagination.
Eusebius
is a wonderful lyrical meditation,
while Florestan is presented to us in breathless, almost chaotic and somewhat
destabilising agitation. It’s in this piece, too, that Schumann writes ‘Papillons?’ and
introduces a fragment of Vult’s theme as we heard it at the opening and conclusion
of
Papillons
.
In addition to
Eusebius
and
Florestan
, we can find further contrasting duos in
Carnaval
:
Pierrot
, depressed, obsessional, verging on the pathological – a piece
that’s always given me an uneasy feeling, with that little rhythmic cell of three
notes which rather inopportunely interrupts the phrase – and
Arlequin
, joyful and
sparkling. I also see in
Chiarina
and
Estrella
, the two beloveds, a sort of feminine
double surrounding the piece called
Chopin
– perhaps Schumann identifiedwith his
fellow composer for a moment here . . .