Klarinet Archive - Posting 000766.txt from 2002/06

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Schumann 'Romances' for oboe
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 08:25:41 -0400

Here are the details that I remembered reading.

"In a letter of 19 November 1850 (now in the Biblioteka Jagiellonska,
Krakow), the publisher Simrock acknowledged receipt of the manuscript
for the Romances, and at the asme time asked whether Schumann "would be
in agreement if we were to print on the title page: <<for oboe and
piano>> and on page three: <<for clarinet and piano>>, since it is not
looked upon with favour when several instruments appear on the title
page." Schumann's reply, dated 24 November, is reported in Wolfgang
Boettischer's _Robert Schumann: Einfuehrung in Personlichkeit un Werk_
(Berlin 1941), although the original letter has been lost: "If I had
originally written the work for clarinet and piano it would have become
a completely different piece. I regret not being able to comply with
your wishes, but I can do no other." Nonetheless, Simrock not only
published an alternative violin part but an additional part for clarinet
as well. We have followed this practice in our edition. Clara
Schumann, on the other hand, mentions only the alternative violin part
in her complete edition of Schumann's works, published By Breitkipf and
Haertel under her auspices beginning in 1878. This may well be in
accord with her own practice of playing the piece with the violinist
Schubert in Leipzig, and perhaps with Wasielewski in Dusseldorf as
well."

(From the Henle Verlag Urtext edition of the Romances)

I have only a photocopy of this preface sent me by a friend, and he
didn't send the bit naming the editor.

Somebody called Krista Riggs, while a student at Bloomington, worked up
a theory, published in the Winter 2000 'Double Reed News', that Clara
Schumann wrote the Romances herself, and issued them with other works to
cover up Robert's illness and inability to compose in the year that the
Romances were supposed to have been written; but there are autograph
sketches of the first two movements in Berlin, and I'd have thought that
if that were so, the handwriting would settle the matter. It seems to
me that there are other problems whith this theory too, but I won't go
into that here.

Tony
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