Felix Schumann (1854 Düsseldorf – 1879 Frankfurt)

Summary

‘Meine Liebe ist grün’ Op. 63 no. 5 (Junge Lieder I) (comp. Dec. 1873, publ. Nov. 1874)

‘Wenn um den Holunder’ Op. 63 no. 6 (Junge Lieder II) (comp. summer 1874, publ. Nov. 1874)

‘Versunken’ Op. 86 no. 5 (comp. May 1878, publ. July 1882)

Vom Ruhm meines Vaters zehren It does not suit me to feed

Steht mir nicht an. on my father's fame.

Nicht nur als Sohn soll man mich ehren, I should not only be honoured as the son.

Selbst ist der Mann. The man is himself.

IN AUGUST 1855, the 22-year-old Brahms spent the night at the Schumanns’ home in Düsseldorf while Clara Schumann was away. He wrote to her:

Precious Clara, I know I will never forget last night my whole life. [He then described the storm which was raging outdoors.] The two little ones tumbled about the room. I then took them in my lap and got them to close their eyes. Felix slept soundly, and Eugenie was calm.

The youngest of the Schumanns’ eight children, Felix, was a baby at the time, Eugenie Schumann three years old. Clara Schumann was pregnant with Felix when Schumann went into an asylum at Endenich in 1854; he never saw his last child. As a result, Brahms was virtually in loco parentis in those years. His Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann Op. 9, was effectively a gift to Clara Schumann at that time, and his arrangements of fifteen folksongs for children, the Volks-Kinderlieder WoO31, were probably created for the Schumann children. The Schumann settings are intensely personal compositions, impossible to untangle from the short life of the poet; for this reason, further context on Schumann's life has been integrated into this entry.

The normally strict Clara Schumann was especially fond of her youngest child (called ‘Lix’ and ‘Lixchen’ in family letters) because of his precocious talent, his physical and temperamental similarity to his father, and his poor health. By his late teens, Felix Schumann hoped to train as a violinist, which his mother discouraged in order to avoid unavoidable and potentially detrimental comparisons with his famous father. Joachim, who was then director of the recently formed Königliche Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, was more encouraging.