Schumann’s Love for the Romantic
Schumann’s fervid imagination readily led to a love for the romantic. His early fondness for the works of Jean Paul developed into a kind of life tendency, which resulted in winning him the title of the “Tone-Poet of Romanticism.” Few of his songs, however, are really dramatic. Waldesgespräch, which Robert Franz called a pianoforte piece with a voice part added, is probably the best of Schumann’s dramatic-romantic songs. I have always found that audiences are very partial to this song; and it may be sung by a female voice as well as the male voice. The Two Grenadiers is strictly a man’s song. Ich grolle nicht, while sung mostly by men, may, like the Erl-King of Schubert, be sung quite as successfully by women singers possessing the qualities of depth and dramatic intensity.