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SCHUMANN. age. Even then the performances of this gifted girl, who was so soon to take her place as the greatest female pianist of Germany, were astonishing, and by them, as Schumann puts it, 'Zwickau was fired with enthusiasm for the first time in its life.' It is easily conceivable that Schumann himself was enthusiastically delighted with Clara, adorned as she was with the twofold charm of childlike sweetness and artistic genius. 'Think of perfection,' he writes to a friend about her on April 5, 1833, 'and I will agree to it.' And many expressions in his letters seems even to betray a deeper feeling, of which he himself did not become fully aware until several years later.

Schumann's circumstances allowed him to revisit Leipzig in March, 1833, and even to live there for a time without any definite occupation. He was not exactly well off, but he had enough to enable him to live as a single man of moderate means. The poverty from which so many of the greatest musicians have suffered, never formed part of Schumann's experience. He occupied himself with studies in composition, chiefly in the contrapuntal style, in which he had taken the liveliest interest since making the acquaintance of Bach's works; besides this his imagination, asserting itself more and more strongly, impelled him to the creation of free compositions. From this year date the impromptus for piano on a romance by Clara Wieck, which Schumann dedicated to her father, and published in August, 1833, as op. 5. In June he wrote the first and third movements of the G minor Sonata (op. 22), and at the same time began the F♯ minor Sonata (op. 11) and completed the Toccata (op. 7), which had been begun in 1829. He also arranged a second set of Paganini's violin caprices for the piano (op. 10), having made a first attempt of the same kind (op. 3) in the previous year. Meanwhile he lived a quiet and almost monotonous life. Of family acquaintances he had few, nor did he seek them. He found a faithful friend in Frau Henriette Voigt, who was as excellent a pianist as she was noble and sympathetic in soul. She was a pupil of Ludwig Berger, of Berlin, and died young in the year 1839. Schumann was wont as a rule to spend his evenings with a small number of intimate friends in a restaurant. These gatherings generally took place at the 'Kaffeebaum' (Kleine Fleischergasse No. 3). He himself however generally remained silent by preference, even in this confidential circle of friends. Readily as he could express himself with his pen, he had but little power of speech. Even in affairs of no importance, which could have been transacted most readily and simply by word of mouth, he usually preferred to write. It was moreover a kind of enjoyment to him to muse in dreamy silence. Henriette Voigt told W. Taubert that one lovely summer evening, after making music with Schumann, they both felt inclined to go on the water. They sat side by side in the boat for an hour in silence. At parting Schumann pressed her hand and said, 'To-day we have perfectly understood one another.'

It was at these evening gatherings at the restaurant in the winter of 1833–4 that the plan of starting a new musical paper was matured. It was the protest of youth, feeling itself impelled to new things in art, against the existing state of music. Although Weber, Beethoven, and Schubert had only been dead a few years, though Spohr and Marschner were still in their prime, and Mendelssohn was beginning to be celebrated, the general characteristic of the music of about the year 1830 was either superficiality or else vulgar mediocrity. 'On the stage Rossini still reigned supreme, and on the pianoforte scarcely anything was heard but Herz and Hünten.' Under these conditions the war might have been more suitably carried on by means of important works of art than by a periodical about music. Musical criticism, however, was itself in a bad way at this time. The periodical called 'Cæcilia,' published by Schott, which had been in existence since 1824, was unfitted for the general reader, both by its contents and by the fact of its publication in parts. The 'Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung,' conducted by Marx, had come to an end in 1830. The only periodical of influence and importance in 1833 was the 'Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung,' published by Breitkopf & Härtel of Leipzig, and at that time edited by G. W. Fink. But the narrow view taken of criticism in that periodical, its inane mildness of judgment—Schumann used to call it 'Honigpinselei' or 'Honey-daubing'—its lenity towards the reigning insipidity and superficiality, could not but provoke contradiction from young people of high aims. And the idea of first bringing the lever to bear on the domain of critical authorship, in order to try their strength, must have been all the more attractive to these hot-headed youths, since most of them had had the advantage of a sound scholarly education and knew how to handle their pens. On the other hand, they felt that they were not yet strong enough to guide the public taste into new paths by their own musical productions; and of all the set Schumann was the most sensible of this fact.

Such were the grounds on which, on April 3, 1834, the first number of the 'Neue Zeitschrift für Musik' saw the light. Schumann himself called it the organ of youth and movement. As its motto he even chose this passage from the prologue to Shakespeare's Henry VIII:—

a passage which sufficiently expresses his intention of contending against an empty flattering style of criticism, and upholding the dignity of art. 'The day of reciprocal compliments,' says the preliminary notice, 'is gradually dying out, and we must confess that we shall do nothing