When Robert Schumann visited Beethoven’s grave in Vienna in 1838, he found there an old steel pen, which he kept for use on special occasions. It is no accident that Schumann chose to use it when he embarked on his first symphony two years later, for all his symphonies offer audible testimony to his profound respect for Beethoven as the father of the Romantic symphony. He was distressed to find that Vienna seemed to pay little respect to Beethoven’s memory or his music. One of Schumann’s crusading purposes as a critic and composer was to raise Beethoven to the level he deserved, and the most effective means at his disposal was to compose symphonies of his own that would demonstrate their lineage. 

In September 1850, Schumann and his wife, pianist-composer Clara Wieck Schumann, moved from Dresden, where they had lived for nearly six years, to Düsseldorf, a city on the Rhine whose musical reputation had risen in the three years that Mendelssohn was conductor there, and even more under his successor Ferdinand Hiller, an important and versatile musician with considerable influence in German musical circles. When Hiller moved on to Cologne, he proposed his friend Schumann as successor. After much hesitation, Schumann accepted, little knowing that his years there would be plagued by declining health and growing controversy over his abilities as a conductor. 

At the start, though, he was warmly welcomed by the Düsseldorfers, especially when he presented them with a series of new works, including his fourth and final symphony (though published and known as No. 3). It was performed in February 1851 during his first season. Since his student days in Heidelberg, Schumann had always loved the Rhineland (the long expanse of land along the Rhine River in central Germany), and the immediate inspiration for the symphony, along with its familiar nickname “Rhenish,” came, as Schumann himself explained, from his visit to Cologne Cathedral the previous September.

Modern visitors to Cologne are inescapably impressed by the massive twin spires at the west end of the cathedral, but when Schumann was there, there were no spires — the medieval structure had been left unfinished for over three centuries. But in 1842, the immense task of completion began, and the cathedral was finally finished in 1880. Schumann was able to see the work in progress and was perhaps as much impressed by the solemn occasion he witnessed there — the enthronement of Cardinal Archbishop Geissel — as by the building itself. Solemnity is clearly an element of the symphony, especially the extra movement, fourth of the five, which is marked feierlich (solemn) and introduces trombones to give breadth and grandeur. 

There is a similar weight and dignity to the opening of the first movement, when Schumann overcomes his tendency to think in short phrases and writes a splendid theme that launches the work with great panache. The orchestration is rich and full, never featuring instruments on their own, even in a more reflective theme that suits the winds but is actually shared with the strings. He was writing for an orchestra he did not yet know, and in this case, a policy of safety contributes to the solemnity. 

The second-movement scherzo is not swift or jocular; the model is more Mendelssohn than Beethoven, especially in its middle section, where more rapid figures are passed back and forth. 

The slow movement also has touches of Mendelssohn, but here we are closer to the world of Schumann’s songs. There is some beautiful writing for strings, and even the woodwinds have no cause to complain. When the movement introduces the steady tread of a solemn procession, Schumann’s private musings come to an end and the public ceremonial takes over, with echoes of J.S. Bach in the counterpoint and pre-echoes of Bruckner in its breadth. 

The fourth movement’s strange, uncertain ending in the minor key is blown away by the positive vigor of the fifth-movement finale, as the shy, taciturn Schumann presents himself to the Düsseldorf public as a man of faultlessly extrovert temper. 

— Hugh Macdonald 

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.