3 Mixed Choruses

Clara Schumann is one of the most significant composers of the 19th century. The growing interest in her work is reflected in the Urtext editions of recent decades, in the creation of scholarly studies and in the increasing number of performances of her works. A further step here is the first print of her three mixed choruses in a source-critical Urtext edition by Gerd Nauhaus with a detailed preface on the history of the composition and its impact as well as a critical report, which includes the printed Ossia variants. The source-critical Urtext edition is based on Clara Schumann’s autograph of 1848, which is kept in the Robert Schumann House in Zwickau.

The work was composed on the occasion of Robert Schumann’s forthcoming birthday on June 8, 1848, and the three mixed choruses were premiered by members of the Dresdner Chorgesangverein on the morning of his birthday in 1848. Further performances followed at the “First Singing Voyage”, a boat trip on the Elbe on July 16, 1848, and at Clara’s birthday party on September 13.

The texts for the three mixed choruses are based on three poems by Emanuel Geibel from his successful and widespread collection of poetry from 1848, which Clara Schumann had already used in her solo songs op. 13 nos. 3, 4 and 6, composed in 1842. Robert Schumann and other contemporary composers also drew on Geibel’s poems; the “Gondoliera” alone was set to music over twenty times.

Clara Schumann’s three mixed choruses are wonderful gems and character pieces for choir. In “Abendfeier in Venedig”, a peaceful atmosphere is created with the simplest of means, such as harmonic distortions and imitative entries with uniform movement. The marching rhythms of the chorus “Vorwärts” are powerful with a cleverly varied sequence of verses, while in “Gondoliera” the gondola sways gracefully in nine-eighths time.