Music of the 19th century as received in our own continues to seem focused on large forms and exquisite miniatures for piano, but many composers of the time wrote in genres that remain little explored today. Choral music is one, and related are the vocal quartets and other small vocal ensemble pieces that would have been staples of home music-making, in much of America as well as in Germany, for many decades. This enjoyable little disc from Leipzig's
Calmus Ensemble is presented as a collection of household music from the home of Robert and Clara Schumann. It resides a bit uncomfortably somewhere between that and an introduction to this repertory in general: the selections from Bach's Clavierbüchlein für Anna Magdalena Bach would have been unique to the Schumanns and perhaps a few like-minded enthusiasts, whereas Brahms' Six Songs and Romances, Op. 93a, were not even written until the early 1880s, long after Robert Schumann's death. The music is uniformly charming, however, and the pieces by Robert Schumann (and one in a similar vein from Clara) that make up most of the program are among his least often heard. This is not for any very good reason; they exhibit the same engagement with serious German poetry as his art songs, but they are just a bit gentler in tone, and they are, as the titles of the sets indicate, mostly "romances and ballads." Consider the setting of Goethe's "Heidenröslein" (track 5), from the Romanzen und Balladen I, Op. 67/3, which would make a perfect companion piece in concert for Schubert's familar setting; Schumann's version actually runs counter to the artlessness of the text and comes out more complex than Schubert's. Many of the songs, in fact, have beautiful harmonic shadings; the music was written for amateurs, but they were well-informed amateurs indeed. The Bach arias, accompanied by mid-19th century fortepiano, are uniquely evocative, as is the 1850 photo in the booklet of Clara at the piano and Robert dourly looking on. The booklet essay (in German, English, and French), however, is disappointing; it offers a basic biography of the Schumanns, pausing to note the disappointment of certain leftist German critics that Schumann was writing romances and ballads during the revolutions of 1848 and 1849, as if all aspects of human society should be required to operate synchronously. The texts of the songs are given in German and English only.