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By Root 1351 0

Clara played for him her variations on a theme from Robert’s Bunte Blätter (Mottled Leaves), written the year before as a gift for his birthday. Immediately he began writing his own set of variations on the theme, bringing each draft to Clara for comment as he finished it. There would be sixteen variations finally, published as Opus 9. Brahms wrote all but two of them between May 24 and June 15.40 Though they have echoes of Robert’s music and of Clara’s variations, he still shows considerable independence from his mentors—nor for all his historical borrowings would he ever sound like anyone but himself. Julius Otto Grimm, who was very close to Johannes in those days, christened the Schumann Variations “Trost-Einsamkeit,” “Consolation and Loneliness.” In mid-August he would add two final ones, numbered 10 and 11.

On the manuscript he signed some of these variations B for Brahms, some Kr for Kreisler. This was an echo of Schumann, who attributed parts of his Davidsbündlertänze—Dances of the League of David—to his alter egos Eusebius and Florestan. Brahms seemed to associate his own name with Schumann’s austere scholar Eusebius, Young Kreisler with Romantic and impulsive Florestan. For Brahms as for Schumann the name Florestan had another resonance as well: it was the name of Beethoven’s hero in his opera Fidelio, chained in a dungeon and rescued by a heroic wife.41 It had happened with Schumann and now with Brahms more than ever; alter egos flourished and contended, as in Hoffmann’s stories. Schumann’s imaginary circle had been symbol and symptom of his fragmenting consciousness. Who were Brahms and Young Kreisler now, as he spent every day with Clara? What were his alter egos thinking?

At the end of May the friends waited for Clara’s lying-in, trying to keep the house calm. Several times in those spring days Clara and Brahms read through his D minor two-piano sonata, and she and Dietrich played it over so he could listen. (Like many composers, Brahms needed to hear new pieces run through others’ fingers and ears to find some perspective after the inward process of composing.) Clara wrote in her journal of the sonata in progress, “This again seemed to me very powerful, quite original, on a grand scale, and at the same time clearer than the earlier things.” A few days later, Johannes played her more of his Hungarian folk songs. At the same time he announced that he was completely broke, but that he always felt in good spirits when he had no money.

Every day they waited for word from Endenich. In the first week of June came news that Robert had begun to remember things. He remained quiet and the doctor’s reports were guarded, but for the moment there were no outbursts or hallucinations.42 On June 9, the day after what must have been a bleak commemoration of Robert’s birthday, Clara wrote Joachim,

I am learning to understand [Johannes’s] rare and beautiful character better every day. There is something so fresh and so soothing about him; he is often so childlike and then again so full of the finest feelings.… And as a musician he is still more wonderful. He gives me as much pleasure as he possibly can … and he does this with a perseverance which is really touching … The reports [of Robert] vary greatly, but on the whole they point to a gradual improvement. I am swayed continually by hopes and fears, and at the bottom of my heart I suffer more than I can possibly describe.43

Two days later, Clara gave birth to her seventh surviving child and third boy. She wanted to name him Felix, for their late friend and champion Mendelssohn, but she put off the christening until Robert could make his own suggestion. The new baby consoled her as a token of connection to her husband, but at the same time created another obstruction to her touring as a soloist. Nor were the older children any help: “The children, instead of being a comfort to me, only agitate me the more, for I keep thinking: ‘What a father the poor children had! and now they have lost him, perhaps forever.’ ”44 As she recovered from childbirth, Brahms handed her a manuscript