If not an idée fixe in scholarship, the notion of musical exchanges among intimates of the Schumanns’ circle probably counts at least as a Leitfaden. Clara Schumann’s wistful instrumental romances – and those composed by Robert Schumann, Joseph Joachim and Johannes Brahms – encourage a reconsideration of the role that ‘conversations’ played for her within the miniature genre. We begin with a chronology of the romances composed by this circle between 1829 and 1893 – predominantly for solo piano, but also for violin and piano, oboe and piano, string quartet, piano or violin and orchestra, orchestra, and cello and piano – and discuss how these ‘conversations’ could yield subtle allusions, performative physical memories and nostalgic recollections. Focusing on Clara Schumann’s Romances Opp. 21 and 22, this study brings forward aspects of formal and textural ambiguity, and virtuosity, all of which help reveal Clara Schumann’s contribution to the genre, while elucidating how her complex, multifaceted roles in the private and public spheres did not impede her from continuously challenging herself as a composer as she engaged in nuanced musical dialogues inspired by her circle.

Charles Dickens's assessment is striking. It names various older violinist-composers who were among the greatest living virtuosi in the 1830s. Joachim performed their compositions regularly and passionately in the 1840s but then, shifting his taste, came to reject violinistic showpieces. There are two principal reasons for Joachim's radical change of programming from about 1853 onward. First, at the end of the Golden Age of virtuosity—around 1848 according to Dahlhaus—the phenomenon of the virtuoso violinist-composer gradually went out of fashion. Second, in 1853, Joachim became part of an intimate circle with Brahms, the Schumanns, and the von Arnims, which altered his views on virtuosity, programming, program music, and aesthetics. As Joachim the performer transformed himself, so did Joachim the composer. This chapter investigates not Joachim's mature violin compositions of the 1850s, many of which he found worthy enough of publication and occasional performance, but rather Joachim's youthful sins: the virtuoso pieces by himself and others that he performed in the 1840s. Amalie Joachim (1839–99) said in 1891 that in his later life Joachim performed virtuoso pieces only in his “study …—because he wished to present himself in public exclusively as priest of the highest and most beautiful.” Accordingly, he probably would have preferred those early programs and pieces to pass into oblivion.

Joachim's reputation as an interpreting Geigerkönig or high priest rests on several ideological assumptions, including the role of the performer (versus the composer), and the superiority of “serious” genres. As the revered performer representing “dignity and sincerity in his art,” Joachim defended for several decades “fundamentally a moral position,” together with Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. James Hepokoski describes their stance using the first-person plural as follows: “We are the pure remnant, the last of the real artists, struggling against a musical age lapsing into cheap, tawdry decline.”

In Carl Johann Arnold’s famous watercolour, Quartettabend bei Bettina von Arnim, Joseph Joachim appears as a faceless Rückenfigur that pulls us from behind into the space of an intimate musical performance. When this depicted scene may have occurred is unclear, although scholars generally assign it to 1854 or 1856. Similarly unclear is exactly which works were performed at Bettina von Arnim’s ‘Gesellschaften’ at her residence ‘Unter den Zelten’ in Berlin. Although Petra Wilhelmy has argued that in the strict sense of the word, Bettina did not direct a salon, contemporary reports of prominent Berliners such as Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, who described gatherings at ‘Unter den Zelten’ where music was performed for groups of culturally minded intellectuals, encourage us to consider further the involvement of one of Bettina’s most cherished musicians – Joseph Joachim. Wilhelmy concedes that if Bettina did not host a typical salon, she did entertain assembled house parties that were interesting, unconventional, and quite heterogeneous, with audiences that ranged from ‘Prussian princes’ to ‘democratic authors’. And, as Wilhelmy adds, music played a large role in the von Arnim house. Nor was Bettina’s ‘salon’ the only one frequented by Joachim. During the Bismarck era, the musician and his wife, Amalie (a mezzo-soprano whom he married in 1863), were guests at the Berlin salon of the Countess Marie von Schleinitz-Wolkenstein, an aristocrat who, much like Bettina and other salonnières, recruited musicians to enrich the cultural offerings of her private social gatherings.

If salon research aims, as one of its goals, to understand a cultural space typically inhabited by women whose voices were often not heard (partly explaining, in this instance, the sparse documentation for Joachim’s participation in von Arnim’s salon), this chapter proposes that Joachim’s relationships with members of this salon and his creative output between the years surrounding Arnold’s painting can shed light on the very concept on which Bettina von Arnim’s social gatherings were based – intimacy. By attempting a reading of correspondence and documents related to Joachim’s interaction with the von Arnims – including a composition – we examine what it meant for him to be involved with the von Arnims and, in turn, what it meant for the von Arnims to be so intimate with the Jewish-Hungarian musician, by then already hailed as one of Germany’s most distinguished violinists.

Chronology

With the Overture to Henry IV, composed in 1853–54, Joachim continued his work on ‘hybrid’ overtures ‘for both theatre and concert hall’. Having completed the Overture to Hamlet (begun in 1851), and before beginning work on Demetrius (1853–54, finished before Henry IV), the composer now took up his second Shakespearean overture. Partially drafted during the summer of 1853, it was completed one year later, in July 1854, marking an unusually long genesis for a first draft. By 10 September 1853 Joachim had finished sketching the first half. But by November 1853, just a few days after dating his Op. 5 pieces, Joachim still had no draft of the whole. In January 1854 he reported that both the Demetrius and Henry IV overtures were almost realized in his head, the first also ‘on paper’.6 Now finding a burst of creativity, Joachim was able to finish the first version of the Demetrius Overture in February 1854, albeit not in time for a performance with Herman Grimm's play Demetrius, first staged on 24 February 1854. Three days later Robert Schumann's suicide attempt in the Rhine temporarily interrupted Joachim's progress, and his Henry IV Overture waited several months before its completion in July. The Overture to Henry IV was premiered on 24 March 1855 in Hanover in the newly opened Hoftheater, the first of only seven performances documented during Joachim's lifetime.

As with several of Joachim's previous compositions, his circle closely observed the overture's genesis and first steps into the world. Still under the spell of the New German aesthetic, the overture has a formal flexibility that accommodates the needs of the programme while maintaining a sense of thematic unity. Joachim continued drawing extensively on his experience at Weimar, and sent the work to Liszt after completing it.

At the same time, Joachim's Henry IV Overture betrays close contact with Schumann and Brahms. The tempo marking at the opening, ‘Mit feurigem Schwung’, could be a nod to Schumann, who was particularly fond of the overture and whose influence was even noted by a reviewer for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. By 25 January 1855 Joachim had made a copy specifically for Schumann;13 and after Schumann's death in July 1856, Joachim found several pages of his overture arranged for piano four hands among his mentor's last compositional efforts.

In the first full-length biography of Joachim, written in 1899 and published in 1901 while Joachim was still alive, Moser praised the musician's ‘great gift of representing different styles’ in his violin playing. Moser continued:

In the following, as we attempt a conclusion, we can apply a similar line of thought to the music of Joachim. He flourished in many styles and genres, and revealed, through his music, skill and familiarity with a breadth of different styles, beginning in a Mendelssohnian idiom and ending by embracing a Prussia-affirming compositional language. We may here briefly assess and summarize his compositional output.

Joachim's early melodic preferences betray Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte in 6/8 metre (combining crotchet, quaver, and dactyl rhythms), while he also inherits his mentor's ‘Elfin character’ (Irish Fantasy) and twomovement, slow-fast pairing (Op. 1). Beside the early Mendelssohnian influence, evidence from the mid-1840s – before Weimar – suggests a clear orientation to the idiomatic solo violin writing of both Charles de Bériot and H. W. Ernst, as revealed in Joachim's now lost Adagio and Rondo (1845) and the two fantasies (1848–52), respectively.

In Weimar (and continuing in Hanover) Joachim transforms himself, under Liszt's important influence, into a composer of serious orchestral programmatic overtures with multi-layered forms, thematic transformation (in the overtures to Hamlet, Demetrius, and Henry IV) and occasionally even acrostics formed with lines from the underlying plays (in said overtures). The Gozzi Overture experiments with a lighter, comic aesthetic; at the same time Joachim does not shake off completely his brooding musical temperament, a sombre passion that remains one of the greatest assets of his compositional style.

In three independent variation sets, Joachim pursued three distinct endeavours: the Variations on an Original Theme Op. 10 treated the Gis-ELa cipher, the Elfenlied cycle explored and reconsidered variation form, and the last work, Variations for Violin with Orchestral Accompaniment, offered a synthesis. Joachim's choice of themes revealed his continued weakness for ciphers (Op. 10) and his continuing infatuation with Gisela (Gis-E-La). The Irish national folk style, explored twice in Joachim's output (in the Goldschmidt–Joachim Fantasy of 1859 and in the here discussed piano variations), became the centre of the Elfenlied Variations and perhaps left a trace in the theme of the Variations for Violin. Only the Elfenlied Variations used a pre-existing theme.

Joachim's life-long fascination with virtuosity – ranging from the early hyper-virtuosity to the later ‘tamed’ type – is again evident in the E minor Variations for Violin with Orchestral Accompaniment, which balance lyricism and effect-laden applications of virtuosity, as was fitting for the dedicatee, Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908), then one of Europe's most eminent virtuosi.

The composer's changing personal situations in 1854, 1856, and 1878–79 differed as much as the three variations. In 1854 Joachim entered his second year in Hanover, but frequently visited Berlin, which in the summer of 1854 replaced Göttingen as his chosen place to spend the summer months. The blissful period in Berlin indeed provided frequent opportunities for Hausmusik of the sorts depicted in Carl Arnold's watercolour Quartettabend bei Bettine. And some time between early June and late August Joachim’s cipher FAE – which previously stood for his bachelorhood – changed its meaning to ‘Für alle Ewigkeit’ – as the composer wrote to Gisela one day that summer. On 30 August 1854, Gisela's birthday, Joachim began his variations by writing down a theme that included her cipher and a note announcing his intention to compose a variation work on Gis-E-La.

Rather different was the background to the Elfenlied Variations. In 1856 Joachim was beginning to feel the tensions of his triangular relationship with Herman and Gisela but nevertheless went on a trip to Venice with Herman, returning to Heidelberg for the summer. He composed one large work, the Kleist Overture, which was premiered on 14 March 1857, and several smaller works, including Versuch eines Tanzes – an attempt at a melodrama for Gisela with no afterlife– and the Elfenlied set, as well as many compositional exercises.

Understanding Joachim's aesthetic as a composer of programme music in the early 1850s has proved challenging for scholars. The many dichotomies of his life and work have often blurred his contours as a composer. History has situated him between Leipzig (Moritz Hauptmann) and Weimar (Liszt), and between absolute (Brahms) and programme music (Liszt). There are also his two musical personae as violinist and composer, as well as conflicts between his German and Hungarian nationalities, and between the Jewish and Christian faiths (he converted to the latter in 1855). Borchard has offered a valuable start to understanding his Zerrissenheit (disunity):

This chapter will follow Borchard's method and investigate Joachim's Hamlet Overture by asking how Shakespeare's tragedy served as a mirror to a whole generation. It provides a window into Joachim's political and historical worldview. What was the cultural situation that elevated Weltschmerz? And how, specifically, was cultural and societal disunity an issue for Joachim? The following analysis of Joachim's Hamlet approaches his disunity from a musical perspective. It does so by positioning the work between a musical past and present, by acknowledging its programmatic and counter-Lisztian features, and by exploring how Joachim portrays the character Hamlet. Joachim closely followed the political events of the 1848–49 revolutions in Hungary and Germany. His letters written between March and October 1848 reflect the enthusiasm for Hungarian independence and subsequent frustration when the dream of independence was shattered.

Catalogue of Works

On 11 September 1907 The Musical Courier issued a report describing Joachim's funeral in Berlin, noting the deceased's important role at the Hochschule für Musik – he was the only one on whom the title ‘“Director of the Hochschule”, as a whole’ was conferred – and comparing the funeral to that of a king. At the cemetery of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche, named after Wilhelm I, grandfather of the dedicatee of Joachim's Kaiser Wilhelm Overture (1896), Beethoven's ‘Funeral March’ was played. Joachim, the composer of virtuoso fantasies, songs, character pieces, overtures ‘a l’école de Weymar’ (in the style of the Weimar School), concertos, cipher obsessions, works in the elegiac style, vocal pieces, melodramas, and marches, was subsumed in that same Prussian Hochschuldirektor and larger-thanlife German violinist to whom 200,000 guests paid their respects.

Joachim, a ‘king’ or Geigerkönig, as he was often designated in his last decades, but also a ‘durch und durch Deutscher Künstler’ (‘a German artist through and through’), was buried on 23 August 1907 as an artist whose ‘Germanness’, though noted as early as 1854, was now recognized. And if in the middle of the century the definition of ‘Germanness’ seemed open to interpretation – as evident in the diverse groups of musicians with different aesthetic banners who claimed it – since 1871 a distinctly political definition had developed. This chapter treats Joachim's Prussian sense of ‘Germanness’, more specifically, a particular definition that was related to his position at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, which he founded in 1869, and to the music he composed in his capacity as Hochschuldirektor.

In founding the Königlich Akademische Hochschule für Musik, by an intriguing turn of destiny Joachim realized Mendelssohn's earlier efforts in 1843 to establish a conservatory in Berlin under Friedrich Wilhelm IV, which had failed. Hence Mendelssohn moved the project to Leipzig, thereby attracting the twelve-year-old Joachim (or rather, his father), who, as a consequence, sent his son to the city. In Weissmann's history of Berlin, the year 1869 was singled out as especially noteworthy: ‘Joachim is called to Berlin. He will direct the newly founded royal conservatory of music [Hochschule für Musik]. This is more than a simple calling. It means giving new impulse to practical [instrumental] music in Berlin, which without a superior guiding spirit threatened to turn to silt in the sand and become mediocre.’

Among the many portraits of Joseph Joachim in the public domain is a photograph from 1887 featuring a greeting from Joachim to Fauré: ‘A Monsieur Fauré / en souvenir du 30 Janvier et de Joseph Joachim / Paris, Janvier 1887’ (see Illustration 0.1).

The occasion was a concert in the French capital, where Joachim performed his Variations for Violin with Orchestral Accompaniment (1878– 79). The image shows a dignified gentleman with a full beard and a somewhat stern, deliberate look on his face. He is not holding his violin in this photograph, but has his hand inside his coat, a gesture that we would associate with paintings of Napoleon or statesmen of the time. This was the time when he was regarded as Germany's premier violinist, a ‘Geigerkönig’, or high priest of German music. The photograph on the cover of this book, in contrast, was taken nearly forty years before, and shows Joachim from a different side. Here we see a brooding, emotional adolescent, looking rather wild and eager. Of course, he was already a world-renowned violin star and also an up-and-coming composer with great promise. These two photographs reveal two different sides of the same man. Today the older, dignified violinist is the more famous. The younger, fiery composer is less well known – in fact, not well known at all.

In this monograph, the first full-length study of Joachim's music, the composer and his music take centre stage. Between the late 1840s and mid- 1860s, the main span of Joachim's compositional activity, he composed five overtures, three violin concertos, several little violin pieces, and variations. A small number of mostly occasional works were composed after 1864, and some earlier works were later revised for publication. Although the Hungarian Concerto in D minor Op. 11 is still performed today – in Hanslick's view, this ‘opus hungaricum’ secured Joachim's ‘excellent place among modern composers’ – Joachim's activity as a composer around the 1850s has largely passed unnoticed. His idiosyncratic, subjective musical language shines on its own merits. And in terms of influences, it is revealing on both the giving end (Bargiel, Brahms, Bruch, Dvořák, Fauré, Gade, Herzogenberg, Reinecke, Rudorff, Schumann, and Stanford) and the receiving end (Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, and Brahms, in that order).

As a native Hungarian who left his homeland at an early age, a Jew who converted to Christianity, and a musician who flirted with the music of Liszt but in the end professed allegiance to a more conservative aesthetic and identified with Beethoven and Brahms, Joachim confronted several identity issues during his career. To understand and disentangle them is a complex challenge. Our approach in this chapter will draw primarily upon two compositions that are surely equal in relevance but unequal in musical scope and significance: the Hungarian Concerto (1857–59, bolstered by a comparison with the early Hungarian Fantasy of 1848–50) and Hebrew Melodys Op. 9 for viola and piano (1854). Because the concerto outweighs Hebrew Melodys in size, complexity, and reception history, and because Joachim's letters yield far more about his understanding of Hungarian nationalism, politics, and culture than of his Jewish heritage, the primary sources entail an imbalance vis-à-vis identity questions. Whereas primarily biographical accounts can investigate more thoroughly Joachim's place in culture, society, and politics as a Hungarian-born Jew who spoke German, a monograph dedicated to his music necessitates some difficult choices of coverage. But those readers who wish to explore Joachim's self-identification further are recommended to read two further works that look in detail at his Jewishness: Styra Avins’s ‘Joseph Joachim and the Haskalah: The Dilemma of German Jews’ and the long-awaited, full-length Joachim biography by Robert Eshbach.

Returning to the Style Hongrois: Joachim's ‘Hungarianness’ Reconsidered

On 6 April 1903, Esther Bright, a dear friend of Joachim and amateur violinist, was on a train with the 71-year-old Joachim, who as it happened was in a talkative mood. Bright recorded the following conversation in her diary: