Date of composition: 1848
Duration: 11 minutes
As early as 1828, at the age of eighteen, Robert Schumann was captivated by Lord Byron and his 1817 dramatic poem Manfred. Byron – a scandal-ridden poet of anguished romanticism, admired as a freedom fighter who died young – was an idol for an entire generation. Two decades later, in the year of revolution in Germany, 1848, Schumann adapted the text as a “dramatic poem with music”, including solo parts, choruses, and spoken passages – an ambitious, hybrid form of musical theatre, “something completely new and unheard-of” (Schumann). Yet it was above all the overture through which his version of Manfred survived. A sonic portrait of the soul, it moves listeners even without words. One senses that the music tells the story of a restless, death-seeking hero: Manfred, through his “forbidden love” for Astarte (an incestuous relationship is implied), is burdened with a guilt that will not let him go. Opening with an introduction that returns at the end as a kind of epilogue, the breathlessly driven score, shot through with plaintive gestures, surges with passion yet comes up against the abyss of despair time and again.