From a circle of friends to worrying anti-Semitism: the strange history of Schumann’s Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

Neue Bahnen – Schumann’s final article for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1853

Schumann’s magazine, Neue Zeitschrift für;Musik, is best known for the composer’s own, often important, pronouncements about contemporary music. It was where he would hail Johannes Brahms as the saviour of German music. But the magazine would later become known for its anti-Semitic articles from Wagner (anonymously) and others, sentiments which worryingly chime in with Schumann’s own milder and less public pronouncements.

The New Journal of Music (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik) was a music magazine founded in Leipzig in 1834 by Robert Schumann (then aged 24), his teacher and future father-in-law Friedrich Wieck, Julius Knorr and his close friend Ludwig Schuncke. The first issue was on 3 April 1834 and the editor was Julius Knorr though in fact most of the work on early issues was done by Schumann. Schuncke wrote some articles but died in 1834 (age 23). 

The magazine’s subtitle was “Herausgegeben durch einen Verein von Künstlern und Kunstfreunden” (published by a society of artists and arts lovers). This phrase was important as it underlined how Schumann envisioned the journal’s audience as being a circle of like-minded musical friends. He wrote that contemporary music critics too often uplifted the “arch-enemies of our art and every other: the untalented, the dime-a-dozen talent…and the talented, facile scribblers.” Schumann’s reviews for the magazine praised members of the new generation of musicians including Chopin and Berlioz, whilst pushing back against performers who he felt were second-rate imitators.

Schumann’s contributors were people whose writing he liked and with whom he shared musical ideals. For musical life outside Leipzig, Schumann relied on these correspondents, many of whom were not professional writers but simply passionate about the arts. The journal was published on a demanding schedule: twice a week, without fail.

A typical issue contained the following features:

• An epigraph from one of Schumann’s favourite authors
• A long essay on a subject such as biography, aesthetics, the state of regional musical performance, or even assessments of the output of other rival music journals
• Personal articles, including satirical ones and ones from alter egos like Schumann’s characters ‘Eusebius’ and ‘Florestan’.
• Reviews of printed works and works still in manuscript
• Correspondence which included a lively description of musical life in Germany and abroad
• Miscellany, where Schumann would include items like brief news updates, upcoming concert dates, and riddles
• Final section of advertisements, offers of employment

Indeed, you do wonder about the economic viability of the publication and the labour-intensive nature of Schumann’s contributions. 

No wonder that in June 1843, Schumann’s other commitments made him give up editorship of the magazine, as he was troubled by his mental health and wanted to be able to devote more time to writing music. However, his links to the magazine were not over and in 1853 he contributed his final article. Entitled Neue Bahnen (New Paths), Schumann introduced a young composer whom he had just met, named Johannes Brahms, who he believed would be the saviour of German music. It was a prophetic endorsement.

Schumann also had beliefs which are now rather less acceptable, notably when considering Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer never abandoned Judaism, which may have further inflamed German anti-Semites, even cultured ones. Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots premiered in 1836 and Schumann’s review of 1837 has the suggestion of anti-Semitism, “Time
and time again we had to turn away in disgust…One may search in vain
for a sustained pure thought, a truly Christian sentiment…It is all
contrived, all make believe and hypocrisy!…The shrewdest of composers
rubs his hands with glee.” 

Schumann expressed outrage that Meyerbeer had included variations on Martin Luther’s 16th-century hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.  He complained: “It is too much for a good Protestant when he hears his most hallowed song bawled forth from the stage.”

In letters to his wife Clara, Schumann also expressed anti-Semitic hatred of Mendelssohn, but his published views on Meyerbeer were more influential. Commentators see Schumann’s attack on the supposed evil inherent in Meyerbeer’s music as inspiring later anti-Semitic articles by the composer and music critic Theodor Uhlig, a Wagner devotee, and later by Wagner himself in his notorious 1850 tract Das Judenthum in der Musik (Jewishness in Music).

Theodor Uhlig (1822-1853) become a violinist in the Dresden orchestra at the age of 19. Uhlig quickly became a passionate convert to Wagner’s music. A tangible sign of his devotion was his arrangement of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin for piano. Uhlig defended Wagner in magazine articles and reviews. During the early years of Wagner’s exile from Germany, Uhlig remained one of his most important contacts and the source of an extensive correspondence until Uhlig’s early death in 1853 in Dresden from consumption.

Uhlig in part repaid Wagner by a series of articles, published in 1850, caustically attacking the opera Le prophète by Wagner’s supposed enemy, Meyerbeer. In a series of six essays in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, entitled Contemporary Reflections, Uhlig castigated the music of the opera and attacked Meyerbeer personally, not least as a representative of “Hebraic art-taste“. Wagner picked up on this phrase as an excuse to launch his virulent attack in the article Jewishness in Music. Uhlig was involved in the negotiations for the publication of this pamphlet. Wagner later dedicated to Uhlig his major essay Opera and Drama. 

Which brings us back to the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. In 1844 Franz Brendel became owner and editor: Brendel coined the phrase Neudeutsche Schule (New German School) to describe the progressive musical movement in Germany headed by Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt in the middle of the nineteenth century. Under Brendel’s tenure, the most notable piece in the magazine was Richard Wagner’s anti-Jewish article Das Judenthum in der Musik (Jewishness in Music), published under the pseudonym K. Freigedank (‘Freethought’) in volume 33, no. 19 (3 September 1850). 

Ignaz Moscheles and other teachers at the Leipzig Conservatory were outraged and called for Brendel’s resignation from its board. Wagner’s article had insulted the memory of Felix Mendelssohn, the conservatory’s founder—but had little further effect at the time. Later in the nineteenth century, it contributed to the rise in anti-Semitism, including criticism of music by Jewish composers who differed in style from Wagner. Brendel continued to edit the magazine until his death in 1868.