Whose Music? Interpreting Authorship and Identity in Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann Op. 9

The Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, composed by Johannes Brahms in 1854 and dedicated to Clara Schumann, occupy the intersection of a complex web of biographical and
musical relationships. Schumann’s suicide attempt and subsequent hospitalisation in February of 1854 was deeply felt by the young Johannes Brahms, who soon afterwards began composition of the Variations Op. 9. In addition to the unusual choice of a minor-key theme, taken from Schumann’s Op. 99 Albumblätter (a theme previously chosen by Clara Schumann for her Variations Op. 20), the rhetoric, texture and musical treatment of the variation cycle itself may be read as an homage to Schumann. Furthermore, the variations display an intricate set of layered identities, both through referentialities in the musical text (the theme is only a single, explicit example of the deliberate invocation of the ‘compositional voice’ of another person), and through explicit notation in the manuscript delivered to Clara Schumann. In the midst of this cloud of references, the concept of interpretation takes on a new significance. It is clear that Brahms is, on multiple planes, distanced from his own authorial voice. He is engaged in what may be termed compositional interpretation: Johannes Brahms interprets Robert Schumann — or Johannes Kreisler, or an idealised and reinterpreted self. These are questions of compositional identity that remain relevant for the modern interpreter, as alterations to this identity necessarily produce differences in interpretation and performance practice. Brahms is not ‘varying’ Schumann’s theme in his own compositional voice, but differentiating his authorial identity by altering and at times almost dissolving his otherwise already strongly-characterised pianistic writing; what then is the primary point of orientation for a pianist engaging with traditions of nineteenth-century performance practice? In essence, does, or should, one aim to perform Brahms, Schumann, or someone else entirely?