Schumann's Manfred

The passion of Byron's Manfred lent itself to the 19th-century Romantic composers. The link that these composers made with Byron's poem was explicit, that is, part of the title of the works. The most famous are Tchaikovsky's 1885 Manfred Symphony and Schumann's 1849 Manfred Overture. In using Byron's hero as a major reference point, these composers were exploiting the lasting appeal of the drama, over several generations of readers, and well beyond readers in English.

Schumann is shown here in a daguerrotype from 1852 (source, Wikipedia). The image itself tells a great deal about the importance of the Byronic hero--world-weary (the pose) but beauty-susceptible (the flowers)--on the German composer.

Here is a YouTube performance of Schumann's Manfred Overture, conducted by Wilhelm Fürtwangler. In the mode of 19th-century "program" music, the composer has both tried to create a mood of passion and at the same time has "programmed" in some references to events in Byron's text--the famous scene of Manfred on the heights of the Jüngfrau, and his death.

--NJ