Schumann course culminates in performance

School of Music Prof. Michael Friedmann's course Schumann's Chamber Music: Performance and Analysis, which is open by audition to instrumentalists studying at the School of Music and at Yale College, focuses on combining analytical research with practical performance issues. The class culminates in a performance of what Friedmann describes as "a precious and surprisingly undervalued body of repertoire."

Friedmann, Professor of Musicology and Theory at the Yale School of Music, specializes in the music of Schoenberg, Schumann, and Beethoven, analysis of post-tonal music, ear training, and chamber music coaching. He received a special citation from the Society of Music Theory for his 1990 book Ear Training for 20th-century Music (Yale University Press).

"My approach links analysis to performance," Friedmann said, "because performers usually rush to get performances ready without the opportunity to make genuine contact with all dimensions of the phrase structure, relation of tonal design and thematic form, and motivic interaction. They also learn how to distinguish the principal elements from countersubjects or other secondary elements. Moreover, a refined awareness of emotional content, and mercurial shifts of emotional 'topic,' which directly affect sound and pacing, is often bypassed in favor of a monolithic rendering of the notes.”

Friedmann concentrates on Schumann's chamber music because "students may not immediately get the opportunity to play this repertoire as they would comparable music of Brahms, Beethoven, and others."

This year's concert, which is scheduled to take place on Dec. 12, at 7:30 pm at the Whitney Humanities Center, will feature performances of Schumann's Märchenerzählungen, Op.132; Piano Trio No. 3 in G minor, Op. 110; Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105; and Piano Trio No. 2 in F major, Op. 80.