Old windows

Huw Williams | 16:09, Thursday 07 November 2013 | Turin, Italy

My listening recently has centred around that of Robert Schumann. This surprises me in some ways because for a long time, Schumann was far from my favourite composer. Something just didn't quite click for me, I admired his music, but I didn't love it. But what was it Shakespeare said? "What our contempts doth often hurl from us / We wish it ours again..." - and having hurled Schumann from me for some time now, I find I have come back to his music with new ears, and wonder why I didn't hear all this before.

If you know Schumann's symphonies for example, you will be familiar with all that melancholic longing and anxiety that he poured into these works. His critics tend to criticise his dense orchestration but too easily forget that in the hands of a skilled conductor, these textures are anything but dense, and the music itself is never self-indulgent. Schumann of course, led a deeply tragic life - his music charting quite closely his own struggles with what we would identify today as manic depression. There are times when that struggle is almost unbearably sad - as any comparison between the first and final versions of his Fourth Symphony make clear.

But what is it that makes the music suddenly click like this? I know I've touched on this before, but is it the changing circumstances of life? Is it simply growing up and older eyes and ears appreciating what younger eyes and ears are unable to? Whatever it is, it's something I like, I love that the scene out of an old window can suddenly reveal details, colours and contours that the eye hasn't noticed before. I am delighted to find that the spirit of discovery and rediscovery doesn't have to disappear with age.