Beyond the "Year of Song": Text and Music in the Song Cycles of Robert Schumann after 1848 Page: 3

                                
issues of their own day. Schumann's storytelling voice allowed him to embrace a
change in his own musical style and message in several late cycles. Third, Schumann's
(relational) feminist voice will be considered. In two late cycles Schumann featured
historical women: Elisabeth Kulmann (1808-1825), a Russian poet, and Mary, Queen of
Scots (1542-1587). In both of these cycles, Schumann closely associated these
women's lives with their work and appreciated their strength and their abilities to
transcend their earthly burdens.
These late song cycles not only allow us to fully appreciate a large part of
Schumann's late-compositional oeuvre, but they also provide us a better understanding
of the mid-century German culture from this artist's perspective. The method by which
Schumann communicated with his audiences-one so different from that of the 1840-
songs-is as significant as the messages he hoped to communicate. Schumann's
experiences leading up to 1848 had changed him as a man and as a musician.
Through his late song cycles, Schumann communicated his ideas about the
transformation that happened within himself, his audiences, and the German culture
and proposed ways to resolve the many conflicts that existed.