A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Davidsbündler

by George Grove

DAVIDSBÜNDLER. An imaginary association of Schumann and his friends, banded together against old-fashioned pedantry and stupidity in music, like David and his men against the Philistines. The personages of this association rejoiced in the names of Florestan, Eusebius, Raro, Chiara, Serpentinus, Jonathan, Jeanquirit, etc., and their displays took place in the pages of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Schumann's periodical. It was Schumann's half humorous, half melancholy way of expressing his opinions. He himself, in the preface to his Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig, 1854), speaks of it as 'an alliance which was more than secret, since it existed only in the brain of its founder.' The Davidsbündler did not confine themselves to literary feats; their names are to be found in Schumann's compositions also. Florestan and Eusebius not only figure in the Carneval (op. 9), but the Grande Sonate, No. 1 (op. 11), was originally published with their names, and so was the set of pieces entitled 'Davidsbündler' (op. 6). The most humorous of all these utterances is the 'Marche des Davidsbündler contre les Philistins,' which winds up the Carneval, and in which the antiquated 'Grosvatertanz' is gradually surrounded and crushed by the strains of the new allies.

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