Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Musical Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 “Seldom Satisfied, but Always Delighted”: Jean Paul and His Novels
- 2 Digressive Dances: Schumann's Early Cycles
- 3 Carnaval: Redefining Convention, Transcending Boundaries
- 4 Higher and Lower Forms
- 5 Schumann's and Jean Paul's Idyllic Vision
- Epilogue
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Musical Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 “Seldom Satisfied, but Always Delighted”: Jean Paul and His Novels
- 2 Digressive Dances: Schumann's Early Cycles
- 3 Carnaval: Redefining Convention, Transcending Boundaries
- 4 Higher and Lower Forms
- 5 Schumann's and Jean Paul's Idyllic Vision
- Epilogue
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
Meine Sterne waren untergegangen: da lächelte dein Hesperus, göttlicher Jean Paul, und beleuchtete meine Thränen, aber die Thränen wurden Freudenthränen und die Seele lächelte sanft wie Hesperus. …
(My stars had sunk below the horizon: then your Hesperus smiled, divine Jean Paul, and illuminated my tears, but the tears became tears of joy and my soul smiled as gently as Hesperus did. …)
—Robert Schumann, Tagebücher, ed. Georg Eismann and Gerd Nauhaus (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1971-87), 1:40.In 1844, Carl Kossmaly wrote of Schumann's piano works that he found many of them “too pithy, dense, and laden with meaning … as if one were lost in a thick, overgrown forest, the path barred from moment to moment by mighty treetrunks or knotty roots, powerful vines and sharp thorns, and could escape only with difficulty” and that they shared with other bizarre expressions of Romanticism “a tendency toward everything arbitrary, eccentric, and formless.” Since Kossmaly, we have seen varying degrees of sympathy toward Schumann's piano music in the literature, beginning with J. A. Fuller-Maitland's short overview of 1927 and Kathleen Dale's article in the Schumann symposium edited by Gerald Abraham in the 1950s. It was not until the 1980s, however, that truly concentrated analytical attention was paid to these works, particularly those without the immediate accessibility of a sonata structure. Bernhard Appel's dissertation on the Humoreske was at the vanguard of a welcome cornucopia of scholarly examination of this repertoire.
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- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004