The common challenges of the Kinderszenen and the Hammerklavier

The inexhaustibility of the great composers is such that we can only begin to scratch the surface of what they offered us, and connections and threads we haven’t previously noticed are bound to appear. Ideally, I would want to bring myself to the point where, on stage, I can empty my head of everything I discuss in this post, and all these connections would somehow instinctively emerge. When I go off stage, they would pop back into my head and I’d be reminded of how baffled I was when I first discovered them.

The finale of Schumann’s F-sharp minor sonata: Getting into the composer’s head

Schumann has managed to acquire a reputation for somewhat disorganized music. Gould, for example, who was obsessed with the architecture of the musical text, never touched any of Schumann’s piano repertoire. But a closer, or rather different look reveals a logic all its own and a glimpse inside Schumann’s head–as it were. And even if by classic architectural standards Schumann’s edifice wouldn’t stand, on its own terms, the structure holds together remarkably.

Schumann’s F-sharp minor sonata and the boundaries of genre

Schumann was the father of organic unity and the obsessive musical idea running through all movements of a piece — an early instance of what was later to be known as the leitmotiv. His first sonata, in F-sharp minor, is a perfect example. This masterpiece of gigantic proportions (both in length and in expressive scope) seeks to reconcile the structural boundaries of the four-movement sonata with the composer’s cyclical ambitions.