Tag: Schumann

  • Schumann on Chopin’s style

    Chopin can hardly write anything now but that we feel like calling out in the seventh or eighth measure, “It is by him!” – Robert Schumann, 1838 P. Kildea, Chopin’s Piano, London, Allen Lane, 2018, p. 43.

  • Schumann as a student

    Schumann studied with Dorn, the conductor at the civic theatre. Dorn recalled: Having completed exercises in figured-bass realization, chorale harmonization, and canon, teacher and student moved on to double counterpoint. Intrigued by the mysteries of this discipline, and reluctant to tear himself away from his desk, Schumann once requested that his lesson take place in…

  • Schumann on music

    As to what concerns the knotty question in general of how far instrumental music may go in the representation of thoughts and events, many are here too anxious in their attitude. We are certainly wrong if we believe that composers set out pen and paper to realize the miserable intention of expressing, describing, or painting…

  • Piotr Anderszewski on interpretation

    To me it’s all about how you read and translate the music you play: the most important thing is to reach the point where you feel you understand what happened in the composer’s mind before he actually wrote it. Musical notation is a very sophisticated yet imperfect system; it was the only way for the…