Robert Schumann es en muchos sentidos caracterstico de la poca en que vivi,

combinando en su msica una serie de los principales elementos del

Romanticismo, al igual que hizo en su vida. Hijo de un librero, editor y escritor,
nacido en Zwickau en 1810, mostr desde muy temprano inters por la literatura
y en aos posteriores se hara un nombre como escritor y director de la Neue
Zeitschrift fr Musik, una revista creada en 1834. Su padre favoreci sus
intereses literarios y musicales y hubo un momento en el que pens enviarlo a
estudiar con Weber, una propuesta que qued desechada con la muerte de este
ltimo, a la que sigui muy pronto la muerte del padre de Schumann.
La carrera de Schumann sigui entonces un rumbo ms convencional. En 1828
se matricul en la Universidad de Leipzig, donde su atencin por los estudios fue
tan intermitente como habra de serlo al ao siguiente en Heidelberg.
Posteriormente consigui convencer a su madre y tutor para que le permitieran
estudiar msica con el renombrado profesor de piano Friedrich Wieck, cuyas
propias energas se haban dirigido con cierta intensidad hacia la formacin de su
hija Clara, una pianista con un talento precoz y prodigioso. Las ambiciones de
Schumann como pianista, sin embargo, se vieron frustradas por una debilidad en
sus dedos, cualquiera que fuera su verdadera causa, y en el resto de sus
estudios musicales le falt, como poco, aplicarse con el celo necesario. Sin
embargo, en la dcada de 1830 escribi muchas obras para piano, a menudo en
forma de piezas breves, de gnero, con alguna asociacin literaria o
autobiogrfica extramusical. Mantuvo una relacin amorosa con una de las
discpulas de Wieck, ms tarde interrumpida, pero en 1835 empez ya a desviar
su atencin hacia Clara Wieck, nueve aos ms joven que l. Wieck tena buenos
motivos para oponerse a la relacin. Su hija tena ante s una importante carrera
como pianista de concierto y Schumann haba mostrado signos de inestabilidad
de carcter, fueran cuales fueran sus aptitudes como compositor. Las cosas
llegaron hasta tal punto que hubo que acudir a un juicio con objeto de impedir lo
que Wieck vea como un matrimonio desastroso.
No fue hasta 1840 cuando Schumann pudo por fin casarse con Clara, una vez
que los intentos legales de su padre por oponerse al matrimonio fracasaron
definitivamente. La pareja se cas en septiembre, quedndose primero en
Leipzig, aunque realizaron viajes para que Clara ofreciera conciertos,
acompaada generalmente por su marido, cuya posicin era menos distinguida.
En 1844 se trasladaron a Dresde, donde pareca que Schumann podra
recuperarse de los brotes de depresin que haba sufrido en los inicios de su
matrimonio. Aqu tampoco pareci surgir ningn puesto oficial y no fue hasta
1849 cuando surgi la perspectiva de un trabajo, esta vez en Dsseldorf, donde
Schumann ocup su puesto como director de msica en 1850.
Mendelssohn haba tenido una relacin difcil con las autoridades de Dsseldorf y
Schumann, mucho menos experimentado en asuntos de administracin y de
direccin de orquestas, demostr ser incluso menos capaz de hacer frente a las
dificultades que iban surgiendo. Las presiones sobre l dieron lugar a una
profunda crisis nerviosa en 1853 y pas los ltimos aos de su vida en un
manicomio en Endenich, donde muri en 1856.

Como compositor, las primeras piezas para piano de Schumann se vieron

seguidas en 1840 por la composicin de una cancin tras otra, alrededor de 150
en el lapso de un ao, un perodo en el que se produjeron las presiones del pleito
de Wieck, aunque todo concluy felizmente. Clara Schumann anim entonces a
su marido a que abordara formas ms amplias, grandes obras orquestales y
peras. Esto no impidi que Schumann escribiera ms canciones y ms piezas
breves para piano, formas ambas en las que sobresali. Sus ltimas canciones y
sus ltimas obras para piano de cierta importancia vieron la luz en 1853.
Un ao despus de su matrimonio en 1840, Clara Schumann dio a luz a su
primera hija, Marie. Una segunda hija, bautizada con el nombre de Elise, sigui
en 1843, y una tercera, Julie, en marzo de 1845, despus de que la familia se
hubiera trasladado a Dresde. Emil, nacido en 1845, muri algo ms de un ao
despus. Ludwig naci en 1848, y Eugenie y Felix despus del traslado definitivo
a Dsseldorf. Fue en 1848, sin embargo, tras la finalizacin de su ambiciosa
pera Genoveva y al tiempo que contemplaba la composicin de su msica para
Manfred de Byron, cuando Schumann centr su atencin en una serie de piezas
breves, concebidas, en primera instancia, para el cumpleaos de su hija mayor,
Marie. El proyecto creci al tiempo que Schumann aumentaba felizmente la
coleccin, que resultaba muy prctica para sus hijos. Acab venciendo la
resistencia de su editor y la coleccin final de 43 piezas se public, con los
beneficios para el compositor, aumentada, en una segunda edicin, con una
coleccin de Musikalische Haus- und Lebensregeln (Instrucciones para msicos
jvenes). Schumann incorpor ms tarde a este proyecto educativo una serie de
canciones, Liederalbum fr die Jugend, Opus 79, (lbum de canciones para la
juventud), y en 1853 Drei Clavier-Sonaten fr die Jugend, Opus 118 (Tres sonatas
para piano para la juventud), con una serie de dos para nios, Kinderball, Opus
130 (Baile infantil).
El Jugendalbum difiere, no hace falta decirlo, de las familiares Kinderszenen
(Escenas infantiles) de 1838, que reflejan una visin adulta de la niez.
Especialmente familiares son la Marcha de los soldados y una pequea pieza, en
su da oda profusamente en una enftica interpretacin juvenil y ms tarde
conocida generalmente como El campesino feliz. La caza y los jinetes a caballo
despiertan las armonas y los ritmos apropiados y Knecht Ruprecht evoca al
tradicional criado de San Nicols. Tres de las piezas aparecen designadas por
medio de una disposicin triangular de estrellas e incluyen reminiscencias de
otras obras con una resonancia especial para el compositor. La segunda parte de
la obra incluye tambin una obra breve, Erinnerung, en memoria de
Mendelssohn, cuya prematura y repentina muerte tuvo lugar en 1847. La
Nordisches Lied (Cancin nrdica) es un tributo al sucesor de Mendelssohn como
director de la Orquesta de la Gewandhaus de Leipzig, el compositor dans Niels
W. Gade, cuyo nombre aporta las notas que inician el tema. Las dos escenas
invernales, Winterszeit, presentan un retrato literario del invierno, al aire libre y
bajo techo, este ltimo reflejado en una referencia insinuada a una cancin
popular alemana. La coleccin, que aumenta su complejidad con su pequea
fuga y su coral ornamentado, concluye adecuadamente con una mirada
optimista al Nuevo Ao, el Sylvesterlied, en un perodo especialmente fructfero

de la carrera creativa de Schumann, un perodo que habra de concluir pronto en

tragedia.

Robert Schumann's Album for the Young and the Coming of Age of
Nineteenth-Century Piano Pedagogy
Written by Lora Deahl
In 1843, Robert Schumann noted that his highly original if slightly bizarre piano
cycles of the 1830s had not endeared him to the public or to his publishers. He
regretfully conceded that the financial responsibilities of supporting a wife and
family had forced him to consider not only "artistic fruits" of his labor but also the
"prosaic" ones.1 At the same time, Schumann was concerned about the poor
quality of pedagogical piano music available for teaching his own young
daughters. Therefore, in the final decade of his life, he began composing works
aimed at satisfying the escalating middle-class demand for Hausmusik.2
Schumann's initial essay in this genre, the Album for the Young (Album fr die
Jugend), op. 68, not only revolutionized attitudes concerning music education,
but also inaugurated an entirely new genre of piano literatureprogrammatic
music written explicitly for children. The spectacular and instantaneous success
of the Album inspired Schumann to write many more pieces for children,
spawned a host of copycat publications, and most importantly, popularized a
forward-looking pedagogical philosophy whose ramifications extended into the
twentieth century. While it can be argued that the Album was and is the most
widely known of Schumann's works, its significance as a historical, musical, and
pedagogical document has been largely overlooked. This article attempts a
broad evaluation of the Album by providing documentation and discussion of the
following: the historical and political contexts of Hausmusik as a signature
concept of nineteenth-century bourgeois sensibility, the sources of Schumann's
pedagogical philosophies, the developmental history and design of the Album,
the reception history of the Album, and the influence of the Album on German
and American piano pedagogy.

Hausmusik and the Bourgeois Sensibility

Hausmusik,3 literally music designed for playing at home, was a repertory
distinguished primarily by its place of performance and only secondarily by its
style or genre. The sacred intimacy of the Hausmusik setting, eloquently if
sentimentally preserved in the etchings of the famous nineteenth-century
illustrator Ludwig Richter, contrasted starkly with the sumptuous and contrived
elegance of the aristocratic salon as well as with the grandeur of large public
performance spaces.4 The development of Hausmusik coincided with the
growing debate in the 1840s concerning the social dimensions of music.
Fractured into a myriad of states, the Germany of Schumann's day sought and
found in the arts an affirming force for unification. By cultivating specifically
"German" traits of seriousness, simplicity, and Volkstmlichkeit, Hausmusik set
itself apart from that large body of aristocratic French and Italian salon music
which the press criticized as being frivolous, artificial, and corruptive of good
taste.5 By relying on a tripartite emphasis on home, church, and nature,

Hausmusik aimed to raise the cultural literacy of its middle-class practitioners.

The piano, the instrument of choice for Hausmusik because of its reasonable cost
and its unique ability to reproduce multiple-voiced textures, soon became a
ubiquitous feature of Biedermeier parlors.6
Hausmusik fit squarely into a general constellation of Enlightenment ideas
concerning self-cultivation, self-education, and civic humanism known as Bildung.
These turn-of-the-century developments in educational theory, child psychology,
and learning psychology were set into motion by the publication of Jean Jacques
Rousseau's Emile in 1762. Emile comprised Rousseau's rejection of the "spare
the rod and spoil the child" mentality of church-dominated school systems; it
soon became "the most censored, banned, and therefore sought-after book of
the century."7 Rousseau denied the notion that men were irreparably tainted by
original sin or that children were merely imperfect adults who needed only to be
whipped into conformity. Instead, because "everything is good as it comes from
the hands of the Maker of things,"8 he postulated that children were innately
virtuous and were capable of being guided to reason. He envisioned an
educational system free of divisions along class lines where children would be
incited to learn by being given free rein to explore the world through sensory
experience. Central to Rousseau's educational models were concepts of learning
readiness, the sequential presentation of material, making materials childappropriate, appealing to a child's sense of play and fantasy, the cultivation of
self-directed learning, a child's right to self-determination and independence, and
above all, education's central role in the development of a morally responsive
citizenry.
Rousseau's ideas concerning the education of children inspired the formation of
experimental schools by Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724-90), Johann Pestalozzi
(1746-1827) and Johann Hebart (1776-1841). As Prussia moved toward the
establishment of a national system of education in a defensive response to the
Napoleonic wars, teachers from these institutions soon spread throughout
Prussia and from there to Britain, Russia, and the New World. The belief that
music was the language of feeling and that it possessed a moral dimension led
Rousseau, Basedow, and Pestalozzi to devise curricula which included singing
and music instruction.9 For influential nineteenth-century German writers such
as Jean Paul Richter, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig
Tieck, Heinrich von Kleist, and Joseph von Eichendorff, the literary and the
musical were in fact sympathetic experiences in the life of the emotions.10 The
arts were seen as crucial to the education of a hoher Mensch, a status achieved
not through divine intervention but rather through a program of self-education or
Bildung.
The Sources of Schumann's Pedagogical Philosophies
Although Schumann would have absorbed a commitment to Bildung from his
father, a successful bookseller and publisher, his ideas concerning piano
pedagogy may well have been influenced by his piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck,
the father and teacher of his future bride, the consummate virtuoso Clara

Wieck.11 Unlike many piano teachers of his day, Wieck had begun his adult life
by preparing for a career in theology. Even though Prussia wrested control of its
educational systems from the clergy in 1810, Wieck's theological studies would
have included courses in general pedagogy. He also would have known about
Basedow's experimental school, the Philanthropium, which was established in
1768 in Dessau. Wieck was the first person to apply Enlightenment theories
about learning and methodology to piano pedagogy.12 In articles for the Neue
Zeitschrift fr Musik and Signale fr die musikalische Welt which he later
collected into a volume called Klavier und Gesang, he passionately articulated
the need for emphasizing the individuality of each student, allowing children a
sensory exploration of the keyboard, postponing the teaching of music reading,
dividing learning tasks into small child-appropriate units, awakening interest
through self-discovery wherever possible, and motivating children through the
continual mastery of small steps. Wieck's lessons were patterned after Hebart's
four-step teaching process comprising Klarheit (breaking the object into its
smallest teachable elements), Umgang (relating those objects to each other),
System (arranging the facts into a unity), and Methode (testing the student for
application of knowledge).13 Advocating a more holistic approach, Wieck wrote
of the necessity of training in related arts such as composition, improvisation,
and theory. He even attempted to transfer the principles of beautiful tone
production exemplified in bel canto singing to the piano. Railing against the
empty virtuosity of pianists such as Kalkbrenner, Hnten, and Liszt, he
demanded, even at the beginning levels, a devotion to artistry. "We have much
beautiful and enjoyable to do...almost always with an eye to the cultivation of
technique without souring the child's feeling for the piano through strenuous
senseless, mechanical practicing." The three cornerstones of his teaching, he
maintained, were "the most sensitive listening, the finest taste, and a profound
sensibility" as opposed to "absolutely no hearing, perverted taste, and no feeling
of any kind."14
It is only in comparison with contemporaneous piano methods that Wieck's
position can be appreciated. As the piano displaced the harpsichord and
clavichord as the keyboard instrument of choice at the turn of the nineteenth
century, at least nine new instruction methods written specifically for the
pianoforte by James Hook, Daniel Gottlob Trk, Johann Peter Milchmeyer, Ignaz
Pleyel, Louis Adam (author of two methods), Jan Ladislav Dussek, and Muzio
Clementi were published in England, France, and Germany between the years
1785 and 1804. These were followed by more exhaustive surveys by Franz
Hnten, Henri Herz, Johann Hummel, and Carl Czerny. Although these methods
purported to treat the most elementary rudiments of piano playing, the focus
was primarily on the mindless training of the fingers as conveyed through
exercises and lessons. For example, Clementi's influential manual packed all
there was to learn about music reading, fingering, and performance practice into
fifteen pages of dense text, followed by scale, trill, and double-note exercises. It
concluded with a rapid progression of "lessons" which had the student playing in
double notes by Lesson V.15 Hnten's Instructions for the Piano-Forte advocated
at least three hours of daily practice with the first hour spent in drilling scales

and five-finger exercises.16 Herz's Mthode complte de piano, op. 100 also
recommended at least an hour of daily practice spent on scales and passages
contained in the method as well as on exercises with his new invention, the
Dactylion.17 Hummel's monumental treatise emphasized the verbal presentation
of musical concepts that were then drilled in by the endless repetition of 2200
technical exercises.18 As was customary for the time, Hummel prescribed a full
hour of instruction every day for at least six months to a year so as to prevent
the ingraining of bad habits. Carl Czerny, Beethoven's most notable student and
the composer of thousands of exercises treating every imaginable technical
problem, recommended that beginning students have one one-hour lesson daily
in addition to one hour of practice for which the constant repetition of exercises
was recommended.19 The introduction to his op. 337, Forty Daily Exercises for
the Pianoforte With Prescribed Repetitions for Acquiring and Preserving
Virtuosity, exhorted pianists to the "assiduous practice of all the most oftrecurring difficulties," persisting until "perfect facility is acquired." 20 Attainment
of such facility was promised if the pianist would devote one hour of daily
practice to the forty exercises, which were to be played "with all the repetitions
indicated, and without any interruption whatever, in the prescribed tempo." The
exercises, all a page or two in length and of phenomenal difficulty, were to be
repeated between ten and twenty times each, depending upon the example.
Scales, finger passages dwelling on the weak outer fingers of the hand, broken
scales, trills, double notes, fast repeated chords, and large skips were to be
performed at fiendish tempos approaching M.M. 184 to the quarter note.
Mechanical technical development continued to be the focus of widely used
methods published after 1850 by Ferdinand Beyer, Sigismund Lebert and Ludwig
Stark, Karl Urbach, Louis Plaidy, Josef Pischna, and Charles-Louis Hanon. While
Beyer's widely distributed method distinguished itself by a more realistic pacing
of material, it was nevertheless dominated by exercises or etudes.21 Echoing
pedagogues from the first half of the century, Hanon recommended that a full
hour of daily practice be devoted to playing the exercises from his Le pianistevirtuose from beginning to end.22 Additional piano methods were linked to the
use of demonic finger exercisers and practice aids such as the Chiroplast of
Johann Logier, Hand-guide of Friedrich Kalkbrenner,23Dactylion of Henri Herz,
Digitorium of Myer Marks, Technicon of James Brotherhood, and Tekniklavier of
Almon Virgil as well as assorted practice claviers, hand gymnasiums, and legato
monitors.24 For many thousands of amateur piano players, the majority of them
young women, hours of daily practice on scales and exercises became a way of
life. Wieck did not completely eschew the use of exercises. However, his parody,
"Frau Grund and Four Lessons," condemned the teacher who would prescribe
"daily two hours of scales in all major and minor keys, in unison, thirds and
sixths, and then daily three to four hours of etudes by Clementi, Cramer and
Moscheles." His own cure for a technically deficient student amounted to "a daily
quarter of an hour of scales that I shall have you play, as I see fit, staccato,
legato, fast, slow, forte and piano" with an emphasis on beauty of tone.25
Further, concerning the use of mechanical devices, "I permit no cutting of the
web between the fingers, no wrist guide, no finger springs and no stretching
machine, and certainly not the finger torturer thought up by a famous pupil of

mine to the just outrage of his third and fourth fingers, which he fashioned
against my wishes and used behind my back."26
One of Schumann's earliest musical mentors, Wieck served as a founding editor
of Schumann's new journal, the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik, and as the model for
Master Raro, a character in Schumann's Davidsbund, a society devoted to
battling musical philistines.27 In the pages of the Neue Zeitschrift and other
musical periodicals, both men continually attacked the degraded state of public
taste and the hegemony of Parisian piano music, which was aided and abetted
by the overt and crass commercialism of Paris-based virtuoso-pianists, many of
whom had entered into partnerships with publishers of piano methods,
manufacturers of dubious piano aids, and instrument builders. It is clear that
their concerns extended to the poor quality of music for children and
amateurs.28 Wieck's review of newly issued compositions for the pedagogical
market for the Signale fr die musikalische Welt in October 1843 railed against
the "comfortless plunder and tinsel-playing" of the virtuoso composer-pianists of
his day and sarcastically derided the poverty, superficiality, and utter
tastelessness of a variety of works by Filtsch, Burgmller, Hnten, Schad,
Rosenfeld, Kalkbrenner, Dohler, Bertini, Straub, and Dreyschock.29 Wieck's
damning critique of the pedagogical value of Logier's chiroplast appeared in the
very first issue of the Neue Zeitschrift.30
Like Wieck, Schumann believed that musical excellence depended upon a proper
foundation built from childhood. In 1838, he reflected regretfully to Clara on the
poverty of his own early musical education: "If I had grown up in a similar
situation to Mendelssohn, dedicated from childhood to music, I would have
become you and perhaps surpassed youI feel that because of the energy of my
inventions."31 He minced no words in ridiculing the "phenomenal insipidness" of
Czerny's Variations, op. 302. "Had I enemies," he wrote," I would, in order to
destroy them, force them to listen to nothing but music such as this."32 In a
survey of contemporary piano studies, he lamented that while they were useful
for training the hands and head, their "intellectual monotony" failed to capture
"...that charm of the imaginative which causes youth to lose itself in the beauty
of the piece and forget its difficulty while mastering it."33 In cautioning students
against spending hours of daily practice on mechanical exercises, he claimed
that to do so was "as reasonable as trying to recite the alphabet faster and faster
every day."34 He entreated teachers and parents to be selective in choosing
music for their children. "No child can be brought to healthy manhood on
sweetmeats and pastry. Spiritual like bodily nourishment must be simple and
solid."35 In addition, "Never play bad compositions and never listen to them
when not absolutely obliged to do so."36 Thus, Schumann's first pedagogical
project, the Album for the Young, was a bold statement about what Hausmusik in
all its didactic, cultural, and moral dimensions should be. After all, "The laws of
morality are also those of art."37
The Developmental History and Design of the Album

By 1848, the year of composition and publication of the Album fr die Jugend,
Robert and Clara Schumann had four children. The oldest children, Marie and
Elise, were in the beginning stages of piano lessons. Clara Schumann noted on 1
September 1848, the date of Marie's seventh birthday, that "pieces children
usually study in piano lessons are so poor that it occurred to Robert to compose
and publish a volume (a kind of album) consisting entirely of children's
pieces."38 At the same time, Schumann was fully aware of the commercial
possibilities of products marketed for children. Recognition of childhood as a
separate developmental phase had spawned profitable cottage industries in the
production of children's toys, clothing, furniture, calendars, songs, and books.39
Accordingly, Schumann gave Marie a birthday notebook of titled character
pieces, the first stage in the complex evolution of the Album.40 Between
September 2 and 27, he expanded upon the concept, composing additional
miniatures and adding arrangements of familiar tunes by Germany's greatest
composersBach, Hndel, Gluck, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Weber, and
Mendelssohn. Schumann also drew up a lengthy list of "House Rules and Maxims
for Young Musicians," aphorisms that articulated his aesthetic philosophies and
that exhorted his youthful admirers to put virtuosity at the service of artistry. By
inserting the "House Rules" and margin drawings between the musical
selections, he hoped to create a poetically unified "musical domestic album"
incorporating music, text, and illustrations.41 Realizing that Christmas was an
ideal time for gift giving, Schumann initially attempted to have op. 68 published
by Breitkopf und Hrtel as a Weihnachtsalbum fr Kinder (Christmas Album for
Children). In what turned out to be a terrible business decision, Hrtel rejected
the proposal, noting that "the market for your compositions is, by and large,
rather limitedmore limited than you could believe....[W]e have lost through the
publication of your works a significant sum and there is at this point little
prospect of recovering it."42 With the assistance of his friend Carl Reinecke,
Schumann then offered it in the form we know today to the publisher Julius
Schuberth of Hamburg. The final format consisted of 43 titled character pieces43
divided into two sections. Part I (numbers 1-18), "Fr Kleinere," contains easier
works. Part II (numbers 19-43), "Fr Erwachsenere," contains works of greater
difficulty. The lists of "musical house rules" and the compositions of other
composers were eliminated. Personalized titles, such as the original title of the
third piece, "Lullaby for Ludwig," were generalized. The idea of offering the work
for sale as a Christmas album was also abandoned, presumably to generate a
broader market appeal. For financial reasons, Schumann was also forced to give
up on the idea of having individual illustrations for each of the pieces. However,
he managed to persuade the famous illustrator of children's books, Ludwig
Richter, to draw the title page in exchange for twenty-four hours of composition
instruction for Richter's son. Richter went to the Schumann home where he heard
a complete performance of op. 68 by Clara. He subsequently drew vignettes
depicting ten of the pieces. A seasonal theme was suggested by the placement
of four larger vignettes at the corners. At the upper left was the picture for
"Spring Song," showing a mother with her children gathering flowers. The upper
right depicted the "Harvest Song." A scene at the bottom right showing
grandmother and grandfather sitting by the hearth with their grandchildren

illustrated the two pieces of "Wintertime." The bottom left showed the "Gathering
of the GrapesHappy Time!" The large vignettes framed smaller ones, three on
each side. The illustrations on the left depicted three girls dancing in a circle
("Round"), a farmer with his little son ("Happy Farmer"), and a crying child
mourning a bird lying dead before an open cage ("First Sorrow"). On the right
were a tightrope walker dancing on the ropes ("Mignon"), an old man with a
heavy sack ("Knecht Ruprecht"), and a child on a hobby horse ("Wild Rider"). The
extraordinary beauty and complexity of the design with its cherubs, bountiful
wreaths, Gothic arches, and curling tendrils of leaves and flowers, showed how
powerfully Richter was affected by these small but intensely poetic works.44
In a letter to his friend Carl Reinecke, Schumann claimed he had never been
happier than when composing these pieces, but he distinguished them from his
earlier cycle, the op. 15 Kinderszenen, claiming that the Kinderszenen were
reminiscences written for adults but that the Album was written from the
perspective of a child.45 Clara said that her husband "translated everything he
saw, read, and experienced into music,"46 and Schumann himself wrote that
these pieces in particular "were taken directly from my family life."47 Indeed, the
Album is a concrete musical record of important events from the early years of
Schumann's children. "Humming Song," initially titled "Lullaby for Ludwig," was
dedicated to Schumann's newborn son. "A Little Piece" was written for Marie to
be played after her schoolwork was finished. The vigorous sforzandi in "Wild
Rider" were meant to recreate the breakneck ride of a child on a hobbyhorse,
knocking recklessly against the legs of chairs and tables. "First Sorrow" was a
lament written on the death of the family's beloved pet greenfinch. "Little
Morning Wanderer" commemorated the day when Marie, lap-desk firmly under
her arm, first went to school.48 The march began with footsteps "fresh and
sprightly," becoming "softer" as they receded into the distance. Eugenie
Schumann recalled that her mother outlined the following program for the piece:
the wanderer was depressed at the thought of leaving home (m. 9), but dispelled
her sorrow with a yodel (m. 14-16), walking on bravely until the village was lost
to sight and only the church bells could be heard ringing in the distance (mm. 21
ff., bass).49 "Echoes from the Theatre" recorded the agitated response of sixyear-old Marie to her first out-of-town trip to the Viennese theatre.
"Remembrance," dated 4 November 1847, was written in memory of
Mendelssohn, godfather to the Schumann children. As to the three untitled
pieces headed only by three stars (numbers 21, 26, and 30), Clara said that
Robert "might have meant the thoughts of parents about their children."
Schumann even remembered a friend, the Danish composer, Niels Gade, in
"Nordic Song," using the musical letters of Gade's name to carve out a melody, a
musical practice having its roots in the Renaissance.
Other works in the Album recalled scenes from everyday life or familiar
characters from folklore or literature. According to Clara, the program for
"Hunting Song" began with the resonating sound of horns blowing (mm. 1-2), the
prancing of the horses and arrival of the riders (mm. 3-4), the startled deer flying
into the bushes (m. 10), and a cracked bugler's note (m. 25, alto). In "Knecht
Ruprecht," the character from German legend who scolds naughty children at

Christmas time was heard stomping up the stairs, his staff knocking sharply on
each step (mm. 1-24). The following section depicted the trembling of the
children (mm. 25-32), the entreating words of the saint (m. 33 ff.), and his noisy
stumbling back down the stairs (m. 49 ff.). Other pieces recreated rustic scenes
of peasants singing. The first part of the "Happy Farmer" depicted the farmer
singing alone, joined at measure 6 by the soprano of his little son. "Rustic Song"
opened with a chorus of girls, the boys joining in at measure 9. The second part
depicted a girl singing solo (m. 17 ff.), ending with the return of the girls' chorus
to a reed accompaniment (m. 25 ff.). The two pieces of "Wintertime"
memorialized Biedermeier family life. Schumann recreated a scenario of forests
and city streets completely covered with snow counterpointed against a cheery
room where grandparents and children were gathered round.50 The second
piece, "Wintertime II," quoted two well-known German folk tunes, "Sweet Lovers
Love the Spring" and the "Grandfather's Dance." There were also pieces
depicting "Scheherazade," fabled storyteller of the 1001 Nights, and forlorn
"Mignon" of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Finally, from Schumann's Protestant
heritage were two harmonizations of "Freue dich, o meine Seele."
In writing op. 68, Schumann not only addressed the necessity of making piano
learning pleasurable for children but he also single-handedly created a new
genre in piano literaturean album of titled programmatic character pieces
written explicitly for children.51 Ten years prior to the publication of the Album,
the influential reviewer Ludwig Rellstab had criticized Schumann's use of
descriptive titles, saying that "music has to be music."52 Perhaps in response to
this criticism, Schumann had abandoned titles, resuming their use only with the
publication of the Album. By 1848, however, Schumann seemed to have resolved
any conflicting feelings about using descriptive titles for musical compositions.
He wrote that "[t]itles for pieces of music, since they again have come into favor
in our day, have been censured here and there, and it has been said that 'good
music needs no sign-post.' Certainly not, but neither does a title rob it of its
value; and the composer in adding one at least prevents a complete
misunderstanding of the character of his music. If the poet is licensed to explain
the whole meaning of his poem by its title, why may not the composer do
likewise?"53
The Reception History of the Album
Announcements of the publication of the Album first appeared in November and
December 1848 in the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik and Signale fr die
musikalische Welt, and it was finally released to the trade in January 1849. The
commercial success of Schumann's enterprise was immediate, widespread, and
unprecedented for its time. A press release of more than 100 copies was
uncommon in the nineteenth century, yet Schuberth, the publisher of the Album,
planned an initial printing of 500 copies which he doubled to 1000 a few months
later.54 In October 1849, in order to capitalize on the Album's success,
Schuberth divided the op. 68 into two separate volumes and issued them in a
fancy gold-embellished vellum edition. In an advertisement placed in August
1850 in the Signale fr die musikalische Welt, he further claimed to have sold

2000 copies within the first year despite the steep price of three thalers.55 In
December 1850, only two years after the initial printing, Schuberth also prepared
a revised second edition of the Album with the "Musical House Rules" included as
an appendix. Schumann wrote to his friend Franz Brendel in September 1849
that "the Jugendalbum has found a market like few if any works of recent years
I hear this from the publisher himself."56 He noted in his Haushaltbuch that his
income had increased from 314 thalers in 1848 to 1275 thalers in 1849, largely
due to proceeds from the Album. By the end of the nineteenth century,
Schumann's op. 68 had been issued in 16 editions, 6 in the year 1887 alone.57
Isabel Eicker's exhaustive survey of 743 nineteenth-century albums of children's
pieces showed that the number of new publications per year, averaged in tenyear periods, immediately increased after the publication of the Album, from 2
per year in the 1840s to 15 per year by the turn of the century.58 Many of the
albums issued shortly after op. 68 copied aspects of Schumann's work, including
16 which copied the design of the title page59 and 56 which borrowed the exact
title or made use of a slightly varied title.60 Eicker traced similarities in texture
between specific pieces of op. 68 and single works included in collections by
Biehl, Ambros, Gurlitt, Baumfelder, Jadassohn, Lschhorn, and Kgele.
Scharwenka even headed one of his pieces with three stars. There were
innumerable instances of correlation in the subject matter, titling, and musical
characteristics of the individual pieces. Both Eicker and Gnther Mller have
noted the borrowing of Schumann's titles by Kullak, Tchaikovsky, Reger,
Winterberger, Martinz, Hiller, and de Hartog, among others.61
Also influential on composers was Schumann's idealized formulation of
childhood, a formulation however that had been developed in contemporary
collections of children's stories and poems. Pieces often focused on specific
family members and friends; holidays, seasons, and festivals; children's games,
pets, and toys; rustic activity; fairy and folk tales; national dances and songs; the
world of nature; and church hymns.62 Notable was the absence of music
designed to sound brilliant without being very difficult: quadrilles; variations,
fantasies, etudes, or rondos on popular operatic tunes; waltzes; galopps;
sentimental showpieces; and other salon music considered to be of a corruptive
nature. The edifying presence of Protestant chorales and pieces glorifying the
intimacies of the Biedermeier home and hearth steadfastly proclaimed
Schumann's "Romantic" aesthetics. The subtle subtexts of nationalism and class
discussed previously continued to be transmitted in albums of children's music,
especially since many of the nineteenth-century composers of these albums
were in fact admiring students, teachers, and associates of Schumann from the
conservatories in Leipzig and Dresden.63 Schumann's construct continued to
inform similar works by a stellar array of nineteenth-century composers such as
Amy Beach, George Bizet, Carl Julius Eschmanns, Niels Gade, Enrique Granados,
Cornelius Gurlitt, Stephen Heller, Ferdinand Hiller, Theodor Kirchner, Louis Khler,
Theodor Kullak, Gabriel Pierne, Eduard Poldini, Max Reger, Carl Reinecke,
Giacomo Rossini, and Peter Tchaikovsky. Twentieth-century composers of
children's albums included Bela Bartok, Ernst Bloch, Robert Casadesus, Chick
Corea, Claude Debussy, Norman Dello Joio, David Diamond, Hugo Distler, Richard

Faith, Ross Lee Finney, Jean Francaix, Luis Gianneo, Alexander Gretchaninoff,
Sofia Gubaidulina, Howard Hanson, Michael Hennagin, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Aram
Khachaturian, John La Montaine, Lowell Liebermann, Witold Lutoslawski, Darius
Milhaud, Federico Mompou, Leo Ornstein, Octavio Pinto, Francis Poulenc, Sergei
Prokofiev, Vladimir Rebikov, Hugo Reinhold, Pierre Sancan, Erik Satie, Rodion
Shchedrin, Dmitry Shostokovich, Elie Siegmeister, Leo Smit, Alexander Tansman,
Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Alec Wilder.64
The popularity of Schumann's op. 68 could also be measured by the availability
of favorite pieces in the form of arrangements for other instruments. In the
nineteenth century, Schuberth issued arrangements for piano and violin, piano
and cello, piano and flute, and piano and viola, and Constantin Sternberg, Simon
Breau, Carl Schrder, and August Horn published transcriptions for other
combinations of stringed and keyboard instruments.65 Arrangements of Album
pieces continued to be popular into the twentieth century. A recent search of the
Worldcat database revealed arrangements of various pieces of the Album for Eflat baritone saxophone and piano, B-flat bass clarinet and piano, cello and
piano, voice and piano, bassoon or contrabassoon and piano, tuba and piano,
flute and piano, clarinet and piano, alto sax and piano, marimba or xylophone,
one or two guitars, flute and guitar, organ, trumpet or cornet quartet and piano,
brass quartet, string quartet, saxophone quartet, clarinet quartet, flute quartet,
harp, harp and trombone, trumpet or cornet trio with piano, flute-oboe-clarinetbassoon quartet, string orchestra with double bass and piano, a quartet of any
four G-clef instruments, a quartet of "any four instruments," woodwind quintet,
and string orchestra. Of particular note was the worldwide exposure accorded
the "The Happy Farmer" by virtue of its inclusion in the first book of the Suzuki
Violin School.
In addition, Schumann's "House Rules," the collection of quasi-Biblical
pronouncements that articulated the philosophical underpinnings of the Album,
achieved a status fully equal to that of the Album. First issued as an appendix to
the second edition, it soon appeared as an independent entity. Liszt made a
French translation of the "House Rules" and Henry Hugo Pierson completed an
English translation soon afterward. The "House Rules" appeared in countless
schoolbooks and were subsequently translated into many other foreign
languages.
The Influence of the Album on German and American Piano Pedagogy
Schumann's Album was immediately recognized as an important resource by
leading German pedagogues of the second half of the nineteenth and beginning
of the twentieth centuries. Alfred Drffel's enthusiastic review of the op. 68
pieces in the Neue Zeitschrift recognized that Schumann had created something
new and noted the "rich content" of these "small, ingenious tone poems."66 He
noted the poetic inspiration of the pieces, proclaimed their suitability for the
holistic musical development of children, and welcomed their addition to the
pedagogical canon. The reviewer in the Signale fr die musikalische Welt called
the Album a treasure of poetry, feeling, and humor. Shortly after its publication,

Schumann received reports that his Album had been well received by teachers in
Zurich, and he was entreated by Julius Fischer, a well-known piano teacher, to
write a pedagogical piano course. Isabel Eicker surveyed the contents of four
important guides to teaching repertoire written by Louis Khler (1865), Carl
Reinecke (1896), A. Ruthardt (1905), and Hugo Riemann (1912).67 Of the 72
collections of children's pieces by 50 composers that were recommended,
Schumann's op. 68 and op. 15 and Theodore Kullak's op. 62 and op. 81 were the
only works to be listed in at least three of the four guides.
However, it is arguable that Schumann's original conception of a "musical
domestic album" linking music with illustrations and text achieved full fruition
not in his own country, but rather in the United States. The intimate connections
between German and American piano pedagogy were forged in the midnineteenth century when American pianists and educators enamored of German
virtuosos such as de Meyer, Herz, and Thalberg sought further study in Austria
and Germany with famous teachers such as Clara Schumann, Liszt, Theodor
Leschetizky, Carl Tausig, Theodor Kullak, Ludwig Deppe, Friedrich Wieck, and
Moritz Moszkowski. The section entitled "Historical Documents" in Kenneth
Williams' article, "International Students in Music: Crossing Boundaries," in this
issue of the College Music Symposium relates the experiences of three of these
American pianistsWilliam Mason, Amy Fay, and Carl Lachmund.68 Germaneducated pianists were responsible for establishing America's first schools of
music (Oberlin Conservatory, Peabody Conservatory, Cincinnati Conservatory,
Chicago Musical College, and the New England Conservatory), which they
modeled after Mendelssohn's Leipzig Conservatory.69 The American market was
dominated by traditional German piano methods (Hnten, Beyer, Mller/Knorr,
Lebert and Stark, Khler, Urbach, Damm) or by American instruction books
adapted from German courses (Geib, Richardson, and Peters).70 Finally, many
Austrian- and German-educated musicians and educators emigrated to America,
assuming important positions as teachers and administrators in conservatories of
music (Carl and Reinhold Faelten, Ernest Hutcheson, Leopold Godowsky, Rudolph
Ganz, Carl Friedburg, Edward Steuermann, Rudolph Serkin, Mieczyslaw
Horszowski, Miecyzslaw Mnz, Artur Schnabel, Rafael Joseffy, et al.).71
At the end of the nineteenth century, however, American piano pedagogy
declared its independence from and superiority over European methods.72 In a
series of turn-of-the century methods by Annie (Jessy) Curwen (1886, 1889),
Calvin Cady, Julia Caruthers (1903), William Berold (1904), Jessie Gaynor,
Blanche Dingley-Mathews and W. S. B. Mathews(1907), Nin Darlington, Juliette
Aurelia Graves Adams (1907), and Dorothy Gaynor Blake (1916), the
pleasurability of piano learning and the cultivation of expressiveness were given
precedence over the development of technical prowess.73 The shift in focus in
American piano pedagogy away from mechanical practicing and empty virtuosity
renewed the debate ignited by Schumann and Wieck a half century earlier. In
fact, an article from Wieck's Klavier und Gesang sharply criticizing the
"charlatanry" and "glittery tawdriness" of virtuoso performers who cultivated the
"heartless and worthless dexterity of the fingers" to the exclusion of beautiful
tone, shading, and expressiveness appeared in a popular American music

magazine, Dwight's Journal, in 1875.74 The influential pedagogue, W. S. B.

Mathews, in a December 1896 article for The Musical Record, cast doubt upon
the value of a traditional European training:
You can find quantities of well-trained fingers, and lots of charming exerciseplaying, but never in the whole thousands of pupils one single musical player,
except by accident in some pupil for whom music was too strong for
the...method to kill out....The assiduous practice of exercises of any kind gives
rise to a style and manner of playing which is exercise-like and not musical. The
touch becomes unsympathetic, and playing monotonous, and the whole takes on
more and more a distinct character as good exercise-playing and not musical
playing.75
Schumann's character pieces for children continued to be valued for their
imaginative content and were included as repertoire in methods by Mathews,
William T. Sudds, Stephen T. Gordon, John Williams, John Thompson, Raymond
Burrows, Ella Mason Ahearn, John Schaum, Leila Fletcher, June Weyright, Maxwell
Eckstein, Louise Goss, Kurt Stone, and in the Oxford Piano Course.76 Beryl
Rubenstein, professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music and author of the 1929
Outline of Pedagogy, recommended Schumann's music for the unusual breadth
of its interpretive and technical difficulty.77 When the Leipzig-educated president
of the Juilliard School, Ernest Hutcheson, reviewed Schumann's Album in his
highly influential book of 1948, The Literature of the Piano, he evoked yet again
the same terms of aesthetic debate to which Schumann had responded a century
earlier:
Nine tenths of the "teaching" pieces that flood the market might be thrown into
the trash barrel without a pang to make way for that Golden Treasury of music
for children, the 43 Piano Pieces for the Young, Opus 68, familiarly known as the
Album for Youth. What a blessing it would be to rid ourselves of the litter-ature of
swing songs devoid of swing, cradle songs that don't rock, skating pieces, popguns, and what not? These are true teaching pieces in the sense that they are
written to be taught, not played. They remind me forcibly of a remark made by
an angling friend of mine about the array of lures displayed in a sporting-good
shop: that they are manufactured to capture not fish, but the eye of the
fisherman. Schumann provides more tempting bait....78
The primary means by which American methods were made more child friendly
the introduction of titled character pieces, poetic texts, and illustrationshad
been envisioned by Schumann in 1848. Technological advances in printing
facilitated the publication of methods specifically designed to appeal to children.
Larger print, colorful covers, fanciful pen-and-ink illustrations, musical games,
and titled character pieces were featured in methods by John M. Williams (192638), Mary Ruth Jesse (1927-30), Harold Bauer, Angela Diller, and Elizabeth Quaile
(1931), Bernard Wagness (1938), Raymond Burrow and Ella Mason Ahearn
(1945), Michael Aaron (1945-52), Leila Fletcher (1947-56), June Weybright (194950), Maxwell Eckstein (1951), Ada Richter (1954), Frances Clarke (1955-62), Edna
Mae Burnam (1959-50), and others. Visual presentation assumed an overriding

importance. John Thompson's Modern Graded Piano Course, which appeared in

1937 and which for years was the most readily recognized American piano
method, took pains to acknowledge the contributions of its illustrator, Frederick
S. Manning, as well as of the poet who composed verses and poems
accompanying the musical selections, Katherine Faith.79 Elizabeth Quaile's A
Very First Piano Book of 1939 conveyed its musical lessons in the form of a series
of character pieces and verses detailing the life of Tony the pony with charming
line drawings by the famous illustrator of children's books, Roger Duvoisin.80
Edna Mae Burnams' Step by Step Piano Course of 1956 contained titled character
pieces accompanied by fleshed out illustrations, not mere line drawings.81 In
James Bastien's Bastien Piano Library of 1981 color was introduced; its black line
drawings were accented in red.82 Six years later, Bastien's Piano for the Young
Beginner was embellished with full color pictures.83 A survey of selected
American piano methods showed that all of the methods published after 1987
featured full color illustrations, with the sole exception of June Edison's Peanuts
Piano Course (which contained fanciful line drawings by the famous cartoonist,
Charles Schultz).84 Furthermore, the addition of poetic lyrics to the music was
extremely common not only in the selections featuring well-known children's
songs but also in musical pieces composed specifically for the methods. The
repertoire contained in these methods was also dramatically different from that
found in method books of the previous century. A survey of selected twentiethcentury piano courses commercially available in the United States found that
fully 75% of the works contained in these methods were titled character pieces,
replacing the customary exercises and technical drills.85
*************
Robert Schumann's enduring pedagogical work, the Album for the Young,
revolutionized nineteenth- and twentieth-century attitudes concerning piano
pedagogy. Instead of the pages of dry technical exercises that filled most
nineteenth-century method books, the Album offered children musical poetry. It
reformulated the experience of childhood, attempting to activate the pleasurable
inner world of the imagination through music that was well crafted, emotive, and
responsive to the visual and literary arts. Its phenomenal success and
widespread dissemination heightened Schumann's reputation as a composer,
inspired the composer to write many new works in this genre, inspired a host of
copycat compositions, and popularized modern views of child rearing and
pedagogy. In evaluating Schumann's creative output, particularly the muchdenigrated late period, the pervasive and lasting influence of the pedagogical
works written during the last decade of his life must be acknowledged and
accounted for.86 Schumann's modest "domestic musical album," by finding a
place in the hearts of the young and the young at heart, changed forever the
course of late nineteenth-century piano pedagogy.