“Schumann’s Kreisleriana: No other cycle among Schumann’s great works so perfectly expresses the sensation of dark nocturnal things, of chaos, lurking in the background. The last piece of this collection shows this particularly well. Like skeletons on horseback, shadowy figures flit before us in a soft, sustained rhythm; in the middle section horn-calls enliven the scene with visions of knightly strength and nobility, but at the end the figures vanish ghost - like into night and mystery. Looking into the first volume of Schumann’s diaries we find ‘Midnight Piece,’ a prose passage which provides moving, indeed alarming evidence of his perilously depressive mental state. It contains elements of a highly personal kind which memorably convey the particular quality of his imagination, mortally cold and never far from visions of death. It could have served perfectly as a model for the final, disturbing piece in the Kreisleriana set.”
Talkings about Chopin and Schumann
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Burkard Schliessmann 33
classical pianistRelated quotes
Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 1 : Music and Sound
Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 12 : Schumann: Triumph and Failure of the Romantic Ideal
“I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.”
Source: A Severed Head

Boisgeloup, winter 1934
Richard Friedenthal, (1963, pp. 257-258).
Quotes, 1930's, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35

“I think that with the death of Schumann and Chopin—‘finis musicae'.”
Quoted in A Conversation on Music (1892)