Robert Schumann

Schumann’s autograph of the Waldszenen affords us an unobstructed insight into the composer’s working methods. It is namely not a final, fair version of the piano work but an autograph which bears numerous traces of the composition’s development, enabling us to reconstruct the work’s genesis. In the end the manuscript, which is always legible and beautifully written despite crossings out, changes and insertions, was even considered suitable to be used as the model for the engraving by the original publisher. Thus as well as Schumann’s numerous comments there are also notes made by the engraver. The French collector Charles Malherbe once owned the 16-page autograph, which is now in the music department of the French National Library. Schumann is within our reach in this facsimile reproduction, which truly does look extremely similar to the original, with comprehensive comments by the Canadian Schumann expert Margit L. McCorkle.

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