Nachtstücke (Robert Schumann)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Nachtstücke are a set of four character pieces for piano by the German composer and pianist Robert Schumann, 1810-1856.
Romantic traits
Even though there is no obvious programmatic relationship between Schumann’s Night Pieces and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s narrations collected under the same title, the fantastic, gloomy and macabre mood is very similar.
The mechanical quality of the middle part suggests an ‘automaton'. The idea of an artificial ‘person’ haunted Romantic imagination and 'automatons' appear frequently in writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann or Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49). Carl Reinecke included ‘Godfather Drosselmeyer’s Automatons’ from Hoffmann’s fairy tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King in his piano four hand setting of the tale. Hoffmann’s narration Der Sandmann from Nachtstücke introduces the famous Olimpia automaton. Nathanael, who is the main character in this narration, falls in love with Olimpia, forgetting his true love, Clara.
