Four of Schumann's great masterpieces of the 1830s - Carnaval, Fantasiestücke, Kreisleriana and Nachtstücke - are connected to the fiction of E. T. A. Hoffmann. In this book, John MacAuslan traces Schumann's stylistic shifts during this period to offer insights into the expressive musical patterns that give shape, energy and individuality to each work. MacAuslan also relates the works to Schumann's reception of Bach, Beethoven, Novalis and Jean Paul, and focuses on primary sources in his wide-ranging discussion of the broader intellectual and aesthetic contexts. Uncovering lines of influence from Schumann's reading to his writings, and reflecting on how the aesthetic concepts involved might be used today, this book transforms the way Schumann's music and its literary connections can be understood and will be essential reading for musicologists, performers and listeners with an interest in Schumann, early nineteenth-century music and German Romantic culture.

'… analyses like these enrich us immensely by providing some understanding not only of the music itself but its literary influences and the cultural context in which it came into being and the multiple interlinkages between them; and so can still change the way we listen and indeed how we read the work of the Romantics. The Romantic imagination, in all its expansive, creatively contradictory glory, has found another champion in MacAuslan.'

Jayati Ghosh Source: Frontline