Schumann's Musical Seams: The Expressive Logic of Disruption

It has long been argued that disruption and interruption are essential to Schumann’s idiolect, especially that of his early character pieces. Although early critics were quick to dismiss the jarring contrasts of both key and affect between movements within collections as incoherent, or even incomprehensible,1 this aspect of his works is now most typically viewed not as a blemish, but as a manifestation of Schumann’s literary bent. Siegel argued nearly fifty years ago that the style of these pieces “still puzzles both critic and player alike because it is not derived from any musical source but from a literary one: the novels of Schumann’s idol, Jean Paul Richter.”2 Similarly, Anthony Newcomb suggests that these cycles share deep stylistic affinities with early Romantic fiction because “Schumann, like Jean Paul, avoids clear linear narrative through a stress on interruption, embedding, digression, and willful reinterpretation.”3