Kinderscenen + Bach

Kinderscenen Op.15 (1838)

Von fremden Ländern und Menschen (Of foreign lands and people)

Kuriose Geschichte (Curious story)

Hasche-Mann (Catch me)

Bittendes Kind (Pleading child)

Glückes Genug (Happy enough)

Wichtige Begebenheit (Important event)

Traümerei (Dreaming)

Am Kamin (By the fireside)

Ritter vom Steckenpferd (Knight of the hobby-horse)

Fast zu ernst (Almost too serious)

Fürchtenmachen (Frightening)

Kind im Einschlummern (Child falling asleep)

Der Dichter spricht (The poet speaks)

The Kinderscenen do not obviously fit into a programme built round Schumann’s relationship with Bach. But in the booklet accompanying his recently issued Schumann CD (Harmonia Mundi) Andreas Staier draws attention to Bach’s presence here too. It is signalled from the start by the BACH motif in the middle voice in the opening bars of the first piece and it is confirmed, in a transposed retrograde version, in the closing bars of the last. As a result ot his studies in counterpoint, Schumann wrote to Clara at the time, “I conceive almost everything canonically and it is only afterwards that I discover countermelodies, often also in inversions or inverted rhythms.” Glückes genug is a lovely example of a canonic texture put to expressive use. There are no fugues here, of course, but there are complex contrapuntal textures, artfully concealed, in several pieces, not excluding Träumerei. After all, unlike Album für die Jugend, the Kinderscenen are not amusements or exercies for children but, as the composer explained, “reflections of an adult for adults.”