Träumerei (Kinderszenen, Op. 15 No. 7)

Background

Träumerei ("Dreaming") is the seventh of the thirteen short pieces in Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen ("Scenes from Childhood"), Op. 15, composed in 1838 and published the following year. Schumann was then in his late twenties and engaged, against her father's fierce opposition, to the pianist Clara Wieck, whom he married in 1840.

Despite the title, Kinderszenen is not a set of pieces for children to play. Schumann later described it as the reflections of a grown-up looking back, written for grown-ups. He also said that he added the titles, such as "Of Foreign Lands and Peoples" and "The Poet Speaks", after the music was written, as gentle hints rather than stories to follow.

Träumerei quickly became the best known of the set and has been arranged for every kind of instrument, from the cello to full orchestra. Vladimir Horowitz often played it as an encore, including at his celebrated return concert in Moscow in 1986.

How to practise it

The piece is in F major and only 24 bars long, but it is written in several layers at once: a melody on top, inner voices that move underneath it, and a bass. Both hands share the inner voices, so a single hand often plays a melody note and a softer accompanying note together.

The melody starts with an upbeat C and rises in one long arc:

That rising shape returns several times, starting on different notes, so learn its feel well. Each return should sound like the same thought said again with a new colour.

The main challenge is balance. Try this sequence:

1. Play only the top line of the right hand, singing it, until the shape of each phrase is clear.
2. Play the left hand alone, holding every note for its full value.
3. Play everything slowly, and press the melody note slightly deeper than the notes beneath it. This is called voicing. Aim for the melody to be clearly louder, and the inner notes to sound like a soft background.
4. Add the sustaining pedal last, changing it when the harmony changes (often every beat or two). Listen for any blur and change sooner if you hear it.

Two places in particular reward slow work. The high point of each phrase, where the melody reaches the top of its arc, needs to be gentle, not loud: Schumann marks the piece soft. And several phrase endings are marked to slow down or pause, so let them breathe instead of rushing into the next bar.

A tempo ladder: at 40, then 52, then the full 66 beats a minute. Even at full speed this piece should feel unhurried. Think of each long phrase as one breath, rising and falling, and let the last chord fade away to nothing.

Shaping long phrases is one of the topics in the ties, dotted rhythms and phrasing unit.