A question to thalbergmad (and possibly others)

[michel dvorsky]

Alkan is *NOT* in the same group of composers as Henselt, Tausig, et. al.

Alkan may not be on a trajectory to mass popular appeal, but his piano music is of huge importance to the French School specifically, and the development of 19th/20th century piano music in general.

Le Festin D'Esope alone should do for Alkan what Islamey has done for Balakirev.

[thalbergmad]

https://rapidshare.com/files/157823837/herz_-_op_45__trois_nocturnes_caracteristiques.zip.html

You will need the Lizardtech plugin to view these nocturnes in acrobat as they are old djvu files.

Recently recorded by Hyperion. Simple but beautiful (like me)

Thal

[thalbergmad]

A couple of typical Herzian arrangements of operatic themes by Rossini.

The Cerentola was brilliantly recorded by Earl Wild. The Sonnambula has not been recorded.

Intellectuals and people with beards will despise these. People with more open minds who are not ashamed to actually have "fun" playing something and are not afraid to smile at the piano, might look beyond the first bar.

Impossible to compare with Schumann, Brahms and other German giants. You either like it or you don't.

Thal

[thalbergmad]

Alkan is *NOT* in the same group of composers as Henselt, Tausig, et. al.

Alkan may not be on a trajectory to mass popular appeal, but his piano music is of huge importance to the French School specifically, and the development of 19th/20th century piano music in general.

Le Festin D'Esope alone should do for Alkan what Islamey has done for Balakirev.

I do agree with your first two paragraphs, but i am unsure of what Islamey has done for Balakirev, other than to keep his name in regular repetoire with what is hardly his best composition.

Thal

[birba]

I second that.  I had never even heard of him before pianostreet.  Or maybe I had heard of him but, like someone you were introduced to at a cocktail party 20 years ago.

[mikey6]

Intellectuals and people with beards will despise these. People with more open minds who are not ashamed to actually have "fun" playing something and are not afraid to smile at the piano, might look beyond the first bar.

Impossible to compare with Schumann, Brahms and other German giants. You either like it or you don't.

Thal

That's fair enough, but as long as you're not saying that it's impossible to have fun while playing Schumann and Brahms!

[argerichfan]

The Cerentola was brilliantly recorded by Earl Wild. The Sonnambula has not been recorded.

I have that recording.  No one can touch Earl Wild in this stuff!

Intellectuals and people with beards will despise these.

I have little use for intellectuals (they can be so unbearably pompous and full o' themselves) and I don't have a beard. 

[thalbergmad]

That's fair enough, but as long as you're not saying that it's impossible to have fun while playing Schumann and Brahms!

I would say it is impossible for me to have fun whilst playing Brahms and Schumann. I hope this does not apply to everyone.

Thal

[argerichfan]

But listening to -not playing- the finale of the Brahms Bb always brings a smile, does it not?  (And love the Richard Rodgers rip-off in the secondary theme...  )

[thalbergmad]

I did actually spend all of Saturday morning listening to Schumann and Brahms just to check if i still hated it.

After two hours of Schumann, i was left in a state of utter boredom even though it was the great Glemser playing.

The piano sonatas of Brahms did leave me wishing to hear more, but the urge to listen to a concerto by Liljefors that arrived in the morning took me over.

Thal

[ahinton]

Thal - your problems with Schumann and (I believe) to a somewhat lesser extent Brahms are yours and you are entitled to them; I have similar problems with most of Schubert - it simply cannot be helped. I do wonder in your case, however, whether your apparent blanket disapproval of Schumann really does mean that you simply cannot stomach even the Piano Quintet, Études Symphoniques and Fantasie. I don't share your take on Schumann, although there are quite a few of his works without which I could well do (not least the piano concerto, whose handful of really inspired ideas seem to me to be drowned in a swamp of tritenesses and obsessive repetitititiousness, the latter most especially in the finale). Schumann at his best remains for me a most important composer and his influence upon Elgar, Schönberg and others cannot be taken less than seriously.

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

I have not listened to the piano quintet and do not intend to. If i continue, i am only wasting my time in listening to composer that i don't like, whereas i would rather spend my time listening to a composer i do like.

This is the problem with these type of threads. You are always going to get "have you listened to that" or "have you listened to this" and in some cases "you should listen to this pianist playing it and you will change you mind". I have simply listened to enough to make a decision to waste no more time.

I can understand why you have problems with Schubert, as his music contains beautiful melodies. This is not good for people who's ears are tuned to the appalling dischords and random piano banging of the last 50 years or more.

Thal

[argerichfan]

I would cheerfully pass the rest of my life without ever hearing the Schumann First Symphony again.  That last movement, especially, is so bloody tedious. 

Funny, I've never had a problem with the Piano Concerto.  I've heard it many more times than I can count, but it always seems fresh to me. 

[thalbergmad]

but it always seems fresh to me. 

So is the crap in the monkey cage at London Zoo.

Thal

[argerichfan]

So is the crap in the monkey cage at London Zoo.

Yes, but at least I wasn't entreating you to listen to (for example) one of Argerich's recordings.  As superbly as she plays it, obviously that's not going to help.

I'll admit that I've never liked the Schubert Ab Impromptu.  Another tedious piece, and I don't give a cr*p who plays it. 

 

[ahinton]

I have not listened to the piano quintet and do not intend to.

Then you should at least give it a chance, even if it only ends up on your already obviously overloaded Schmann scrap-heap...

If i continue, i am only wasting my time in listening to composer that i don't like, whereas i would rather spend my time listening to a composer i do like.

Yes, there's only a certain amount of listening time available to any of us, of course and I understand your remark, at least in principle.

This is the problem with these type of threads. You are always going to get "have you listened to that" or "have you listened to this" and in some cases "you should listen to this pianist playing it and you will change you mind". I have simply listened to enough to make a decision to waste no more time.

In my case, it;s only the former; I'd never say to you that you "should" listen to anything. It's up to you, of course - and you hopefully have many years of your life left to revisit all kinds of music and see what you think at later stages.

I can understand why you have problems with Schubert, as his music contains beautiful melodies.

I'm trying to take that remark seriously (which I suppose I shouldn't really, but there you go!); that is not the problem that I have with schubert and I'd like you to tell me why you nevertheless think that it is...

This is not good for people who's ears are tuned to the appalling dischords and random piano banging of the last 50 years or more.

Our ears are attuned to all manner of things and, with every second that passes, we become attuned to more and more, at least to the extent that one might seek to imply that absorbing more and more material is an any sense synonymous with being more "attuned" to this or that. Robert Simpson once said that it is impossible to listen to Bach with the ears and minds of those people who heard his music in first performances, simply because of all that we have heard since, not least Schubert, Xenakis, Schumann, Varčse and some of your lesser-appreciated 19th century Romantics. I am personally not remotely interested in "random piano banging" irrespective of which year in which it occurred and, as someone who, despite being a non-pianist, has spent what some might regard as a disproportionate amount of time over the past years trying to express thoughts in pianistic terms, that is surely hardly surprising...

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

I'm trying to take that remark seriously (which I suppose I shouldn't really, but there you go!); that is not the problem that I have with schubert and I'd like you to tell me why you nevertheless think that it is...

Then tell me first what your problem is.

[ahinton]

I'll admit that I've never liked the Schubert Ab Impromptu.  Another tedious piece, and I don't give a cr*p who plays it. 

It's that dreadful F minor one that really gets me; it occurred to me years ago that if one continued in the vein of its opening dotted rhythm, one would at least be off the left edge of the piano and the aural radar infinitely sooner than would be the case if one forced oneself to listen to the whole sickeningly repetititititive piece. That's only my opinion, of course and I just cannot help what brings it about. The Scots composer Thea Musgrave once discussed with me in a composition lesson the beginning of the development section of the opening movement of the same composer's E flat piano trio - two pages, followed by the same two pages in a different key, followed again by what might have ended up as yet another transposition of the same material had Schubert not thought better of a second complete repetition - yet in this case the music seems somehow to justify it (and, to this hopeless non-Schubertian, that trio, along with the better known one in B flat, the "Death and the Maiden" Quartet, the Mass in E flat and a handful of other things of his amply suggest that Schubert was really getting somewhere in his last year or two).

[thalbergmad]

that Schubert was really getting somewhere in his last year or two).

Shame he did not live as long as Elliott Carter then.

Think what he would have acheived.

Thal

[ahinton]

Then tell me first what your problem is.

It's the frequent and frequently obsessive repetition of what often seems less than worthy of statement in the first place. I do accept that Schubert wrote some fine work and I also admit to have come to a little more of it recently, but I still cannot help but feel that he wrote far too much and for most of his creative life failed to concentrate his mind sufficiently on a smaller number of works; not for nothing did his star seem suddenly to be in the ascendent when, as he approached his most untimely death, he began to compose much less and concentrated far more energy on far less music, to the immense advantage of the latter.

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

Shame he did not live as long as Elliott Carter then.

Think what he would have acheived.

Thal

Indeed - though one could reasonably say the same for quite a few other composers, not least Chopin, whom Elliott Carter admires very much - but then Elliott Carter is evidently still composing at an age when just about every other composer in history had stopped (le Flem made it to 103 and Ornstein to 108 or 109 but each had ceased to  compose well before attaining their century).

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

Indeed - though one could reasonably say the same for quite a few other composers, not least Chopin, whom Elliott Carter admires very much

Perhaps, but Schubert undoubtedly still had a lot more to say.

Do you think the same of Chopin?

Thal

[ahinton]

Perhaps, but Schubert undoubtedly still had a lot more to say.

Thank whom? Schubert had to say what he had to say in his own way, as did Chopin

Do you think the same of Chopin?

Elliott Carter cites listening to one of the early performances (it might even have been the US premičre for all I know) of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps as his initial motivation to become a composer; if you have any doubts as to what I think of Chopin, I will remind you that, in my own life, the Fourth Ballade occupies a position pretty much analogous to that of the Stravinsky work for EC...

Best,

Alistair

[iumonito]

Alkan is *NOT* in the same group of composers as Henselt, Tausig, et. al.

Alkan may not be on a trajectory to mass popular appeal, but his piano music is of huge importance to the French School specifically, and the development of 19th/20th century piano music in general.

Le Festin D'Esope alone should do for Alkan what Islamey has done for Balakirev.

I disagree.  I think Alkan is irrelevant to Franck, Saint-Saens, Dukas, Debussy, Ravel, and Messiaen - maybe even Boulez, let alone Satie and Poulenc.  In terms of impact and importance to the development of subsequent style, Chaminade - fluffy and inconsequential as she was - was way more influential than Alkan.  You wanna talk important?  Talk Nadia Boulanger.

I would say Alkan's impact is not felt until you get to the likes of Sorabji and Finnissy, and by then you had had Godowsky, who was the one that really open the door to a pianistic style beyond the language of Chopin and Liszt (Liszt particularly having opened the door to the styles of Bartok, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, Debussy and Ravel, and even Messiaen).

...and by the way, if I were to bet on a single piece of Alkan that would secure his name in the piano literature, it would be the symphony for piano solo (if you want to extrapolate it from the etudes in minor keys).  Festin would come much after the concerto for piano solo, allegro barbaro, or even something as insipid as comme le vent.

[iumonito]

Hi Alistair,

Interesting that you have a block with Schubert.  I suspect the same structure present in the Thal-Schumann block.

Could it be that you crave something in music that Schubert is denying you?  Just like the glitter, sacharine and merry-go-happy feeling that Thal enjoys in something like the finale of Hummel's Op. 89 concerto and the macho Menschlichkeit that he senses in something like Tausig's Weber and Strauss waltzes is absent from the sickly likes of Kresleriana, Kinderscenen and even the manly-man Symphonic Etudes, could it be that you are looking for a Bach or Beethoven-like plan in the music of Schubert?  Meaningful motivic and structural organization, such as you readily find in Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Scriabin, Ravel, Wagner, Bach and Beethoven, is something you will seek in vain in Schubert.

Not that his music is amorphous.  It is just that propulsion and dialectic energy is not what that music is about.

Let me guess: you also despise Philip Glass.  That feeling of static there is nothing happening must be somewhat sickening; like "how many times do we have to go through this?  I heard you already!"

The thing is, the feeling at hand is one of obsession: no problem-solving: just good ole wallowing.  Hopelessness (and bliss) require the absence of a goal to progress to.

[iumonito]

I did actually spend all of Saturday morning listening to Schumann and Brahms just to check if i still hated it.

After two hours of Schumann, i was left in a state of utter boredom even though it was the great Glemser playing.

What were you thinking?

"Yeah, I don't care much for blue cheese, but just to make sure last Saturday morning I ate two pounds of it, and sure enough, by the end of the second pound I was ready to puke."

Next time, a smaller dossage of carefully selected enjoyable little things:  The whole Op. 17 is already too much (Bolet's recording is the good one).  Comparing three versions of Carnaval altogether too much (the three to compare are Rachmaninoff's, Godowsky's and Bolet's).

Instead, throw in between your feasting on Hummel and De Greef a little bit of the Op. 7 toccata (I like Lehvinne's.  Barere's is fun too).  After a particularly enjoyable sessions of Mozkowski, let Horowitz' in Moscow spend three minutes on Traumerei.  After becoming sated with all eight (or 28, whatever he wrote) of Herz' concertos, play the video of the scherzo from the quintet, and if you finally got too much Thalberg for a day, give the slow movement of the piano quartet a chance.  Yard work?  Novellete No. 1.

Looking for something new to discover after the Hanon bust?  Not one person in the world knows Schumann's third sonata (the concerto without orchestra, if you want to call it something Alkanian), which Horowitz recorded sandwiched in between some Clementi and Scriabin.  You want it even more obscure?  Try the absolutely heavenly Andante and Variations for two pianos, two cellos and horn - a work so very neglected that Clara denied it an opus number and you can get it as a companion piece to the Dussek Double Concerto.

https://www.amazon.com/Dussek-Concerto-Schumann-Andante-Variations/dp/B00076YPD0

...kind of like green eggs and ham, but please, no more binging!

[mikey6]

Looking for something new to discover after the Hanon bust?  Not one person in the world knows Schumann's third sonata (the concerto without orchestra, if you want to call it something Alkanian), which Horowitz recorded sandwiched in between some Clementi and Scriabin. 

No, not that one! Most Schumann-ites I've met find this piece one of the dullest he wrote! What about the Gesange Der Fruhe op.132?  The 1st of which has some absoluteley amazing counterpoint!

[iumonito]

There he goes again.

Op. 132 is good for people who like Schumann.  I would love to hear I am wrong, but my super-human powers of perception suggest by the third phrase he would be "Why am I listening still to this crap?  Let's skip to the Dussek track quickly, Ahhh (that's a yawn).

Thal, nothing dull with Op. 14, and see, even people who love Schumann think that it is on par with Heller.  That must be good, right?

[healdie]

this is getting pointless what is this obsession of wheater Thal likes Schumann or not,  if this continues we will end up with hundreds of topic titled Healdie why don't you like Chopin? or Ahinton why don't you like Schubert? and then one for every other memeber  we all have our opinions and some writers just don't appeal to some

[ahinton]

I disagree.  I think Alkan is irrelevant to Franck, Saint-Saens, Dukas, Debussy, Ravel, and Messiaen - maybe even Boulez, let alone Satie and Poulenc.  In terms of impact and importance to the development of subsequent style, Chaminade - fluffy and inconsequential as she was - was way more influential than Alkan.  You wanna talk important?  Talk Nadia Boulanger.

I would say Alkan's impact is not felt until you get to the likes of Sorabji and Finnissy, and by then you had had Godowsky, who was the one that really open the door to a pianistic style beyond the language of Chopin and Liszt (Liszt particularly having opened the door to the styles of Bartok, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, Debussy and Ravel, and even Messiaen).

...and by the way, if I were to bet on a single piece of Alkan that would secure his name in the piano literature, it would be the symphony for piano solo (if you want to extrapolate it from the etudes in minor keys).  Festin would come much after the concerto for piano solo, allegro barbaro, or even something as insipid as comme le vent.

I think that a distinction needs to drawn here between influence and impact as part of an overview which must take into account the fact that Alkan's work had little of either in the latter 19th and early 20th century beause it was rarely performed; the fact that you write of Sorabji and Finnissy in this context is therefore far from inappropriate (although Sorabji was already in print extolling Alkan's virtues a decade or two before Finnissy was born). You mention Godowsky, but the impact of his work was also largely much more recent; for example, his monumental cycle of Chopin study transcriptions was completed almost a century ago yet the first complete recording of it is barely two decades old and only a tiny handful of pianists have it in their repertoires, just as not that many more, even today, are playing his other works. Alkan's Symphonie is certainly one of his finest and at the same time approachable creations, as is the cello sonata. Alkan was Alkan - a very individual and unusual voice, respected by certain French musicians since he was active professionally, whose music seems to have puzzled far more people than it pleased until recent times.

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

Hi Alistair,

Interesting that you have a block with Schubert.  I suspect the same structure present in the Thal-Schumann block.

I cannot say for sure.

Could it be that you crave something in music that Schubert is denying you?  Just like the glitter, sacharine and merry-go-happy feeling that Thal enjoys in something like the finale of Hummel's Op. 89 concerto and the macho Menschlichkeit that he senses in something like Tausig's Weber and Strauss waltzes is absent from the sickly likes of Kresleriana, Kinderscenen and even the manly-man Symphonic Etudes, could it be that you are looking for a Bach or Beethoven-like plan in the music of Schubert?  Meaningful motivic and structural organization, such as you readily find in Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Scriabin, Ravel, Wagner, Bach and Beethoven, is something you will seek in vain in Schubert.

Not that his music is amorphous.  It is just that propulsion and dialectic energy is not what that music is about.

Whether or not I might do that is not really the point, since I am not criticising Schubert here but merely offering my own take on how most of his work strikes me - in other words, I do not expect Schubert to do - nor do I seek in his work - things that it was not in his brief as a composer to do. Schubert was certainly very much affected by Beethoven's example and there is no shortage of evidence of Beethoven's influence across his mature work, even if that influence is rarely actually paramount.

Let me guess: you also despise Philip Glass.  That feeling of static there is nothing happening must be somewhat sickening; like "how many times do we have to go through this?  I heard you already!"

As I observed in the albeit quite different context of the foreword to my Étude en forme de Chopin, "guesswork can involve dangerous risks"; you should stop guessing! It is true that I find very little in Philip Glass's work that appeals to me at all and the kind of thing that you describe here is by no means far from the mark in terms of my own responses to it, but I do not "despise" him at all, any more than I do other composers whose work does little for me such as Morton Feldman, Steve Reich, Michael Torke et al - nor, I imagine, does Elliott Carter, even though such music is largely anathema to him - he's far less concerned with "despising" the composer that with going and listening to something else! There are a few other composers whose works I actually find largely repellent and discretion naturally precludes me from naming them, but their work interests me insufficiently for me to "despise" them. For the record, I do not "despise" Schubert either...

The thing is, the feeling at hand is one of obsession: no problem-solving: just good ole wallowing.  Hopelessness (and bliss) require the absence of a goal to progress to.

I don't quite buy that. For me, a good wallow and a tough piece of intellectual reasoning, a ręverie and a dramatic structure with problem-solving and so on are by no means necessarily incompatible. Were that not the case, it would seem inconceivable that anyone might warm both to Messiaen and to early Schönberg, or to Debussy and Sibelius...

Best,

Alistair

[iumonito]

I love your intelligent conversation, Al.

Certainly despise is too active of a word, what an Arsenal fan will feel for Chelsea.  I have fun guessing, and my next is that you do not have voo-doo dolls of either Glass or Schubert with what could be mistaken for a practice accupuncture session.

As a point of semantics, I do think that hopelessness and bliss (although certainly not the act of wallowing in itself) do require certain static quality.  For the ontoly of such states implies the absence of something other to move to, either because it is so bad there is no point in trying to change, or because it is so good that change is not needed or desired.

Certainly you can wallow and still have propulsion, but I posit to you that the driver in such situation is hope, a desire for change that is not extinguished by the certainty that change cannot be gotten, and that effort or even reaction is futile.

Naturally, there is a lot of propulsion in Schubert, but my point is not that propulsion is absent, but that one of the feelings Schubert captured best was hopelessness.  These feelings can of course coexist, even in the same piece, for one without hope can develop it, and one with hope can lose it.

Then there is evasion, where you have propulsion not for the sake of resolution or progress, but because hopelessness feels so very bad that it is too much to bear.  After all, until our conciousness shuts down, we are in propulsion physically even if we are spiritually hopeless.  I think there is a lot of that in Schubert.

It strikes me that you are not very atuned to hopelessness, and any you may have finds an evasion outlet through humor (particularly tongue-in-cheek) and abstraction (as in unduly formal disection of light-hearted writing, and perhaps a need to not be light-hearted about other people's triviality).

My guess is that when you listen to Schubert and Schubert irks you, or disapoints you, or simply leaves you indiferent, Schubert is arting about hopelessness and evasion, and you are being you and either dismissing or rejecting the message.

Oh my goodness, and this is without a psychoanalysis license.

I should have stuck to the banjo on my knees.

[ronde_des_sylphes]

Alkan is *NOT* in the same group of composers as Henselt, Tausig, et. al.

Alkan may not be on a trajectory to mass popular appeal, but his piano music is of huge importance to the French School specifically, and the development of 19th/20th century piano music in general.

I disagree.  I think Alkan is irrelevant to Franck, Saint-Saens, Dukas, Debussy, Ravel, and Messiaen - maybe even Boulez, let alone Satie and Poulenc.

I've heard that both Debussy and Ravel were familiar with Alkan's music, and I believe that it was also considered important 50+ years ago by some teachers at the Paris Conservatoire. I would like to give you an actual formal citation for that, but I'm going from memory of a conversation that I had a few years ago with a French-trained pianist, so I'll just have to hope that my memory is accurate.

[thalbergmad]

Let's skip to the Dussek track quickly

Good advice even though that was not one of his greatest efforts.

Thal

[birba]

Someone tell me who prints Herz's music.  HOw I can get a hold of some of those transcriptions?

[thalbergmad]

I would be amazed if anything of Herz is still being published.

All of the shhets posted here will have been scanned from old books or purchased from music libraries.

I doubt if anything has been published in the last 100 years or more.

Thal

[mikey6]

There he goes again.

Op. 132 is good for people who like Schumann.  I would love to hear I am wrong, but my super-human powers of perception suggest by the third phrase he would be "Why am I listening still to this crap?  Let's skip to the Dussek track quickly, Ahhh (that's a yawn).

Thal, nothing dull with Op. 14, and see, even people who love Schumann think that it is on par with Heller.  That must be good, right?

I'm going again?  I've posted like twice in this thread.
So exactly how does a weak piece of Schuman that people who like Schumann generally don't like going to help someone who doesn't like Schumann come around?

I give up, it seems as though Thal is not going to change his mind, and some may see it as his loss, however if he is happy to like what he likes, then fine with him!

[birba]

The only thing I've found published are some excercizes which look a lot like Liszt's.
So where, for example, did you see this "Cenerentola" paraphrase?

[thalbergmad]

One of the best resources for out of print music is

https://www.worldcat.org/

However, that does not include the British Library which probably has the largest collection of sheet music in the Universe.

https://www.bl.uk/

Type in the words Henri Herz into their search engines and you will get hundreds of hits.

Thal

[iumonito]

I'm going again?  I've posted like twice in this thread.
So exactly how does a weak piece of Schuman that people who like Schumann generally don't like going to help someone who doesn't like Schumann come around?

I give up, it seems as though Thal is not going to change his mind, and some may see it as his loss, however if he is happy to like what he likes, then fine with him!

It is all jest.  Of course it is fine Thal does not enjoy Schumann the way he enjoys discovering unheard-off jewells of the literature unfairly neglected simply because they are light-hearted, brilliant, and not something Serking could play (and that frankly suffers greatly by being played in modern pianos in large halls, at some point someone will do for Herz and Thalberg what Munrrow did for what was then amorphously labeled early-music).

As for the logic of suggesting the F Minor sonata, it is not obscure:

The first step is that Thal likes lots of music that are relatively unknown, not what every body likes, and different from what everyone plays.  If Schumann's music was all the music there was, both Op. 14 and 132 would fit that category (which would exclude Opp. 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 9, 13, 26, the better-known pieces from album for the young, the prophet bird, the first Novellete, and Op. 54; with Opp. 2, 6, the quintet and the quartet, and Op. 22 kind of around (borderline well-known)).

The second step is that Thal likes music that is not only unknown, but unlike music that is well-known.  That strikes Op. 132, which has the ambiguities and exquisitely small proportions typical of Opp. 9, 12 and 15.  It also excludes Humoresque and the rest of Op. 21 for the same reason.  People who love Schumann love these, therefore they do not satisfy the second requirement of the algorithm - that is: that they be unique as compared with the rest of the literature.

Op. 14 does satisfy this requirement, not because it is dry, but because people like you think that it is not that great (even though it is a masterwork).

Following that logic, it would be great for Thal as an entry point.  It should not be ignored, though, that Op. 14 lacks two attributes I find consistently present in the music I think Thal loves: 1) it lacks glitter, 2) it comes from a famous composer.

But then, there is not one measure of Schumann that has the levity of Herz Fantasie Mexicaine.  Schumann in fact considered such superficiality something to be fought.  The merry but inconsequential music that was the rage of the time was precisely what Schumann vehemently critiqued as a writer and aesthete, and although it would have been inconceivable for someone at the time to think so, that lay the basic ground work for the new music of Wagner and later Richard Strauss and Mahler to arise from the ruins that were all that was left of the golden age of Beethoven and Schubert, ruins which Schumann captured in the last movement of Op. 17. 

I find it ironic that what Schumann was worried about would be the only music available, has turned to be itself a treasure to be rediscovered, just like J.S. Bach was for his generation thanks to Mendelssohn and his associates.  Maybe Dr. Kreisler and Maestro Raro would have found that to be funny two.

So.  Now you can embarrass yourself and quote Sarah Palin quoting Reagan, just like I did with you (although IMHO much more fairly that I did).