This is so damn urgent!

[Jay_Matt]

hey,
i really need some help. thing is, i'm writing my programme notes 4 my ABRSM Performance Diploma and i've been researching on Robert Schumann's Romanze in F#, Op. 28, No. 3. If  ne1 has got any info on this piece, please be so kind as to write back.


thanx

[SDL]

you make it sound like its today? 

[celticqt]

I Googled the piece and couldn't find any program notes. . .sorry!

[whynot]

Written 1839, published 1840.

"... the second half of 1839 was almost completely blank as regards creative work... In October he reported to Clara that he had been 'chewing for eight days at a stupid prelude and fugue'... Only the imminence of Clara's return for the next court hearing seems to have released a fresh burst of activity, of which the principal fruit was the set of three Romanzen op. 28."

Some odds and ends:

"His sketchbooks make it clear that he often cherished a theme or a harmonic progression not only for its intrinsic musical sake, but because it recalled to him the precise moment and mood in which it was conceived; he dated a theme... '29 April 38, since no letter came from you'.  He took pleasure less in communicating a mood or emotion than in hugging the secret circumstance of the mood.  In many of these respects-- love of extra-musical associations, fundamental lyricism, emphasis on self-expression-- Schumann is the typical musical Romantic; he is equally so in his earlier technique."

"The individual theme or melody being specially valuable for its own sake, its function as structural material tends to be neglected... The material is seldom 'developed' in the Classical sense, but continually remoulded, as if under an improviser's fingers." 

(Schumann wrote:) 'the piano expresses itself essentially and peculiarly in three things above all -- through richness of part-writing and harmonic change, through use of the pedal, or through volubility'.

-- from Grove's Dictionary
    (article by Gerald Abraham)

(There is tons more, of course, but in glancing through, I thought the above might pertain to your project.  Best wishes!)