b Riding East: January 2010

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Schumann Paper

This trifling idea regarding Schumann's pedal markings is something I'm still thinking about.

We believe that Chopin’s use of pedal markings went beyond basic objectives of providing color or sustaining a given set of pitches to preserve a harmonic structure. Chopin’s pedal markings even went so far as to indicate phrases and/or hypermetrical structure. What about Schumann’s use of pedal markings? And what, specifically, might we learn from his application of those markings in one of his mid-career works for the piano, namely his Waldszenen, Opus 82, composed in 1848 and 1849?

Schumann's use of Pedal Markings in his Waldszenen