Träumerei (Kinderszenen, op. 15)

Schumann wrote about thirty short pieces in the spring of 1838 and selected thirteen of them for Kinderszenen, op. 15. He was in Vienna, separated from Clara Wieck by her father's opposition, and told her that the pieces had come out of a remark of hers that he sometimes seemed like a child. He insisted they were not music for children but recollections of childhood by an adult, and that the titles were added after the notes, as hints rather than programmes. The set closes with a piece marked as the poet speaking, standing outside the scenes just described.