Robert Schumann’s literary background and cultivated taste is revealed in his choice of texts for musical setting. The emphasis in this collection is on songs...

Robert Schumann’s literary background and cultivated taste is revealed in his choice of texts for musical setting. The emphasis in this collection is on songs with a narrative character, such as the tragic tale of Die feindlichen Bruder in which two brothers kill each other in a duel for love of the same girl. Further stories are drawn from those by Hans Christian Andersen. In around 1850 Schumann embarked on a series of melodramas with dramatic spoken dialogue over musical accompaniment. Notable among these lurid tiles of murder and retribution is the Ballade vom Haideknaben.