Davidsbündlertänze

The 18 miniatures for solo piano that constitute the Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of the League of David) are a sonic cabinet of curiosities, assembled with an eccentricity that sometimes baffles listeners. Theoretically they’re dances, but they're not always danceable. Their mood and content swing abruptly from fantastical to heartfelt, joyous, desperate or jokey. And in the Romantic manner which Schumann’s life and work exemplified, they mix dreamlike visions with deeply personal statements. The composer likened them to "faces" behind the "masks" of his earlier keyboard music. And they undoubtedly chart the emotional ups and downs of his relationship with Clara Wieck, the young pianist whom he was, at the time of writing (1837), struggling to marry: there are cryptic references to Clara’s name embedded in the score. But at the same time, the piece forms part of an elaborate intellectual fantasy. The League of David was an imaginary group of artists doing battle with the cultural philistines of 19th-century Germany. And among them were two comparably imagined characters, Florestan and Eusebius, who represented conflicting aspects of Schumann’s mentality: the actively outgoing and passively reflective. Part of the game in the Davidsbündlertänze was to attribute authorship of the miniatures to one or other of these characters. And though it was indeed a game, it isn’t hard to see it as a portent of the breakdown that would shatter the composer’s life in later years.