Schumann’s «Gesänge der Frühe», op. 133: a “false dawn”?

The following study comprises three parts: in Part I, I consider some factors which can encourage us to hear Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe as what Jonathan Dunsby has called a “multi-piece” [Dunsby 1983]. In Part II, I build on these findings to trace a specifically musical “narrative” across the five Gesänge. Finally, in Part III, my analysis takes a more hermeneutical turn which inevitably brings me to the question of Schumann’s late music and his biography.