| First Publication | 1854 |
|---|---|
| Genre Categories | Music history; Writings; Music analysis; |
| Work Title | Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker |
|---|---|
| Alternative. Title | |
| Composer | Schumann, Robert |
| I-Catalogue NumberI-Cat. No. | None [force assignment] |
| First Publication. | 1854 |
| Language | German |
| Composer Time PeriodComp. Period | Romantic |
| Piece Style | Romantic |
| Instrumentation | history, analysis, and criticism |
“… After … translating Schumann’s entire collection of essays and reviews, as arranged by himself, … I finally decided to publish at first a series of selections from my translation, - about half the entire work …. A second volume, including the remainder of Schumann’s collection, will follow in due course of time.” From Ritter’s introduction to the First Series, pp. xxv-xxvi.
Ms. Ritter’s first volume “was published with no certainty that a Second Series would follow…. [S]he selected what appeared to her to be the best of the crop for the First Series…. In so doing she disregarded the chronological order which Schumann had chosen for his book …. Her accomplishment in translating the whole two volumes was formidable, but the English is so dated and the error count so high that her work could not be allowed to stand for ever as the English-speaking music lover’s only insight into the literary and critical gifts of Robert Schumann. The volumes are, moreover, almost totally devoid of annotation.” Henry Pleasants, from the introduction to his later edition, The Musical World of Robert Schumann: A Selection from His Own Writings (1965), reprinted as Schumann on Music: A Selection from the Writings (1988).
The original German texts are at Wikisource: Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker.
