plays
Schumann's Kreisleriana (Op. 16)
' Johannes Kreisler Kapellmeister ' was a fictitious figure created in 1814 by the German romantic novelist E. T. A. Hoffmann (himself a composer of some merit), in a story called ' Kreisleriana ' and afterwards used by him as a mouthpiece for his musical criticisms. Kreisler, a grotesque figure, half genius, half lunatic, was a sort of exaggerated personification of the German romantic view of music during the first half of the last century, and was, to many German musicians of the period, the fantastic embodiment of a high ideal.
These pieces of Schumann's, written about 1839, aptly suggest
Kreisler's dreams and fancies, his wild rhapsodies, and his bitter epigrams.