Schumann Piano Variations Study

Romantic musician Schumann displays his brilliant talent typically in the area of piano composition. His piano variation works abound with rich imagination and high artistic value. Compared with his predecessors, he exhibits more freedom and romantic characteristics in his composition. Schumann's variation technique, based on free fantasy, slips the leash of reason and thus possesses a high degree of openness, which becomes one of the distinct characteristics of Schumann's music composition. It is fair to say, that Schumann finds the proper way of expressing his music thought in the boundless field of imagination. His unique variation technique influences the whole realm of his music composition and eventually achieves his brilliance in piano music area. This paper takes Schumann's variations as the study subject, not only to elaborate the uniqueness of his variation technique, to reveal his variation thinking, but also to explore the fantasy in his romantic music as well as its manifestation in his variation technique.