The musical narration of nineteenth century. Stories, education and childhood in Robert Schumann's piano compositions

In an attempt to identify and reconfigure a musical paradigm of educational nature or
otherwise concerning childhood, the great composer Robert Schumann becomes an unavoidable
starting point. In his work childhood enters, exits, returns, reappears to strengthen as the key
feature of a latent musical discourse that, while it interests us as the ‘description’ of childhood,
on the other hand it excites us for the bi-directionality that we can feel inside: while Schumann
becomes an impressionist of images of childhood (and just think of the Album for the Young), in
the meantime he draws a direction of a methodological-educational kind that coexists with the
need, relentless and never concealed, to narrate; to tell stories through his music, without relying
on written text but, often, reminding it through evocative and effective instrumental transpositions. The ‘suitable’ childhood images, those that ‘tell’ childhood, a certain gradation of both a
semantically extra-musical content and of technical difficulty, are the elements that structure a
process that, from the Album for the Young, passing through the Scenes from Childhood and
connecting to the masterpieces of literature-music transposition such as Kreisleriana (from ETA
Hoffmann), puts in close connection music, literature, childhood and artistic / musical training.
The lesson concert on Schumann is as a theoretical proposal (addressed to scholars and colleagues), a methodological guide (to teachers) and a practical educational guide to listening and
learning (for students of academies and schools of music). The conclusions derived from an analysis conducted on so few works by Schumann underline the role of the author as a point of reference considering his interdisciplinary approach that must be identified as a primary reference in
music, literature and art education of the new generations.