Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis and the Genre of the Romantic Cycle

"Using Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis as his primary example, David Ferris proposes a new conception of the Romantic cycle. Rather than try to demonstrate that the cycle of songs creates a unified whole, he focuses on the ways in which the fragmentary and open-ended nature of the individual song implies a connection to something beyond itself. As Schumann experiments with small-scale form in his songs, he taps into our innate desire for closure, and thus creates the need for a larger context within which the individual piece can be placed. The context that the cycle provides, however, is itself discontinuous and open-ended, and so the tension between openness and closure is simply replicated on a higher level. In this way Schumann responds, in musical terms, to the Romantic themes of transcendence, ineffability, and infinite yearning that are central to the poetry that he set."--BOOK JACKET.