Carnaval had its origin in a set of variations on a Sehnsuchtswalzer by Franz Schubert, whose music Schumann had only discovered in 1827. The catalyst for writing the variations may have been a work for piano and orchestra by Schumann's close friendLudwig Schuncke, a set of variations on the same Schubert theme. Schumann felt that Schuncke's heroic treatment was an inappropriate reflection of the tender nature of the Schubert piece, so he set out to approach his variations in a more intimate way, working on them in 1833 and 1834. Schumann's work was never completed, however, and Schuncke died in December 1834, but he did re-use the opening 24 measures for the opening of Carnaval. Pianist Andreas Boyde has since reconstructed the original set of variations from Schumann's manuscript, premiered this reconstruction in New York and recorded it for Athene Records. Romanian pianist Herbert Schuch has also recorded this reconstruction, with his own editorial emendations, for the Oehms Classics label. The 21 pieces are connected by a recurring motif. The four notes are encoded puzzles, and Schumann predicted that "deciphering my masked ball will be a real game for you." In each section of Carnaval there appears one or both of two series of musical notes. These are musical cryptograms, as follows:
A, E, C, B – signified in German as A-Es-C-H
A, C, B – signified in German as As-C-H
E, C, B, A – signified in German as Es-C-H-A.
The first two spell the German name for the town of Asch, in which Schumann's then fiancée, Ernestine von Fricken, was born. The sequence of letters also appears in the German word Fasching, meaning carnival. In addition, Asch is German for "Ash," as in Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Lastly, it encodes a version of the composer's name, Robert Alexander Schumann. The third series, S-C-H-A, encodes the composer's name again with the musical letters appearing in Schumann, in their correct order. Heinz Dill has mentioned Schumann's use of musical quotes and codes in this work. Eric Sams has discussed literary allusions in the work, such as to novels of Jean Paul. In Carnaval, Schumann goes further musically than in Papillons, Op. 2, for he himself conceives the story for which it serves as a musical illustration. Each piece has a title, and the work as a whole is a musical representation of an elaborate and imaginative masked ball during carnival season. Carnaval remains famous for its resplendent chordal passages and its use of rhythmic displacement and has long been a staple of the pianist's repertoire. Both Schumann and his wife Clara considered his solo piano works too difficult for the general public. Consequently, the works for solo piano were rarely performed in public during Schumann's lifetime, although Franz Liszt performed selections from Carnaval in Leipzig in March 1840, omitting certain movements with Schumann's consent. Six months after Schumann's death, Liszt would write to Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski, Schumann's future biographer, that Carnaval was a work "that will assume its natural place in the public eye alongside Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, which in my opinion it even surpasses in melodic invention and conciseness". Today, despite its immense technical and emotional difficulty, Carnaval is one of Schumann's most often performed works.
Sections
The work has 21 sections, plus a separate line in between the 8th and 9th sections, titled Sphinxes, that contains a description of the aforementioned musical codes. Sections 16 and 17 are actually a single piece with the middle section having its own title; they are commonly numbered separately. 1. Préambule 2. Pierrot 3. Arlequin 4. Valse noble 5. Eusebius 6. Florestan 7. Coquette 8. Replique --. Sphinxs 9. Papillons 10. A.S.C.H. S.C.H.A. 11. Chiarina 12. Chopin 13. Estrella 14. Reconnaissance 15. Pantalon et Colombine 16–17. Valse allemande – Paganini 18. Aveu 19. Promenade 20. Pause 21. Marche des “Davidsbündler” contre les Philistins
