Children’s scenes" by Robert Schumann: borders, images, movements

The article is devoted to Robert Schumann's piano cycle "Children's Scenes". Unlike other cyclical works of the composer, there is no bright contrast, virtuoso beginning, duality of images in it. At the same time, the expressiveness of the musical "characters" presented in brief sketch plays is extremely characteristic and vitally reliable. "Children's Scenes" is a program composition. This is reflected in the title of the cycle and in the titles of the plays. The tempo and character designations given at the beginning of each piece, as well as performance instructions (leagues, strokes, accentuation marks) guide the interpreter's imagination. The analysis of texture, harmony, forms of movement, interactions of rhythm and meter allow us to reveal the details of each musical "portrait". Observing oppositions - quiet and noisy, slow and fast, joyful and mournful, serious and playful, playful and dreamy, adult and child - reveals the poetics of boundaries that form the entire cycle. The boundaries that frame each piece require a certain strong-willed overcoming both during the transition from one piece to another, and throughout the sound of music. The author and the "world of childhood" revealed by music are always separated. Also, the performer, overcoming the boundary of the sounding image, remains a bystander. The poetics of boundaries allows you to enter the imaginative world of "Children's Scenes", to see the edges separating one image from another, to find the right tone of sound, to realize the special author's reflection in each turn of the intonation plot.