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An entry in Schumann’s diary dated 20 April 1832 contains a list of future plans, among them a Fandango pour le piano which was clearly connected with a projected second book of Papillons. On 30 May Schumann noted: At the piano the fandango idea came to me—I was uncommonly happy when I stopped, and I looked out of the window up at the beautiful spring sky. I felt gentle breezes, and I heard a nightingale sing so fervently—and just as I was thinking of my Papillons a beautiful large moth fluttered to the window. But it kept away from the light, and did not scorch its wings. This was a good sign for me; but the fandango was going around in my head far too much—though that is a heavenly idea with godly figures, and still more adaptable than the masked ball [Papillons]. Schumann eventually decided against publishing his fandango and incorporated it instead into his Piano Sonata in F sharp minor Op 11, where it appears juxtaposed with a ‘rocking’ fifths motif as the opening movement’s main Allegro theme. The fifths idea seems to have been a deliberate reference to the last of Clara Wieck’s Quatre pièces caractéristiques, Op 5—a piece entitled ‘Le Ballet des revenants’ (‘Ballet of the Ghosts’). Clara Wieck’s piece also contains a theme remarkably similar to that of Schumann’s fandango, though it is likely that in this case she borrowed the material from him. |