Daydreaming at the Piano with Schumann's Träumerei
The Best Moments
Kinderszenen, Op. 15, No. 7
Hello, I am Schumann, and here I would love to share the best moments of my Träumerei with you. In just twenty-four bars of solo piano, you will hear how a single rising melody can capture the quiet warmth of an adult looking back on childhood. Here on this site, the other composers and I also help you recognize our music whenever it plays, so feel free to visit our Trainer and give it a go.
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Drifting off at the keyboard
I start Träumerei on the solo piano with a gentle melody that climbs upward and then lingers on a high note, much like a thought that trails off when you stare out the window. I liked this opening eight-bar phrase so much that I marked it to be played twice right from the start, just in case your mind was already wandering the first time through.
Getting pleasantly lost
In the middle section, I take that same rising tune and nudge it through shifting harmonies, as if the daydream is wandering into unfamiliar rooms. Nobody knows for sure if my metronome in Leipzig was faulty when I marked the pace at a hundred beats a minute, so you can let these middle bars flow along without dragging your feet.
Waking up gently
For the final eight bars, I bring the music back home to the warmth of F major and ask the melody to make one last, quiet climb before settling down. The whole piece is only twenty-four bars long and fades away on a soft chord, leaving you back in the room before your tea has even had time to go cold.
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Did you enjoy walking through the best moments of Träumerei with me? Even in a piece of just twenty-four bars, there is still plenty more to discover about how it came to be and the life it took on after I wrote it. Feel free to click on the links on this page if you would like to explore Träumerei a little further.
Recording: Robert Schumann (1810-1856) (see Musopen for performance author information), Public domain