ABSTRACT
Commenting on the fate of many string quartets composed during the nineteenth century, Friedheim Krummacher writes: "There is scarcely another genre in which the standards set by the Classical masterpieces were so domineering that the victims of later selection included even those works that had sought seriously to engage with the established canon."1 What Krummacher says of the string quartet resonates with almost the whole of Schumann's chamber music. Of the composer's nearly two dozen chamber works (see Table 5.1), only one, the Piano Quintet, Op. 44, is heard with any frequency, a fact of reception history already grounded in the reactions oflisteners during Schumann's lifetime. While some of these compositions are occasionally trotted out in public performances-the string quartets, the piano quartet, the first two piano trios, the first two violin sonatas, the Phantasiestiicke, Op. 73-a late masterpiece such as the G Minor Piano Trio, Op. 110, is hardly known at all.
