ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors turn now to Schumann's first prolonged compositional effort in the concerto genre, an exposition for a Concerto in F Major that exists in two separate fair copies. Overall, the piano part of each exposition is self-sufficient with only occasional indications of the orchestral part. Similarly, Schumann's earliest attempts at composing a concerto also are directly associated with compositions he knew and with performance opportunities available to him. In sum, although Hummel's close, like Schumann's, is constructed of a series of cadential extensions, and in fact begins with a chain of small units of changing figuration, dynamics, registration, and even affect, Hummel builds the final long cadential gesture of his close with a rhythmic elasticity and registral expansion that are absent in Schumann. More difficult is the delivery of the norm these opening signals promise, that is, to work within what Kallberg calls “an ordered mental space” or form that these signals invite.
