The last part of the 1840s were productive years for Schumann. Following his marriage to Clara in 1840, Schumann had rediscovered an interest in the composition of music not
for piano solo which he had pursued to a degree in his youth, but which he had largely abandoned to focus upon the more remunerative music that would appear during his twenties. During this time Schumann composed music in an array of genres. In the early 1840s Schumann completed and published his string quartets, the
Piano Quintet and
Quartet, and the Andante and Variations for two pianos. In 1845 the Schumanns moved to Dresden, which Schumann had considered a suitable location for the couple even before their marriage. They would spend the latter part of the decade there. Schumann turned to chamber music on the smaller scale; all the chamber music of this period was for piano and one or two other instruments. Schumann composed three duets, the first he ever completed, in 1849: the
Five Pieces, the
Adagio and Allegro for Horn and Piano and the
Fantasiestücke for Clarinet, Op. 73. The period 1845–53 was also the time of the composition and premieres of all of Schumann's concerti and concertante works, beginning with the
piano concerto, which appeared in 1845. Between 1845 and 1847 Schumann struggled against actual ill-health, hypochondria, and depression to complete the symphony published as his
Second. The year 1849 was a particularly active one for the Schumanns. Robert was busied by finishing touches to his opera
Genoveva, whose premiere in
Leipzig would take place the following year. But in February and March, he completed the
Fantasiestücke, the Adagio and Allegro for Horn and Piano, the Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra, and several choral works and cycles of
Lieder including the
Romanzen für Frauenstimmen, a set of part-songs, and the
Spanisches Liederspiel of songs for four soloists. These meant income for Schumann (a priority for him in 1849, which ended in the publication of the lucrative
Album für die Jugend) and also served to raise his profile amongst the genteel public of Dresden, where small-scale music in the home was more popular than concert works of the sort which had made Schumann famous elsewhere. Meanwhile, the violence of the
May Uprising in Dresden, where the Schumanns had their home, was brewing. At the time Clara was pregnant with Ferdinand, their sixth child, but they were forced to flee the city in early May, and went to live in the nearby village of Kreischa. The
Five Pieces were conceived early in the flowering of Schumann's interest in chamber works for duet, and so the project's result was somewhat formally and texturally experimental for Schumann. They preceded his first conventional sonata for soloist and piano accompaniment,
the first violin sonata, by two years; they also preceded the composition of the
cello concerto by a year, and served as a venue for textural and technical experimentation in cello writing for Schumann. The pieces also reflect Schumann's longstanding interest in folk music, especially music from Germany and Bohemia. The dedicatee of the work, Andreas Grabau, was a cellist in the
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and a celebrated chamber musician. He had met Clara Schumann in 1828, when she was nine years old, and was introduced soon after to Robert. Later, he would premiere Schumann's
first and
third piano trios. He was a
Davidsbündler, whom Schumann, himself a student of the cello in his youth, greatly admired. A year before their publication in 1851, Grabau performed the
Five Pieces with Clara in private, in honour of Schumann's fortieth birthday. The work was published at
Kassel by Carl Luckhardt in September 1851. Schumann prepared an alternative edition for violin and piano. After Schumann's death, Clara staged a public premiere for the work in December 1859 at the Leipzig
Gewandhaus.
Friedrich Grützmacher was accompanied by Clara herself. == Music ==