Anecdotes of Great Musicians/Anecdote 216
216.—AN INTERRUPTED STRAIN.
Musicians are sometimes affected in composing by events of the most trivial kind. It was a casual and unimportant matter of this character that accounts for a certain peculiarity in one of Schumann's compositions. In his "Humoreske" the reader may remember that the short section headed "Einfach und Zart" is interrupted by a short theme of entirely different character from the context. A member of the Schumann family gives the following as a reason for this peculiar break in the continuity of the piece:—
"When the master was engaged upon the section referred to, a strolling carol seller came down the road, followed by a crowd of children, and calling attention to his wares by blowing a pipe upon which he could play three notes. With the flow of his sentimental melody arrested by the itinerant and obstreperous music, Schumann at once proceeded to make the pipe theme the motive of an intermezzo, accompanied by a throng of semiquavers to stand for the children. The episode dies away (the man's pipe becomes faint in the distance), and the composer then resumes his interrupted strain."