Dreams of Childhood: The Romantic Quest for the Innocent Imagination in Music

Abstract

The nineteenth century witnessed an upheaval in the perception of the childhood imagination, elevated as a source of innocence and enlightenment by poets and authors in an era of political disillusionment. By synthesising historical and musical analysis of works both explicitly centred on and more subtly linked to childhood, this article explores the less well-documented influence of contemporary conceptions of childhood on Romantic music. From the wonderment of Humperdinck’s Märchenoper to the fragmented fantasy of Schumann’s Kinderszenen, the terror of Schubert’s Erlkönig to the transcendence of Hoffmann’s Undine, childhood appears in many guises, but an overriding picture emerges of the Romantic yearning for a fantastic, idealised innocence accessed through the child’s imagination, and the unique power of music to recreate and engage with this ideal.