Concert Piece for Four Horns and Orchestra, Op. 86

Schumann composed his Konzertstück für 4 Hörner und Orchester in 1849, and it premiered in Leipzig on February 25, 1850.¹
In their Grove article on Schumann, John Daverio and David Sams refer to this piece as “a latterday response to the Baroque concerto grosso.”²
- They also observe that Schumann’s Op. 86 is “the first large-scale concerted work to exploit the capabilties of the valve horn.”
In his article “Nineteenth-Century Concertos for Strings and Winds,” musicologist R. Larry Todd observes that Schumann plays with a variety of cultural associations with the horn throughout this piece. The first movement uses the horns in the manner of a fanfare; the second movement recalls pastoral associations with the horn by using gentle horn passages in canon; the third movement recalls hunting horns.³

“Concertpiece for 4 Horns and Orchestra, Op.86 (Schumann, Robert),” IMSLP, accessed November 29, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/Concertpiece_for_Four_Horns_and_Orchestra,_Op.86_(Schumann,_Robert).
John Daverio and Eric Sams, “Schumann, Robert,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed July 30, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040704.
R. Larry Todd, “Nineteenth-Century Concertos for Strings and Winds,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Concerto, ed. Simon P. Keefe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 137.
“Concertpiece for 4 Horns and Orchestra, Op.86 (Schumann, Robert),” IMSLP.

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