Fantasy Pieces examines from several vantage points a vital life-force of Robert Schumann's music, namely metrical conflict. Harald Krebs's imaginative yet rigorous study makes use of Schumann's fascinating projections of his own personality--the characters Florestan and Eusebius--as one means of addressing the biographical and aesthetic context of the music.

In counterpoint with the remarks of these personae, Krebs develops an original theory of metrical conflict by adapting the concepts of consonance and dissonance to metrical analysis. He investigates how states of metrical...