The Fantasy Pieces were written in the spring and summer of 1837 in Leipzig. The unbroken popularity of this work, and particularly of certain pieces like Des Abends, Aufschwung, In der Nacht and Traumes Wirren can be explained to a certain extent by the fact that Schumann succeeded here for the first time in writing more broadly laid-out and formally distinct character pieces of rather limited technical difficulty.

The present edition is based on the music text of the Gesamtausgabe of Robert Schumanns works, edited by Clara Schumann together with Johannes Brahms and others between 1879 und 1893. This publication is almost entirely free from arbitrary alterations in the text. A few obvious errors and unjustifiable alterations of the musical text were eliminated after a thorough comparison with the first edition.