To judge from the entry “Waldscenen” in the “Haushaltbuch of 24 December 1848, it seems that Schumann had planned from the very beginning a cyclical succession of piano pieces related to the forest, the ideal Romantic setting for the peculiar alliance between the idyllic and the demonic. Nonetheless, these pieces cannot be properly termed “program music” in the thrue sense of the word, since the composer devised the titles and mottos after having written the piece (procedure known from similar works by Schumann) and even altered them several times, as can be seen in the extant sketches and in the autograph.

The present edition is based on the music text of the „Gesamtausgabe“ of Robert Schumann’s 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.