“In the closing number of Papillons, Schumann quotes the ‘Grandfathers’ Dance’ traditionally used at the conclusion of a ball, combining it with the waltz-tune of the cycle’s first piece—as though to illustrate in music the view he expressed to Rellstab, that the end of Jean Paul’s novel sounds like a new beginning. In the last bars we hear the chimes of six o’clock in the morning, as the dancers disperse and the music vanishes into thin air. The effect is achieved by fragmenting the ‘Grandfathers’ Dance’ so that it sounds as though it is disappearing into the distance; and, at the very end, by means of a quietly arpeggiated chord whose notes are slowly released one by one. Schumann carried out a similar idea in the concluding pages of his Abegg Variations Op 1, where the process of subtracting notes from a chord produces a ‘ghost’ version of the work’s theme.”
-notes by Misha Donat
