Schumann’s first twenty-six published works (covering \ most of the decade from 1830 to 1840) were almost exclusively for the piano. From the beginning he showed his instinct for its technical possibilities. Opus 1, published in November, 1831, was a set of variations, the theme being the musical ‘spelling’ of the name of a woman friend of his, the ‘Countess Abegg,’ perhaps as much a product of the imagination as was the music itself. The variations show the crudities of dilettantism, as well as its enthusiasm and courage. They were far from being the formal mechanical variations of classical clavier music. No change of the theme but has a musical and expressive beauty apart from its technical ingenuity. Especially they reveal a vivid sense of what the piano could do as distinguished from what the clavichord or harpsichord could do. Much better was opus 2, the _Papillons_, or ‘Butterflies,’ which is still popular on concert programs. All that is typical of Schumann the pianist is to be found in some measure in this opus 2. For, besides the vivid joy they reveal in experimentation with pianistic effects, there is the fact that they came, by way of Schumann’s colorful imagination, out of literature. Here was romanticism going full tilt. From his earliest years Schumann had adored his Jean Paul. He had equally adored his piano. When he read the one he heard the other echoing. This was precisely the origin of the _Papillons_, as Schumann confessed in letters to his friends. The various dances of opus 2 are the portions of the masked dance of the conclusion of Jean Paul’s _Flegeljahre_--not as program music, nor even as pictorial music, but in the vaguest way the creation of the sensitive musician under the stimulus of literature. Schumann attached no especial value to the fanciful titles which he gave much of his piano music; in his later revisions of it he usually withdrew them altogether. He always insisted that the music and not the literature was the important thing in his music. The names which betitle his music were often afterthoughts. They were nearly always given in a playful spirit. The literary music of Schumann is not in the least music which expresses literature, but only music written by a sensitive musician under the creative stimulus of literature. The ‘Butterflies’ of opus 2 (_Papillons_) are by no means the flittering, showy butterflies common to salons of that day. They are free and fanciful dances, rich in harmonic and technical device, and rich especially in buoyant high spirits. The canons, the free melodic counterpoint, the recurrence of passages to give unity to the series, the broken or rolling chords, the spicy rhythmical devices, the blending of voices in a manner quite different from the polyphonic style of old, and the use of single anticipatory or suspended notes for changes of key--these gave evidence of what was to be the nature of Schumann’s contribution to piano literature.