Combining these two Schumann bestsellers seemed very natural: both of the titles not only reflect their inner association but the technical demands on the pianist are for once not so great (see the levels of difficulty). And both works are collections of more-or-less short, succinct pieces that ever since their publication (in 1839 and 1848) were to profoundly influence middle-class musical culture in the second half of the 19th century. To this day, they have lost hardly any of their appeal. -Ernst Herttrich in the preface