At the outset of any account of Robert Schumann's compositions, one group of works must command chief, and, for a time, exclusive attention. We have seen that it was his practice to confine himself almost entirely to one class of composition at a time, and that he never rested, or turned his attention to another branch of the art, until he had done the best he could in the particular class he had chosen. Since at the beginning of his artistic career he intended to fit himself for the profession of a pianist, it is easy to account for the fact that his earliest compositions are one and all for the instrument which it was his ambition to play. It is not often easy, and in many cases it is quite impossible, to trace the course of an artist's growth from his published works; but in Schumann's pianoforte compositions we are permitted to watch his gradual development, and to see how the mysteries of musical form became ever more and more clear to his understanding. At first he wisely refrained from attempting to write in the classical form at all, and it was not till the sixth year from the time of his beginning composition that he wrote his first sonata; but there is no evidence that he was hampered in the expression of his ideas by his lack of theoretical musical knowledge.