German composer Robert Schumann was only 38 in 1848, but he was already beginning to show signs of decline as a composer and as a conductor. His creative output had slowed in recent years and his conducting of the Dresden Staatskapelle was thought to be inept and incompetent. But the combination of his friend Felix Mendelssohn's death in autumn 1847 and the revolutionary uprising of late spring 1848 seems to have inspired him as a composer and he wrote a series of works that can stand with any of his earlier works. These include many of his best Goethe songs, plus his Szenen von Faust and Requiem für Mignon, the Introduction and Allegro for Piano and Orchestra, the Waldszenen for solo piano, and the Zwolf Vierhändige Klavierstücke für Kleine und Gross Kinder (12 Four-Hand Piano Pieces for Small and Large Children), Op. 85.

Schumann, who loved his children and who had already written several sets of pieces for them, conceived his Zwolf Vierhändige Klavierstücke für Kleine und Gross Kinder as duets he would perform with his daughter, Maria. The first of the pieces—"Geburtstagsmarsch" (Birthday March)—was performed by father and daughter as a surprise for Clara Schumann on her birthday, September 13. The remaining 11 pieces were written in two batches between September 10 through 15 and between September 27 and October 1. All were written in Schumann's most charmingly childlike manner, with tender and funny melodies and simple but effective accompaniments. Tragically, the Zwolf Vierhändige Klavierstücke für Kleine und Gross Kinder proved to be Schumann's last great work for the piano. The pieces of piano music published afterwards—the sets of Bunte Blätter and Albumblätter—are collections of earlier works.

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