Robert Schumann's little-known Märchenbilder (Fairytale Pictures) for viola and piano (alternately for violin and piano, by the composer's own indication) were composed during March of 1851, during his brief and relatively unhappy tenure as conductor at Düsseldorf. Chronologically, these four fantasy pieces occupy the space between the two sonatas for violin and piano, though they can hardly be said to inhabit the same emotionally conflicted world. Instead, they draw the listener into that same glistening world of fantasy and childlike imagination that, many years earlier, drew from him some of the most beloved piano music in the repertory. However, twenty years of further experience and the first signs of approaching madness grant to these seemingly simple portraits an almost desperate sense of escapism lacking in the earlier piano works.

The first of the four Märchenbilder, marked Nicht schnell (Not fast), features a somber melody in D minor that recurs throughout the piece in a variety of guises. Lebhaft (spirited), which follows, is a kind of truncated rondo that contrasts its main, exuberant, theme with two much gentler digressions, while pitting the violin and piano against one another in friendly competition. Rasch (swift or brisk), a vehement moto perpetuo, follows. A secondary motive, announced by the piano in the fifth bar of the piece, is of rhythmic interest and considerable importance. The final piece of the group is set in the traditionally happy key of D major, but is nevertheless marked Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck (Slowly, with melancholy expression). Its sonorous texture seems to presage the Adagio of Johannes Brahms' D minor violin sonata.

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