Robert Alexander Schumann (1810-1856) who is attentive and full of imagination is one of leading authority in 19th century Romanticism Music. He composed lots of touching music in all sincerity. Especially piano works, like Schumann’s diary, concentrate all his feelings and make his music with strong personal style and high creativity.

Besides, cultivated in rich literary knowledge, Schumann has been known as a “Poet- Musician” or “Music Litterateur”. He gains lots of idea from literature to compose music and applies literary techniques into it. For example, using multiple metaphors, quoting previous material into new works, presenting humor by inverse elements and playing words puzzles in music. Above all polish Schumann’s music with literature temperature and sense of poetry. Therefore, listening to Schumann’s music is like reading great literary works that spread our imaginary wings wide.

Papillons, Op. 2, is a suite of piano pieces written in 1831 by Schumann, which was inspired by Jean Paul's novel Flegeljahre―the last chapter Larventans. This work is the first one that Schumann combined music with literature and also as the representative work of early Schumann’s piano works. Therefore, this research focuses on Papillons, Op. 2 to analyze how Schumann applied the techniques of Jean Paul’s writing into his own music.

The research includes five chapters. The first chapter explains motivation, purpose, field and method of research. The second chapter describes the life background of Schumann, and introduces his style and genre of works, especially the features and forms of his piano works. The third chapter presents the composing background of Papillons, analyzes entire forms of it, and discusses music with plots of Jean Paul's novel. The fourth chapter presents the comparison and examples of Jean Paul’s writing techniques and Schumann composing skills, explaining how Jean Paul influenced Schumann in Papillons . Besides, Researcher creates the themes for each piece of Papillons by her own imagination inspired from music. With these imaginary themes, Researcher finishes the interpretation and analysis of piano performance skills, responding what Schumann appealed―keep your own imagination to Papillons . And the last chapter is the conclusion of the research.