Considered by W. Siegmund-Schultze as 'formally the most perfect of Schumann's choral compositions', The Pilgrimage of the Rose was composed in 1851, a few months after the composer had received a manuscript from the poet Moritz Horn with a subject he found fascinating. This fairy tale, deeply impregnated by the spirit of the Biedermeier period, tells the story of a little rose that aspires to the human condition ­ and thus, to love. In a few weeks Schumann composed this huge fresco for chorus, soloists and piano, orchestrating it in 1851-52 with the aim of reaching a larger audience. But it is undoubtedly in its original form that the work is most pertinent, because it is entirely in the glorious tradition of the Romantic Lied.