Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner


Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner: Pages from the Diary of a Travelling Romantic is the first prose collection by the Prussian writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, consisting of fantastical short stories, novellas and music criticism. It was published in four volumes in 1814–1815 and in a revised two-volume version in 1819.

Contents

1819 version:
First volume
  1. "Jaques Callot"
  2. "Ritter Gluck"
  3. ""
  4. # "The Kapellmeisters Musical Sorrows
  5. # "Ombra Adorata!"
  6. # "Thoughts on the Great Value of Music"
  7. # "Beethoven's Instrumental Music"
  8. # "Extremely Random Thoughts"
  9. # "The Compleat Stage Manager"
  10. "Don Juan"
  11. ""
Second volume
  1. ""
  2. "The Golden Pot: A Modern Fairy Tale"
  3. "" )
  4. "Kreisleriana: "
  5. # "Baron Wallborn to Kapellmeister Kreisler"
  6. # "Kapellmeister'' Kreisler to Baron Wallborn"
  7. # "Kreisler's Musical-Poetic Club"
  8. # "Report from an Educated Young Man"
  9. # "The Music Hater"
  10. # "On a Remark by Sacchini and On the Effect of Music"
  11. # "Johannes Kreisler's Apprentice Letter"
The original version incorporated the beginning of the novella ' in "Kreisler's Musical-Poetic Club". The 1819 version omitted this story.

Publication

Much of the material had been published previously in periodicals. The collection was published in four volumes by in Bamberg in 1814 and 1815, and in a revised two-volume version in 1819. The initiative to include the name of the 17th-century printmaker Jacques Callot in the title came from Kunze. Hoffmann knew little about Callot and his work at the time, but at Kunze's suggestion he looked through a collection of Callot's prints, enjoyed them and wrote an essay about Callot that opens the book. Kunze was also the one who got Jean Paul to write a preface.

Legacy

The book established the model for stories that Hoffmann would follow and develop further in his collections Night Pieces and The Serapion Brethren.