Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann was born on 8 June 1810 in Zwickau, Saxony. His father, August, was a bookseller, publisher and writer; he introduced his son to the great authors, especially Jean Paul and Byron, and encouraged his artistic tastes. Robert began piano at seven, composed his first pieces and organised a small orchestra with his schoolmates. He long hesitated between literature and music. In 1826 the death of his father and the suicide of his sister marked him deeply.

To obey his mother he went to study law in Leipzig in 1828, then in Heidelberg, but spent most of his time at the piano. In 1830, after hearing Paganini, he decided to become a pianist and persuaded his mother to let him study with Friedrich Wieck, a renowned Leipzig teacher, in whose house he lodged. Wieck’s daughter Clara, aged eleven, was already a prodigy pianist. But in 1832 Robert injured his right hand, perhaps with a device meant to strengthen his fingers: his dream of becoming a virtuoso was shattered, and he devoted himself to composition.

Schumann was also a brilliant writer. In 1834 he and friends founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, a music journal he edited for ten years. He signed his reviews with imaginary names: Florestan, the impetuous, and Eusebius, the dreamer, representing the two sides of his personality, members of a fictitious brotherhood, the “Davidsbündler”, who fought the philistines. In 1831 he introduced Chopin with a famous phrase: “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!”

His early works are almost all for piano: Papillons, Carnaval (1835), a suite of little musical portraits, Kreisleriana and Kinderszenen (1838), with the famous Träumerei. From 1835 Robert and Clara fell in love. Friedrich Wieck fiercely opposed their union and forbade his daughter to see him. The lovers had to take the matter to court, and they were finally able to marry on 12 September 1840, the day before Clara’s twenty-first birthday.

1840 was his “year of song”: he composed some 140 songs, including the cycles Dichterliebe, Frauenliebe und -leben and the Liederkreis on poems by Eichendorff. Encouraged by Clara, he then turned to the orchestra: Symphony No. 1, “Spring” (1841), then chamber music, with the magnificent Piano Quintet (1842), and the Piano Concerto in A minor (1845), premiered by Clara. The couple had eight children. For them Robert composed the Album for the Young (1848).

Since his youth Schumann had suffered from health problems and periods of great nervous exhaustion. In 1850 he became music director of the city of Düsseldorf, where he composed the “Rhenish” Symphony, inspired by the Rhine and Cologne Cathedral. But he was ill at ease as a conductor, and relations with the musicians deteriorated. In 1853 he was visited by a twenty-year-old composer, Johannes Brahms, whom he introduced to the world in an enthusiastic article entitled “New Paths”.

In February 1854 his health collapsed: he heard sounds that tormented him and threw himself into the Rhine. Rescued by boatmen, he asked to be treated and entered a clinic at Endenich near Bonn. He spent the last two years of his life there, while Clara, supported by Brahms, continued her concerts to support the family. He died at Endenich on 29 July 1856, aged forty-six. Clara devoted the rest of her life to making his music known.