Robert schumann biographyexplanation point

German composer, pianist and critic (1810–1856)

"Schumann" redirects here. For Robert Schumann's wife, see Clara Schumann. For the French statesman, see Robert Schuman. For other uses, see Schumann (disambiguation).

Robert Schumann (; German:[ˈʁoːbɛʁtˈʃuːman]; 8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber groups, orchestra, choir and the opera. His works typify the spirit of the Romantic era in German music.

Schumann was born in Zwickau, Saxony, to an affluent middle-class family with no musical connections, and was initially unsure whether to pursue a career as a lawyer or to make a living as a pianist-composer. He studied law at the universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg but his main interests were music and Romantic literature. From 1829 he was a student of the piano teacher Friedrich Wieck, but his hopes for a career as a virtuoso pianist were frustrated by a worsening problem with his right hand, and he concentrated on composition. His early works were mainly piano pieces, including the large-scale Carnaval, Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of the League of David), Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces), Kreisleriana and Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) (1834–1838). He was a co-founder of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Musical Journal) in 1834 and edited it for ten years. In his writing for the journal and in his music he distinguished between two contrasting aspects of his personality, dubbing these alter egos "Florestan" for his impetuous self and "Eusebius" for his gentle poet

‘To him, above all, belongs my heart, I love him like an honoured friend, to him I owe my most beautiful hours - I lament deeply for him, too, for the shadows of sadness - the sorrow we feel in his songs - fell ever more thickly upon him…What do we know of his inner  being, what can we know, there, where reason ceases and madness begins?’

Edwin Fischer’s poetic words speak to all lovers of Schumann the composer and the man. Schumann does feel like an intimate friend, perhaps more so than any other composer. Strange that one can feel so close to a man who has been dead for over 150 years and who, in his lifetime, was famously taciturn and shy; but through his music Schumann confesses to us his deepest secrets – treats us, the listeners, as trusted companions in all his moods. He is perhaps the most autobiographical of all composers, taking us into his confidence in a way that earlier composers would have considered unthinkable. But despite this openness, there are many facets of Schumann the man and the musician that I feel are frequently misunderstood. Even Fischer’s words, affectionate though they are, seem to me a bit ambiguous.

Certainly, shadows fell upon Schumann, and there is great sadness in some of his later music, as in his early works; but there is also joy, humour, hope. It is significant that Schumann tended not to compose during his periods of depression; he would wait until he felt better – or use music as a path back to health. To describe any of his works as the product of madness, thus implying that he was not in full control of the composing process, is misleading. The most serious result of this misconception is that only about a third of Schumann’s works are heard regularly in today’s concert halls; it is probably fair to say that he is the most under-valued of the great composers.

Schumann and the past

The view of Schumann as the embodiment of Romanticism by

Some people are simple born to create. This certainly seems to have been the case for Robert Schumann. Born in 1810 the son of a shoemaker and his humble wife, Schumann was encouraged in his artistic abilities by his father and pressured to pursue a more practical career by his mother (Moss, 2007). His interests were evenly divided between literature and poetry and music, particularly the piano.

Although his father died when he was only 16 and his mother sent him to school to study law, Schumann was unable to resist the draw of his creative side and eventually wrote to his mother about his intention to study music, “I have arrived at the conviction that with work, patience and a good teacher, I would be able, within six years, to surpass any pianist. Besides … I have an imagination and perhaps a skill for the individual work of creation” (cited in Moss, 2007). Although he showed tremendous promise as a pianist and composer, a crippling of his right hand by November of 1832 and he gave up performing in favor of writing about music from a critical perspective and continued to compose.

By founding a music journal in 1834 dedicated to critiquing music for the masses, Schumann managed to gain widespread attention for new composers and musicians. As a composer, he explored the art song, orchestral music, chamber music and choral music, often bringing to it his own style and concerns and almost always managing to include his sentiments toward his life-long love Clara in them. By 1844, though, he’d suffered his first mental breakdown and by 1854, he was hearing voices and horrific music (Moss, 2007). After a failed attempt at drowning himself in the Rhine, Schumann was voluntarily placed in a mental asylum where he spent the last two years of his life. In tracing through his works and his influence, it can be seen that Schumann’s mus

The morning of 27 February 1854 (a Monday) began as many did for Robert Schumann. After breakfast, he worked quietly at home in Düsseldorf. Around noon, however, he emerged from his study, and left the family’s first-floor apartment on Bilker Strasse without explanation.

Still wearing a floral-patterned dressing gown and slippers, and hatless in cold weather, he walked at least ten minutes through pouring rain to a wooden pontoon bridge on the River Rhine. Schumann may or may not have been recognised en route: it was carnival time in the city, so his bizarre attire would probably have blended more easily into the milling crowds than it might otherwise have done.

'What happened next is blurred by history'

Arriving at the bridge, Schumann had no money to pay the toll collector. But he offered his silk handkerchief in lieu and was allowed to continue. The specific details of what happened next are blurred by history. At some point on his way across the bridge, Schumann halted, stepped over the wooden railing and entered the Rhine, possibly via one of the pontoon boats below.

The impact of the ice-cold water was immediate, and Schumann would undoubtedly have drowned or died of hypothermia had help not been at hand immediately. It came from Joseph Jüngermann, a local river worker who reacted swiftly by pulling the composer from the fast-flowing current into his vessel. Schumann apparently resisted, but was eventually brought ashore and taken home in a cart.

‘What I felt is indescribable, it was as if my heart had stopped beating’

While the news of Schumann’s apparent suicide attempt was shocking to his friends and family – ‘What I felt is indescribable, it was as if my heart had stopped beating’, his wife Clara Schumann said later – it was not totally surprising. For years, Robert Schumann had suffered from mental instability and, in the weeks imme