RobertSchumann

Robert Schumann grew up among books in Zwickau. His father August sold and published them, and encouraged his son’s music; Robert read Jean Paul’s novels while learning the piano. The novels contain twins, disguises, and conversations that wander from their subject and return to it unexpectedly. In Papillons, his early set of piano dances, Schumann took up the masked ball at the end of Jean Paul’s Flegeljahre.

He went to Leipzig to study law in 1828 and moved to Heidelberg the following year. In the end he persuaded his mother to let him pursue music. Friedrich Wieck undertook to train him as a pianist. Wieck’s young daughter Clara was already performing in public; Robert was the older pupil and had more ground to make up. By 1832 paralysis in his right hand had ended his hopes of becoming a virtuoso. He studied composition with Heinrich Dorn and turned to composing and writing.

1834–⁠44The Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and Davidsbund

Schumann helped found the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1834 and edited it for ten years. He filled its pages with a partly imaginary society, the Davidsbund, sworn to fight musical Philistines. Two of its members also stood for parts of himself: the impulsive Florestan and the inward-looking Eusebius. A review could take the form of a conversation between them. He had already championed Chopin in 1831, and he gave Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique sustained attention.

His admiration for Chopin did not stop him being surprised. Reviewing Chopin’s Preludes in 1839, he admitted that he had expected pieces in the grand manner of the études. What he found were “sketches, beginnings of études”, even “ruins, isolated eagle’s wings, all in a colourful, wild jumble”. He went on to describe some things in the collection as sickly and repellent. “Let each seek what suits him,” he told his readers.

ClaraClara, Wieck and the piano works

His engagement to Ernestine ended in 1835. He and Clara fell in love, and Wieck did everything he could to keep them apart. He distrusted Robert’s finances and his ability to provide a stable life. The couple communicated through letters and through music. The C major Fantasie grew partly from a plan to raise money for the Beethoven monument in Bonn; at the end of its first movement, a phrase from Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte is quoted. Writing to Clara on 18 March 1838, Schumann called the movement “a deep lament for you”.

1840–⁠42Marriage, songs and larger forms

A court finally allowed them to marry without Wieck’s consent. The wedding took place on 12 September 1840, the day before Clara’s twenty-first birthday. Schumann wrote more than a hundred songs that year, setting Heine, Eichendorff, Chamisso and Rückert. He offered Clara Myrthen as a wedding present. The following year, the two composers contributed songs to a joint Rückert collection.

In Dichterliebe, Heine’s disappointed lover insists that he bears no grudge, while the piano hammers beneath him. The first song ends on an unresolved dominant chord. At the end of the cycle, after the singer has ordered his love and sorrow buried in an enormous coffin, the pianist continues alone and returns to music from an earlier song.

In the next two years Schumann turned to larger forms. In 1841 he wrote the “Spring” Symphony, first conducted by Mendelssohn, and the original D minor Symphony. In 1842 came three string quartets, the E♭ major Piano Quintet and the Piano Quartet in the same key. At the end of the Quintet, the opening theme of the first movement returns and is combined in counterpoint with the theme of the finale.

Clara earned money through concerts and carried Robert’s music onto the platform. Practice and composition competed for quiet in a growing household; pregnancies and children interrupted her touring. They studied Bach together. His Piano Concerto began as a one-movement Fantasy in 1841; he added the Intermezzo and finale in 1845. At its opening, the piano’s downward flourish stops for the oboe to introduce the principal tune, and the soloist then answers.

Dresden and DüsseldorfSymphonies, Genoveva and conducting

Schumann joined the staff of the new Leipzig Conservatoire in 1843. After accompanying Clara on her Russian tour the following year, he suffered another period of serious ill health. He sold the journal and the family moved to Dresden. His study of Bach led to the six organ fugues on B–A–C–H. The C major Second Symphony places a long Adagio between its quick movements. His opera Genoveva was staged in 1850 but did not reach the public he had wanted. In the same period he wrote the Album for the Young, a collection of short pieces for children learning to play.

1853–⁠56Brahms, Endenich and Schumann’s death

That autumn the twenty-year-old Brahms came to the Schumanns with an introduction from Joseph Joachim and played his music. Schumann returned to the journal for Neue Bahnen, published on 28 October 1853. At the piano, he wrote, Brahms had revealed “an orchestra of lamenting and loudly rejoicing voices”; his sonatas were “veiled symphonies”. For Joachim himself, Schumann composed the Violin Concerto, whose finale is in the rhythm of a polonaise.

In February 1854, suffering from auditory disturbances, Schumann attempted suicide in the Rhine. He was rescued and asked to enter the private asylum at Endenich, near Bonn. Brahms and Joachim were allowed to visit; the doctors kept Clara away until two days before his death on 29 July 1856. She continued to perform and edit his music for decades. The Violin Concerto was withheld after his death and received its first public performance in 1937.