Schumann, Robert Alexander 1810-56
German composer

Schumann was born in Zwickau in Saxony. He studied law at Leipzig and Heidelberg, but was always more interested in music. After hearing Rossini's operas performed in Italy and Paganini playing at Frankfurt am Main, he persuaded his parents to allow him to study the piano under the formidable teacher Friedrich Wieck of Leipzig. However Wieck was absent for much of the time organizing concert tours for his highly gifted daughter Clara, and Schumann was left to his own devices. He studied J S Bach's Well-tempered Clavier, and wrote reviews and articles, including a significant one heralding the genius of the young Chopin. He managed to cripple a finger of his right hand with a finger-strengthening contraption that he had devised (1832), permanently ruining his prospects as a performer.

The deaths of a brother and a sister-in-law and an obsessive fear of insanity drove him to attempt suicide. His first compositions, the Toccata, Paganini studies, and Intermezzi, were published in 1833, and in 1834 he founded the Neue Zeitschrift f�r Musik, of which he was editor for 10 years. His best contributions were collected and translated under the title Music and Musicians (1877-80). He was a champion of romanticism, and in 1853 contributed another prescient essay, on the young Brahms. In 1834 he founded the so called Davidsb�nder ('David Club') to fight the artistic philistines in Germany. In his music, he identified in himself two personalities, the impetuous Florestan and the contemplative Eusebius.

In 1835 he met Chopin, Ignaz Moscheles and Mendelssohn, who had become director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus. The F sharp minor Piano Sonata was begun and another in G minor written post-haste for the Beethoven commemorations, but not published until 1839. In 1838 Schumann visited Vienna and came across the manuscript of Schubert's C major symphony; Schumann sent it to Mendelssohn, who had it performed. Schumann's attachment to Clara Wieck (the future Clara Schumann) was met with disapproval from her father, who took her away on concert tours as much as possible. He did not know that they were secretly engaged, however. Clara dutifully repudiated Schumann, who retaliated by having a brief relationship with the Scottish pianist Robina Laidlaw, to whom he later dedicated his Fantasiest�cke.

In 1839 the lovers were reconciled and after a long legal wrangle to obtain permission to marry without her father's consent, they married in 1840. Schumann had meanwhile written his first songs, the Fool's Song in Twelfth Night, and the Chamisso songs Frauenliebe und -Leben ('Woman's Love and Life'). After the marriage, he poured out his heart into a flood of new songs and song cycles, including Dichterliebe ('Poet's Love'). Clara now influenced him to turn to orchestral composition, and her efforts were rewarded by the first Symphony in B flat major, which was performed under Mendelssohn's direction at the Gewandhaus. This was followed by the A minor Piano Concerto, the Piano Quintet, the choral Paradise and the Peril, the scenes from Faust, completed in 1848, the 'Spring' Symphony in B flat, and other works.

In 1843 he was appointed professor of the new Leipzig Conservatory. The Schumanns' Russian concert tour, during which Clara played before Nicholas I (1844), inspired him to write five poems on the Kremlin. Increasing symptoms of mental illness prompted the move from Leipzig to Dresden. In 1847 the Symphony in C major was completed and the death of his great friend Mendelssohn prompted him to write a set of reminiscences, first published in 1947.

Revolution broke out in Dresden in 1849 when Prussian troops confronted republican revolutionaries, among them Richard Wagner. The Schumanns fled, but Robert wrote some stirring marches. His mental state allowed him one final productive phase in which he composed piano pieces, many songs and the incidental music to Byron's Manfred.

His appointment as musical director at D�sseldorf in 1850 saw a happy interlude and the composition of the Rhenish Symphony, but his condition remained unstable and in 1854 he threw himself into the Rhine, only to be rescued by fishermen. He died in an asylum two years later.

Discography: Schumann was primarily a composer for the pianoforte, whose repertory he enriched with works of intense poetry and romanticism. Notable among these are the Abegg Theme and Variations (dedicated to his friend Meta Abegg), Papillons, Davidsb�ndlert�nze, Carnaval, Fantasiest�cke, �tudes symphoniques ('Symphonic Studies'), Kinderszenen ('Scenes from Childhood'), Kreisleriana, Novelleten, Waldscenen ('Forest Scenes'), and Albumbl�tter ('Album Leaves). He also wrote many songs and song cycles, picking up the mantle of Schubert. In addition to the above-mentioned (Frauenliebe und -Leben and Dichterliebe), the Liederkreis (two cycles, on poems by Heinrich Heine and Joseph Eichendorff respectively) is also well known.

Bibliography: Alan Walker (ed), Robert Schumann: The Man and His Music (2nd edn, 1974); Joan Chissell, Schumann (1967); Robert H Schauffler, Florestan: The Life and Work of Robert Schumann (1945).