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Composer Profiles Robert Schumann Born: Zwickau, Saxony – 1810 Died: Bonn, Germany – 1856 Biography Robert Schumann was born in the village of Zwickau in the province of Saxony, which at the time was an independent confederacy that was absorbed into the German Empire in 1871. August Schumann, Robert’s father, was a bookseller and publisher; he is credited with translating into German the complete works of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. Because of this, young Robert was constantly around literature; it would shape his view of the world and his compositional works. Unfortunately, August also had a mental condition that he called a “nervous disorder”, most likely bipolar disorder, which was also passed down to his children. Emilia, Robert’s sister, would commit suicide when Robert was 16, a month after their father died. Robert’s musical education did not formally begin until he was eighteen. After his father’s death, his mother wished him to study law in Leipzig, and after studying for only a year, Robert’s attention soon turned to music. Caught up in the new style of Romanticism brought on by his reading of authors such as Schiller, Goethe, Byron, and most importantly Jean Paul, Schumann turned to the pianist Friedrich Wieck for musical instruction. Schumann lived in the Wieck home while studying and practicing voraciously, also taking composition lessons from Heinrich Dorn, conductor of the Leipzig opera. Unfortunately for Schumann’s pianistic career, a permanent injury to his right hand, possibly caused by damage to the tendons due to an invention Schumann created to exercise finger independence, prevented him from achieving fame as a concert performer. After this, Schumann focused solely on musical composition. Composition was not the only talent Schumann exercised; as a lover of books he tried his hand at writing, a trait many future historians would know him for as much as his musical works. In 1833, he began his own musical journal, called the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music). It was Schumann in his critiques that first noticed the mastery of Chopin, and condemned the grandiose music of Meyerbeer and Rossini as base and not representing the true essence of Romanticism he embraced in his pieces. For his articles, he invented a society known as the Davidsbund, or the band of David, waging war on the Goliaths of grand opera. Schumann used code names for the group’s members; he himself was two separate entities: Florestan, the exuberant, passionate side to his personality, and Eusebius, the more reserved, calmer side. These inventions could possibly have been created in part to Schumann’s own manic-depressive personality, an ailment that would contribute to his early death. Another character, Master Raro, represented his teacher Friedrich Wieck, and Chiara represented Wieck’s daughter Clara. Robert and Clara had fallen in love, much to her father’s chagrin, and married against his consent in 1840 after a long courtship and legal battle. Clara was a virtuoso pianist and composer in her own right, especially in an age where women were considered inferior to men. Schumann continued to write, both music and for the Journal, and even taught at the Leipzig Conservatory. Schumann’s last few years began to strain his mind; he became more unpredictable and sometimes even violent. Though he had a family of eight children (five of whom survived), Schumann committed himself to a mental institution after attempting suicide by throwing himself into the Rhine river. He died from what some scholars believe to have been either syphilis or mercury poisoning in the sanatorium on July 29th, 1856, at the age of 46. Clara Schumann would outlive Robert by forty more years, passing away at the turn of the century in 1896. Works Schumann was highly influential in the development of program music, marrying literary ideas with musical ones. His first attempt was his Op. 2, “Papillons” (Butterflies), modeled after Jean Paul’s novel Die Flegeljahre. Rather than writing one large work, Schumann instead combined shorter pieces, sometimes less than a minute in length, creating one larger opus held together by a common theme. The Op. 9, “Carnaval” and Op. 12, “Scenes from Childhood”, are excellent examples of Schumann’s characteristic piano work. Though Schumann embraced the Romantic ideal of rejecting all ideas of Classical form, he nonetheless wrote some sonatas, though they are not considered the most representative of Schumann’s works. However, he did write four fulllength symphonies after experimenting with piano music and lieder, though he was not an expert orchestrator (several of his symphonies were rescored by Gustav Mahler). His piano and chamber music does not reflect the virtuosic skill of Chopin or Liszt, believing that virtuosity was only exhibited as mere showmanship and not designed to reflect true art or beauty. The only genre Schumann did not achieve success in was opera. But it primarily Schumann’s chamber music for what he is most remembered for, which the public only began to notice his genius after his untimely death. Suggested Listening Symphonies: No. 1, Op. 38: “Spring”; No. 2, Op. 61; No. 3, Op. 97: “Rhenish”; No. 4, Op. 120 Chamber Works: Papillons, Op. 2; Carnaval, Op. 9; Fantasiestücke, Op. 12; Scenes From Childhood, Op. 15; Liederkreis, Op. 39; Phantasiestücke, Op. 73