Robert Schumann 8 June —29 July was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. But he was an ineffectual teacher; and he had limited success as a conductor too.
He and Clara moved to Dresden in , but his deep depressions continued, hampering his creativity. Not until was he again productive, writing his opera Genoveva , chamber music and songs. He was at first happy and prolific, writing the eloquent Cello Concerto and the Rhenish Symphony, but the post worked out badly because of his indifferent conducting.
In his health and spirits deteriorated and he realized that he could not continue in his post. In he began to suffer hallucinations; he attempted suicide and entered an asylum, where he died in , almost certainly of the effects of syphilis, cared for at the end by Clara and the young Brahms. To this end he began a study of music theory under Heinrich Dorn, a German composer six years his senior and, at that time, conductor of the Leipzig Opera. About this time Schumann considered composing an opera on the subject of Hamlet.
Papillons The fusion of literary ideas with musical ones - known as program music - may be said to have first taken shape in Papillons , Op. In a letter from Leipzig dated April , Robert Schumann bids his brothers "read the last scene in Jean Paul's Flegeljahre as soon as possible, because the Papillons are intended as a musical representation of that masquerade. Mozart 's Don Giovanni , published in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.
Here F. Chopin 's work is discussed by imaginary characters created by Schumann himself: Florestan the embodiment of Schumann's passionate, voluble side and Eusebius his dreamy, introspective side - the counterparts of Vult and Walt in Flegeljahre. A third, Meister Raro, is called upon for his opinion. In the winter of , Robert Schumann, 22 at the time, visited relatives in Zwickau and Schneeberg, where he performed the first movement of his Symphony in G minor without opus number, known as the "Zwickauer".
In Zwickau, the music was performed at a concert given by Clara Wieck , who was then just 13 years old. On this occasion Clara played bravura Variations by Henri Herz, a composer whom Schumann was already deriding as a philistine. Schumann's mothesaid to Clara , "You must marry my Robert one day. The deaths of Robert Schumann's brother Julius and his sister-in-law Rosalie in the worldwide cholera pandemic brought on a severe depressive episode. The composer made his first apparent attempt at suicide.
Schumann published most of his critical writings in the journal, and often lambasted the popular taste for flashy technical displays from figures whom Schumann perceived as inferior composers.
Schumann campaigned to revive interest in major composers of the past, including W. Mozart , L. Beethoven and Weber, while he also promoted the work of some contemporary composers, including F.
Chopin about whom Schumann famously wrote, "Hats off, Gentlemen! A genius! Robert Schumann's editorial duties during the summer of were interrupted by his relations with year-old Ernestine von Fricken - the adopted daughter of a rich Bohemian-born noble - to whom he became engaged.
Having learned in August that Ernestine von Fricken was born illegitimate, which meant that she would have no dowry, and fearful that her limited means would force him to earn his living like a "day-labourer", Schumann made a complete break with her toward the end of the year, due to his growing attraction to year-old Clara Wieck.
They made mutual declarations of love in December in Zwickau, where Clara appeared in concert. His budding romance with Clara was soon brought to an end when her father learned of their trysts during the Christmas holidays; he summarily forbade them further meetings and ordered all correspondence between them burnt.
Carnaval Carnaval , Op. Schumann begins nearly every section of Carnaval with a musical cryptogram, the musical notes signified in German by the letters that spell Asch A, E-flat, C, and B, or alternatively A-flat, C, and B; in German these are A, Es, C and H, and As, C and H respectively , the Bohemian town in which Ernestine was born, and the notes are also the musical letters in Schumann's own name.
Eusebius and Florestan, the imaginary figures appearing so often in his critical writings, also appear, alongside brilliant imitations of F. Chopin and Paganini. The work ends in joy and a degree of mock-triumph. In Carnaval , Schumann went further than in Papillon s, by conceiving the story as well as the musical representation and also displaying a maturation of compositional resource.
Chopin 's greatness and most of his other colleagues, and which later prompted him to publicly pronounce the then-unknown Johannes Brahms a genius. Despite the opposition of Clara 's father, she and Robert continued a clandestine relationship which matured into a full-blown romance.
In , he asked her father's consent to their marriage, but was refused. Wieck ridiculed his daughter's wish to "throw herself away on a penniless composer. After he had written the latter of these two, he detected in the music the fanciful suggestion of a series of episodes from the myth of Hero and Leander.
After a fable — and the appropriately titled "Dream's Confusion" - the collection ends on an introspective note in the manner of Eusebius. These variations were based on a theme by the adoptive father of Ernestine von Fricken. The work - described as "one of the peaks of the piano literature, lofty in conception and faultless in workmanship" [Hutcheson] - was dedicated to the young English composer William Sterndale Bennett, for whom Schumann had had a high regard when they worked together in Leipzig.
Schumann credited the two sides of his character with the composition of the work the more passionate numbers are signed F. Florestan and the more dreamy signed E. The work begins with the 'motto of C. The Bund was a work of Schumann's imagination, members of which were kindred spirits as he saw them such as F. Chopin , Paganini and Clara , as well as the personalized Florestan and Eusebius. Kinderszenen , Op. It has been the favourite encore of several great pianists, including Vladimir Horowitz.
Melodic and deceptively simple, the piece has been described as "complex" in its harmonic structure. Kreisleriana , Op. The originality of his work pushed at emotional, structural and philosophical boundaries. As a young man, he fought to marry the pianist he had fallen in love with, finally taking his future father-in-law to court, and championed the work of other composers. In middle age, suffering the effects of tertiary syphilis, he threw himself into the Rhine and spent the remainder of his life in an asylum, writing music that he believed to have been dictated to him by angels.
The family into which Schumann was born was literary rather than musical. His father was a publisher and bookseller. Schumann himself was a fine writer, and he was torn at first over whether to devote himself to words or music. Although the latter won, he was a perceptive critic. He founded and edited a music magazine. Throughout his career Schumann tended to concentrate on one genre at a time, exhausting the possibilities of each one before moving on to the next.
The exception to this was piano music. A pianist himself, he wrote for the instrument until the end of his life. He went to Leipzig, at first to study law.
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