Robert Schumann is justly famed as being one of the central
figures of German Romanticism in music, although he was far from the ideal of
the romantic hero in his personal life, being regarded as dull by his two
greatest contemporaries, Liszt and Wagner. Although he died, romantically
enough, in a lunatic asylum, and he once attempted suicide by throwing himself
into the River Rhine, his symptoms were more likely to have been caused by
syphilis than romantic angst.
Robert Schumann was born on 8th June 1810 in
Zwickau, Germany. His father was a well-to-do bookseller and publisher, and
Robert was able to gain a broad knowledge of European literature from his
father's bookshelves. His early ambition was to be a writer, but he also showed
promise as a pianist and his parents encouraged him to develop this talent. At
least, this was the case until his father died when Robert was aged 16, at
which point his mother decided that the law would provide a more secure future
for him.
He therefore started law studies at Leipzig University and
then at the more distant Heidelberg University, this move coming about because
Robert knew that the law professor there, Anton Thibaut, was also a keen
musician. Having absolutely no interest in law, Robert gradually persuaded his mother
to let him take up music as a career, and in 1830 he went to live in the
Leipzig home of a celebrated piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck.
Schumann had composed a few songs and piano pieces before
his move to Leipzig, but after this point he produced a large number of
compositions, mainly for the piano. These included "Carnaval",
"Symphonic Studies" and three sonatas. He had hoped to combine
composing with a career as a concert pianist, but this hope was dashed in 1832
when he damaged his right hand, either due to the use of a device designed to
improve the movement of his fingers or (more probably) as a side-effect of
treatment for syphilis that included the use of mercury. Whatever the reason,
Schumann was now forced to concentrate on composition as his means of earning a
living. He also fulfilled his early ambition to be a writer by contributing
large quantities of music criticism to journals, especially the "Neue
Zeitschrift fur Musik" which he helped to found and later edited.
Another consequence of Robert's residence at the house of Friedrich
Wieck was that he got to know Friedrich's young daughter, Clara, and slowly
became besotted with her (and she with him), although she was nine years his
junior. Clara was a promising piano virtuoso and her father had no intention of
allowing her to throw away her career by marrying one of his pupils. He did
everything he could to frustrate the young couple's plans, firstly throwing
Robert out of his house and then opening his letters to Clara, followed by a campaign
of personal vilification of Robert's character. The couple were eventually
married on 12th September 1840, the day before Clara's 21st
birthday.
Clara Schumann had a considerable influence on Robert's
development as a composer. He had often dreamt of writing symphonies, but she
pushed him to realise that dream (in particular the "Spring" Symphony
of 1841). He also produced a wealth of songs in the months before and just
after their marriage (including "Dichterliebe" and "Frauenliebe
und Leben"), and in 1842 he turned to writing chamber music.
However, the marriage also brought new pressures to bear on
Robert, not least because he needed quietness in order to compose and Clara
needed to practice the piano. As a virtuoso pianist in great demand, Clara
performed concert tours on which Robert accompanied her, but he found it
uncomfortable to have to play a supporting role. This exerted a strain on his
mental health and he began to suffer from aural hallucinations, caused in part
by his pre-existing syphilis. In 1844 the couple moved from Leipzig (where
Robert had been teaching at the conservatory) to Dresden, where it was hoped
that the less frenetic atmosphere of the quieter city would restore his health.
For a time the move did the trick, and new compositions
followed, including the 1845 Piano Concerto, his Second Symphony (1845-6), an
opera ("Genoveva", 1847-8), and more songs and piano music. He also
composed for the local choral society, becoming their conductor in 1847.
However, he was not happy living in Dresden, partly through
feeling overshadowed by the rising genius of another Dresden resident, Richard
Wagner, with whom Schumann did not get on. In 1850 he was glad to be able to
accept an invitation to move to Dusseldorf as the city's Director of Music.
This proved to be a bad move, due mainly to the requirements
of the post including conducting the city's choir and orchestra, a task for
which Schumann was not suited. Although he made a promising start things soon
went wrong, not helped by Schumann's declining mental health, and he was
eventually forced to resign in 1853. During these years he continued to
compose, producing his Cello Concerto and Third Symphony (the
"Rhenish") in 1850 and his Violin Concerto in 1853, along with piano
music and lieder. However, he was now finding it difficult to concentrate for
long enough to produce consistently good work, and flashes of brilliance were
countered by long periods when he produced work of indifferent quality.
The hallucinations mentioned earlier became worse, and he
imagined that he was being assailed by angels and demons. On 27th
February 1854 he threw himself into the Rhine but was rescued and committed to
a lunatic asylum near Bonn. His last years were confused and miserable, and he
died without regaining his sanity, or composing anything new, on 29th
July 1856 at the age of 46.
Robert Schumann's reputation as a great composer rests on
his early (pre-1841) songs and piano music and a handful of later works, most
notably his symphonies. He was able to combine great beauty with wit and inventiveness,
his major innovation being, in lieder writing, to make the piano an equal
partner with the singer. As with any great artistic genius whose life is cut
short by accident or disease, one is left wondering how they might have
developed. In Robert Schumann's case, one also wonders whether his marriage to
Clara, despite the positive influence she had on his ambition to branch out
into new areas of composition, did not also have a negative effect by limiting
his production of some of the greatest lieder ever written.
© John Welford
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