Robert Schumann

The life of the quintessential Romantic composer Robert Schumann (1810–1856) was fraught with difficulties, stress, and danger. Schumann was born on 8 June 1810 in the small town of Zwickau. In his youth, he had an equal interest in literature and music. Nevertheless, in 1928 he chose to pursue law studies in Leipzig, which he gave up after finding his first competent piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck. However, Schumann soon had to abandon his hopes of a career as a virtuoso, as he was unable to receive effective treatment for the sporadic symptoms of paralysis in his right hand. His attempt to remedy the problem using a machine he built himself temporarily led to complete paralysis.

Faced with this situation, Schumann found a new path. In 1834, he founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal of Music), which quickly gained a sizeable readership and still exists today, and he turned his attention to his creative abilities, even though he had no formal training in composition. By 1839, he composed numerous important piano works. Parallel to this, he found himself in a complicated love affair with Friedrich Wieck’s daughter Clara, who became a virtuoso of European standing. After many ups and downs, the couple finally married in 1840, settling in Leipzig, where Schumann had been appointed to the conservatory that Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy recently founded. At this point, Schumann began exploring new genres. In 1840, the so-called ‘year of song’, he wrote more than half of his entire oeuvre of Lieder. In 1841, he similarly focused on orchestral music, and in 1842 on chamber music.

Despite his increasing artistic success, married life did not prove easy. In addition to constant financial worries weighing heavily on the couple, Schumann struggled with being overshadowed by his far more famous wife. Clara, meanwhile, had to severely curtail her concert activities and lamented a lack of time to practise. In 1844, Schumann withdrew from his editorial work, and the couple moved to Dresden. Schumann expanded his compositional activities considerably, now thinking more about the marketability of his works, and took over the direction of several choirs. The general admiration for the famous musician couple and for Schumann as a composer led to his appointment as municipal music director in Düsseldorf in 1850.

Soon, though, the initial enthusiasm gave way to deep disappointment, as Schumann suffered from severe inhibitions in his personal interactions and was unable to establish any authority. These conditions, which Schumann now found unbearable, further impacted his already strained psyche. On 27 February 1854, Schumann attempted suicide and was admitted to a mental hospital at his own request, where he died two years later in a state of mental aberration.