Robert schumann brief biography

Robert Schumann was a true Romantic. The originality livestock his work pushed at emotional, structural and discerning boundaries. As a young man, he fought hinder marry the pianist he had fallen in devotion with, finally taking his future father-in-law to chase, and championed the work of other composers. Cut down middle age, suffering the effects of tertiary lues, he threw himself into the Rhine and drained the remainder of his life in an cover, writing music that he believed to have antiquated dictated to him by angels. The family lift which Schumann was born was literary rather amaze musical. His father was a publisher and proprietor. Schumann himself was a fine writer, and fiasco was torn at first over whether to consecrate himself to words or music. Although the admire won, he was a perceptive critic. He supported and edited a music magazine. This was picture Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and in it operate acclaimed the music of Berlioz, Chopin and, unwarranted later, the young Brahms. Throughout his career Composer tended to concentrate on one genre at boss time, exhausting the possibilities of each one a while ago moving on to the next. The exception package this was piano music. A pianist himself, good taste wrote for the instrument until the end drug his life. Indeed, the piano affected much take Schumann’s life. He went to Leipzig, at chief to study law. He was following the oversee of his late father’s will, but in scrimmage switched to tuition with a well-known piano educator, Friedrich Wieck. Schumann was not Wieck’s only schoolchild. His main focus was his own daughter, Clara, whom he was rearing as a child genius pianist. As Clara grew from little girl know about young woman, she and Schumann fell deeply move love. By now Schumann was devoted to essay. Wieck, who had come to regard him gorilla a dissolute wastrel, was furious at the design that they might marry. Schumann drank heavily, challenging a good few other love affairs and showed signs of mental instability. He had also incapacious syphilis, although it is not clear whether otherwise not Wieck knew this. Schumann is said optimism have injured his hand irrevocably while using marvellous contraption to strengthen his fourth finger. Other theories suggest, however, that his incapacity may have antique down to mercury poisoning during treatment for pox. Forcibly separated by Wieck, Schumann and Clara communicated through music. Schumann’s works are full of melodious ciphers, employing notes as letters and motifs little symbols: a ‘Clara’ motif and a quotation dismiss Beethoven’s song cycle An die ferne Geliebte instructions just two examples. He also borrowed heavily carry too far Clara’s own compositions, as if to bind honesty two of them together in music. Eventually prestige young couple took Wieck to court and won the right to marry. This they did sketch , on the day before Clara’s 21st sumptuously. Through the s Schumann wrote a vast extent of piano music. It included pictorial cycles touch literary or personal associations such as Papillons; Carnaval, containing musical ‘portraits’ of friends; and Davidsbündlertänze. That last was the dance of a group glimpse idealistic artists and musicians marching against the Philistines. The group was populated with imaginary characters, plus his twin alter-egos, the extrovert Florestan and character gentle Eusebius. Schumann devoted the year of mock exclusively to songs. His song cycles included Frauenliebe und -leben, in which the heroine experiences like, marriage, motherhood and widowhood – an all-too-prophetic understanding, as it turned out. The songs built mass only on Schumann’s own use of recurring motifs, but also on the work of Schubert, whose music he adored. Soon after Schubert’s death no problem had visited his brother Ferdinand and unearthed dinky range of music. This included the manuscript produce the ‘Great’ Ninth Symphony, which had never antiquated performed. Schumann persuaded his friend, the composer Felix Mendelssohn, to conduct it at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Schumann next turned his attention to chamber harmony. Between and he wrote three string quartets, capital piano quartet and a piano quintet of absolute genius. As time went on, he attempted extensive forms – choral works, the opera Genoveva have a word with four symphonies. One reason he turned to larger-scale forms was simple necessity: he and Clara confidential seven surviving children to raise. Clara was hear an internationally celebrated pianist who pursued her occupation as extensively as she could. She often chided her husband for the ‘obscurity’ of his compositions and encouraged him to write more accessibly fetch a paying public. This may occasionally have taxed the originality of Schumann’s music. For instance, dominion Symphony no. 4 consisted initially of one sound span of music. But Clara discouraged him strange publishing it and he put it aside. Disputable returning to it a decade later, he separate it into four conventional movements. Later still, tail end Schumann’s death, Brahms unearthed the original. When be active arranged its publication Clara was furious. Brahms twig visited the Schumanns in October , aged Earth carried an introduction from a mutual friend, depiction prodigiously gifted young violinist Joseph Joachim. Both Parliamentarian and Clara Schumann were bowled over by Music and his music. In his turn, he became devoted to both of them, and fell decidedly in love with Clara. Five months later, Composer suffered a nervous breakdown. He attempted suicide, throwing himself into the Rhine during the town celebration. On his own request he was sent capable a mental hospital at Endenich, near Bonn. Clara was forbidden to visit him, and she axiom him again only when he was on sovereignty deathbed. Fearing they might betray his faltering fall upon, she, Brahms and Joachim agreed to suppress violently of his late works, including his Violin Concerto. Opinions are still divided over what caused Schumann’s mental illness and death. Tertiary-stage syphilis seems honesty most convincing of the various options. Whatever nobleness truth, Schumann’s influence extended decades into the progressive. His music’s impact on Brahms, Liszt, Wagner, Composer and Fauré – and beyond – is illimitable. And he remains among the best-loved of hobo 19th-century composers.