1810–1856 · Romantic
Robert Schumann (1810–1856) was a German composer of the Romantic era, known for his piano cycles, songs and four symphonies. A gifted pianist, a hand ailment led him to devote himself to composing and music criticism instead. Many of his piano pieces and songs are still played by music-school students today.
Robert Schumann was born on 8 June 1810 in the Saxon town of Zwickau, into the family of bookseller, publisher and writer August Schumann and his wife Johanna Christiane. He was the youngest and favourite child: he had three older brothers — Eduard (1799–1839), Carl (1801–1849) and Julius (1805–1833) — and a sister, Emilie (1796–1825), who from a young age showed signs of quiet madness and took her own life in 1825.
Young Robert took his first music lessons from the Zwickau organist Johann Kuntsch, and by about the age of ten he had begun composing, including choral and orchestral pieces. At the gymnasium he grew fascinated with the works of Byron and Jean Paul and remained an admirer of them for life — the moods of this Romantic literature later resurfaced again and again in his music. His father's publishing house also drew him into literary work: as a teenager he wrote articles for an encyclopaedia and proofread a large Latin dictionary, and some of his school writings were mature enough to be published after his death. For a time Schumann seriously wavered between a career as a writer and one as a musician.
In 1825 his sister Emilie took her own life, and a year later, in 1826, his father died.
In 1828 Schumann enrolled at Leipzig University, and a year later transferred to the University of Heidelberg. At his mother's insistence he was preparing for a career in law, but music drew him ever more strongly, and he increasingly dreamed of becoming a concert pianist.
Even as a student he travelled through Switzerland and Italy, where hearing Italian opera left him increasingly drawn to music; in 1830, after hearing the violinist Niccolò Paganini play in Frankfurt, he became finally convinced that music, not the law, was his path.
In 1830 his mother allowed him to devote himself entirely to music. Schumann returned to Leipzig in search of a suitable teacher and began taking piano lessons from Friedrich Wieck and composition lessons from Heinrich Dorn. Wieck was convinced that his new pupil would become the finest pianist in Europe.
During his studies Schumann gradually developed a paralysis of the middle finger and weakness of the index finger of his hand, forcing him to give up the idea of a career as a professional pianist. Modern medicine classes his condition as focal dystonia. A widely known version blames a finger-strengthening device for the injury, but researchers note that the paralysis developed gradually rather than appearing suddenly, as an injury would; Schumann himself attributed it to excessive handwriting and long hours at the piano. None of the treatments he tried, including electric therapy, helped.
Having given up the idea of a career as a pianist, Schumann threw himself into composing and music criticism. With the support of Friedrich Wieck, Ludwig Schunke and Julius Knorr, in 1834 he founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ("New Journal for Music") — one of the most influential publications of its time, which he edited for several years and for which he regularly wrote himself. In its pages Schumann campaigned against routine and stagnation in art, championing everything new.
In his articles and in his music, Schumann embodied two opposing sides of his character as two invented characters — the impetuous, defiant Florestan and the gentle dreamer Eusebius.
Clara Wieck's father, who was also Schumann's teacher, long refused to consent to their marriage, not regarding him as a suitable match for his daughter. Nevertheless, on 12 September 1840, Schumann and Clara were married in the village church at Schönefeld near Leipzig; that same year Leipzig University awarded Schumann a doctorate in philosophy.
In the year of their wedding Schumann wrote around 140 songs. Clara, who composed music herself, had a substantial career as a concert pianist: her husband often accompanied her on tours, and she in turn frequently performed his works. The couple had eight children. From 1843 Schumann taught at the Leipzig Conservatory, founded that same year by Felix Mendelssohn.
In 1841 Schumann's attention moved to the orchestra: that year he completed the earliest of what would become four symphonies, later nicknamed the "Spring", unveiled with Mendelssohn conducting. A burst of chamber writing followed the next year — a trio of works for string quartet, joined by a quintet and a quartet built around the piano.
In 1844 Robert and Clara set off on a concert tour to St Petersburg and Moscow, where they were received with great honour. That same year the family moved from Leipzig to Dresden, where Schumann's mental illness struck with particular severity, and it was not until 1846 that he had recovered enough to compose again.
In 1849, fleeing revolutionary unrest in Dresden, the Schumann family left the city for a time and lived away from it — staying for a while at Bad Kreischa, to the south of Dresden.
From 1850 Schumann led Düsseldorf's musical life as the city's director of music, but working with the local orchestra proved difficult, and by the autumn of 1853 his contract was not renewed. In November 1853 Schumann and his wife travelled to Holland, where they were welcomed warmly and with honour, though that very year the illness resurfaced.
In 1853 the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms came to see Schumann. The young musician's playing and compositions impressed Schumann so much that he wrote the last article of his life for his journal, praising Brahms's talent with great enthusiasm.
In early 1854, when his illness flared up especially severely, Schumann tried to drown himself in the Rhine, but was rescued and, at his own request, admitted to a psychiatric clinic at Endenich near Bonn. There he composed almost nothing, and the drafts of his last projects have not survived; he was allowed to see Clara only rarely. Robert Schumann died on 29 July 1856 and was buried in Bonn.
In his music Schumann conveyed the deeply personal, introspective nature of Romanticism more than most of his contemporaries; although much of his output was received with difficulty during his lifetime, today it is valued for its boldness and originality of harmony, rhythm and form, closely bound to the tradition of German musical classicism.
Until 1840 Schumann wrote music exclusively for piano; only later did songs, four symphonies, an opera and other orchestral, choral and chamber works appear in his output. Most of Schumann's piano works are built as cycles — a sequence of short pieces linked by a shared narrative or psychological idea, rather than separate, self-contained numbers; this is the structure of Carnaval, Kreisleriana and his other famous sets. In his four symphonies — the "Spring", the Second, the "Rhenish" and the Fourth — bright, joyful moods predominate, with song-like and dance-like episodes occupying a notable place.
Much of what music-school students play today comes from the Album für die Jugend (Op. 68), a collection of short pieces Schumann wrote specifically for young musicians. It includes some very simple pieces — "Chanson fredonnée", "Un choral", "Petite pièce" — as well as more demanding ones, such as "Marche militaire" or "Mai, cher Mai". Worth singling out is "Träumerei" from the Kinderszenen cycle.
An equally important part of Schumann's legacy is his vocal lyricism. One of his best-known cycles, Dichterliebe ("A Poet's Love"), setting poems by Heine, comprises sixteen songs, and here, as in his other song collections, the piano part matters as much as the voice, completing what the text leaves unsaid. Beginning singers and accompanists can find individual songs from such collections on the site — for example, "Ich grolle nicht" and "Widmung".
Schumann's music and ideas were highly valued by his contemporaries — Felix Mendelssohn, Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt, and later, in Russia, Anton Rubinstein and P. I. Tchaikovsky. The musicologist L. L. Sabaneyev considered Schumann to have had perhaps the greatest influence on Russian music of any Western composer.