bouncy tune depicts a cheerful peasant on his way home after a satisfying day of honest labor, looking forward to being reunited with his rosy-cheeked wife and a bevy of well-scrubbed children gathered before the hearth. It is an image that became a sort of ideal during the lifetime of Schumann, who was born in 1810 and died in 1856.
Nothing could be further from the reality of the actual life of Schumann, who at various times during his life contemplated suicide, whose own piano teacher took him to court to prevent Schumann from marrying his daughter, who created imaginary personalities for himself so as to be able to write conflicting opinions in music reviews, and who ultimately died in an asylum while being haunted by alternating hallucinations of tormenting demons and angelic voices singing unbearably beautiful music.
Given those facts, it is not surprising that Schumann's life has been of such great interest to many people, but perhaps two of his attributes are what makes him most stand out in the history of Western music: he was, along with his contemporaries Franz Liszt (1811-1886) and Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (1810-1849), one of the three greatest composers for the piano of all time (see sidebar on the piano); and he personified, as much as any musician in the 19th century, the quintessential Romantic composer.
By Romantic, with a capital R, we don't mean lovey-dovey hearts-and-flowers--although throughout most of his life, Schumann's existence was dominated by the remarkable relationship he had with his wife, Clara. Rather, we are referring to a movement in all the arts that first manifested in the early 1800s and dominated most of the rest of the 19th century and even beyond.
Politically, the world was in ferment the year Schumann was born, with Napoleon at the zenith of his power. New currents were also stirring within the realm of the arts. Where the 18th century Enlightenment had an optimistic and sunny conviction that reason and science would eventually eradicate evil and error from the world, people were becoming aware that a dark side lurked within each of us, as well. It was around this time that the Gothic romance was created, perhaps the most famous example being Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Where the Enlightenment of the 18th century emphasized balance, precision and clearly defined forms, the world of 19th-century Romanticism was one where emotion trumped intellect, and individuality was considered more important than Classical form. Consider that while the most important solo piano music by Beethoven usually had only the generic title "sonata," Schumann produced collections of pieces with such titles as "Butterflies," "Forest Scenes" and "Dances of the League of David." By 1831, when Romanticism had reached its full flower, the poet Grillparzer wrote of Schumann, "He follows no school, but draws inspiration only from himself... he has created a new and ideal world for himself, in which he revels almost recklessly, and sometimes with quite original eccentricity."
Although he showed a predilection for music at an early age--he composed a psalm setting at the age of 12--Schumann, like many composers throughout history, was originally encouraged by his mother (his father died when Robert was only 16) to pursue some other line of work, in this case, law. Robert never took his law studies seriously, however, and his primary interests continued to be music and literature.
One hallmark of the Romantic period was the prominence of non-musical, especially literary, influences on music. Schumann's interest in literature developed as early as his love for music--his father had run a publishing house where the young boy read prodigiously--and the greatest influence on him was a writer known as Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763-1825), a wildly popular writer at the time but now mostly forgotten. Schumann would combine his love of literature and music in the area of music journalism, and along with Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner (1813-1883) he is considered one of the most prominent 19th-century composers who wrote eloquently on the subject of music. Eventually--in 1834--he would begin publishing his own periodical, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ("The New Journal for Music") as a vehicle for his articles and reviews.
But it was primarily as a concert pianist that Schumann first attempted to establish a name for himself, and in 1828 he began to study piano with Friedrich Wieck, who predicted to Schumann's mother that, with the proper training and diligence, the boy could become one of the foremost pianists of the day.
Schumann's concert aspirations, however, were dashed in 1832 when he began experiencing serious problems with his right hand (some say he inadvertently injured himself by using a mechanical device to strengthen his fingers), and it became obvious that his future career in music would be as a composer. For the rest of the decade, he turned out many of his most famous piano works, including the Davidsbündlertänze, Papillons ("Butterflies"), Carnaval, the Phantasiestücke ("Fantasy Pieces"), Symphonic Etudes, Kreisleriana and the Kinderszenen.
Even greater than the influence of Friedrich Wieck, however, was the spell cast over Schumann by Wieck's daughter Clara, who was only 9 years old when Schumann first made her acquaintance. Clara would become her father's most successful pupil--by 1835 she was famous throughout Europe as a child prodigy-and eventually, in 1840, Robert's wife [see sidebar on Clara Schumann]. It was during the year of his marriage that Schumann turned his attention to the German art-song, or Lied, producing nearly 150 Lieder during what has become known as his "Year of Song." Today Schumann, along with Franz Schubert is revered as one of the all-time great composers of Lieder, which he sometimes composed in cycles of numerous songs, such as the monumental collections Dicterliebe ("Poet's Love") and Frauenliebe und -leben ("Women's Love and Life"). It was also probably with Clara's encouragement that he turned to orchestral music, composing the first of his four symphonies in 1841.
As early as 1831 Schumann had fabricated several alter-egos in his diary, "two of my best friends, whom, however, I have never set eyes on-Floristan and Eusebius." In his foreword to the 1854 collected edition of his writings in the Neue Zeitschrift, he wrote, "In view of the desirability of dramatizing the different points of view from which works of art may be discussed, it seemed opportune to invent antithetical artist-characters to whom these different views might be ascribed." At some point he added a third pseudonym, Master Raro, who would serve as a mediator between the tempestuous Florestan and the more pensive Eusebius.
Some writers have taken these fictitious personalities as early evidence of the mental problems that led, in 1854, to a suicide attempt and his confinement in a private asylum, where he remained until his death. It has been theorized that Schumann suffered from manic-depression with schizophrenic and paranoid tendencies, but according to the casebooks of Schumann's physician, Dr. Franz Richarz, the composer actually died of complications from advanced syphilis, a disease that claimed many lives--including the composers Franz Schubert, Gaetano Donizetti, Bedrich Smetana, Hugo Wolf, Scott Joplin and Frederick Delius--before the development of penicillin during World War II.
But we must not allow the sad details of Schumann's final days to distract us from his artistic legacy. Throughout his life, however severe his periodic bouts with emotional disturbance or depression, he managed to produce music that is life-affirming, eloquent, deeply moving and visionary. The brilliantly burning genius that distinguishes his music was a force that was not, could not, be extinguished.
