Schumann biography summary

As Grillparzer said, "He has made himself a new ideal world in which he moves almost as he wills. Yet it was not until long afterwards that he met with adequate recognition. In his lifetime, the few tokens of honor bestowed upon Schumann were the degree of Doctor by the University of Jena inand ina professorship in the Conservatorium of Leipzig, which was founded that year by Felix Mendelssohn.

On one occasion, accompanying his wife on a concert tour in Russia, Schumann was asked whether 'he too was a musician'. This and other insults left a mark on Schumann's delicate psyche. Probably no composer ever rivaled Schumann in concentrating his energies on one form of music at a time. At first all his creative impulses were translated into pianoforte music, then followed the miraculous year of the songs.

Inhe wrote two of his four symphonies. The year was devoted to the composition of chamber music, and includes the pianoforte quintet op. In he wrote Paradise and the Perihis first essay at concerted vocal music. He had now mastered the separate forms, and from this time forward his compositions are not confined during any particular period to any one of them.

In Schumann, above all musicians, the acquisition of technical knowledge was closely bound to the growth of his own experience and the impulse to express it. The stage in his life when he was deeply engaged to composing music to Goethe's Faust was a critical one for his schumann biography summary. The first half of the year had been spent with his wife in Russia.

On returning to Germany he had abandoned his editorial work, and left Leipzig for Dresden, where he suffered from persistent "nervous prostration" now referred to as bipolar disorder. As soon as he began to work, he was seized with fits of shivering, and an apprehension of death which was exhibited in an abhorrence for high places, metal instruments even keysand for drugs.

Moreover, he suffered perpetually from imagining that he had the 'A' tone ringing in his ears. Inhe had recovered and in the winter revisited Viennatravelling to Prague and Berlin in the spring of During that summer, he traveled to Zwickau, where he was received with enthusiasm. This was most gratifying because Dresden and Leipzig were the only large cities in which his fame was at this time appreciated.

His only opera, Genoveva op. It is interesting for its attempt to abolish the recitative, which Schumann regarded as an interruption to the musical flow. The subject of Genoveva, based on Johann Ludwig Tieck and Hebbel, was not considered a wise choice, yet it is worth remembering that as early asthe possibilities of German opera had been keenly realized by Schumann.

He wrote, "Do you know my prayer as an artist, night and morning? It is called 'German Opera. Schumann's consistently flowing melody in this work, can be seen as a forerunner to Wagner's 'melos'. The music to Byron's Manfred is pre-eminent in a year in which he wrote more than in any other. The insurrection of Dresden caused Schumann to move to Kreischa, a little village a few miles outside the city.

In the August of this year, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth, scenes of Schumann's Faust as were already completed, were performed in Dresden, Leipzig, and Weimar. Liszt, as always, gave unwearied assistance and encouragement. The rest of the work was written in the latter part of the year, and the overture in From tothe nature, and admittedly the quality, of Schumann's works are extremely varied.

Inhe visited Switzerland and Belgium as well as Leipzig. Inhe completed his glorious so-called Rhenish symphony, and he revised what would be published as his Symphony No. In Octoberhe was very impressed by the talent of the year-old Johannes Brahmswho had appeared on his doorstep and spent a month with the Schumanns. Besides the single note, he now imagined that voices sounded in his ear.

One night he suddenly schumann biography summary his bed, saying that Schubert and Mendelssohn had sent him a theme—actually a reminiscence of his Violin Concerto. He hurriedly wrote it down, and on this theme composed five variations for the pianoforte, which became his last work. Brahms published the Theme in a supplementary volume to the complete edition of Schumann's piano music, and in wrote a substantial set of variations upon it which became a piano duet, his op.

On February 27Schumann threw himself into the Rhine. He was rescued by some boatmen, but when brought to land was determined to be quite insane. Download 'Kinderszenen Opus 15 7 ' on iTunes. Preview Track Preview. Download 'Romance Opus 28 No. Download 'Symphony No. Schumann Music See more Schumann Music. Schumann Guides See more Schumann Guides.

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Schumann biography summary

His compositions are placed into four categories. They are piano, choral, orchestra and vocal works. Click here to leave Robert Schumann page and return to home page! Joseph Haydn - A Compressed Biography. Ludwig van Beethoven - Compressed Biography. Wolfgang Mozart — A Brief Biography. Franz Liszt - A Brief Biography. Franz Schubert - A Short Biography.

Connect schumann biography summary Carlinton on Google Plus! Robert Schumann — A Summarized Biography. Hall comments that in retrospect it can be seen that Schumann was fundamentally unsuited for the post. In Hall's view, Schumann's diffidence in social situations, allied to mental instability, "ensured that initially warm relations with local musicians gradually deteriorated to the point where his removal became a necessity in ".

In the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms called on Schumann with a letter of introduction from a mutual friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. Brahms had recently written the first of his three piano sonatas, [ n 8 ] and played it to Schumann, who rushed excitedly out of the room and came back leading his wife by the hand, saying "Now, my dear Clara, you will hear such music as you never heard before; and you, young man, play the work from the beginning".

Hall writes that Brahms proved "a personal tower of strength to Clara during the difficult days ahead": in early Schumann's health deteriorated drastically. On 27 February he attempted suicide by throwing himself into the River Rhine. He remained there for more than two years, gradually deteriorating, with intermittent intervals of lucidity during which he wrote and received letters and sometimes essayed some composition.

Friends, including Brahms and Joachim, were permitted to visit Schumann but Clara did not see her husband until nearly two and a half years into his confinement, and only two days before his death. Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians begins its entry on Schumann: "[G]reat German composer of surpassing imaginative power whose music expressed the deepest spirit of the Romantic era ", and concludes: "As both man and musician, Schumann is recognized as the quintessential artist of the Romantic period in German music.

He was a master of lyric expression and dramatic power, perhaps best revealed in his outstanding piano music and songs In his music he aimed at a conception of art in which the poetic was the main element. According to the musicologist Carl Dahlhausfor Schumann, "music was supposed to turn into a tone poemto rise above the realm of the trivial, of tonal mechanics, by means of its spirituality and soulfulness".

In the late nineteenth century and most of the twentieth it was widely held that the music of Schumann's later years was less inspired than his earlier works up to about the midseither because of his declining health, [ 86 ] or because his increasingly orthodox approach to composition deprived his music of the Romantic spontaneity of the earlier works.

Schumann's works in some other musical genres — particularly orchestral and operatic works — have had a mixed critical reception, both during his lifetime and since, but there is widespread agreement about the high quality of his solo piano music. Schumann's first published work, the Abegg Variationsis in the latter style. Schumann's most characteristic form in his piano music is the cycle of short, interrelated pieces, often programmaticthough seldom explicitly so.

The critic J. Fuller Maitland wrote of the first of these, "Of all the pianoforte works [ Carnaval ] is perhaps the most popular; its wonderful animation and never-ending variety ensure the production of its full effect, and its great and various difficulties make it the best possible test of a pianist's skill and versatility". Schumann wrote more than songs for voice and piano.

Among the best-known of the songs are those in four cycles composed in — a year Schumann called his Liederjahr year of song. In a study of Schumann's songs Eric Sams suggests that even here there is a unifying theme, namely the composer himself. Although during the twentieth century it became common practice to perform these cycles as a whole, in Schumann's time and beyond it was usual to extract individual songs for performance in recitals.

The first documented public performance of a complete Schumann song cycle was not untilfive years after the composer's death; the baritone Julius Stockhausen sang Dichterliebe with Brahms at the piano. After his Liederjahr Schumann returned in earnest to writing songs after a break of several years. Hall describes the variety of the songs as immense, and comments that some of the later songs are entirely different in mood from the composer's earlier Romantic settings.

Schumann's literary sensibilities led him to create in his songs an equal partnership between words and music unprecedented in the German Lied. Schumann acknowledged that he found orchestration a difficult art to master, and many analysts have criticised his orchestral writing. After the successful premiere in of the first of his four symphonies the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung described it as "well and fluently written Schumann revised it ten years later and published it as his Fourth Symphony.

Brahms preferred the original, more lightly scored version, [ ] which is occasionally performed and has been recorded, but the revised score is more usually played. Schumann experimented with unconventional symphonic forms in in his Overture, Scherzo and FinaleOp. The Piano Concerto quickly became and has remained one of the most popular Romantic piano concertos.

The Quintet was written for and dedicated to Clara Schumann. It is described by the musicologist Linda Correll Roesner as "a very 'public' and brilliant work that nonetheless manages to incorporate a private message" by quoting a theme composed by Clara. Dahlhaus comments that after this Schumann avoided writing for string quartet, finding Beethoven's achievements in that genre daunting.

In addition to his chamber works for what were or were becoming standard combinations of instruments, Schumann wrote for some unusual groupings and was often flexible about which instruments a work called for: in his Adagio and AllegroOp. Genoveva was not a great success in Schumann's lifetime and has continued to be a rarity in the opera house. From its premiere onwards the work was criticised on the grounds that it is "an evening of Lieder and nothing much else happens".

He maintained that they all approached the work with a preconceived idea of what an opera must be like, and finding that Genoveva did not match their preconceptions they condemned it out of hand. Harnoncourt's view of the lack of drama in the opera contrasts with that of Victoria Bondwho conducted the work's first professional stage production in the US in She finds the work "full of high drama and supercharged emotion.

In my opinion, it's very stageworthy, too. Unlike the opera, Schumann's secular oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri was an enormous success in his lifetime, although it has since been neglected. Tchaikovsky described it as a "divine work" and said he "knew nothing higher in all of music. In Schumann's life it was the most popular piece he ever wrote, it was performed endlessly.

Every composer loved it. Wagner wrote how jealous he was that Schumann had done it". In a letter to a friend in Schumann said, "at the moment I'm involved in a large project, the largest I've yet undertaken — it's not an opera — I believe it's well-nigh a new genre for the concert hall". Szenen aus Goethes Faust Scenes from Goethe's Faustcomposed between andis another hybrid work, operatic in manner but written for concert performance and labelled an oratorio by the composer.

The work was never given complete in Schumann's lifetime, although the third section was successfully performed in Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar in to mark the centenary of Goethe's birth. Jensen comments that its good reception is surprising as Schumann made no concessions to popular taste: "The music is not particularly tuneful There are no arias for Faust or Gretchen in the grand manner".

All of Schumann's major works and most of the minor ones have been recorded. In the s Hans Pfitzner recorded the symphonies, and other early recordings were conducted by Georges Enescu and Toscanini. The songs featured in the recorded repertoire from the early days of the gramophone, with performances by singers such as Elisabeth Schumann no relation to the composer[ ] Friedrich SchorrAlexander Kipnis and Richard Tauberfollowed in a later generation by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Schumann's only opera, Genovevahas been recorded. A complete set conducted by Harnoncourt with Ruth Ziesak in the title role followed earlier recordings under Gerd Albrecht and Kurt Masur. Schumann had considerable influence in the nineteenth century and beyond. Although Brahms said that all he had learned from Schumann was how to play chess, [ ] [ n 11 ] his works contain many homages to Schumann.

Other composers in German-speaking countries whose music shows Schumann's influence include Mahler, Richard Strauss and Schoenberg. During the second half of the nineteenth century there developed what became known as the " War of the Romantics ". Schumann's successors including Clara and Brahms, together with their supporters such as Joachim and the music critic Eduard Hanslickwere seen as the proponents of music in the classic German tradition of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann.

In the schumann biography summary volume of a complete edition of Schumann's works was published. A supposedly complete edition had been published between andedited by Clara and Brahms, but it was not complete: apart from inadvertent schumann biographies summary the two editors deliberately suppressed some of Schumann's later music as they believed it had been affected by his declining mental health.

This led to the New Schumann Complete Edition which comprises 49 volumes and was completed in Schumann's birthplace in Zwickau is preserved as a museum in his honour. It hosts chamber concerts and is the focus of an annual festival commemorating him. The site aims to offer the public the most comprehensive coverage of the life and works of Robert and Clara Schumann.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. German composer, pianist and critic — For Robert Schumann's wife, see Clara Schumann. For the French statesman, see Robert Schuman. For other uses, see Schumann disambiguation.

ZwickauKingdom of Saxony. BonnRhine Province, Prussia. Clara Schumann. Life and career [ edit ]. Childhood [ edit ]. Indeed, he could sketch the different dispositions of his intimate friends by certain figures and passages on the piano so exactly and comically that everyone burst into loud laughter at the accuracy of the portrait. University [ edit ].

Eusebius dropped by one evening, not long ago. He entered quietly, his pale features brightened by that enigmatic smile with which he likes to excite curiosity. Florestan and I were seated at the piano. He, as you know, is one of those rare musical persons who seem to anticipate everything that is new, of the future and extraordinary. This time, however, there was a surprise in store even for him.