Robert Schumann (1810-1856), Clara Schumann (1819-1896)

Robert and Clara Schumann 1847

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German composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) began his career as a budding pianist, but due to an injury, he had to stop performing and focus his talents on composition.  Later in life he became a well-known music critic.  In 1840, Schumann married the daughter of his piano teacher, Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896), a talented concert pianist.  Schumann composed many piano works for his wife, who toured Europe extensively for her performances.  Their relationship, of which her father did not approve, inspired a number of lieder, German-language art songs for voice and piano.

Throughout her tours, the Schumanns became close friends with Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, and Felix Mendelssohn. Johannes Brahms became a part of the Schumann household as a young composer in his twenties when he showed up on their doorstep with a letter of introduction, soon becoming a close friend of the family. In addition to his work as a composer, Schumann expanded the public’s awareness of music (including his own) by founding The New Journal for Music in 1834. He improved standards of music criticism and educated the public on new composers.

Robert Schumann had a life-long struggle with mental health issues, which may have been apparent in some of his compositions.  After suffering from hallucinations, he attempted suicide, by throwing himself into the Rhine River, and was hospitalized, dying shortly thereafter.  Despite his struggles, Schumann remains firmly in the canon of Romantic-Era composers as composer of many of the most beautiful works for piano, as well as two of the frequently-performed song cycles: Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love), written for Tenor and piano, and Frauenliebe und Leben (A Woman’s Love and Life), written for Mezzo-Soprano and piano.  A song cycle is a set of solo songs for voice and piano that have a common theme and are designed to be performed as a whole.  For example, Frauenliebe und Leben is a collection of eight songs set to poetry by Adelbert von Chamisso.  Each song details a different time period in the life of a young woman, from meeting the love of her life, marriage, having a child, and finally, her husband’s death. 

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Attribution:Performed and recorded by Leonard Vertighel [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Attribution:Robert Schumann [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons