Parents
Robert was born on June 8, 1810 in the German town of Zwickau, located in picturesque Saxony.
The head of the family, Friedrich August Schumann, was the son of an impoverished priest from Ronnenburg. He had a natural poetic talent. However, the poverty in which his childhood and youth passed forced the guy to give up his dreams of poetry and engage in trading. After graduating from school, he entered the service of a merchant as an apprentice. But trade was extremely disgusting to him, while Friedrich Augustus read books to the point of madness. In the end, he left the merchant, returned home to his parents and took up literary work. The novel he wrote was not published, but became an opportunity to meet booksellers. Schumann was invited to work as an assistant in a bookstore, and he happily agreed.
Soon Friedrich August met a charming girl, Johanna Christiane Schnabel, whom he loved with all his heart. Their marriage was opposed by the bride's parents due to the extreme poverty of the groom. But the persistent Schumann worked so hard over the course of a year that he saved money not only for the wedding, but also to open his own bookstore. When trading business was particularly successful, Friedrich August transferred them to the city of Zwickau, where he opened a store called the Schumann Brothers.
Robert Schumann's mother, Johanna Christian, in contrast to her withdrawn and serious husband, was a cheerful, hot-tempered woman, sometimes quick-tempered, but very kind. She took care of the house and raising children, of whom there were five in the family - sons (Karl, Eduard, Julius, Robert) and daughter Emilia.
The future composer was the youngest child in the family. After his birth, his mother fell into some kind of exalted delight and concentrated all her maternal love on Robert. She called her youngest child “a bright point on her life’s path.”
Childhood and youth
German composer and music critic Robert Schumann was born on June 8, 1810 in Saxony (Germany) to a loving couple, Friedrich August and Johanna Christiana. Because of his love for Johanna, whose parents opposed marriage to Friedrich due to poverty, the father of the future musician, after a year of working as an assistant in a bookstore, earned money to marry a girl and open his own business.
Portrait of Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann grew up in a family of five children. The boy grew up mischievous and cheerful, similar to his mother, and was very different from his father, a reserved and silent person.
Robert Schumann began school at the age of six and was distinguished by his leadership qualities and creative abilities. A year later, the parents noticed the child’s musical talent and sent him to learn to play the piano. He soon developed an ability to compose orchestral music.
Robert Schumann House
For a long time the young man could not decide on the choice of his future profession - to take up music or go into literature, as his father wanted and insisted. But the concert of the pianist and conductor Moscheles, which Robert Schumann attended, left no chance for literature. The composer's mother had plans to make her son a lawyer, but in 1830 he finally received his parents' blessing to devote his life to music.
Childhood
Schumann grew up as a playful and cheerful child. The boy was very handsome, with a finely contoured face, which was framed by long blond curls. He was not only his mother’s favorite son, but also the darling of the whole family. Adults and children calmly tolerated Robert's mischief and whims.
At the age of six, the boy was sent to Denera school. Among his classmates, Schumann immediately began to stand out and excel. In all games he was the leader, and when they played the most favorite game - toy soldiers, Robert was certainly elected commander and led the battle.
It cannot be said that Schumann was a brilliant student at school, but his rich creative nature appeared immediately. Having discovered that the child had an excellent ear for music, at the age of seven his parents sent him to a local organist to learn to play the piano. In addition to musicality, Robert’s father’s genes also manifested themselves; the boy composed poems, a little later tragedies and comedies, which he learned with his friends and demonstrated, sometimes even for a reasonable fee.
As soon as Robert learned to play the piano, he immediately began to improvise and write music. At first, he composed dances, which he painstakingly wrote down in a thick notebook. The most unique thing he was able to do on a musical instrument was to depict character traits using sounds. This is how he drew his friends on the piano. It turned out so great that the boys, gathered around the young composer, roared with laughter.
Passion for music
Schumann hesitated for a long time what to devote his life to - music or literature? The father, of course, wanted his son to fulfill his unfulfilled dreams and become a writer or poet. But chance decided everything. In 1819, in Carlsbad, a boy attended a concert by Moscheles. The virtuoso's playing made an extraordinary impression on the young Schumann; he then kept the concert program for a long time, like a shrine. From that day on, Robert realized that his heart finally and irrevocably belonged to music.
In 1828, the young man graduated from high school, receiving a first-degree diploma. The joy of this was slightly overshadowed by the upcoming choice of career and profession. By this time, his father had died, and Robert lost all creative support. Mom insisted on further legal education. Having listened to her persuasion, Robert became a student at the University of Leipzig. In 1829, he transferred to one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in Germany - the University of Heidelberg.
But the young composer’s heart yearned for music, and in 1830 Schumann received permission from his mother to quit his law studies and engage in creative activity.
Creation
He returned to Leipzig, found good teachers and began taking piano lessons. Robert wanted to become a virtuoso pianist. But during his studies, he suffered paralysis of his middle and index fingers, which forced him to give up his dream and focus on music composition. Simultaneously with composition, he took up music criticism.
In 1834, he founded the influential periodical “New Musical Newspaper”. For several years he was its editor and published his articles there.
Robert wrote most of his works for piano. Basically, these are “portrait”, lyrical-dramatic and visual cycles of several small plays, which are interconnected by a plot and psychological line:
- "Butterflies" (1831);
- "Carnival" (1834);
- "Davidsbündlers", "Fantastic Passages" (1837);
- "Kreisleriana", "Children's Scenes" (1838);
- "The Poet's Love" (1840);
- "Album for Youth" (1848).
In 1840, Robert was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Leipzig. This year generally became the most fruitful in his work for the composer; inspired by his marriage to the woman he loved, he wrote about 140 songs.
In 1843, Felix Mendelssohn founded the Higher School of Music and Theater (now a conservatory) in Leipzig, where Schumann taught composition and piano and read scores.
In 1844, Robert interrupted his teaching and work in a music newspaper, as he and his wife went on a tour to Moscow and St. Petersburg. They were received there very warmly. Clara played for the Empress herself, and Schumann made many useful contacts. The spouses were especially impressed by the luxury of the Winter Palace.
Returning from Russia, Robert refused to continue publishing the newspaper and devoted himself entirely to writing music. But such a diligent zeal for work began to have a detrimental effect on his condition. The composer was also upset by the fact that he was greeted everywhere as the husband of the famous pianist Clara Wieck. Traveling with his wife on tours, he became increasingly convinced that his fame did not extend beyond the borders of Leipzig and Dresden. But Robert never envied his wife’s success, because Clara was the first performer of all of Schumann’s works and made his music famous.
Robert Schumann
In his work, an esthete and intellectual, one of the most significant composers of the first half of the 19th century, Robert Schumann managed to reflect the aesthetics of romanticism like no one else. With his compositions he managed to overcome the dominance of outdated classical forms. His music was a bold, innovative experiment, but the author himself was not understood by most of his contemporaries...
Robert Schumann
(German: Robert Schumann) was born in Zwickau (Saxony) on June 8, 1810 in the family of book publisher and writer August Schumann. Schumann took his first music lessons from a local organist; at the age of 10 he began composing, in particular choral and orchestral music.
While studying at the gymnasium, he became acquainted with the works of Byron and Jean Paul, becoming their passionate admirer. The moods and images of this romantic literature were eventually reflected in Schumann's musical work. From childhood, he was engaged in professional literary work, compiling articles for an encyclopedia published by his father's publishing house. He was seriously interested in philology, and his school essays on literature were written at such a level that they were posthumously published as an appendix to the collection of his mature journalistic works.
In 1828, Robert entered the University of Leipzig, and the following year he moved to the University of Heidelberg. He never thought of becoming a musician in his youth. He was attracted to a career as a lawyer, but it soon became clear that he had a talent for piano music. Then he began to think about a career as a concert pianist and soon devoted himself entirely to music.
In 1830, Schumann returned to Leipzig and began taking piano lessons from F. Wieck and composition from G. Dorn. Striving to become a real virtuoso, he practiced with fanatical persistence and... injured his right hand. The middle finger ceased to function forever, so I had to forget about a career as a professional pianist. Then Schumann seriously took up composition and, at the same time, musical criticism.
In 1840, the University of Leipzig awarded Schumann the title of Doctor of Philosophy. In the same year, he married the daughter of his teacher, an outstanding pianist, Clara Wieck. They had eight children. Schumann accompanied his wife on concert tours, and she, in turn, often performed her husband’s music. Schumann taught at the Leipzig Conservatory, founded in 1843 by F. Mendelssohn.
In 1844, Schumann and his wife went on a tour to Russia - to St. Petersburg and Moscow, where they were received with great honor. That same year they moved to Dresden. There, for the first time, signs of the composer’s nervous disorder appeared; only two years later he recovered enough to continue his creativity and work.
In 1853, the couple went on a trip to Holland, but soon symptoms of the disease began to appear again. At the beginning of 1854, after an exacerbation of his illness, Schumann attempted to commit suicide, but was saved. He had to be placed in a psychiatric hospital in Endenich near Bonn, where he remained for the rest of his life. In the hospital, he wrote almost nothing, only occasionally he was allowed to see his wife.
Robert Schumann left a rich creative legacy. Most of his piano pieces were created in the form of cycles of small plays, mainly in the lyrical-dramatic and portrait genres. One of the most famous cycles is “Carnival”. In it, the listener is presented with scenes, dances, masks and a number of musical portraits: Paganini, Chopin and the musician’s beloved wife.
In addition, Schumann was interested in writing vocal music. He continued the traditions of lyrical song laid down by Schubert. Piano accompaniment, the role of which has noticeably increased, often complements the meaning of the words and gives the song greater drama and expressive power.
The composer's creative heritage is amazing. He is the author of 4 symphonies, 8 overtures, 7 different concertos, a huge number of piano, chamber instrumental and vocal, choral and other works.
Schumann also did a lot for the development of musical criticism. In the pages of his own music magazine, which he founded in 1834, Schumann published under two pseudonyms: Florestan and Eusebeus. The first was ardent and passionate - he condemned dandyism, a soulless attitude towards music, and sneered at “fashionable” composers. The second, gentle and dreamy, welcomed the new romantic school and called for rethinking the classics.
Schumann edited this magazine “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik”, which later became one of the most influential musical periodicals, and regularly published his articles in it for several years. He established himself as a supporter of the new and a fighter against the obsolete in art, against those who, with their limitations and backwardness, hampered the development of music and represented a stronghold of conservatism and burgherism.
Robert Schumann died on July 29, 1856 in Endenich near Bonn (Germany) and was buried in Bonn.
Schumann's ideals were close to the leading musicians of the 19th century. He was highly valued by Felix Mendelssohn, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and members of the “Mighty Handful.”
Personal life
In September 1840, Robert married the daughter of his musical mentor Friedrich Wieck. This marriage encountered many obstacles along the way. With all due respect to Schumann, Friedrich Wieck wanted a more suitable groom for his daughter. The lovers even resorted to a last resort - they went to court with a request to decide their fate.
The court ruled in favor of the young people, and they played a modest wedding in the village of Shenfeld. Schumann's dream came true, now his beloved Clara Wieck and the piano were next to him. The brilliant pianist married the great composer, and they had eight children - four girls and four boys. The couple were incredibly happy until Robert began to develop mental problems.
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Tchaikovsky believed that future generations would call the 19th century the Schumann period in the history of music. Indeed, Schumann’s music captured the main thing in the art of his time - its content was the “mysteriously deep processes of the spiritual life” of a person, its purpose was to penetrate into the “depths of the human heart.”
Robert Schumann was born in the provincial Saxon town of Zwickau, in the family of publisher and bookseller August Schumann, who died early (1826), but managed to convey to his son a reverent attitude towards art and encouraged him to study music with the local organist Kuntsch. From an early age, Schumann loved to improvise on the piano; at the age of 13 he wrote a Psalm for choir and orchestra, but no less than music, he was attracted to literature, in the study of which he made great progress during his years studying at the gymnasium. The romantically inclined young man was not at all interested in jurisprudence, which he studied at the universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg (1828-30). Lessons with the famous piano teacher Wik, attending concerts in Leipzig, and getting acquainted with the works of Schubert contributed to the decision to devote himself to music. With difficulty overcoming the resistance of his relatives, Schumann began intensive piano lessons, but an illness in his right hand (due to mechanical training of his fingers) closed his career as a pianist. Schumann devoted himself even more enthusiastically to composing music, took composition lessons from Dorn, and studied the works of Bach and Beethoven. Already the first piano works (Variations on a Theme of Abegg, “Butterflies”, 1830-31) revealed the independence of the young author.
From 1834, Schumann became the editor and then the publisher of the New Musical Journal, which aimed to fight against the superficial works of virtuoso composers who flooded the concert stage at that time, with artisanal imitation of the classics, for a new, deep art, illuminated by poetic inspiration. In his articles, written in an original artistic form - often in the form of scenes, dialogues, aphorisms - Schumann presents to the reader the ideal of true art, which he sees in the works of Schubert and Mendelssohn, Chopin and Berlioz, in the music of the Viennese classics, in the playing of Paganini and the young pianist Clara Wieck, the daughter of his teacher. Schumann managed to gather like-minded people around him, who appeared on the pages of the magazine as Davidsbündlers - members of the “Brotherhood of David” (“Davidsbund”), a kind of spiritual union of genuine musicians.
Schumann often signed his reviews with the names of the fictitious Davidsbündlers Florestan and Eusebius. Florestan is prone to wild flights of fantasy, to paradoxes; the judgments of the dreamy Eusebius are softer. In the suite of character pieces “Carnival” (1834-35), Schumann creates musical portraits of the Davidsbündlers - Chopin, Paganini, Clara (under the name of Chiarina), Eusebius, Florestan. The second half of the 30s brought Schumann the highest tension of mental strength and the highest peaks of creative genius (“Fantastic Pieces”, “Dances of the Davidsbündlers”, Fünntasia in C major, “Kreisleriana”, “Novelettes”, “Humoresque”, “Vienna Carnival”). passed under the sign of the struggle for the right to unite with Clara Wieck (Father Wieck did his best to prevent this marriage). In an effort to find a wider arena for his musical and journalistic activities, Schumann spent the 1838-39 season in Vienna, but the Metternich administration and censorship prevented the publication of the magazine there. In Vienna, Schumann discovered the manuscript of Schubert's “big” C major Symphony, one of the pinnacles of romantic symphonism.
Clara Josephine Wieck Schumann is a German composer, musician, and teacher. One of the most outstanding pianists of the Romantic era, her creative career lasted 61 years. She changed the format and repertoire of solo piano concerts, shaping new tastes of the audience. The wife of the famous German composer Robert Schumann.
1840, the year of the long-awaited union with Clara, became the year of songs for Schumann. An extraordinary sensitivity to poetry, a deep knowledge of the work of his contemporaries contributed to the realization in numerous song cycles and individual songs of a true union with poetry, the precise embodiment in music of the individual poetic intonation of Heine (“Circle of Songs” op. 24, “The Love of a Poet”), J. Eichendorff ( “Circle of Songs” op. 39), A. Chamisso (“Love and Life of a Woman”), R. Burns, F. Rückert, J. Byron, G. H. Andersen and others. And subsequently the field of vocal creativity continued to be replenished with wonderful works (“Six poems by N. Lenau” and Requiem - 1850, “Songs from “Wilhelm Meister” by J. W. Goethe” - 1849).
Schumann's life and work in the 40s and 50s proceeded in an alternation of ups and downs, largely associated with attacks of mental illness, the first signs of which appeared back in 1833. Upsurges of creative energy marked the beginning of the 40s, the end of the Dresden period (in the capital of Saxony The Schumanns lived in 1845-50), coinciding with revolutionary events in Europe, and the beginning of life in Düsseldorf (1850). Schumann composed a lot, taught at the Leipzig Conservatory, which opened in 1843, and began performing as a conductor in the same year. In Dresden and Düsseldorf he leads the choir, devoting himself enthusiastically to this work.
Of the few tours made together with Clara, the longest and most exciting were the trip to Russia (1844). Starting from the 60-70s, Schumann's music very quickly became an integral part of Russian musical culture. She was loved by Balakirev and Mussorgsky, Borodin and especially Tchaikovsky, who considered Schumann the most outstanding modern composer. Rubinstein was a brilliant performer of Schumann's piano works.
The creativity of the 40s and 50s was marked by a significant expansion of the range of genres. Schumann writes symphonies (First - "Spring, 1841, Second, 1845-46; Third - "Rhine, 1850; Fourth, 1841 - 1st ed., 1851 - 2nd ed.), chamber ensembles (3 string quartets - 1842 ; 3 trios; piano Quartet and Quintet; ensembles with clarinet - including “Fairy Tales” for clarinet, viola and piano; 2 sonatas for violin and piano); concertos for piano 1841-45), cello (1850), violin (1853); program concert overtures (“The Bride of Messina” by Schiller, 1851; “Hermann and Dorothea” by Goethe and “Julius Caesar” by Shakespeare - 1851), demonstrating mastery in handling classical forms. The Piano Concerto and the Fourth Symphony stand out for their boldness in updating them; the Quintet in E-flat major stands out for their exceptional harmony of execution and inspiration of musical thoughts. One of the culminations of the composer’s entire work was the music for Byron’s dramatic poem “Manfred” (1848) - the most important milestone in the development of romantic symphonism on the path from Beethoven to Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Brahms. Schumann also does not betray his favorite piano (Forest Scenes, 1848-49) - it is its sound that gives special expressiveness to his chamber ensembles and vocal lyrics.
The great event of the last years of Schumann's life was his meeting with the twenty-year-old Brahms. The article “New Paths,” in which Schumann predicted a great future for his spiritual heir (he always treated young composers with extraordinary sensitivity), ended his journalistic career. In February 1854, a severe attack of illness led to a suicide attempt. After spending 2 years in the hospital (Endenich, near Bonn), Schumann died. Most of the manuscripts and documents are kept in his House Museum in Zwickau, where competitions for pianists, vocalists and chamber ensembles named after the composer are regularly held.
Schumann's work marked a mature stage of musical romanticism with its keen attention to the embodiment of complex psychological processes of human life. Schumann's piano and vocal cycles, many of his chamber instrumental and symphonic works opened up a new artistic world, new forms of musical expression. Schumann's music can be imagined as a series of surprisingly capacious musical moments, capturing the changeable and very subtly differentiated mental states of a person. These can be musical portraits, accurately capturing both the external characteristics and the inner essence of the person depicted.
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Clara and Robert Schumann had eight children. Clara outlived her husband by 40 years. Until 1854 she composed music; her best works (Piano Trio, some songs) are characterized by extraordinary imagination and skill. Contemporaries valued Schumann the pianist not only for her brilliant mastery of the latest repertoire (Chopin, Schumann, Brahms), but also for her high culture of interpretation and melodious tone. Until the end of her life she maintained a close relationship with Brahms.
