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Robert Schumann, composer and pianist - Clara Schumann, virtuoso pianist, composer, and wife of Robert Schumann - their lives and careers intertwined almost indefinably in history.
Robert Alexander Schumann was born in 1810 in Zwickau, Saxony. He showed talent with both the written word and the piano. At the age of six, Robert began musical training and wrote his first composition at the age of twelve. His high school years proved the young Schumann to be as gifted in the literary arts as in music, influenced immeasurably by the Austrian composer Franz Schubert and the German poet Jean Paul Richter. Because Robert was uncertain which course of study to pursue, Robert's mother endeavored to place him in the law school at Leipzig. It was there that Robert met and studied under Friedrich Wieck, a well-known and celebrated piano teacher of the area.
Friedrich Wieck recognized Robert's talent, but from the first, he doubted Robert's stability and discipline. These early impressions of the young man influenced Herr Wieck in his later assessment of his qualifications as a suitable husband for his daughter Clara Josephine Wieck.
Clara Wieck, nine years younger than Robert Schumann, was a gifted pianist. Under her father's tutelage since the age of five, Clara had long been recognized as a musical child prodigy with a touring career that began at age nine. As a teenager, she was elected to the honored Music Society of Vienna.
Robert left Leipzig to study with a law professor whose writing outside of the legal field focused on musical aesthetics. Sympathetic to Robert's love of music and disdain for his law studies, the professor encouraged Schumann to practice and become a virtuoso pianist. It was during this time that Robert Schumann composed several waltzes, followed by his Opus 1.
Schumann was able to persuade his mother to allow him a return to Leipzig for the purpose of studying under Herr Wieck. Robert's goal was to become a concert pianist and this, of course, required a vigorous practice regime. A common method used in that day for strengthening fingers and improving technique was the placement of wooden splints on the fingers. While it is not certain that these splints caused injury, history does record that one of the fingers on Robert Schumann's right hand was damaged accidentally and there are those who attribute the injury to practicing with splints. Whatever the cause, the injured hand meant an end to any dreams of becoming a concert pianist.
Clara, on the other hand, continued to abound in musical prowess and concert perfection. She also composed but was not as well received for her original works, perhaps because any composition ability that she showed was overshadowed by her virtuoso skill as a pianist.
As a young man, Robert entertained the affection of another of Herr Wieck's students, Ernestine von Fricken. Robert wrote "Carnival" for her, a cyclic piece in which the same theme recurred in all the movements. A second composition followed, entitled "Etudes Symphoniques." However, this relationship did not last, primarily because Clara had turned sixteen and had captured Robert's eye.
Friedrich Wieck, still convinced of Schumann's lack of fortitude, forbade his daughter to see Robert. For more than sixteen months, Robert was exiled from the Wieck's home. Alone and dejected, he poured his emotion into the composition of "Fantasy in C Major." On her eighteenth birthday, Clara found an extremely distressed - and by some accounts, drunken - Schumann. Their relationship was reestablished and Robert asked Clara's father for her hand in marriage. This was denied.
While Clara appealed to the courts, she refused to disobey her father and marry Schumann without either her father's permission or the court's sanction, fearing loss of her inheritance and with it, financial security. The courts did finally grant the appeal and Clara Wieck became Clara Schumann at the age of twenty-one, her husband thirty.
The year that followed was one of the most prolific of Robert's lifetime. He produced over one hundred Lieder, many of which were composed for his wife to play. Clara encouraged him to broaden his style, leading him into orchestral music as well as chamber works. Robert combined his love for the piano with symphonic orchestration, producing the "Piano Concerto in A Minor."
Clara continued to tour and also taught at the Leipzig Conservatory. She composed twenty-three opuses and countless piano songs, including polonaises, waltzes, and a piano concerto. Still, female composers were not readily received by the musical world. Clara wrote in her diary, "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose - there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" Clara chose instead to become the chief interpreter of her husband's music. He wrote. She played.
Robert and Clara Schumann had seven children together. This too affected their musical careers in that it opened a new dimension for composition - songs "about children" and songs "for children." Robert wrote a group of piano pieces called "Kinderszenen," capturing childhood as their theme. Another such piece, "Child Falling Asleep," lulls the mind into a sleepy state, much as he might have imagined lullabying his own children at bedtime. Schumann also wrote "Album for the Young," a collection of simple pieces for children to play.
As Herr Wieck predicted, Robert did not have the fortitude for stability. He was moody and often depressed, seemingly growing worse as he became older. In 1844, he suffered a mental breakdown but by all accounts recovered. In 1850, he accepted a post as Director of Music in Dusseldorf. During this time, he composed the "Cello Concerto in A Minor" and "Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major." Still battling his own temperament and fits of depression, Robert was given to public displays of chaos and anger. He was forced to resign.
The years from 1854 to 1856 were fraught with frequent periods of depression and the onset of auditory hallucinations. At times, Robert confessed to hearing variations of themes from the spirits of Schubert or Mendelssohn. It was during one of these times that a frustrated Schumann made his way to the Rhine River and tried to drown himself. Rescued by fisherman and quite shaken, Robert asked to be taken to an asylum. He died there in 1856.
After Robert's death, Clara Schumann toured the concert piano circuit to support herself and her children. She edited her husband's work, still the principal interpreter of his genius, not only at the keyboard but in its preservation. Clara died in 1896.
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