Robert Schumann
Schumann, Robert Alexander - shooˈmän, 1810–56, German composer. Both as a composer and as a highly articulate music critic he was a leader of the romantic movement. He studied theory with Heinrich Dorn and piano with Friedrich Wieck, whose daughter Clara he married. Forced by a hand injury to abandon a career as a pianist, he served as editor of the Neue Zeitschrift Read More...
Schumann, Robert Alexander - shooˈmän, 1810–56, German composer. Both as a composer and as a highly articulate music critic he was a leader of the romantic movement. He studied theory with Heinrich Dorn and piano with Friedrich Wieck, whose daughter Clara he married. Forced by a hand injury to abandon a career as a pianist, he served as editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik from its inception in 1834 until 1844. In his articles he championed younger composers, particularly Chopin and Brahms. Schumann's brilliant compositions for piano, including Papillons, Die Davidsbündlertänze, Carnaval, Fantasiestücke, Études symphoniques, Kinderszenen, and Kreisleriana, occupied him until 1840, when he began to write songs and orchestral music. In his lieder he set to music lyrics by such poets as Heine, Goethe, Eichendorff, and Kerner, achieving a superb fusion of vocal melody and piano accompaniment. Among his best song cycles are Frauenliebe und -Leben [Woman's Love and Life, on verses by Chamisso] and Dichterliebe [Poet's Love, verses by Heine]. His Spring Symphony (1841), Piano Concerto in A Minor (1846), and Third, or Rhenish, Symphony (1850) are his outstanding orchestral works. They exemplify his infusion of classical forms with intense, personal emotion. His one opera, Genoveva (1847–48), was unsuccessful. After a nervous breakdown, he entered (1854) a sanitarium, where he died two years later. His wife, Clara Josephine (Wieck) Schumann, 1819–96, was one of the outstanding pianists of her time. After bitter opposition from her father she married Schumann in 1840 and eventually bore him eight children. She made her debut in 1836 and later performed with great success on the Continent, in England, and in Russia. She was noted for the intellectual brilliance and sensitivity of her playing, and was an outstanding interpreter of Schumann's and Brahms's works. Her own compositions were mainly piano pieces and songs. From 1878 to 1892 she taught at the Frankfurt Conservatory. See his essays, On Music and Musicians (1946); his letters, tr. by M. Herbert (1888, repr. 1970); biographies by J. Chissell (1967) and H. Bedford (1933, repr. 1971); studies by T. A. Brown (1968), S. Walsh (1972), A. Walker, ed. (1974), and J. W. Finson (1989). The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved. |
Robert Schumann
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Robert Schumann, one of the most beloved composers of the Romantic movement, embodied the passion and imaginative spirit of his age. Known for his musical and literary genius and his legendary romance with his wife Clara, Schumann was also plagued with debilitative bouts of depression that led him to live his last days in a German mental asylum. This important new biography recreates the dynamics of this man and his music with unprecedented range, offering new insight into his final years and his lasting musical achievements. Drawing on Schumann's recently published journals, letters, and new research, author Eric Jensen renders a balanced portrait of the composer with both scholarly authority and engaging clarity. Biographical chapters alternate with commentary on Schumann's piano, choral, symphonic, and operatic works, demonstrating how the circumstances of his life helped shape the music he wrote at various periods. Chronicling the forbidden romance of Robert and Clara, Jensen offers a nuanced look at the evolution of their relationship. He also follows Schuman's creative musical criticism, which championed the burgeoning careers of Chopin, Liszt, and Brahms and challenged the musical tastes of nineteenth-century Europe. Most importantly, he presents new evidence that Schumann--locked away in the asylum at Endenich--had returned sufficiently to health to justify his removal from confinement a year before his death. Like the innovations of his final compositions from 1845-1854, his sanity was overlooked and misunderstood by his contemporaries. Jensen corrects the historical record, illuminating the tragedy of Schumann's final days and refuting the common dismissal of his final works as the result of an unstable mind. A significant addition to music literature, Schumann is the first authoritative biography of the composer written for general readers as well as music students and historians.
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Forced by a hand injury to abandon a career as a pianist, Robert Schumann went on to become one of the world's great composers. Among many works, his Spring Symphony (1841), Piano Concerto in A Minor (1841/1845), and the Third, or Rhenish, Symphony (1850) exemplify his infusion of classical forms with intense, personal emotion. His musical influence continues today and has inspired many other famous composers in the century since his death. Indeed Brahms, in a letter of January 1873, wrote: "The remembrance of Schumann is sacred to me. I will always take this noble pure artist as my model." Now, in Robert Schumann: Herald of a "New Poetic Age," John Daverio presents the first comprehensive study of the composer's life and works to appear in nearly a century. Long regarded as a quintessentially romantic figure, Schumann also has been portrayed as a profoundly tragic one: a composer who began his career as a genius and ended it as a mere talent. Daverio takes issue with this Schumann myth, arguing instead that the composer's entire creative life was guided by the desire to imbue music with the intellectual substance of literature. A close analysis of the interdependence among Schumann's activities as reader, diarist, critic, and musician reveals the depth of his literary sensibility. Drawing on documents only recently brought to light, the author also provides a fresh outlook on the relationship between Schumann's mental illness--which brought on an extended sanitarium stay and eventual death in 1856--and his musical creativity. Schumann's character as man and artist thus emerges in all its complexity. The book concludes with an analysis of the late works and a postlude on Schumann's influence on successors from Brahms to Berg. This well-researched study of Schumann interprets the composer's creative legacy in the context of his life and times, combining nineteenth-century cultural and intellectual history with a fascinating analysis of the works themselves.
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This new study draws on analysis, literary criticism, and source studies to propose a new conception of the nineteenth-century romantic cycle. Rather than a unified whole, the cycle is seen as a fragmentary and open-ended form, which enables Schumann to express the romantic themes of transcendence and ineffability in musical terms.
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The Critical Composer: The Musical Writings of Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Others
by Irving Kolodin. 275 pgs.
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The History of Pianoforte Music (Part III, Chap. VI "Reflective and Characteristic Romance- Schumann" and Part III, Chap. XII "The Reflex of Schumann")
by Herbert Westerby. 410 pgs.
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This important compilation lends a new perspective to music criticism by gathering the comments of 85 well-known composers concerning the work of their peers. Encompassing all forms of commentary, from caustic attacks to perceptive criticism and praise, the book offers new insights into the development of music and its most important creators by collecting under each composer's name the remarks made about him by other composers.
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Romanticism (1830-1890) (Includes discussions of Schumann's compositions in multiple chapters)
by Gerald Abraham. 942 pgs.
Romanticism--a concept more easily recognized than defined--dominated the artistic landscape of music from 1830-1890. Like the other volumes in the New Oxford History of Music series, this final volume to be published provides a detailed, scholarly critical survey of the music and composers of its period. Divided among different forms of music, the chapters, written by eminent scholars under the editorship of one of the most respected experts on nineteenth-century music, detail the work of Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms, Berlioz, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Gounod, Bizet, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorak, Smetana, Faure, Wolf, Puccini, Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss, Cesar Franck, and Debussy.
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The Music Lover's Handbook ("Robert Schumann: Symphony in B Flat (Spring)" begins on p. 173 and "Robert Schumann" begins on p. 456)
by Elie Siegmeister. 820 pgs.
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The World of Great Composers ("Robert Schumann (1810-1856)" begins on p. 232)
by David Ewen. 578 pgs.
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The Complete Correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann
by Eva Weissweiler, Hildegard Fritsch, Ronald L. Crawford. 578 pgs.
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In Crossing Paths, John Daverio explores the connections between art and life in the works of three giants of musical romanticism. Drawing on contemporary critical theory and a wide variety of nineteenth-century sources, he considers topics including Schubert and Schumann's uncanny ability to evoke memory in music, the supposed cryptographic practices of Schumann and Brahms, and the allure of the Hungarian Gypsy style for Brahms and others in the Schumann circle. The book offers a fresh perspective on the music of these composers, including a comprehensive discussion of the 19th century practice of cryptography, a debunking of the myth that Schumann and Brahms planted codes for "Clara Schumann" throughout their works, and attention to the late works of Schumann not as evidence of the composer's descent into madness but as inspiration for his successors. Daverio portrays the book's three key players as musical storytellers, each in his own way simulating the structure of lived experience in works of art. As an intimate study of three composers that combines cultural history and literary criticism with deep musicological understanding, Crossing Paths is a rich exploration of memory, the re-creation of artistic tradition, and the value of artistic influence.
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