Schumann, the Romantic enigma

Mr. Peabody Says:

Schumann was one of several really famous composers who was born between 1809 and 1813, so that brief time absolutely exploded with creativity. It was close to the beginning of the Romantic Period. But what most people remember is that this fine man, also a close friend of the much younger Brahms, went INSANE.

The rest of the story:

Schumann was the biggest supporter of Brahms, and Brahms was close to his whole family. He wrote about music and highly praised the music he liked of other famous composers. Over time his music became very popular in Russia, where resistance to “German music” became increasingly hostile. But Russia liked Schumann.

Why did the Russians like Schumann so much?

The Russians, who in general became increasingly hostile towards traditional German composers, had a special affection for Schumann, and I believe this stems from the better-sweet nature of his music, so full of joy and optimism one moment but the next tinged with an inexpressible melancholy. In short, his music is incredibly complicated, rich and varied emotionally, and Tchaikovsky adored his music. The link between Tchaikovsky and Schumann may seem unexpected, but as you listen to the music of each, the connection and influence is there, and they are powerful. There is no composer who has more personal importance to me than Tchaikovsky, but lately I’ve been feeling more and more of the same connection to Robert Schumann.

Before looking at the man, let’s find out when he was born, and who he knew:

An extraordinary group of Romantic composers was born within the short period of four years, so it was one of the most amazing explosions of talent in musical history. All of these names are so famous that if you simply type in the last name in Google, they immediately appear at the top of the list.

  1. Felix Mendelssohn 1809-1847
  2. Frédéric Chopin 1810-1849
  3. Robert Schumann 1810-1856
  4. Franz Liszt 1811-1886
  5. Richard Wagner 1813-1883
  6. Giuseppe Verdi 1813-1901

From this we know that Schumann grew up with these other five composers, and it turns out that he wrote much about these others. He declared Chopin a genius early in the Pole’s young life, and of course we know that both Chopin and Liszt were part of a young, intimate group in Paris. Wagner married Liszt’s daughter, and Liszt conducted Wagner’s operas in Bayreuth in Germany. Schumann was a friend of Mendelssohn, only one year younger. The only odd man out in this group is Verdi, and I have read nothing about Schumann’s knowing Verdi’s music or even knowing him.

Now lets examine how long this group of six lived:

When did these men die, and how that might have changed their world views? The first three were all dead before the American Civil War. But the last, Verdi, lived to see the 20th century. By 1901 Debussy was 39 years old, and Rachmaninov was 28. So Verdi lived long enough to see something that Mendelssohn and Chopin could not have imagined. When Schumann died, Tchaikovsky was 14. But Verdi outlived Tchaikovsky by around 8 years.

  1. Felix Mendelssohn 1809-1847, lived to age 38
  2. Frédéric Chopin 1810-1849, lived to age 39
  3. Robert Schumann 1810-1856, lived to age 46
  4. Richard Wagner 1813-1883, lived to age 69
  5. Franz Liszt 1811-1886, lived to age 76
  6. Giuseppe Verdi 1813-1901, lived to age 87

Why do we care about births and deaths?

Because when a composer was born tells us about what he experienced as a young man, but composers who remained creative and productive into old age go continued developing and evolving. If late works are important, the years in which they are written may be more important than the age of the composers at the time of creation. And from this idea we also learn that composers who died young never had time to show us what might have been next and amazing simply because their lives were cut short.

Mental illness:

In the case of Schumann, mental illness cut short his creative maturity even more than his early death. He was so horribly tortured by insanity that his ability to compose was horribly affected long before his death, although experts argue about when mental illness caused a deterioration of his creative genius. Certainly by 1854 he was mostly unable to compose, at around the age of 44. Was he schizophrenic in the end? Was he bipolar? Did he contract syphilis as a young man? Would the kind of illness he had be easily treatable today? There are answers to none of these questions. We only know that even as a young man he had periods of deep melancholy, and this melancholy is something he shared with Tchaikovksy and Rachmaninov, just two amazing Russian composers.

His amazing symphonies:

He only wrote four and he was a late starter as a symphonist. But all four of these symphonies were written at the height of his career. His first symphony was completed at the age of 31. (Schubert was dead before the age of 32 and had written all of his symphonies before the age of 30). This means that Schumann was a fully mature, seasoned composer by the time he completed his first symphony, and that gives us a very different look at his output.

Clara Schumann:

His wife, Clara (Clara Josephine Wieck), was born nine years later in 1819, at a time where women really did not have many rights and got very little of the credit they deserved. Clara was famous, greatly admired and very obviously incredibly successful. She married Robert only a day before her 21st birthday and had to fight with her father for the independence to do so. She went on to have eight children with Robert, and she was a fierce defender and advocate of her husband decades after his early death. Equally important was her encouragement, because without her encouragement and support her husband would never have written his first symphony.

Schumann’s character:

Much has been written about Schumann’s struggles with sanity and the causes, but it seems we’ll never know for sure why he was so tortured at the end of his life. Yet it is clear that he was never malicious, and he was never dangerous to anyone except himself. We do know that he was a loving husband, a loyal friend to many and an ardent supporter of other composers, a generous and kind man. And we know that both his wife, Clara, and the great composer Brahms loved him greatly and never stopped championing his music after his death.

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