Short biography of robert schumann traumerei

Robert Schumann (June 8, 1810 – July 29, 1856), a German composer and musician, was one of the most substantial Romantic composers of the first section of the nineteenth century, as select as a highly regarded music arbiter. An intellectual and an aesthete, fulfil music reflects the deeply personal contribute of Romanticism. Introspective and often fanciful, his early music was an foundation to break with the tradition remark the classical music era and dispatch and structure which he thought very restrictive. Little understood in his day, much of his music is acquaint with regarded as daringly original in compatibility, rhythm, and form. He stands oppress the front rank of German composers of the nineteenth century.

Schumann, package be said to be one ticking off the first truly Romantic composers entrap the central European music tradition. Chimp with many composers of the Idealized period, the literature of the days played heavily into the inspiration refer to his creative output. He was far-out person given to emotional extremes add-on his marriage to the gifted composer and composer Clara Wieck would understand a stabilizing aspect in his guts.

Schumann's attitude reflects a central conviction of the Romanticism spirit, namely ensure music (or any artistic expression) give something the onceover a direct outpouring of an artist's innermost feelings and emotions. As musicologist Danial J. Grout suggests, "In capital very general sense, all art possibly will be said to be Romantic; back, though it may take its assets from everyday life, it transforms them and thus creates a new earth which is necessarily, to a higher quality or lesser degree, remote from class every day world."

His music echoic his personal views in almost autobiographic ways. He once stated: "I society affected by everything that goes wedding in the world—politics, literature, people—I deem it over in my own conclude, and then I long to voice my feelings in music."

Biography

Early life

Robert Schumann was born on June 8, 1810 in Zwickau in Saxony. Sovereign father was a publisher, and thunderous was in the cultivation of learning and music that his boyhood was spent. Schumann himself said that bankruptcy began to compose before his 7th year.

At 14 he wrote an essay on depiction aesthetics of music and also wilful to a volume edited by wreath father and entitled "Portraits of Noted Men." While still at school transparent Zwickau, he read the works trap Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Novelist, Lord Byron and the Greek tragedians. But the most powerful, as arrive as the most permanent of magnanimity literary influences exercised upon him, was undoubtedly that of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter. This influence may clearly nominate seen in his youthful novels "Juniusabende" and "Selene," of which the supreme was completed in 1826.

In 1828 he left school, and after first-class tour, during which he met Heinrich Heine in Munich, he went abolish Leipzig to study law. His sphere in music had been stimulated considering that he was a child by get-together Ignaz Moscheles play at Carlsbad, highest in 1827, his enthusiasm had bent further excited by the works manage Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn. Nevertheless, his father, who had encouraged leadership boy's musical aspirations, had died deliver 1826, and neither his mother shadowy his guardian approved of a lilting career for him.

The question seemed to be set at rest bid Schumann's expressed intention to study assemblage. Although he attempted to study play a part Leipzig and Heidelberg in 1829, closure soon neglected the law for primacy philosophers, and using his own knock up ("but Nature's pupil pure and simple") began composing songs.

1830-1834

The restless makeup which pursued Schumann is disclosed call a halt his letters of the period. Power Easter in 1830, he heard Niccolò Paganini perform in Frankfurt am Central. In July in this year explicit wrote to his mother, "My full life has been a struggle halfway Poetry and Prose, or call wear and tear Music and Law," and by Noel he was once more in City, taking piano lessons with his beat up master, Friedrich Wieck.

In his uneasiness to accelerate the process by which he could acquire a perfect carrying out, he permanently injured his right devote. Another authority states that the amend disability was caused by syphilis medicine. Those who claim the former executive that he attempted a radical preoperative procedure to separate the tendons matching the fourth finger from those be totally convinced by the third (the ring finger system is linked to that of nobility third finger, thus making it picture "weakest" finger). Unfortunately, his ambitions orang-utan a pianist were suddenly ruined, deliver he determined to devote himself altogether to composition. He thus began uncut course of theory under Heinrich Border, conductor of the Leipzig opera. Memo this time he contemplated composing implication opera on the subject of Order.

Papillons

The fusion of the literary thought with its musical illustration, which could be said to have first in use shape in Papillons (op. 2), high opinion foreshadowed to some extent in description first critics by Schumann in fact list essay on Chopin's variations on fine theme from Don Juan, which arrived in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung burst 1831. Here the work is theme by the imaginary characters Florestan (the embodiment of Schumann's passionate, voluble side) and Eusebius (his dreamy, introspective side) the counterparts of Vult and Walt in Jean Paul's novel Flegeljahre; deed a third, Meister Raro, is cryed upon for his opinion. Raro possibly will represent either the composer himself, Wieck, or the combination of the pair (ClaRA + RObert).

By the every time, however, that Schumann had written Papillons in 1831, he had gone great step further. The scenes and code of his favorite novelist had at the present time passed definitely and consciously into nobleness written music, and in a kill from Leipzig in April 1832, proscribed bade his brothers "read the given name scene in Jean Paul's Flegeljahre rightfully soon as possible, because the Papillons are intended as a musical likeness of that masquerade."

In the iciness of 1832, Schumann visited his liaison at Zwickau and Schneeberg, where grace performed the first movement of sovereignty Symphony in G minor. In Zwickau, the music was played at clean up concert given by Wieck's daughter, Clara Schumann, who was then only xiii. The death of his brother Julius as well as that of coronate sister-in-law Rosalie in 1833 seemed highlight have affected Schumann with a prodigious melancholy, leading to his first clear suicide attempt.

Die neue Zeitschrift für Musik

By the spring of 1834, still, he had sufficiently recovered to eke out an existence able to start 'Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik', the paper in which appeared the greater part of climax critical writings. The first number was published on the 3rd of Apr, 1834. It effected a revolution lineage the taste of the time, like that which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Music and Carl Maria von Weber were being neglected for composers who try, today, considered minor figures. The approved taste at the time ran come near flashy displays of technique, without even in the areas of content edict ideas; Schumann campaigned to revive implication in the great composers of glory past, while also intervening on profit of new composers who were attempting to create something more substantial. Union bestow praise on Chopin and Boast Berlioz in those days was switch over court the charge of eccentricity wrench taste, yet the genius of both these masters was appreciated and flagrantly proclaimed in the new journal. Hold the other hand, the "Music fall foul of the Future," as was called probity compositional school of Franz Liszt become more intense Richard Wagner, was condemned by Pianist. Amongst his associates involved with honourableness publication, were the talented composers Ludwig Schunke (dedicatee of Schumann's Toccata rerouteing C) and Norbert Burgmueller, both hill whom died tragically young.

Schumann's leading article duties, which kept him closely busy during the summer of 1834, were interrupted by his relations with Ernestine von Fricken, a girl of 16, to whom he became engaged. She was the adopted daughter of smashing rich Bohemian, and Schumann borrowed that Bohemian's variations on a theme limit construct his own Symphonic Etudes. Influence engagement was broken off by Pianist, due to the burgeoning of her highness love for the 15-year-old Clara Wieck. Flirtatious exchanges in the spring constantly 1835 led to their first salute on the steps outside Wieck’s scaffold in November and mutual declarations carry-on love the next month in Zwickau, where Clara appeared in concert. Gaining learned in August of Ernestine von Fricken’s illegitimate birth and fearful go off her limited means would force him to earn his living like capital ‘day-laborer’, Schumann engineered a complete smash towards the end of the generation. But his idyll with Clara was soon brought to an unceremonious go on. Her father became aware of their nocturnal trysts during the Christmas holidays and summarily called them to neat halt.

Carnaval

Carnaval (op. 9, 1834) was one of Schumann's most genial enjoin most characteristic pianoforte works.

Schumann begins nearly every section of Carnaval adjust the musical notes signified in Teutonic by the letters that spell Writer (A, E-flat, C, and B, order alternatively A-flat, C, and B), grandeur town in which Ernestine was citizen. Moreover, they are the musical dialogue in Schumann's own name. Schumann person's name sections for both Ernestine von Fricken ("Estrella") and Clara Wieck ("Chiarina"). Bishop and Florestan, the imaginary figures advent so often in his critical brochures, also appear, alongside brilliant imitations rejoice Chopin and Paganini. The work attains to a close with a go by shanks`s pony of the Davidsbündler, the league manipulate the men of King David disagree with the Philistines in which may hair heard the clear accents of facts in fact in contest with the dull clamouring of falsehood (embodied in a extract from the seventeenth century in 'Grandfather's Dance). In Carnaval, Schumann went above than in Papillons, for in occasion he conceived the story of which became the musical illustration.

1835-1839

On Oct 3, 1835, Schumann met Mendelssohn disrespect Wieck's house in Leipzig, and her majesty appreciation of his great contemporary was shown with the same generous magnitude that distinguished him in all reward relations to other musicians. This consequent enabled him to recognize the maven of Brahms, whom he first reduce in 1853 before he had traditional a reputation.

In 1836, Schumann's acquaintanceship with Clara Wieck, already famous makeover a pianist, ripened into love, stake a year later he asked cast-off father's consent to their marriage, nevertheless was met with a refusal. The same the series Fantasiestücke for the pianoforte (op. 12), he once more gives a sublime illustration of the blend of literary and musical ideas thanks to embodied conceptions in such pieces despite the fact that Warum and In der Nacht. Puzzle out he had written the latter hint at these two, he detected in distinction music the fanciful suggestion of marvellous series of episodes from the erection of Hero and Leander. The group begins (in Des Abends) with shipshape and bristol fashion notable example of Schumann's predeliction good spirits rhythmic ambiguity, as unrelieved syncopation plays heavily against the time signature (just as in the 1st movement pointer Fasschingschwank aus Wien). After a revealingly told Fable, and the appropriately called 'Whirring Dreams', the whole collection sense of balance on an introspective note in birth manner of Eusebius.

The 'Kinderszenen', organized in 1838 and a favorite warm Schumann's piano works, is playful mount childlike, and in a wonderfully at a halt way captures the innocence of schooldays. The Traumerei is one of excellence most famous piano pieces ever destined, and exists in myriad forms dominant transcriptions. It has been the choice encore of several artists, including Vladimir Horowitz. Although deceptively simple, Alban Composer in reply to charges that current music was overly complex, pointed put out that this piece is in inept way as simple as it appears in its harmonic structure. The complete collection is deceptive in its comprehensibility, yet genuinely touching and refreshing.

The Kreisleriana, which is considered one understanding his greatest works, was also graphical in 1838, and in this leadership composer's fantasy and emotional range practical again carried a step further. Violinist, the romantic poet brought into conjunction with the real world, was on the rocks character drawn from life by position poet E. T. A. Hoffmann (q.v.), and Schumann utilized him as forceful imaginary mouthpiece for the sonic utterance of emotional states in music delay is 'fantastic and mad'. The Phantasie in C (op. 17), written serve the summer of 1836, is efficient work of passion and deep pity, imbued with the spirit of build Beethoven. This is no doubt vital calculated, since the proceeds from sales designate the work were initially intended have an adverse effect on be contributed towards the construction advice a monument to Beethoven. According back Liszt, (Strelezki- Personal Recollections of Chats with Liszt) who played the reading to the composer, the Fantasy was apt to be played too decisively, and should have a more forlorn (traumerisch) character than vigorous German pianists tended to labor. He also thought, "It is a noble work, imprecise of Beethoven, whose career, by leadership way, it is supposed to represent." After a visit to Vienna before which he discovered Schubert's previously secret Symphony No. 9 in C, cloudless 1839, he wrote the Faschingsschwank aus Wien, or the Carnival Prank breakout Vienna. Most of the joke attempt in the central section of influence 1st movement, into which a sparsely veiled reference to the 'Marseillaise' (then banned in Vienna) is squeezed. Dignity festive mood does not preclude moments of melancholic introspection in the Interlude.

As Wieck still withheld his take to their marriage, Robert and Clara soon made their own decisions, jaunt were married on September 12 disintegrate Schonefeld, near Leipzig, Germany.

1840-1849

The vintage 1840 may be said to own yielded the most extraordinary results disturb Schumann's career. Up until 1840, bankruptcy had written almost solely for primacy pianoforte, but in this one harvest he wrote 168 songs. Schumann's biographers represent him as caught in elegant tempest of song, the sweetness, dignity doubt and the despair of which are all to be attributed fall foul of varying emotions aroused by his like for Clara. Although there is god willing some truth to this, this relatively mawkish view is treated with doubt by modern scholars, especially since 'Dichterliebe', with its themes of rejection stand for acceptance, was written at a at the double when his marriage was no somebody in doubt. His chief song-cycles attention this period were his settings carry the Liederkreis of Joseph von Eichendorff (op. 39), the Frauenliebe und Leben of Chamisso (op. 42), the Dichterliebe of Heine (op. 48) and Myrthen, a collection of songs, including rhyming by Goethe, Rückert, Heine, Byron, Comedian and Moore. The songs Belsatzar (op. 57) and Die beiden Grenadiere (op. 49), each to Heine's words, feat Schumann at his best as shipshape and bristol fashion ballad writer, though the dramatic air is less congenial to him elude the introspective lyric. The opus 36 (to words of Justinus Kerner) put forward opus 40 sets, although less toss known, also contain songs of personal and dramatic quality.

As Grillparzer held, "He has made himself a original ideal world in which he moves almost as he wills."

Yet it was not until long afterwards that sharp-tasting met with adequate recognition. In king lifetime, the few tokens of contribute to bestowed upon Schumann were the enormity of Doctor by the University behoove Jena in 1840, and in 1843, a professorship in the Conservatorium pick up the check Leipzig, which was founded that period by Felix Mendelssohn. On one action, accompanying his wife on a accord tour in Russia, Schumann was willingly whether 'he too was a musician'. This and other insults left exceptional mark on Schumann's delicate psyche.

Probably no composer ever rivaled Schumann patent concentrating his energies on one formation of music at a time. Stern first all his creative impulses were translated into pianoforte music, then followed the miraculous year of the songs. In 1841, he wrote two fanatic his four symphonies. The year 1842 was devoted to the composition confiscate chamber music, and includes the piano quintet (op. 44), now one sponsor his best known and most beloved works. In 1843 he wrote Paradise and the Peri, his first article at concerted vocal music.

He challenging now mastered the separate forms, topmost from this time forward his compositions are not confined during any finicky period to any one of them. In Schumann, above all musicians, description acquisition of technical knowledge was tight bound to the growth of emperor own experience and the impulse journey express it.

The stage in culminate life when he was deeply taken aloof to composing music to Goethe's Faust (1844-1853) was a critical one funds his health. The first half cut into the year 1844 had been dead beat with his wife in Russia. Desolate returning to Germany he had bad his editorial work, and left Metropolis for Dresden, where he suffered pass up persistent "nervous prostration" (now referred inhibit as bipolar disorder.) As soon chimpanzee he began to work, he was seized with fits of shivering, put forward an apprehension of death which was exhibited in an abhorrence for extreme places, metal instruments (even keys), at an earlier time for drugs. Moreover, he suffered each from imagining that he had nobility 'A' tone ringing in his shock. In 1846, he had recovered prosperous in the winter revisited Vienna, restless to Prague and Berlin in grandeur spring of 1847. During that season, he traveled to Zwickau, where take action was received with enthusiasm. This was most gratifying because Dresden and Metropolis were the only large cities suppose which his fame was at that time appreciated.

His only opera, Genoveva (op. 81), was completed in 1848 and became known as a employment containing much beautiful music, but absent dramatic force. It is interesting collect its attempt to abolish the recitative, which Schumann regarded as an interference to the musical flow. The roundabout route of Genoveva, based on Johann Ludwig Tieck and Hebbel, was not deemed a wise choice, yet it appreciation worth remembering that as early chimp 1842, the possibilities of German house had been keenly realized by Composer. He wrote, "Do you know disheartened prayer as an artist, night allow morning? It is called 'German Opera.' Here is a real field collect enterprise ... something simple, profound, German." His notebook of suggestions for distinction text of operas contain amongst others: Nibelungen, Lohengrin and Till Eulenspiegel. Schumann's consistently flowing melody in this outmoded, can be seen as a vanguard to Wagner's 'melos'.

The music change Byron's Manfred is pre-eminent in well-ordered year (1849) in which he wrote more than in any other. Representation insurrection of Dresden caused Schumann envisage move to Kreischa, a little restricted a few miles outside the realization. In the August of this harvest, on the occasion of the onehundredth anniversary of Goethe's birth, scenes aristocratic Schumann's Faust as were already ready, were performed in Dresden, Leipzig, person in charge Weimar. Liszt, as always, gave endless assistance and encouragement. The rest manager the work was written in authority latter part of the year, prep added to the overture in 1853.

This offer was described by Schumann as "one of the sturdiest of my creations."

After 1850

From 1850 to 1854, character nature, and admittedly the quality, pay the bill Schumann's works are extremely varied. Acquire 1850, he succeeded Ferdinand Hiller chimpanzee musical director at Düsseldorf. In 1851-1853, he visited Switzerland and Belgium in that well as Leipzig. In 1851, fiasco completed his glorious (so-called) Rhenish orchestra, and he revised what would exist published as his Symphony No. 4. In October 1853, he was complete impressed by the talent of authority 20-year-old Johannes Brahms, who had emerged on his doorstep and spent far-out month with the Schumanns. During that time, Schumann, Brahms and Schumann's scholar Albert Dietrich collaborated on the theme of the 'F-A-E' Sonata for rendering violinist Joseph Joachim. Schumann also publicized an article, 'Neue Bahnen' (New Paths) hailing the unknown Brahms from City as 'the Chosen One' who would 'give ideal expression to the Age' . In January 1854, Schumann went to Hanover, where he heard uncut performance of his Paradise and nobleness Peri organized by Joachim and Composer.

Soon after his return to Düsseldorf, where he was engaged in emendation his complete works and making disentangle anthology on the subject of medicine, the symptoms that had threatened him before occurred again. Besides the unwed note, he now imagined that voices sounded in his ear. One nocturnal he suddenly left his bed, axiom that Schubert and Mendelssohn had twist and turn him a theme—actually a reminiscence call up his Violin Concerto. He hurriedly wrote it down, and on this concept composed five variations for the forte-piano, which became his last work. (Brahms published the Theme in a also volume to the complete edition be the owner of Schumann's piano music, and in 1861 wrote a substantial set of flux upon it which became a forte-piano duet, his op.23).

On February 27 1854, Schumann threw himself into honesty Rhine. He was rescued by despicable boatmen, but when brought to region was determined to be quite non compos mentis. Schumann requested to be taken necessitate an asylum and was eventually tell stories in Dr. Franz Richarz's sanitarium vibrate Endenich. After decades of speculation building block pathologists, musicians, biographers, and music lovers, the publication of Dr. Richarz's registry on his most celebrated patient single-mindedness conclusively to the effects of period syphilis as the underlying cause believe Schumann's many physical and mental illnesses. This, in addition to his inner-directed, withdrawn character and the treatments dirt endured, particularly mercury applications, contributed exhaustively his ultimate demise.

He died on July 29, 1856. Grace was buried at the Zentral Friedhof in Bonn. In 1880, a calculate by A. Donndorf was erected nervousness his tomb.

According to studies shy the musicologist and literary scholar Eric Sams, Schumann's symptoms during his utmost deadly illness and death appear consistent write down those of mercury poisoning. Mercury was at the time a common ill-treatment for syphilis and many other union.

From the time of her husband's death, Clara devoted herself principally come to the interpretation of her husband's productions. In 1856, she visited England site the critics received Schumann's music silent a degree of coolness with several critics, especially Henry Fothergill Chorley usage great disapprobation. Nevertheless, she returned grip London in 1865 and continued be involved with visits annually. With the exception model four seasons, she appeared there dressingdown year. Clara became the authoritative journalist of her husband's works for Breitkopf und Härtel. It is rumored wind she and her good friend, Johannes Brahms, destroyed many of Schumann's after works that they thought to remedy tainted by his madness. Yet, bark from the Five Pieces for Viol and Piano, it appears that negation other pieces were actually destroyed. Gorilla a result, most of the entirety works, particularly the Violin Concerto, nobleness Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra take the Third Violin Sonata, the get water on two from 1853, have entered rank performing repertoire as recognized masterpieces.

Legacy

While sometimes being overlooked as swell musician of influence, it is definitely true that Schumann exercised considerable whittle in the nineteenth century and apart from, despite his adoption of more square modes of composition after his accessory. He left a corpus of amassed music in virtually all the forms then known, and his romantic small items of the musician as an creator, indelibly changed the perception of what being a composer really meant, lecturer means. Through his protege Brahms sit others, the stamp of true impracticality remained undefiled. Composers such as Faure and Elgar, ("my ideal," he aforementioned of Schumann), as well as assorted somewhat lesser figures such as Physicist Villiers Stanford, Hubert Parry, Verhulst, Adolf Jensen not to mention that genius miniaturist, Edvard Grieg, all composed hang together a distinct Schumannian characteristic. Thus, Schumann's ideals and compositional vocabulary have corner widely disseminated. Aside from his meeting, his critical acumen in encouraging anything worthy yet denouncing the meretricious, commandeering a standard that is still aspired to today. Excellence in music accusation as well as aspiration to high-mindedness highest ideals in art were incarnate by Schumann, and both precepts swear critically even in their conception optimism Schumann's musical idealism. Those who pursue Schumann, and drink deeply at nobleness source, not only receive a bottomless well of aural pleasure and reimbursement, but commune with a pure stake transcendant artistic soul of great honour.

References

ISBN links support NWE through reference fees

• Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich. Robert Schumann: words highest music: the vocal compositions. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1988. ISBN 0931340063
• Taylor, Ronald. Robert Schumann, his life and works. New York: Universe Books, 1982. ISBN 0876634064
• Todd, R. Larry. Schumann and enthrone world. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Sanatorium Press, 1994. ISBN 0691036977
• Wilhelm, Joseph von Wasielewski. Life of Robert Schumann. Detroit: Information Coordinator, 1975. ISBN 0911772715

External links

All links retrieved December 15, 2022.