Robert Alexander Schumann

1810-1856

To send light into the darkness of men's hearts

-such is the duty of the artist.

-Robert Schumann

Youth and Early Years

Born in Zwickau, in the Kingdom of Saxony, the fifth and last

child of Johanna Christiane and August Schumann.

Youth and Early Years

Schumann began to compose before

the age of seven. Undoubtedly
influenced by his father, a
bookseller, publisher, and
novelist.
At the age of 7, he began receiving
general musical and piano
instruction from Johann Gottfried
Kuntzsch, a teacher at the
Zwickau high school.

August Schumann (1773 - 1826) at the age of 37

Painting by L. Glaeser, 1810

Youth and Early Years

It has been related that Schumann, as a child, possessed rare taste and
talent for portraying feelings and characteristic traits in melody,
ay, he could sketch the different dispositions of his intimate friends by
certain figures and passages on the piano so exactly and comically that
everyone burst into loud laughter at the similitude of the portrait.
-W.J. von Wasielewski; The Universal Journal of Music 1850

I was a God-fearing child, innocent and

physically attractive.
-Robert Schumann

Youth and Early Years

His father, who had encouraged the

boys musical aspirations, died in
1826 when Schumann was 16.

Neither his mother nor his guardian

thereafter encouraged a career in
music.

Youth and Early Years

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

Was a German poet, journalist,
essayist, and literary critic.
Best known outside Germany for his
early lyric poetry, which was set to
music in the form of Lieder (art
songs) by composers such as Robert
Schumann and Franz Schubert.

Youth and Early Years

But in July he wrote to his mother,

My whole life has been a struggle between Poetry and Prose, or
call it Music and Law.
By Christmas he was back in Leipzig,
at age 20 taking piano lessons from
his old master Friederich Wieck, who assured him that he would be
a successful concert pianist after a few years study with him.

Youth and Early Years

During his studies,Wieck claimed that

Schumann damaged his finger by the use
of a mechanical device designed to
strengthen the weakest fingers.
This claim has been discredited by
Clara Schumann, who said that the
disability was not due to a mechanical
device.

An evil fate has deprived me of the full use of my right hand,

so that I am not able to play my compositions as I feel them.

The trouble with my hand is that certain fingers have become so weak,
probably through writing and playing too much at one time, that I can
hardly use them. -Robert Schumann

Schumann abandoned ideas of a concert career

and devoted himself instead to composition.
Composed during the period: 1830-1834
Papillons, Op. 2 Butterflies
Carnaval, Op. 9 (1834)
Die Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik ("New Journal for Music") first
published on April 1834.

To this end he began a study of music theory under Heinrich Dorn,

a German composer six years his senior and, at that time,
conductor of the Leipzig Opera.

The 1835-1839 Period

We might call this the RAROForLove Period.

Points to those who understand the reference and can explain
it to the class :)

No?
3
2
1

1835 - 1839
Master Raro was a notable character that appeared in many of Schumanns
character pieces for solo piano. Schumann often used Master Raro as his
pseudonym within Zeitschrift fr Musik, the journal through which he
evaluated the music world. Raro appears to bring logic and reason and
reflects Schumanns writing mastery and musical genius.
Raro may represent the union of (ClaRa + Robert).

Despite the opposition of Clara Wiecks father, Friederich, she and Robert
continued a clandestine relationship which matured into a full-blown romance.

Clara Wieck at 16

Clara Wieck at 15

Clara Josephine Wieck

A child prodigy, from an early age, her career and life was planned
down to the smallest detail by her father. She daily received onehour lesson (in piano, violin, singing, theory, harmony,
composition, and counterpoint), and two hours of practice, using the
teaching methods he had developed on his own.
Its no surprise that an over-protective, over-achieving father would
object to her growing attachment to Robert, then a frustrated law
student currently struggling with his career in composition, who was
nine years her senior.

After a long and acrimonious legal battle with her father, Schumann married Clara
Wieck on 12 September 1840, at Schnefeld, the day before her 21st birthday.
Had they waited another day, they would no longer have required her fathers consent.

1835 - 1839

Fantasiestcke, Op. 12
Symphonic Studies (1837)
Davidsbndlertnze, Op.6 (also published in 1837 despite the
low opus number)
Kinderszenen, Op. 15
Kreisleriana, Op. 16 (1838)
The Fantasie in C, Op. 17

The 1840-1849 Period

The Liederjahr or the Year of Song
In the years 18321839, Schumann had written almost exclusively for
the piano, but in 1840 alone he wrote no less than 138 songs.
Indeed 1840 is highly significant in Schumanns musical legacy despite
his earlier deriding of works for piano and voice as inferior.
He actually claimed never to have considered song composition as great art
which he wrote in a letter to Hirschbach in 1839.

You write to become immortal,

or because the piano happens to be open,
or youve looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.
-Robert Schumann

1840 - 1849

Clara and Roberts marriage proved a remarkable business partnership,

with Clara acting as an inspiration, critic, and confidant to her
husband.

He wrote to her in May of that year:

Much of you is embedded in my Eichendorff Liederkreis and the same
could justly be said of Mythen, Frauenliebe und leben and the
Kerner cycle op. 35.

1840 - 1849

Song cycles
Liederkreis of Joseph von Eichendorff, Op. 39 (depicting a series of moods
relating to or inspired by nature)
the Frauenliebe und -leben of Chamisso, Op. 42 (relating the tale of a
woman's marriage, childbirth and widowhood)
the Dichterliebe of Heine, Op. 48 (depicting a lover rejected, but coming to
terms with his painful loss through renunciation and forgiveness)
Myrthen, a collection of songs, including poems by Goethe, Rckert, Heine,
Byron, Burns and Moore.

1840 - 1849
Schumanns music was also affected by his love for his children. He wrote
pieces directly inspired by their activities, as well as works written for
children in general. These were not the usual sonatinas, but imaginative
and entertaining works, like those he published in the Album for the
Young Op. 68 in 1848.
Clara and Robert had eight children. Marie (1841); Elise (1843); Julie
(1845); Emil (1846), who died at 1 year; Ludwig (1848);
Ferdinand (1849); Eugenie (1851); and Felix (1854).

1840 - 1849
Despite his achievements, Schumann received few tokens of honour; he was
awarded a doctoral degree by the University of Jena in 1840, and in
1843 a professorship in the
Conservatory of Music,
which Felix Mendelssohn had
founded in Leipzig that same year.

Mendelssohn I consider the first musician of the day;

I doff my hat to him as my superior.
He plays with everything,
especially with the grouping of the instruments in the orchestra,
but with such ease, delicacy and art, with such mastery throughout.
Robert Schumann

1840 - 1849
He spent the first half of 1844 with Clara on tour in Russia. On
returning to Germany, he abandoned his editorial work and left Leipzig
for Dresden, where he suffered from persistent nervous prostration.
As soon as he began to work, he was seized with fits of shivering and an
apprehension of death, experiencing an abhorrence of high places, all
metal instruments (even keys), and drugs.
Schumanns diaries also state that he suffered perpetually from imagining that
he had the note A5 sounding in his ears.

1840 - 1849

On one occasion, accompanying his wife on a concert tour in Russia,

Schumann was asked whether he too was a musician.

1840 - 1849
His state of unease and neurasthenia is reflected in his Symphony in C,
numbered second, but third in order of composition, in which the composer
explores states of exhaustion, obsession and depression, culminating in
Beethovenian spiritual triumph.
Also published in 1845 was his Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54,
originally conceived and performed as a one-movement Fantasy for Piano
and Orchestra in 1841.

My heart pounds sickeningly and I turn pale...

I often feel as if I were dead... I seem to be losing my mind.
Robert Schumann
(A diary entry after an anxiety attack when he was still 18.)

1840 - 1849

Other works composed

His only opera, Genoveva,

Op. 81, was written in 1848.

The music to Byron's Manfred was written in 1849, the overture of which is one of
Schumann's most frequently performed orchestral works.
Scenes from Goethe's Faust - In August 1849, on the occasion of the centenary of
Goethe's birth, performed in Dresden, Leipzig, Wiemar.

After 1850
From 1850 to 1854, Schumann composed in a wide variety of genres.
Critics have disputed the quality of his work at this time; a widely held view
has been that his music showed signs of mental breakdown and creative
decay. More recently, critics have suggested that the changes in style may
be explained by lucid experimentation.

I feel so entirely in my element

with a full orchestra; even if my
mortal enemies were marshalled
before me, I could lead them,
master them, surround them, or
repulse them.
-Robert Schumann

After 1850
In 1851 he completed his Symphony No. 3, Rhenish
Schumann also published an article, Neue Bahnen (New
Paths) in the Neue Zeitschrift (his first article in many
years), hailing the unknown young Brahms from Hamburg,
a man who had published nothing, as the Chosen One
who was destined to give ideal expression to the times.

After 1850
Schumann returned to Dsseldorf and began to edit his complete works and make an
anthology on the subject of music. He suffered a renewal of the symptoms that had
threatened him earlier.
One night he suddenly left his bed, having dreamt or imagined that a ghost
(purportedly the spirit of either Schubert or Mendelssohn) had dictated a "spirit
theme" to him. The theme was one he had used several times before: in his Second
String Quartet, again in his Lieder-Album fr die Jugend, and finally in the
slow movement of his Violin Concerto.

After 1850

In the days leading up to his suicide attempt,

Schumann wrote five variations on this theme for the
piano, his last published work, today known as
the Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations).
In late February 1854, Schumann's symptoms
increased, the angelic visions sometimes being
replaced by demonic visions. He warned Clara that
he feared he might do her harm.

After 1850

On 27 February 1854, he attempted suicide by throwing

himself from a bridge into the Rhine River.

Rescued by boatmen and taken home, he asked to be taken to

an asylum for the insane.

After 1850

He entered Dr. Franz Richarz's sanatorium in Endenich, a

quarter of Bonn, and remained there until he died on 29
July 1856 at the age of 46. During his confinement, he was
not allowed to see Clara.
She finally visited him two days before his death. He
appeared to recognize her, but was unable to speak.

Without enthusiasm nothing great

can be effected in art.
-Robert Schumann

The building of Richarz'schen private lunatic asylum, now the Robert Schumann House (2009)

You will be most readily cured

of vanity or presumption by studying
the history of music,
and by hearing the master pieces
which have been produced
at different periods.
Robert Schumann

Style
The state of music directly after the death of
Beethoven, Schubert, and Weber was one of sad
stagnation. Dry classicism was the order of the day.*

Style
A large number of Schumanns piano pieces
contains personal and literary allusions and
references.

Eusebius and Florestan

Scenes from Goethe's Faust, oratorio

Eusebius

Florestan

Style
A miniaturist
In the Papillons, Op. 2, Schumann presents a
number of short pieces in a sequence of ideas
without any pretence at unity of form.

Style
The song accompaniments are often almost selfsufficient piano pieces, and the piano pieces often
seem to have been melodically inspired by lyrical
poems.

Style
Musical codes/translating letters of the alphabet
into their corresponding tones
The Abegg Variations

The Carnaval

Style
Chordal with exclusion of commonplace arpeggios.
And a fondness of interlocked chords to give unusual
balances of tone.

Style
Unusual and exciting textures
Especially the figuration between the upper and
lower voices

Style
Rhythmic ingenuity. Syncopation. Sometimes to
the point that the basic meter is endangered.

Schumann Werke

Piano Werke
Papillons Op. 2

The title means 'butterflies' in French. The work is meant

to represent a masked ball and was inspired by the Jean
Paul's novel Flegeljahre.
12 movements, 9 waltzes, 2 polonaise and a finale
Repeated notes near the end of the piece suggest a clock
striking, signifying the end of the ball.

Piano Werke
Carnaval, Op. 9

(Little Scenes on Four Notes)

It consists of 21 short pieces representing masked revelers
at Carnival, a festival before Lent.
The four notes are encoded puzzles, and Schumann
predicted that "deciphering my masked ball will be a real
game for you.
Both Schumann and his wife Clara considered his solo
piano works too difficult for the general public.

Piano Werke
Carnaval, Op. 9

Movements are named thus:

Prambule, Pierrot, Arlequin, Eusebius, Florestan, Coquette,

Replique, Sphinxes, Papillons (unrelated ), Chiarina, Chopin,
Estrella, Reconnaisance, Pantalon et Colombine, Intermezzo:
Paganini, Aveu, Promenade, Pause and the Marche des
"Davidsbndler" contre les Philistins.

Eusebius

Florestan

Chopin

Paganini

Pause

Sphinxes

Piano Werke
Fantasiestcke, Op. 12

The title was inspired by the 1814 collection

of novellas Fantasiestcke in Callots Manier by one of his
favourite authors, E. T. A. Hoffmann.
Schumann composed the pieces with the characters
Florestan and Eusebius in mind, representing the duality
of his personality.
Eusebius depicts the dreamer in Schumann while
Florestan represents his passionate side.

Piano Werke
Fantasiestcke, Op. 12
1. Des Abends In the evening
2. Aufschwung Soaring/Upswing
3. Warum? Why?
4. Grillen Whims
5. In der Nacht In the night
6. Fabel Fable
7. Traumes Wirren Dreams Confusions
8. Ende vom Lied End of the song

Piano Werke
Symphonic Etudes op. 13
The first edition in 1837 carried an annotation that the
tune was "the composition of an amateur": this referred
to the origin of the theme, which had been sent to
Schumann by Baron von Fricken, guardian of Ernestine
von Fricken, the Estrella of his Carnaval Op. 9.

The work was first published in 1837 as XII tudes

Symphoniques. Only nine of the twelve tudes were
specifically designated as variations.

Piano Werke
Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54

The work premiered in Leipzig on 1 January 1846 with Clara

Schumann playing the solo part.
Started as a Fantasie (1839)
The piece, as marked in the score, is in three movements:
Allegro affettuoso (A minor)
Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso (F major)
Allegro vivace (A major)

Piano Werke
Kreisleriana, Op. 16
Subtitled Phantasien fur das Pianoforte
Dedicated to Frederic Chopin in the score, but like most
of his piano music in the late 1830s, it is really about his
love for Clara Wieck.
My favorite work - Patricia
Inspired by Johannes Kreisler (eccentric, wild, and witty
composer), a character in one of E. T. A. Hoffmanns
novels.
Each movement has multiple contrasting sections

Piano Werke
Kreisleriana, Op. 16
Movements:
1.
2.

Ausserst bewegt (Extremely moving)

Sehr innig und nicht zu rasch (Very inwardly and
not to quickly)
3. Sehr aufgereg (Very agitated)
4. Sehr langsam (Very slowly)
5. Sehr lebhaft (Very lively)
6. Sehr langsam (Very slowly)
7. Sehr rasch (Very fast)
8. Schnell und spielend (Fast and playful)

Kreisleriana op. 16 - Andreas Schiff

Piano Werke
Fantasie in C, Op. 17

Dedicated to Franz Liszt

Described as one of the central works of the early Romantic
period. Loose sonata form
Movements
Durchaus fantastisch und leidenschaftlich
vorzutragen; Im Legenden-Ton rhapsodic and passionate
Mig. Durchaus energisch grandiose rondo based
on a majestic march
Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten slow
and meditative

Fantasia in C Op 17 - Evgeny Kissin

Piano Werke
Kinderszenen, Op. 15
Scenes from Childhood
A tribute to the universal memories and feelings of
childhood from a nostalgic adult perspective
Set of 13 pieces
Movements:
Von fremden Lndern und Menschen (Of Foreign Lands
and Peoples)
Kuriose Geschichte (A Curious Story)
Hasche-Mann (Blind Mans Bluff)
Bittendes Kind (Pleading Child)

Piano Werke
Kinderszenen, Op. 15

Glckes genug (Happy Enough)

Wichtige Begebenheit (An Important Event)
Trumerei (Dreaming)
Am Kamin (At the Fireside)
Ritter vom Steckenpferd (Knight of the Hobbyhorse)
Fast zu ernst (Almost Too Serious)
Frchtenmachen (Frightening)
Kind im Einschlummern (Child Falling Asleep)
Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks)

Piano Werke
Album for the Young, Op. 68
Composed for his three daughters
A collection of 43 short works
For beginners and children
A Little Canon, Humming Song, Hunting Song,
Melody, Remembrance, Rustic Song, Sailors Song,
Soldiers March, Spring Song, The Happy Farmer

Piano Werke
Davidsbundlertanze, Op. 6
Dances of the League of David
Group of 18 pieces
The theme is based on a mazurka by Clara Wieck
Schumann told Clara that the dances contained
many wedding thoughts and that the story is an
entire Polterabend (German wedding custom in
which on the night before the wedding, the guests
break porcelain to bring luck to the couples
marriage)

Piano Werke
Davidsbundlertanze, Op. 6
Self-portrait provided by Schumann of his varied
states of mind highlighted by the contrasts
represented by Florestan (passionate, voluble side)
and Eusebius (dreamy, introspective side)
Regarded as one of Schumanns greatest
achievements and one of the greatest piano works
of the Romantic era.

Piano Werke
Lebhaft
Innig
Mit Humor
Ungeduldig
Einfach
Sehr rasch
Nicht schnell
Frisch
Lebhaft

Balladenmig - Sehr
rasch
Einfach
Mit Humor
Wild und lustig
Zart und singend
Frisch
Mit gutem Humor
Wie aus der Ferne
Nicht schnell

Davidsbndlertnze, Op.6 - Adam

Laloum

Other Werke
Fantasy Pieces for Clarinet and
Piano, Op. 73
Clarinet part could be performed by viola or cello
3 Pieces
Zart und mit Ausdruck (Tender and with
expression)
Lebhaft, leicht (Lively, light)
Rasch und mit Feuer (Quick and with fire)

Other Werke
Symphonies
4 complete symphonies, and 1 early incomplete
Symphony, Zwickau (G minor)
Symphony No. 1, Op. 38 Spring (Bb major)
Symphony No. 2, Op. 61 (C major)
Symphony No. 3, Op. 97 Rhenish (Eb major)
Symphony No. 4, Op. 120 (D minor)

Other Werke
Cello Concerto, Op. 129
Movements
Nicht zu schnell (A minor)
Langsam (F major)
Sehr lebhaft (A minor A major)

Other Werke
Dichterliebe, A Poets Love
His best known song cycle
16 songs
Texts come from Heinrich Heines Lyrisches
Intermezzo
The very natural, almost hyper-sensitive poetical
affections of the poems are mirrored in
Schumann's settings, with their miniaturist
chromaticism and suspensions.

Other Werke
Dichterliebe, A Poets Love

Other Werke
Dichterliebe, A Poets Love

Other Werke
Dichterliebe, A Poets Love

Sources

"Robert Schumann". Encyclopdia Britannica. Encyclopdia

Britannica Online.

Encyclopdia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 14 Oct. 2015

<http://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Schumann>.
Hutcheson, Ernest. The Literature of the Piano. London, 1974.
<http://www.schumann-portal.de/startseite.html>

Fin