HIS FATHER was a bookseller and publisher and the young Robert Schumann, born 200 years ago today, in Zwickau, Saxony, discovered a passion for literature while still a boy. His music would come to epitomise German Romanticism, and it was he, as the editor of the music magazine he founded Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, who promoted the music of other young Romantic composers including Chopin, just three months his senior, and Johannes Brahms – who was passionately and unrequitedly in love with Schumann's pianist virtuoso wife, Clara. His song cycles include some of the most tender musical declarations to love ever written, while Schumann's life was dominated his ongoing fear of madness.
In his life, he was more respected as a critic; his music was less widely known. The drama of his relationship with Clara, which included the rage of her father, Friedrich Wieck, a famous piano teacher who had carefully nurtured his daughter for a career as a concert performer, invariably features in any appreciation of Schumann. Aside from having piano lessons from the local church organist, he had no musical education until he was 18 and had arrived, as an unhappy law student, at Wieck’s door.
Grief was always in pursuit of Schumann, a sensitive, at times volatile character. His sister, an invalid, killed herself when she was 19, while Schumann’s father, who also wrote novels, died in the same year, 1826, at the age of 53, from what was described as a “nervous disorder”. His widowed mother decided her boy should be a lawyer. Reluctantly he set off for Leipzig University where he half-heartedly studied, missing most of his lectures in order to dabble in writing and piano playing.
Hearing Schubert lieder inspired him to try composing songs. It was then that he began his lessons with Herr Wieck.
Meanwhile, Schumann who moved between good humour and vicious candour, succeeded in convincing his mother to let him spend a year in Heidelberg, socialising instead of studying. He developed a liking for the artistic life. On return to Leipzig he resumed his lessons with Wieck who had conceded to the youth’s mother that three years of intense application would make a pianist out of him. The problem was Schumann’s mental attitude, which never impressed Wieck. A six-month trial period was suggested but the music teacher was far more committed to his daughter, Clara, then 11, and preparing for a major concert tour.
Father and daughter set off to conquer Europe, leaving Schumann to write, compose, indulge his lively imagination and interest in women. His piano lessons were supervised by the conductor Heinrich Dorn, who briefly taught him. By the spring of 1832, Schumann, then approaching 22, was financially independent, having inherited his share of his father’s fortune. He also realised that he would never become a great performer. In attempting to strengthen his weak fourth finger through the use of a sling-type device which he had devised, he strained his entire right hand. The damage was permanent. There is also the possibility that the weakness was partly due to his having contracted mercury poisoning in the course of being treated for syphilis.
Schumann seemed able to manage, and turned his attention to composing for the piano. He also attempted a symphony, the first movement of which was performed in 1832 in his home town of Zwickau. The following spring, a revised version of the same piece was performed during one of Clara’s concerts. More death stalked the family, his brother died, as did another brother’s wife. “I was obsessed by the thought that I might go mad,” confided Schumann to his diary.
Involved with the magazine, he had remained in contact with the Wieck household, particularly as it was a centre of sorts for musicians and also composers visiting Leipzig. It is easy to forget how major a musical figure young Clara the prodigy was before she became the wife of a genius. Before all that happened, however, Schumann had become engaged. That relationship collapsed as Schumann became more romantically drawn to Clara, then 16. Herr Wieck was horrified and ordered the composer to stay away or he would shoot. Clara was distressed, torn as she was between her father and a man, nine years her senior, who she had barely kissed.
It is the stuff of an opera – ultimately a tragedy. Schumann begged Wieck to relent. It went to court, where Wieck, who had mounted such a vicious campaign against the young man that the only accusation the judge took seriously was one of heavy drinking which Wieck was unable to prove.
The day before her 21st birthday Clara and Schumann married, after a four year battle with her father. The marriage began well; both were happy and Schumann concentrated on his wonderful song cycles; he wrote close to 150 songs in 1840. Initially Clara proved an inspiration, and he wrote his finest chamber music, including his piano quartet and quintet.
Clara’s career as a concert pianist continued, but there were complications. She had her first child and a further seven. As she attempted to balance the role of mother and artist, another problem emerged. Schumann insisted on silence and announced that the sound of her practising was a distraction.
It would be a shame if on this day of days, his 200th anniversary that Schumann is presented as a peevish husband, jealous of his wife. Clara’s life was difficult; the early joy was killed by Schumann’s mental illness. History is hugely and deservedly sympathetic to the remarkable Clara who never lost her belief in her husband. Her concert work financed the family, particularly as he spent increasingly longer spells in hospital. In 1845 he completed his Piano Concerto. But there more problems, his hearing was failing, and he was in the full grip of manic depression. He never impressed as a conductor.
By 1854 he had attempted suicide. Nightmares and hallucinations plagued him. There was now no denying his symptoms; he was in the final stages of tertiary syphilis.
During his final years he rarely saw Clara; when she was allowed to visit, he often did not know here. Throughout the horror, Brahms remained loyal. It is a grim human story. Robert Schumann died in a private asylum near Bonn, on July 29th, 1856. He was 46 years old. Clara, who had been married to him for 14 years, continued performing and teaching, and would spend far more of her life as his widow.
The Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood)and the Dichterliebe, in which the piano and voice share the honours, are magnificent, yet how better to honour a Romantic who believed in the cohesion of music, literature, art and philosophy than to salute him by listening to his Beethoven-like Fantasia in C, completed in 1838. Schumann wrote the words of Schiller on the score: "Through all sounds in the coloured earthly dream resounds a quiet sound drawn for him who secretly listens".