The Highly Imaginative And Emotional Music Of Robert Schumann
The great German composer Robert Schumann was born 200 years ago this year and died in tragic circumstances in 1856 . He is one of the most important composers of the 19th century , and is the very embodiment of German romanticism .
He was born in Zwickau , Saxony , in what used to be called East Germany before reunification , the son of a bookseller and publisher , which explains his great interest in literature as well as music and explains its infuence on his compositions. Schumann hoped to become a great pianist and studied with the noted piano pedagogue Friedrich Wieck, whose daughter Clara he married .
But his ambitions to become a pianist were thwarted by a finger injury caused by a mechanical device which he used in an attempt to strengthen his keyboard technique , and he then concentrated on composing . His wife Clara was one of the most famous pianists of the 19th century and was an ardent champion of her husband's piano works . She survived him for 40 years and the couple had no fewer than eight children . She even composed music on her own , some of which has been recorded .
Schumann's later years were clouded by mental illness which may have been caused by syphillis , and he had to be confined to a mental institution toward the end . His mental instability caused him to attempt suicide by jumping into the Rhine at one time . But prior to his tragic later years , he poured out a substantial number of beatifully melodious and highly imaginitive works in many forms ; piano pieces , songs , four symphonies , a concerto for piano written for his wife , oratorios , assorted works for chamber ensembles and even one opera which has occaisionally been revived over the years .
Some of his most important piano works are Kinderszenen(scenes from childhood), Kreisleriana , inspired by the German poet and musician E.T.A. Hoffmann , Carneval, a depiction of the Carneval season , Papillons(French for butterflies), and the Fantasia in C . All have extra-musical associations based on literature .
There are many beautiful songs for voice and piano with poetry by such great German poets as Goethe and Joseph Eichendorff , including the song cycles Dichterliebe (poet's love) and Frauenliebe Und Leben (woman's love and life ), which is about a young woman who gets married , bears a child and is eventually widowed , and assorted other songs , including the famous "Two Grenadiers", about two soldiers returning from the Napoleonic wars and find their homeland devastated .
The famous piano concerto has been in the repertoire of almost every great pianist for over 150 years , and there are two other concertos, one for violin and one for cello . The first of Schumann's four symphonies is known as the "Spring Symphony " , and was inspired by a poem about that season, and the third is known as the "Rhenish", having been inspired by his time living in Cologne in the Rhineland . The slow movement is supposed to represent a solemn ceremony at Cologne's famous cathedral , which dates from medieval times .
Although his music is strongly influenced by great composers who proceeded him such as Bach and Beethoven , Schumann brought a new kind as fantasy and emotionalism into music and broke from the tendency of past composers to keep music purely abstract and reliant on pre-existing formal tendencies .
There is a highly personal, subjective and quirky quality in Schumann's music which you should find highly appealing . Many great pianists , singers, conductors and other musicians have recorded Schumann's music , including pianists Vladimir Horowitz, Wilhelm Kempff , Marthat Argerich , Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu for example to name only a handful , and the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau ,now retired , and ther great singers such as Christa Ludwig and Lotte Lehmann have made superlative recordings of the songs .
Great conductors who have recorded the symphonies include Wilhelm Furtwangler, George Szell, Leonard Bernstein , Daniel Barenboim , Rafael Kubelik , James Levine , to name only some. A good place to look for these and other Schumann recordings is arkivmusic.com.