Robert Schumann

“ Robert Schumann, the loving critic, admirer, and disciple of Schubert in the province of song, was in most respects a man of far different type. The son of a man of wealth and position, his mind and tastes were cultivated from early youth with the utmost care. Schumann is known in Germany no less as a philosophical thinker and critic than as a composer. ”

“ I verily believe that to-day, next to the divine Clara herself, she is the best interpreter of Robert Schumann's works living; and if the love she has obtained for him is not as universal, it is just as fervent. Many silent and holy hours have I sat communing, through her, with him whom the Germans love to call their Tone-Poet; and the music remained to clothe with the full vesture of romance the meagre paragraphs of the journals which hinted his love, his sorrow, and at length his insanity and death. ”

“ That, indeed, is the sum total of his outward appearance: as for the inward man, it is not to be known save through his writings. Literature and music are the only means of expression, of communication with others, which are possessed by this modest, pensive, reserved maestro, upon whom the sounding titles of Doctor and Professor sit so strangely.
In the unparalleled fervour and romance of his compositions,—in the passionate heart-opening of his letters,—in the sane, wholesome, racy colloquialism of his critiques,—the real Robert Schumann is unfolded. ”

“ Robert Schumann was born at Zwickau, in Saxony, June 8, 1810. In his earliest youth he was recognized as a child of genius. His first teacher in music was Baccalaureus Kuntzch, who gave him piano instruction. He studied the piano with Wieck, whose daughter Clara he subsequently married, now world-famous as a pianist. In 1830, in which year his artistic career really opened, he began the theoretical study of music, first with Director Kupsch in Leipsic and later with Heinrich Dorn, and at the same time entered upon the work of composition. ”

“ Robert Schumann had been before the public as essayist, poet, pianist and composer for twenty years. He had given himself without stint to almost every musical enterprise of Germany, and his sympathy was ever on tap for every needy and aspiring genius. You may give346 your purse—he who takes it takes trash—but to give your life's blood and then hope for a renewal of life's lease, is vain.
The public man owes to himself and to his Maker the duty of reserve. ”

“ Quickly the straight ranks moved across the playground. Back and forth they marched, every one in step. When the drill was over, the little general dismissed his troops. Day after day the boy soldiers drilled on the playground. Each day they chose a color bearer, but the commander was always the same. Among all the boys, no other made so good a general as Robert Schumann. Although his manner was gentle, the lads knew that his orders must be obeyed.
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Robert Schumann was born in a quaint little Saxon town in Germany. ”

“ Clara Schumann lived forty years after Robert Schumann died. She was the teacher of many students, some of whom traveled from America to study with her. She, too, was a composer and a concert pianist who played in public from the time she was ten years of age. ”

“ It is, in short, necessary to deal with Schumann as a whole,—as a man who has fulfilled the triple destiny for which Nature intended him,—as individual, husband, and father,—before one can even approximately understand this silent, studious dreamer, whose one ideal of happiness is to sit at home and compose. ”

“ How is one to reconcile "the want of manliness, moral and intellectual," which Hadow asserts is "the one great limitation of Chopin's province," with the power, splendor and courage of the Polonaises? Here are the cannon buried in flowers of Robert Schumann, here overwhelming evidences of versatility, virility and passion. Chopin blinded his critics and admirers alike; a delicate, puny fellow, he could play the piano on occasion like a devil incarnate. ”

“ What should concern us now is the courtship of Clara by Robert which, though it ended happily, was actually a long martyrdom for both and in the best traditions of romantic melodrama. To be sure it left a deep imprint on Schumann’s creative fancy and for this, if for no other reason, the soul struggle was a cloud lined with shining silver. Almost all the piano works of the composer’s early period—in some ways the most yeasty and influential music he gave the world—are in one way or another the fruits of his love. ”

“ About the same time appeared a very considerate German account in Robert Schumann’s musical paper. “In Paris they did not have much faith in the young artist’s talent for composing or originating ideas, but on the other hand credited him with divining the thoughts of the great masters by his perceptions and study. So far as his playing was concerned, they could only use the expression, ‘marvelous.’ He plays with unrivaled facility and purity, elegantly, tenderly and with fire. He carries the listener along with him and often makes him fear that he will not hold out. ”

“ He once said with reference to the Requiem, 'It is a thing that one writes for oneself.' But the abundant treasure of individual, pure, and profound art which he has bequeathed to us in his other works is a more lasting monument to his name, stupendous and imperishable.
Among the published works that treat of Schumann's life and labours, that by Wasielewski deserves the first mention ('Robert Schumann, eine Biographie von Josef W. von Wasielewski'; Dresden, R. Kunze, 1858; ed. 3, Bonn, E. Strauss, 1880) . ”

“ We have elsewhere spoken of the growth and culmination of Robert Schumann's sad malady. The more serious phases of this affliction were preceded by an occasional absence of mind that sometimes produced ludicrous results. ”

“ But the elaborate dreamings and light-hearted pleasures of Heidelberg could not go on forever. On July 30, 1830, Robert took the bull by the horns and confided to his mother that music, not law, was for weal or woe to be his destiny. Wieck was invited to settle the question. That awesome pedagogue wrote to the widow Schumann a long and circumstantial letter, larded with many an “if” and “but”. Having considered the problem from every angle he urged the good woman to yield to her son’s wish. Robert, so Wieck assured her, could under his training become one of the foremost pianists of the time. ”

“ But in the volumes and volumes of musicians' letters, which it has been my fortune to read, I have never found any others which were so ardent and yet so earnest, so throbbing with longing and yet so full of honesty, so eloquent and so dramatic with the very highest forms of eloquence and romance as those of Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck.
The woes of the two lovers were as different as possible, though equally balanced; and the honourableness of their undertaking was equally high. ”

“ He patted the lad's knee with gentle, friendly encouragement. "Do you think they know up there" he queried, "that a little boy has been playing down here with Mendelssohn?"—This question was the very essence of Schumann,—romantic, mystical, full of tender dreams.
His composition-lessons over, he conducts a part-singing class. Orchestral conducting is abhorrent to him; it is "too defiant and conspicuous a task." He cannot make his meaning clear by word of mouth: and in gesture he is singularly deficient. ”

“ When Robert discovered Vienna was not the city to prosper in, he thought of a return to Leipsic, to win his bride. He came back in April, and succeeded, with the help of legal proceedings, in securing Clara's hand in marriage. This was in 1840. From now on Schumann began to write songs. In this one year he composed as many as a hundred and thirty-eight songs, both large and small. He writes at this time: "The best way to cultivate a taste for melody, is to write a great deal for the voice and for independent chorus."
He now began to express himself not only in song but in orchestral music. ”

“ Imaginary apostles of the biblical David, the giant killer, they were sworn to smite the Philistines of music, defend and uphold novel, adventurous and worthy trends, publicize or advance indubitable merit and, each after his own fashion, promote the vital and the soundly revolutionary. Schumann enhanced the play-acting spirit of the movement by investing various members of the fraternity with fanciful names. He himself, in true Jean Paul spirit, gave distinctive labels to the opposing aspects of his own creative soul. ”

“ One person who was more pleased than grieved by the mischance was Mother Schumann, who harbored an insurmountable dread of the “breadless profession” for her idolized boy. Never did she tire of describing its miseries, the better to scare him off. Why not adopt a lucrative profession? The law, for instance. And so, for the time being, Robert remained in Zwickau, obtaining, as he used 10 to say later, “an ordinary high school training, studying music on the side and out of the fulness of his devotion”—but alone! In the broadest sense he was to grow up like his father—self-taught. ”

“ His unscrupulous treatment of Schumann and his own daughter has made him the object of much historical obloquy, in the main abundantly justified. Yet he was a good teacher, for all his irascible, disputatious ways and his devotion to the artistic causes he believed in could be very genuine. From the first he appreciated Schumann’s creative talent and never concealed the fact, outrageously as he came to demean himself to the composer and Clara alike. Clara was, of course, her father’s most famous pupil. Yet he had others, notably his daughter by his second marriage, Marie, and Hans von Bülow. ”

“ Pictures in Music.
When Robert Schumann was a boy he used to amuse his friends by playing their pictures on the piano. He could make the music imitate the person.
One day he said to them: This is the way the farmer walks when he comes home singing from his work.
THE HAPPY FARMER. Listen
Some day you will be able to play a lot of pieces by Schumann that picture the pleasantest things so clearly that you can see them very plainly indeed. In one of his books there is a music picture of a boy riding a rocking horse. ”

“ The principal ingredient, however, is an apparently judicious caution in presence of that which one happens to be incapable of, together with detraction of that which one would like to accomplish one's self. It is sad, above all things, to find a man so powerful and capable as Robert Schumann concerned in this confusion, and in the end to see his name inscribed on the banner of the new fraternity. The misfortune was that Schumann in his later days attempted certain tasks for which he was not qualified. ”

“ He afterwards gave up the whole idea, and dedicated the work to Franz Liszt.
Schumann lived a quiet, busy life, and if he could have gained the consent of Clara's father for their union, he would have been supremely happy. He feared the principal reason of Wieck's refusal was that the young man should earn more money first, before thinking of settling down with a wife. Robert therefore reverted more seriously to a plan he had thought of, to go to Vienna, and move his paper to that city, hoping to better his fortunes. ”

“ My whole life is one joyous activity."
The annals of art, indeed, hold no more lovely record of a union between natural affinities. That of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning perhaps approximates most closely to that of Robert and Clara Schumann. But whereas in the former case both husband and wife were alike engaged upon the same branch of literature,—poetry,—and a certain sense of sadness was apt to embitter the success of the wife, because of the unpopularity (in those days) of the husband,—Schumann is solely and pre-eminently a composer, and Clara solely and absorbingly a pianist. ”

“ Frau Schumann wished Robert to study law, and sent him to the University at Leipzig for that purpose and later to Heidelberg. He was not the least interested in his legal studies, but loved to play the piano, and write letters, and dream of literature, to idolise Jean Paul Richter and to indulge a most commendable passion for good cigars. He was not dilatory at love, and went through a varied apprenticeship before his heart seemed ready for the fierce test it was put to in his grand passion. ”

“ Despite the machinations of Wieck Clara, back in Germany, found a means of making her feelings known to Robert. A devoted friend, Ernst Adolf Becker, suggested that she perform at a Leipzig concert one of Robert’s works. She chose the “Symphonic Studies” (the theme of which the composer had obtained from the Baron von Fricken, the adoptive father of Ernestine) . Wieck approved. Tyrant as he was he still kept a soft spot in his heart for Schumann’s music. The composer came to the hall, sat inconspicuously at the rear, listened and—knew! ”

“ I am going to return quickly, and would rather wait for Frau Schumann in Düsseldorf than wander about in the dark. When one has found such divine people as Robert and Clara Schumann, one should stick to them and not leave them, but raise and inspire one's self by them. The dear Schumann continues to improve, as you have read in my letter to my parents. There has been a great deal of gossip about his condition. I consider the best description of him is to be found in some of the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann (Rath Krespel, Serapion, and especially the splendid Kreisler, etc.) ”