Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann (Zwickau, 8 June 1810 – Bonn, 29 July 1856) was a nineteenth-century German composer, pianist and music critic, regarded as one of the most important and representative composers of musical Romanticism.

Schumann abandoned his law studies with the intention of pursuing a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher Friedrich Wieck had assured him that he could become the best pianist in Europe, but an injury to his hand ended this dream and focused his musical energies on composition. He married Wieck's daughter, Clara, after a long and bitter legal battle with her father. A lifelong musical partnership began, as Clara was an established pianist and musical prodigy. Clara and Robert also maintained a close relationship with the German composer Johannes Brahms.

Until 1840, Schumann composed exclusively for piano. He later wrote for piano and orchestra and many lieder. He composed four symphonies, an opera and other orchestral, choral and chamber works. His best-known works include Carnaval, Estudios sinfónicos, Escenas infantiles, Kreisleriana and Fantasía en do. He was known for filling his music with characters through motifs, as well as references to literary works. These characters emerged in his editorial work at the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, a publication based in Leipzig that he co-founded.

Schumann suffered from a mental illness that first manifested in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive episode, which recurred several times, alternating with phases of 'exaltation' and with increasingly frequent delusions of being poisoned or threatened with metallic objects. What is now believed to have been a combination of bipolar disorder and possibly mercury poisoning led to 'manic' and 'depressive' periods in Schumann's compositional productivity. After a suicide attempt in 1854, Schumann was admitted at his own request to a psychiatric hospital in Endenich, near Bonn. Diagnosed with psychotic melancholia, he died of pneumonia two years later, at the age of 46, without recovering from his mental illness. His life and work reflect the nature of Romanticism in its fullest expression: passion, drama and joy. In his works, of great lyrical intensity, a remarkable musical complexity converges with the intimate union of music and text.