Robert Schumann, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Robert Schumann

German composer

Date of Birth: 08-Jun-1810

Place of Birth: Zwickau, Saxony, Germany

Date of Death: 29-Jul-1856

Profession: writer, composer, conductor, pianist, musician, music critic, music pedagogy, musicologist, music pedagogue

Nationality: Germany

Zodiac Sign: Gemini


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About Robert Schumann

  • Robert Schumann (German: ['?u?man]; 8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic.
  • He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era.
  • Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist.
  • His teacher, Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist, had assured him that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream.
  • Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing. In 1840, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with Wieck, who opposed the marriage, Schumann married Wieck's daughter Clara.
  • A lifelong partnership in music began, as Clara herself was an established pianist and music prodigy.
  • Clara and Robert also maintained a close relationship with German composer Johannes Brahms. Until 1840, Schumann wrote exclusively for the piano.
  • Later, he composed piano and orchestral works, and many Lieder (songs for voice and piano).
  • He composed four symphonies, one opera, and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works.
  • His best-known works include Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in C.
  • Schumann was known for infusing his music with characters through motifs, as well as references to works of literature.
  • These characters bled into his editorial writing in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication that he co-founded. Schumann suffered from a mental disorder that first manifested in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive episode—which recurred several times alternating with phases of "exaltation" and increasingly also delusional ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic items.
  • What is now thought to have been a combination of bipolar disorder and perhaps 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 mental asylum in Endenich near Bonn.
  • Diagnosed with psychotic melancholia, he died two years later at the age of 46 without recovering from his mental illness.

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