Robert Schumann: biography, interesting facts, work, video

Robert Schumann

The work of the German composer Robert Schumann is inseparable from his personality. The representative of the Leipzig school, Schumann was a vivid spokesman for the ideas of romanticism in musical art. “Mind is mistaken, feeling is never” - such was his creative credo, to which he remained faithful all his short life. Such are his works, filled with deeply personal experiences, sometimes bright and sublime, sometimes gloomy and oppressive, but extremely sincere in each of their notes.

A brief biography of Robert Schumann and many interesting facts about the composer can be found on our page.

Short biography of Schumann

On June 8, 1810, in the small Saxon town of Zwickau, a joyful event occurred - in the family of August Schumann the fifth child was born, the boy, who was named Robert. Parents could not even suspect that this date, like the name of their youngest son, would go down in history and become the property of world music culture. They were absolutely far from music.

The father of the future composer Augustus Schumann was a book publisher and was sure that his son would follow in his footsteps. Having felt a literary talent in a boy, he managed from early childhood to instill in him a love for writing and taught him to deeply and subtly feel the artistic word. Like his father, the boy was read by Jean-Paul and Byron, absorbing from the pages of their writings all the charm of romanticism. He kept his passion for literature for life, but music became his own life.

According to Schumann’s biography at the age of seven, Robert began taking piano lessons. Two years later, an event occurred that predetermined his fate. Schumann attended a concert by the pianist and composer Moscheles. The play of the virtuoso so shocked Robert's young imagination that he could not think of anything else except music. He continues to improve his piano playing and at the same time tries to compose.

After graduating from the gymnasium, the young man, yielding to the desire of his mother, enters the University of Leipzig in law, but his future profession does not carry him away. Study seems to him unbearably boring. Secretly, Schumann continues to dream of music. His next teacher becomes the famous musician Friedrich Wieck. Under his leadership, he improves the technique of the piano game and, eventually, admits to his mother that she wants to be a musician. To break the parental resistance helps Friedrich Wieck, who believes that his ward has a bright future. Schumann is obsessed with becoming a virtuoso pianist and giving concerts. But at 21, the injury of his right hand forever puts an end to his dreams.

Recovering from the shock, he decides to devote his life to composing music. From 1831 to 1838, his inspirational imagination gave rise to the piano cycles "Variations", "Carnival"," Butterflies "," Fantastic Plays ","Children's scenes, Kreisleriana. At the same time, Schumann is actively engaged in journalistic activities. He creates the New Musical Newspaper, in which he stands for the development of a new direction in music that meets the aesthetic principles of romanticism, where feelings, emotions, experiences, as well as the pages of the newspaper are actively supported by young talents.

The year 1840 was marked for the composer by the desired marriage with Clara Wieck. Feeling an unusual uplift, he creates cycles of songs that have immortalized his name. Among them - "Poet's love"," Mirty "," Love and Life of a Woman. "Together with his wife, they tour a lot, including giving concerts in Russia, where they are received very enthusiastically. Moscow and especially the Kremlin made a great impression on Schumann. This trip was one of the last happy moments in the composer's life. A collision with a reality filled with constant worries about their daily bread brought the first bouts of depression. In his desire to provide for his family, he moved first to Dresden, then to Dusseldorf, where he was offered the post of musical directors. But it quickly turns out that a talented composer hardly copes with the duties of a conductor. Experiences about his failure in this capacity, the material difficulties of the family, in which he considers himself guilty, become the causes of a sharp deterioration in his mental state. that the rapidly developing mental illness almost brought the composer to suicide.Raving from visions and hallucinations, he half-dressed jumped out of the house and rushed into the waters of the Rhine. He was rescued, but after this incident he had to be placed in a psychiatric hospital, from where he no longer came. He was only 46 years old.

Interesting Facts About Robert Schumann

• Schumann's name is an international competition of performers of academic music, which is called Internationaler Robert-Schumann-Wettbewerb. It was first held in 1956 in Berlin.
• There is a Robert Schumann Music Prize established by the Zwickau City Hall. Prize winners are honored, according to tradition, on the composer's birthday - June 8th. Among them are musicians, conductors and musicologists who have made a significant contribution to the popularization of the composer’s works.
• Schumann can be considered the "godfather" of Johannes Brahms. Being the editor-in-chief of the New Musical Gazette and a respected music critic, he was very complimentary about the talent of young Brahms, calling him a genius. Thus, he first drew the attention of the general public to the budding composer.
• Adherents of music therapy recommend listening to Schumann's "Dreams" for a restful sleep.

• In adolescence, Schumann, under the guidance of his father, worked as a proofreader to create a dictionary from Latin.
• In honor of the 200th anniversary of Schumann in Germany was issued a silver coin of 10 euros with a portrait of the composer. The phrase from the composer’s diary is engraved on the coin: “Sounds are lofty words”.

• Schumann left not only a rich musical heritage, but also a literary one - mostly an autobiographical plan. Throughout his life, he kept diaries - "Studententagebuch" (Student Diaries), "Lebensbucher" (Books of Life), there is also "Eheta-gebiicher" (Marriage Diaries) and "Reiseta-gebucher" (Travel Diaries). In addition, he wrote the literary notes "Brautbuch" (Diary for the Bride), "Erinnerungsbtichelte fiir unsere Kinder" (Book of Memories for our children), Lebensskizze (Essay on Life), 1840, "Musikalischer Lebenslauf -Materialien-alteste mushylen-1875," Musikalischer "(Musical life - materials - early musical memories)," Book of projects ", which describes the process of writing your own musical works, as well as his children's poems.
• To the 150th anniversary of the German romance in the USSR, they issued a postage stamp.
• On the wedding day, Schumann presented his bride, Clara Vic, with the cycle of romantic songs "Mirthas", which he wrote in her honor. Clara did not remain in debt and decorated the wedding dress with a myrtle wreath.

• The wife of Schumann, Clara all her life, tried to promote her husband's work, including in his concerts his works. She gave her last concert at the age of 72.
• The younger son of the composer was named Felix - in honor of the friend and colleague of Schumann Felix Mendelssohn.
• The romantic love story of Clara and Robert Schumann was filmed. In 1947, the American film "The Song of Love" was shot (Song of Love), where Katherine played Katherine Hepburn.

The personal life of Robert Schumann

The brilliant pianist Klara Wieck became the main woman in the life of the German composer. Clara was the daughter of one of the best music educators of his time, Friedrich Wieck, from whom Schumann took piano lessons. When the 18-year-old boy first heard Clara's inspirational play, she was only 8 years old. A talented girl had a brilliant career. First of all, her father dreamed about it. That is why Friedrich Wieck, who provided full support for Schumann in his desire to connect his life with music, turned from the patron of a young composer to his evil genius when he learned about the feelings of his daughter and his student. He was sharply opposed to Clara’s union with a poor obscure musician. But in this case, the young people showed all the strength of their spirit and strength of character, proving to everyone that their mutual love was able to withstand any ordeal. To be with her chosen one, Clara decided to break with her father. Biography Schumann says that in 1840, young people were married.

Despite the deep feelings that bound the spouses, their family life was not unclouded. Clara combined the concert activity with the role of his wife and mother, she gave birth to eight children of Schumann. The composer suffered and suffered from the fact that he could not provide his family with a decent comfortable existence, but Klara remained his faithful companion all his life, trying to support her husband in every possible way. She survived Schumann by as much as 40 years. She was buried next to her husband.

Mysteries of Schumann

• Schumann was prone to hoaxes. So, he came up with two characters - the ardent Florestan and the melancholic Eusebius, and he signed their articles in the "New Musical Gazette". Articles were written in a completely different manner, and the public was unaware that behind the two pseudonyms is the same person. But the composer went even further. He announced that there was a kind of David Brotherhood ("Davidsbund") - an alliance of like-minded people who are ready to fight for advanced art. Subsequently, he admitted that "Davidsbund" is a figment of his imagination.
• There are many versions explaining why the composer in his youth developed hand paralysis. One of the most common is that Schumann, in his desire to become a virtuoso pianist, invented a special simulator for stretching the hand and developing the flexibility of fingers, but in the end was injured, which then led to paralysis. However, the wife of Schumann Clara Vick always denied this rumor.
• The chain of mystical events associated with a single violin concerto by Schumann. Once, during a seance session, two sisters, violinists, received a request that, if they were to believe, came from the spirit of Schumann, to find and perform his violin concerto, the manuscript of which is kept in Berlin. And so it happened: a concert score was found in the Berlin library.

• The cello concert of the German composer raises no less questions. Shortly before the suicide attempt, the maestro worked on this score. A manuscript with corrections remained on the table, but due to illness he never returned to this work. The concert was first performed after the composer's death in 1860. The music clearly senses emotional instability, but most importantly, its score is so complex for the cellist that you might think that the composer completely ignored the specifics and possibilities of this instrument. Literally until recently, cellists did the job as best they could. Shostakovich even made his orchestration of this concert. And only recently archival materials were discovered, from which it can be concluded that the concert was intended not for a cello, but for ... a violin. It is difficult to say how true this fact is, but, according to music experts, if the same music in the original is performed on the violin, the difficulties and inconveniences that the performers have been complaining about for almost a century and a half disappear by themselves.

Music Schumann in film

The figurative expressiveness of Schumann’s music ensured her popularity in the world of cinema. Very often the works of the German composer, in whose work the theme of childhood occupies a large place, are used as musical accompaniment in paintings telling about children and teenagers. But the gloom, drama, quaintness of the images inherent in a number of his works, could not be more or less organically woven into paintings with a mystical or fantastic plot.

Schumann had a trait that many contemporaries noted - he came to admiration when he saw talent in front of him. At the same time, he himself did not experience noisy glory and recognition during his lifetime. Today it was our turn to pay tribute to the composer and to the man who gave the world not only unusually emotional music, but himself in it. Not having received a fundamental music education, he created real masterpieces that only a mature master could. In a literal sense, he put his whole life to music, without lying about it with a single note.