R. SCHUMANN'S MADNESS

R. Schumann's Madness

R. Schumann's Madness

Introduction

Robert Schumann was born in the German town of Zwickau. He began learning to play the piano at age seven. His father was a bookseller, publisher and translator of English poetry, and his interest in literature as a powerful influence on the young Robert, that for a time he wanted to devote himself to writing. The tragedy suffered by the age of 16 when his father died, and his sister took her own life, seriously his mental health in later years struggled with recurring depression.

Discussion

After graduating from high school began to study law, but after two years Robert Schumann abandoned it to concentrate on piano lessons with Friedrich Wieck in Leipzig. Legend says that the decision was made after hearing the recital of Niccolo Paganini, a charismatic virtuoso of the violin. Even at school he discovered the novel by Jean Paul (now almost forgotten) and numerous works of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, which played a key role in the formation of his creative imagination (Sams, 2011). Reading these inspired him include to create fictional characters Florestan and Eusebius, embodying his own dual nature - on the one hand, passionate, explosive, on the other hand - lyrical and reflective.

In 1832 he was forced to abandon the idea of a virtuoso career because of a permanent injury of the fourth finger of the right hand. Two years later, along with his closest friend, Ludwig Schunck (brilliantly promising pianist and composer, who soon died of tuberculosis) began publishing the magazine “The new daily music”, which became a forum to fight for a new romantic the art of music.

At the time, Robert Schumann became friends with Felix Mendelssohn and met Frederic Chopin, whose music is worshiped, so that he expressed in an enthusiastic review contains the famous phrase: “Hats ...