Robert Schumann: life of a novel at CaixaForum
Robert Schumann's life brings us closer to the purest essence of romantic expression: passion, repression, enjoyment, madness and drama. In four chapters, we will get to know “Schumann the composer” and “Schumann the man” through his writings and his music.
By Eva Sandoval, musicologist and reporter for Radio Clásica (RNE).
17.02 - Abandonment of the concert career
Schumann showed an early interest in literature and music. At the age of seven he began taking piano lessons and, in his youth, he composed some works, but his mother decided that he should study law.
In 1830, Robert abandoned his law studies to become what he most wanted: a great piano virtuoso. This excessive ambition led him to invent a device to strengthen the ring finger of his right hand, but the device caused him an irreparable injury that would end his dreams of becoming a concert pianist.
24.02 - Estimating Clara Wieck
The relationship between Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann is one of the most famous romances in the world of music. The composer met his future wife at the home of his teacher, Friedrich Wieck, Clara's father.
She was eleven and he was twenty, but the age difference was no obstacle to the development of a passionate love between them. Despite fierce paternal opposition, which ended in court, they married in 1840 and had eight children. Through their correspondence and the joint diary they kept, we can learn all the details of this union, which was vital to the musical careers of both.
03.03 - The meeting with Johannes Brahms
“I believed that one day someone would appear who would make the highest expression of tempo pale, someone who would have achieved perfection not through gradual development, but suddenly [...]. S'anomena Johannes Brahms. ”
In 1853 Schumann published this praise of Brahms in the article “New Paths” in the magazine Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The meeting between Robert and an unknown nineteen-year-old Johannes marked the last years of our composer, as well as the life of Clara Wieck and her children forever.
10.03 - Endenich: Music of Angels and Demons
It was no secret that Schumann's mental health had begun to fail in his teens. From 1852, at the age of 42, episodes of madness became increasingly frequent, to the point that he attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Rhine.
Visions of angels and demons and musical hallucinations were constant at that time, but he did not stop composing. He was admitted to a private sanatorium in Endenich, where he remained until his death in 1856. We will analyze the theories about his personality in those turbulent times.
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