Robert Schumann: biography, interesting facts, creativity, video. Schumann "Warum?" ("From what?")

From the age of 13 he performed as a pianist. From 1828 he studied law at the Universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg and at the same time improved his piano playing skills under the famous teacher F. Wieck. He studied music theory under the guidance of the composer and conductor G. Dorn (1831-32). He came up with a mechanical device for accelerated finger training, but damaged his right hand, destroying it. dream of becoming a virtuoso pianist. In 1834 he founded the New Musical Journal (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Leipzig; he was an author and editor until 1844), a progressive organ in German music. Schumann called the circle of like-minded friends who united around the magazine "Davidsbund" (after the name of the biblical song-singer king who defeated the Philistines). In 1840 he married the pianist Clara Wieck (daughter and student of F. Wieck). From 1843, Schumann taught for some time at the Leipzig Conservatory (piano classes, composition and reading scores). Together with his wife, he made a number of concert trips (including to Russia, 1844). From 1844 he lived in Dresden, from 1850 - in Düsseldorf, where, along with composing, he led choirs and conducted a symphony orchestra. Since the end of the 40s. Schumann's mental illness gradually worsened, he spent the last two years of his life in a hospital (Endenich), where he died.

Schumann is one of prominent representatives romantic art of the 19th century. Much akin to the poetry of H. Heine, Schumann's work challenged the spiritual poverty of Germany in the 1820s - 40s, called to the world of high humanity. The heir of F. Schubert and K. M. Weber, Schumann developed the democratic and realistic tendencies of German and Austrian musical romanticism. His works are closely connected with the traditions of German classical music. At the same time, Schumann entered the history of music as one of the most daring innovators. Expanding the boundaries and means of the musical language, he sought to convey with completeness and accuracy, on the one hand, the processes of spiritual life, on the other hand, life "outside" - the connections and contrasts of phenomena that form the "drama" of life. Hence, in particular, his desire to closely bring music closer to literature and poetry.

Most of Schumann's piano works are cycles of small pieces of lyrical-dramatic, pictorial and "portrait" genres, internally interconnected and forming a plot-psychological line. One of the most typical cycles is "Carnival" (1835), in which skits, dances, masks, female images (among them Chiarina - Clara Wieck) pass in a motley sequence, musical portraits Paganini, Chopin. The cycles Butterflies (1831, inspired by the works of Jean Paul) and Davidsbündlers (1837) are close to Carnival. The cycle of plays "Kreisleriana" (1838, named after the literary hero of E. T. A. Hoffmann - the musician-dreamer Johannes Kreisler) is among the highest achievements of Schumann. The world of romantic images, passionate melancholy, heroic impulse are reflected in such works for piano by Schumann as "Symphonic etudes" ("Studies in the form of variations", 1834), sonatas (1835, 1835-38, 1836), Fantasia (1836-38) , concerto for piano and orchestra (1841-45). Along with works of variation and sonata types, Schumann has piano cycles built on the principle of a suite or an album of pieces: Fantastic Fragments (1837), Children's Scenes (1838), Album for Youth (1848) and others.

IN vocal creativity Schumann developed the type lyric song Schubert. In a finely designed drawing of songs, Schumann captured the details of moods, the poetic details of the text, the intonations of lively speech. The role of piano accompaniment, which gives a rich outline of the image and often completes the content of the songs, has significantly increased in Schumann. The most popular of the vocal cycles is “The Poet's Love” to the verses of G. Heine (1840), consisting of 16 songs, including “If the Flowers Guessed”, “Do I Hear Songs Sounds”, “I Meet You in the Garden in the Morning”, “ I'm not angry", "In a dream I cried bitterly", "You are evil, evil songs." Another plot vocal cycle is "Love and Life of a Woman" to the verses by A. Chamisso (1840). Diverse in content, the songs are included in the cycles "Myrtle" to the verses of F. Rückert, J. W. Goethe, R. Burns, G. Heine, J. Byron (1840), "Circle of Songs" to the verses of J. Eichendorff (1840). In vocal ballads and song-scenes, Schumann touched upon a very wide circle plots. A striking example of Schumann's civil lyrics is the ballad "Two Grenadiers" (to the verses of G. Heine). Some of Schumann's songs are simple scenes or everyday portrait sketches: their music is close to German folk song(“Folk Song” to the verses of F. Ruckert, etc.).

In the oratorio "Paradise and Peri" (1843, based on the plot of one of the parts of the "oriental novel" "Lalla Rook" by T. Moore), as well as in "Scenes from Faust" (1844-53, according to J. W. Goethe), Schumann came close to realizing his lifelong dream of creating an opera. Schumann's only completed opera, Genoveva (1848), based on a medieval legend, did not win recognition on stage. creative luck was Schumann's music for the dramatic poem "Manfred" by J. Byron (overture and 15 musical numbers, 1849). In the composer's 4 symphonies (the so-called "Spring", 1841; 2nd, 1845-46; the so-called "Rhine", 1850; 4th, 1841-51), bright, cheerful moods dominate. The predominant place is occupied in them by episodes of a song, dance, lyrical-pictorial nature.

Schumann - Author 3 string quartets(1842), 3 piano trios (2 - 1847, 1851), a piano quartet (1842) and the widely popular piano quintet (1842), as well as solo chamber works for string and wind instruments, works for the choir.

Schumann made a great contribution to music criticism. Promoting on the pages of his magazine the work of classical musicians, fighting against the anti-artistic phenomena of our time, he supported the new European romantic school. Schumann scourged virtuoso panache, indifference to art, hiding under the guise of good intentions and false scholarship. The main fictional characters, on whose behalf Schumann spoke on the pages of the press, are the ardent, fiercely daring and ironic Florestan and the gentle dreamer Eusebius. Both of them personified the character traits of the composer himself.

Schumann's ideals were close to the leading musicians of the 19th century. He was highly valued by F. Mendelssohn, G. Berlioz, F. Liszt. In Russia, Schumann's work was promoted by A. G. Rubinshtein, P. I. Tchaikovsky, G. A. Laroche, and the leaders of the Mighty Handful.

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Schumann's work is one of the pinnacles of the world musical Art XIX century. The advanced aesthetic trends of German culture of the period of the 20-40s found a vivid expression in his music. The contradictions inherent in Schumann's creativity reflected complex contradictions public life his time. Schumann's art is imbued with that restless, rebellious spirit that makes him related to Byron, Heine, Hugo, Berlioz, Wagner and many other outstanding artists of the first half of the century.

In 1830, the spiritual discord of the composer, forced to practice law, led to the fact that Schumann left Heidelberg and its academic environment and returned to Leipzig to Wieck to devote himself entirely and forever to music.

The years spent in Leipzig (from the end of 1830 to 1844) are the most fruitful in Schumann's work. He seriously injured his hand, and this deprived him of hope for a career as a virtuoso performer. Then he turned all his outstanding talent, energy and propagandistic temperament to composition and music-critical activity.

The rapid flowering of his creative powers is amazing. The bold, original, finished style of his first works seems almost implausible. "Butterflies" (1829-1831), variations "Abegg" (1830), "Symphonic Studies" (1834), "Carnival" (1834-1835), "Fantasy" (1836), "Fantastic Pieces" (1837), " Kreislerian" (1838) and many other works for piano of the 30s opened a new page in the history of musical art.

This early period also accounts for almost all of Schumann's remarkable publicistic activity.

In 1834, with the participation of a number of his friends (L. Schunke, J. Knorr, F. Wieck), Schumann founded the New Musical Journal. This was the practical realization of Schumann's dream of a union of progressive artists, which he called the "David Brotherhood" ("Davidsbund"). The main purpose of the magazine was, as Schumann himself wrote, "to raise the fallen value of art." Emphasizing the ideological and progressive nature of his publication, Schumann provided it with the motto "Youth and Movement". And as an epigraph to the first issue, he chose a phrase from Shakespeare's work: "... Only those who came to watch a cheerful farce will be deceived."

In the "Thalberg era" (Schumann's expression), when empty virtuoso plays thundered from the stage and the art of entertainment filled the concert and theater halls, Schumann's magazine as a whole, and his articles in particular, made a stunning impression. These articles are remarkable, first of all, for their persistent propaganda of the great heritage of the past, a "pure source," as Schumann called it, "from where one can draw new artistic beauties." His analyzes, revealing the content of the music of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, amaze with their depth and understanding of the spirit of history. The crushing, full of irony criticism of modern pop composers, whom Schumann called "art dealers", has largely retained its social sharpness for the bourgeois culture of our days.

No less striking is Schumann's sensitivity in recognizing genuine new talents and appreciating their humanistic significance. Time has confirmed the infallibility of Schumann's musical predictions. He was one of the first to welcome the work of Chopin, Berlioz, Liszt, Brahms. In Chopin's music, behind its elegant lyricism, Schumann saw the revolutionary content before others, saying about the works of the Polish composer that they were "cannons covered with flowers."

Quote message Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann - a love story.

Schumann Robert - "Dreams"

The great romantic composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) began his life with extraordinary success, and ended it in a psychiatric clinic. He owed his ups and downs primarily to his beloved, the incomparable Clara Wieck (1819-1896). Perhaps Schumann would not have become so world famous if he had not met on life path this brilliant pianist, whose performing genius must have propelled the composer to divine heights.

Robert Schumann was born in 1810 in Saxony in the provincial town of Zwickau and was the fifth child in big family burghers. His father, a well-known book publisher in the province, dreamed that his son would become a poet or literary critic. Fate decreed otherwise: once, having heard Paganini's violin at a concert, future composer forever bowed to music. The mother loved the boy more than other children, but she wanted her son to learn the "bread" profession, she dreamed that Robert would become a lawyer. The desire of the mother initially prevailed - in 1828, young Schumann went to Leipzig, where he entered the university to study law.
However, the young man never broke with the dream of becoming a musician. Once, walking around the city after class, he decided to visit the local psychiatrist Karus, whose wife the singers Agnes Karus often gathered famous musicians and music critics. That evening, the owner of the piano workshop and at the same time the piano teacher Friedrich Wieck was there with his nine-year-old daughter, who already showed great promise as a performer at such an early age. When the girl sat down at the instrument and lowered her thin childish hands to the keys, the whole house fell silent, as if spellbound, and listened to little Clara's playing. There was no doubt: the girl had an amazing musical gift.

Clara Wieck was born in 1819 and was brought up by a strict father who left his wife, taking his young daughter and her younger brothers to him and forbidding the children to see their mother. The vain Vic never doubted for a moment that his Clara would become a great pianist: he was obsessed with the maniacal idea of ​​making his first child, whether it was a daughter or a son, a brilliant, world-famous musician. Thus, Vic longed to glorify his name for centuries.

The born girl was a very sickly and weak child. Closed in on herself, Clara began to speak only from the age of four, and sometimes seemed completely deaf. Most likely, the sheathed development of the girl is explained by the unhealthy atmosphere in the family and the ongoing quarrels between the parents. Therefore, when they divorced, and her father took little Clara to Leipzig, the girl quickly spoke and showed her outstanding abilities.

Since then, Clara's whole life has been focused on music: daily, hours-long lessons at the piano, exhausting exercises, a strict regimen, a ban on children's games and fun. Friedrich spared no expense: the most famous masters of music, teachers of writing and reading, English and French. All this made Clara Wieck mature and serious beyond her years: her father took away her childhood, giving her worldwide fame in return.

The morning after the performance of the little pianist, Robert Schumann stood at the door of the Viks' house and begged the head of the family to be his teacher. On that day, he became a student of the famous music teacher Friedrich Wieck and from a carefree young man turned into a hardworking student who spent hours studying music. Contemporaries recalled that Schumann, even on trips, took a cardboard keyboard, on which he constantly worked out the technique of playing the piano. Coming up with sophisticated exercises, he once injured his right hand, after which the doctors forbade the musician to play, forever taking away the hope of becoming a great pianist. Continuing his studies with Friedrich Wieck, the future composer at that time became seriously interested in music criticism.
When young Robert appeared at the Vicks, everything in the house emanated warmth and fun. But Clara's thin, unhealthy face and her huge, sad eyes did not give the young man peace. His sympathy for the "sad Chiarina", as well as admiration for her genius, soon grew into a real, strong feeling.

In 1836, when Clara was sixteen years old, Schumann first declared his love for her. “When you kissed me then,” she recalled in her letters much later, “I thought I would lose consciousness ... I barely held the lamp with which I escorted you to the exit.” The girl, who had long had tender feelings for the young pianist, immediately reciprocated. The lovers had to hide their relationship by hiding and deceiving old Vic. Nevertheless, the suspicious father soon found out about the tricks of his daughter. Understanding what Clara's novel could turn out for him, Vic took his daughter away from the city, and for more than a year and a half, the lovers did not have the slightest opportunity to meet. Even correspondence was strictly forbidden to them. In the days of separation, Robert Schumann, yearning for "little Chiarina", wrote his best "Songs", which later brought him worldwide fame.

In 1837, when Vicki returned from a long tour to Leipzig, Clara wrote a tender letter to her beloved, passing it through a mutual friend, Ernst Wecker. Since then, their secret letters have been forwarded through acquaintances who have tried their best to help the couple in love ease their suffering. “... You are a guardian angel sent to me by the creator. After all, you and only you brought me back to life ... "- wrote Schumann. Sometimes friends organized secret meetings between Robert and Clara, and this was done so skillfully that even the stern and vigilant Friedrich Wieck for a long time did not notice the ardent love story his daughter.
When Schumann, who wished to make an open connection with his beloved, came to old Vik to ask for the hand of his daughter, he in a rage drove the former student out of the house and forbade him to approach "his brilliant Clara." Desperate, the young man took the last step, going to court with Clara's consent, where the beloved's father publicly accused his daughter's admirer of drunkenness, debauchery, plebeianism and illiteracy. The composer refuted the slander of the angry Vic, and the court ruled on the possibility of marriage between the lovers, contrary to the ban of the strict father.

Robert and Clara were married in a small church near Leipzig on September 12, 1840. The Schumanns settled in a tiny house on the outskirts of the city. Clara gave concerts, Robert composed music, and in free time they taught at the conservatory. The famous "Love of a Poet", "Love and Life of a Woman". Schumann created “Dreams of Love” at this happy time.
When four years later the couple went on a joint tour of Russian cities, St. Petersburg hosted grand concert renowned European pianist. The next day, the newspapers wrote: “The incomparable Clara came to us with her husband ...” Returning home, Schumann was depressed and broken, he more and more retreated into himself, became withdrawn and unsociable: “... My position next to the famous wife is becoming more and more humiliating ... Fate is laughing at me. Am I just Clara Wick's husband and nothing more?

Living already in Düsseldorf, the Schumann family met the novice musician Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), who remained their faithful and sincere friend until the end of the life of the spouses. He was very affectionate and warm towards Robert, and he experienced completely ambiguous feelings towards Clara.

When, on October 1, 1853, the young, thin Brahms appeared on the threshold of their house, the owner wrote in his diary: "Visit of Brahms (genius)". A month later, a German music magazine published an article by Robert Schumann, where he wrote: “I thought ... that someone should appear who is destined to ideally embody the highest beginning of our time ... And he appeared ... His name is Johannes Brahms ... Sitting at the piano, he opened up wonderful countries for us, enveloping us more and more tightly with his charms. It was even said that supposedly such a strong connection between the two men gave rise to other relationships in addition to friendship, but to this day this remains only speculation.

Meanwhile, Robert's health was deteriorating: increasingly falling into nervous melancholy, he did not even want to see "beloved Clara." The signs of a hereditary mental illness, which his sister and father suffered, made themselves felt more and more strongly. Schumann left the real world for his own world, created by an inflamed imagination, attended circles of magic, became interested in spiritualism and mysticism.
Clara, continuing to give concerts in cities and towns, tried to help her husband: surrounded him with care, patiently endured nervous breakdowns, which were aggravated every day. The sick composer was tormented by auditory hallucinations, sometimes he did not even recognize his children and wife, and once, trying to get rid of the images maniacally pursuing him, he threw himself off the bridge into the Rhine. Blue from the cold, unconscious Schumann was carried ashore by passers-by.

After this incident, fearing to harm Clara and the children, the genius losing his mind asked to be placed in a psychiatric clinic. There he spent two painful years, where he gradually went crazy: he fell into a deep depression, refused to talk, eat and drink - he was afraid that he would be poisoned. Only when the devoted Brahms visited him did Schumann agree to drink a sip of wine and eat a piece of fruit jelly.

After the death of her husband, eight children remained in Clara's arms. Schumann's widow survived the composer by as much as forty years. At first, Brahms remained close to Clara and helped her run the household. Six months later, he returned to his homeland in Hamburg. Everyone who knew Brahms understood how reverently the young composer loves Schumann's widow. Friends and relatives expected that they would soon get married. But this did not happen, perhaps for several reasons.

The composer Brahms dedicated this cycle to his beloved woman - Clara

First, being fourteen years older than Johannes, Clara treated him like a child and had motherly tender feelings towards him. Secondly, a young, promising twenty-three-year-old man could be frightened by a difficult family life, surrounded by an always very busy wife and eight children. Some were convinced that Brahms was afraid of the genius of the "incomparable Clara", who always, as was the case with Schumann, overshadowed his talent. One way or another, Johannes Brahms left Düsseldorf alone.

It is not known whether the connection between Brahms and Clara Schumann was platonic or whether friends in public were still secret lovers. It was said that Clara was very jealous of Brahms for women. Perhaps that is why, and also because of his great devotion to the great pianist, the composer remained unmarried. Before Clara's death, for forty years, the friends had been in continuous correspondence. When Clara died in Frankfurt on May 20, 1896, Brahms took her departure very hard. He died a year later.

It should be noted that time has put everything in its place: the names of Schumann and Brahms are known to everyone who is even the least interested in classical music, and only musicologists remember Clara Wieck.

100 DM 1989 featuring Clara Wieck

10 euro, Germany (200 years since the birth of Robert Schumann)

Monument to R. Schumann in Zwickau.

The love story of Clara and Robert Schumann can be seen in the old sentimental American film Song of Love (1947, USA, in the role of Clara - Katharine Hepburn).

Beloved Clara / Clara Original name: Geliebte Clara production-Germany 2008

Schumann's music embodied the most characteristic features of German romanticism - psychologism, a passionate desire for the ideal, intimacy of tone, sharpness of irony and bitterness from the feeling of the squalor of the petty-bourgeois spirit (as he himself said, "screaming dissonances" of life).

Schumann's spiritual formation began in the 20s of the 19th century, when romanticism in Germany had just experienced its brilliant flowering in literature; the influence of literature on the work of Schumann was very strong. It is difficult to find a composer whose interweaving of music and literature would be as close as his (except perhaps Wagner). He was convinced that "the aesthetics of one art is the aesthetics of another, only the material is different." It was in the work of Schumann that the deep penetration of literary patterns into music, which is characteristic of the romantic synthesis of the arts, took place.

• direct combination of music with literature in vocal genres;
• appeal to literary images and plots ("Butterflies");
• the creation of such musical genres as “stories” cycles (), “Novelettes”, lyrical miniatures similar to poetic aphorisms or poems (“Album Leaf” fis-moll, plays “The Poet Speaks”, “Warum?”).

In his passion for literature, Schumann went from the sentimental romanticism of Jean Paul (in his youth) to the sharp criticism of Hoffmann and Heine (in mature years), and then - to Goethe (in the late period).

The main thing in Schumann's music is the sphere of spirituality. And in this emphasis on the inner world, stronger even than Schubert, Schumann reflected the general direction of the evolution of romanticism. The main content of his work was the most personal of all lyrical themes - love theme. The inner world of his hero is more contradictory than that of the Schubert wanderer from The Beautiful Miller's Woman and The Winter Road, his conflict with the outside world is sharper, more impulsive. This intensification of disharmony brings the Schumannian hero closer to the late Romantic one. The very language that Schumann “speaks” is more complex, it is characterized by the dynamics of unexpected contrasts, impetuosity. If one can speak of Schubert as a classical romantic, then Schumann, in his most characteristic works, is far from the balance and completeness of the forms of classical art.

Schumann is a composer who created very directly, spontaneously, at the behest of his heart. His comprehension of the world is not a consistent philosophical grasp of reality, but an instantaneous and keenly sensitive fixation of everything that touched the soul of the artist. The emotional scale of Schumann's music is distinguished by many gradations: tenderness and ironic joke, stormy impulse, dramatic intensity and dissolution in contemplation, poetic dreams. Character portraits, mood paintings, images of spiritual nature, legends, folk humor, funny sketches, poetry of everyday life and secret confessions - everything that a poet's diary or an artist's album could contain is embodied by Schumann in the language of music.

"The lyric of brief moments", as B. Asafiev called Shuman. It reveals itself especially in its original form in cyclical forms, where the whole is created from a multitude of contrasts. Free alternation of images, frequent and sudden change of moods, switching from one plan of action to another, often opposite, is a very characteristic method for him, reflecting the impulsiveness of his attitude. A significant role in the formation of this method was played by romantic literary short stories (Jean Paul, Hoffmann).

Schumann's life and work

Robert Schumann was born on June 8, 1810 in the Saxon city Zwickau, which at that time was a typical German province. The house in which he was born has survived to this day, now there is a museum of the composer.

It is no coincidence that the biographers of the composer are attracted by the personality of his father, from whom Robert Schumann inherited a lot. He was a very intelligent, outstanding man, passionately in love with literature. Together with his brother, he opened the Schumann Brothers book publishing house and bookstore in Zwickau. Robert Schumann adopted both this paternal passion for literature and the outstanding literary gift that later showed itself so brilliantly in his critical activity.

The interests of the young Schumann were concentrated mainly in the world of art. As a boy, he composes poetry, arranges theater performances in the house, reads a lot and improvises at the piano with great pleasure (he began to compose from the age of 7). His first listeners admired the young musician's amazing ability to create musical portraits of familiar people in improvisations. This gift of a portrait painter would later also manifest itself in his work (portraits of Chopin, Paganini, his wife, self-portraits).

The father encouraged his son's artistic inclinations. With all seriousness, he took his musical vocation - even agreed to study with Weber. However, due to Weber's departure to London, these classes did not take place. Robert Schumann's first music teacher was the local organist and teacher Kunsht, with whom he studied from the age of 7 to 15.

With the death of his father (1826), Schumann's passion for music, literature, philosophy came into a very tense conflict with the desire of his mother. She categorically insisted that he get a law degree. According to the composer, his life has become "into the struggle between poetry and prose." In the end, he succumbs, enrolling in the law faculty of the University of Leipzig.

1828-1830 - university years (Leipzig - Heidelberg - Leipzig). With the breadth of interests and curiosity of Schumann, his studies in science did not leave him completely indifferent. And yet, with increasing force, he feels that jurisprudence is not for him.

At the same time (1828) in Leipzig, he met a man who was destined to play a huge and ambiguous role in his life. This is Friedrich Wieck, one of the most respected and experienced piano teachers. A vivid proof of the effectiveness of Vik's piano technique was the playing of his daughter and student Clara, who was admired by Mendelssohn, Chopin, Paganini. Schumann becomes a student of Wieck, studying music in parallel with his studies at the university. Since the 30th year, he has devoted his life entirely to art, leaving the university. Perhaps this decision arose under the influence of the game of Paganini, whom Schumann heard in the same 1830. It was exceptional, very special, reviving the dream of an artistic career.

Other impressions of this period include trips to Frankfurt and Munich, where Schumann met Heinrich Heine, as well as a summer trip to Italy.

Schumann's composing genius was revealed in its entirety in 30s when one by one his best appear piano compositions: "Butterflies", variations of "Abegg", "Symphonic Etudes", "Carnival", Fantasia C-dur, "Fantastic Pieces", "Kreisleriana". The artistic perfection of these early works seems implausible, since it was not until 1831 that Schumann began to study composition systematically with the theoretician and composer Heinrich Dorn.

Schumann himself associates almost everything he created in the 1930s with the image of Clara Wieck, with the romantic their love story. Schumann met Clara back in 1828, when she was in her ninth year. When friendly relations began to develop into something more, an insurmountable obstacle arose in the way of the lovers - the fanatically stubborn resistance of F. Wick. “Care for the future of his daughter” took extremely harsh forms with him. He took Clara to Dresden, forbidding Schumann to have any connection with her. For a year and a half they were separated by a blank wall. The lovers went through secret correspondence, long separations, secret betrothal, and finally, an open trial. They married only in August 1840.

The 1930s was also the heyday music critical And literary activity Schumann. At the center of it is the fight against philistinism, philistinism in life and art, as well as the defense of advanced art, the education of the taste of the public. The remarkable quality of Schumann the critic is an impeccable taste in music, a keen sense of everything talented, advanced, regardless of who the author of the composition is. world celebrity or a beginner, unknown composer.

Schumann's debut as a critic was a review of Chopin's variations on a theme from Mozart's Don Giovanni. This article, dated 1831, contains the famous phrase: "Hats off, gentlemen, before you is a genius!" Schumann also unmistakably assessed talent, predicting the then unknown musician the role of the largest composer of the 19th century. An article about Brahms ("New Ways") was written in 1853, after a long break in Schumann's critical activity, once again confirming his prophetic instinct.

In total, Schumann created about 200 amazing interesting articles about music and musicians. They are often presented in the form of entertaining stories or letters. Some articles remind diary entries, others - live scenes with the participation of many actors. The main participants in these dialogues invented by Schumann are Frerestan and Euzebius, as well as Maestro Raro. Florestan And Euzebius - it's not only literary characters, this is the personification of two different sides of the personality of the composer himself. He endowed Florestan with an active, passionate, impetuous temperament and irony. He is hot and quick-tempered, impressionable. Euzebius, on the contrary, is a silent dreamer, a poet. Both were equally inherent in the contradictory nature of Schumann. In a broader sense, these autobiographical images embodied 2 opposite versions of a romantic discord with reality - a violent protest and appeasement in a dream.

Florestan and Euzebius became the most active participants in Shumanov's "Davidsbunda" (“Union of David”), named after the legendary biblical king. This "more than secret alliance» existed only in the mind of its creator, who defined it as « spiritual fellowship» artists united in the struggle against philistinism for genuine art.

Introductory article to Schumann's songs. M., 1933.

For example, just like the creators of a romantic short story in literature, Schumann was interested in the effect of a turn at the end, the suddenness of its emotional impact.

A tribute to the admiration for the playing of the brilliant violinist was the creation of piano etudes based on the caprices of Paganini (1832-33)

In 1831, both Schumann and Chopin were only 21 years old.

Born June 8, 1810 in the German city of Zwickau in the family of a bookseller. From a very young age, young Robert showed a vivid talent for both music and literature. The boy learned to play the organ, improvised the piano, created his first work - a Psalm for the choir - at the age of thirteen, and in the gymnasium he made great strides in studying literature. Undoubtedly, if his line of life had gone in this direction, then we would have a bright and outstanding philologist and writer here too. But the music still won!

At the insistence of his mother, the young man studies law in Leipzig, then in Heidelberg, but this does not attract him at all. He dreamed of becoming a pianist, studied with Friedrich Wieck, but injured his fingers. Without thinking twice, he began to write music. Already his first published works - "Butterflies", "Variations on the theme of Abegg" - characterize him as a very original composer.

Schumann is a recognized and undoubted romanticist, thanks to whom we now fully know this direction - romanticism. The nature of the composer was completely permeated with subtlety and dreaminess, as if he always hovered above the ground and went into his fantasies. All the contradictions of the surrounding reality are aggravated to the limit in this nervous and receptive nature, which leads to withdrawal into one's inner world. Even fantastic images in Schumann's work, this is not a fantasy of legends and legends, like many other romantics, but a fantasy of their own visions. Close attention to each movement of the soul causes an attraction to the piano miniature genre, and such pieces are combined into cycles (“Kreisleriana”, “Novelettes”, “Night Pieces”, “Forest Scenes”).

But at the same time, the world knows another Schumann - an energetic rebel. His literary talent also finds a "point of application" - he publishes the "New Musical Journal". His articles take various forms - dialogues, aphorisms, scenes - but they all sing of true art, which does not belong to blind imitation, nor virtuosity as an end in itself. Schumann sees such art in the works of the Viennese classics, Berlioz, Paganini. Often he writes his publications on behalf of fictional characters - Florestan and Eusebius. These are members of the "Davidsbund" ("David's Brotherhood") - a union of musicians who oppose themselves to a philistine attitude towards art. And even if this union existed only in the imagination of the creator - musical portraits of its members are included in piano cycles"Davidsbundlers" and "Carnival". Among the Davidsbundlers, Schumann includes Paganini, and, and - under the name of Chiarina - Clara Wieck, the daughter of his mentor, a pianist who began her performing career at the age of eleven.

Attachment to Clara Wick Robert felt already when she was a child. Over the years, his feeling grew with her - but Friedrich Wieck wanted a more wealthy husband for his daughter. The struggle of lovers for their happiness dragged on for years - in order to prevent their meetings, the father planned many tours for the girl, forbade her to correspond with Robert. The desperate Schumann was engaged for some time to another - Ernestine von Fricken, who also fell into the number of Davidsbundlers under the name Estrella, and the name of the city in which she lived - Ash (Asch) - is encrypted in the main theme of "Carnival" ... But he could not forget Clara , in 1839 Schumann and Clara Wieck go to court - and only in this way did they manage to get Wieck's consent to marriage.

The wedding took place in 1840. It is noteworthy that in that year Schumann wrote many songs to the verses of Heinrich Heine, Robert Burns, George Gordon Byron and other poets. It was a marriage not only happy, but also musically fruitful. The couple traveled all over the world and performed in a wonderful duet - he composed, and she played his music, becoming the first performer of many of Robert's works. Until now, the world has not known such couples and will not know, apparently, for a long time ...

The Schumanns had eight children. In 1848, on his birthday eldest daughter the composer creates several piano pieces. Later, other plays appeared, combined into a collection called "Album for Youth". The very idea of ​​creating light piano pieces for children's music-making was not new, but Schumann was the first to fill such a collection with specific images, close and understandable to the child- "The Brave Rider", "Echoes of the Theatre", "The Merry Peasant".

From 1844 the Schumanns lived in Dresden. At the same time, the composer experienced an exacerbation of a nervous breakdown, the first signs of which appeared as early as 1833. He was able to return to composing music only in 1846.

In the 1850s Schumann creates quite a few works, among which are symphonies, chamber ensembles, program overtures, teaches at the Leipzig Conservatory, acts as a conductor, directs the choir in Dresden, and then in Düsseldorf.

Schuman treated young composers with great attention. His last publicistic work is the article "New Ways", where he predicts a great future.

In 1854, after an exacerbation of a mental disorder that led to a suicide attempt, Schumann ended up in mental asylum and passed away on July 29, 1856.

Music Seasons

Creation German composer Robert Schumann is inseparable from his personality. Representative Leipzig school, Schumann was a prominent spokesman for the ideas of romanticism in musical art. "The mind is wrong, the feeling - never" - this was his creative credo, to which he remained faithful throughout his short life. Such are his works, filled with deeply personal experiences - sometimes bright and sublime, sometimes gloomy and oppressive, but extremely sincere in every note.

Read a brief biography of Robert Schumann and many interesting facts about the composer on our page.

Brief biography of Schumann

On June 8, 1810, a joyful event took place in the small Saxon town of Zwickau - the fifth child was born in the family of August Schumann, a boy named Robert. Parents then 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 musical culture. They were absolutely far from music.

The father of the future composer August Schumann was engaged in book publishing and was sure that his son would follow in his footsteps. Feeling literary talent in the boy, he managed to instill in him a love of writing from early childhood and taught him to deeply and subtly feel art word. Like his father, the boy read Jean Paul and Byron, absorbing all the charm of romanticism from the pages of their works. He retained his passion for literature for the rest of his life, but his own life music became.

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

After graduating from high school, the young man, yielding to his mother's desire, enters the University of Leipzig to study law, but future profession he is not interested in anything. Studying seems unbearably boring to him. Secretly, Schumann continues to dream about music. His next teacher is famous musician Friedrich Wick. Under his guidance, he improves his piano technique and, in the end, admits to his mother that he wants to be a musician. Friedrich Wieck helps break parental resistance, believing that a bright future awaits his ward. Schumann is obsessed with the desire to become a virtuoso pianist and give concerts. But at 21, an injury to his right hand forever puts an end to his dreams.

After recovering from the shock, he decides to devote his life to composing music. From 1831 to 1838, his inspired fantasy gives birth 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 advocates the development of a new direction in music that meets the aesthetic principles of romanticism, where creativity is based on feelings, emotions, experiences, and young talents are actively supported on the pages of the newspaper.

The year 1840 was marked for the composer by a coveted marriage union with Clara Wieck. Experiencing an extraordinary spiritual uplift, he creates cycles of songs that have immortalized his name. Among them - " Poet's love ”, “Myrtle”, “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 life of the composer. The collision with reality, filled with constant worries about daily bread, led to the first bouts of depression. In his desire to provide for his family, he moves first to Dresden, then to Düsseldorf, where he is offered the post of music director. But very quickly it turns out that the talented composer can hardly cope with the duties of a conductor. Feelings about his failure in this capacity, the material difficulties of the family, in which he considers himself guilty, become the reasons for a sharp deterioration in his state of mind. From the biography of Schumann, we learn that in 1954 a rapidly developing mental illness nearly drove the composer to suicide. Fleeing from visions and hallucinations, he ran out of the house half-dressed and threw himself into the waters of the Rhine. He was saved, but after this incident he had to be placed in a psychiatric hospital, from where he never left. He was only 46 years old.

Interesting facts about Robert Schumann

• Schumann's name is international competition performers of academic music, which is called - Internationaler Robert-Schumann-Wettbewerb. It was first held in 1956 in Berlin.
• There is a music award named after Robert Schumann, established by the city hall of Zwickau. The laureates of the award 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 godfather» Johannes Brahms. Being the editor-in-chief of the New Musical Newspaper and a respected music critic, he spoke very flatteringly about the talent of the young Brahms, calling him a genius. Thus, for the first time, he drew the attention of the general public to the novice composer.
• Adherents of music therapy recommend listening to Schumann's "Dreams" for a restful sleep.

• As a teenager, Schumann, under the strict guidance of his father, worked as a proofreader on the creation of a dictionary from Latin.
• In honor of the 200th anniversary of Schumann in Germany, a 10 euro silver coin with a portrait of the composer was issued. The coin is engraved with a phrase from the composer's diary: "Sounds are sublime words."

• Schumann left not only a rich musical legacy, but also a literary one, mostly autobiographical. Throughout his life, he kept diaries - "Studententagebuch" (Student diaries), "Lebensbucher" (Books of life), there is also "Eheta-gebiicher" (Diaries of marriage) and "Reiseta-gebucher" (Road diaries). In addition, his pen belongs literary notes"Brautbuch" (Diary for the bride), "Erinnerungsbtichelchen fiir unsere Kinder" (Booklets of memories for our children), Lebensskizze (Outline of life) 1840, "Musikalischer Lebenslauf -Materialien - alteste musikalische Erinne-rungen" ( Music 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.
• On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the German romantic, a postage stamp was issued in the USSR.
• On their wedding day, Schumann presented his fiancee Clara Wieck with a cycle of romantic songs "Myrtle", which he wrote in her honor. Clara did not remain in debt and decorated the wedding dress with a myrtle wreath.

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

Personal life of Robert Schumann

The main woman in the life of the German composer was the brilliant pianist Clara Wieck. Clara was the daughter of one of the best music teachers of her 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 was predicted brilliant career. First of all, her father dreamed about it. That is why Friedrich Wieck, who provided all possible support to Schumann in his desire to connect his life with music, turned from the patron of the young composer into his evil genius when he learned about the feelings of his daughter and his student. He was strongly opposed to Clara's union with a poor unknown musician. But the young people showed in this case all the fortitude and strength of character, proving to everyone that their mutual love is able to withstand any test. To be with her chosen one, Clara decided to break up with her father. Schuman's biography says that in 1840 young people got married.

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

Schumann's mysteries

• Schumann had a penchant for hoaxes. So, he came up with two characters - the ardent Florestan and the melancholy Eusebius, and signed his articles with them in the New Musical Newspaper. The articles were written in a completely different manner, and the public was unaware that the same person was hiding behind the two pseudonyms. But the composer went even further. He announced that there was a kind of David's brotherhood ("Davidsbund") - a union 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 developed hand paralysis in his youth. 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 finger flexibility, but in the end he was injured, which then led to paralysis. However, Schumann's wife Clara Wieck has always denied this rumor.
• A chain of mystical events is connected with Schumann's only violin concerto. One day, in the course of a séance, two sister violinists received a demand, which, according to them, came from the spirit of Schumann, to find and play his violin concerto, the manuscript of which is kept in Berlin. And so it happened: the concert score was found in the Berlin library.

• Not fewer questions evokes a cello concerto by a German composer. Shortly before the suicide attempt, the maestro was working on just this score. A manuscript with corrections remained on the table, but due to illness, he never returned to this work. The concerto was first performed after the composer's death in 1860. There is a distinct emotional imbalance in the music, but the main thing is that its score is so difficult for a cellist that one might think that the composer did not take into account the specifics and possibilities of this instrument at all. Literally until recently, cellists coped with the task as best they could. Shostakovich even made his own orchestration of this concerto. And only recently archival materials have been discovered, from which we can conclude that the concerto was not intended for the cello, but for ... the violin. It is difficult to say how true this fact is, but, according to music experts, if the same original music is played on the violin, the difficulties and inconveniences that performers have been complaining about for almost a century and a half disappear by themselves.

Schumann's music in cinema

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 pictures that tell about children and teenagers. And the gloom, drama, quirkiness of images inherent in a number of his works, are most organically woven into paintings with a mystical or fantastic plot.

Musical works	Movies
Arabesque, Op. 18	Dirty Grandpa (2016), Supernatural (2014), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
"Slumber Song" ("Lullaby")	Buffalo (2015)
"About foreign countries and people" from the cycle "Children's scenes"	"Mozart in the Jungle" (TV series 2014)
Piano Concerto in A minor Op 54-1	"Butler" (2013)
"In the Evening" from the series "Fantastic Pieces"	"Free People" (2011)
"Baby Scenes"
"Poet's Love"	"Adjuster" (2010)
"From what?" from the series "Fantastic Pieces"	"True Blood" (2008)
"Brave Rider" from the cycle " children's album”, Piano Concerto in A minor	"Vitus" (2006)
"Carnival"	"White Countess" (2006)
Piano Quintet in E Flat Major	"Tristram Shandy: The Story of the Cockerel and the Bull" (2005)
Cello Concerto in A minor	"Frankenstein" (2004)
Concerto for cello and orchestra	"The Client is Always Dead" (2004)
"Dreams"	"Beyond" (2003)
"Merry Farmer" song	"The Forsyte Saga" (2002)

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

Video: watch a film about Robert Schumann