![]() ![]() His sympathy with the world of children produced the adult reminiscences of childhood in the Kinderszenen, Opus 15. If Brahms had the autumnal character of an old man even in his youth, Schumann was in many way always the ardent boy. Opuses 1 through 28 are all for piano, and in addition to the pieces already named, include Kreisleriana, Fantasiestucke, the glorious C major Fantasy and the often overlooked Humoreske. Much of time they were forbidden to see one another and Schumann communicated in one piano masterpiece after another. The travails of the romance between Robert and Clara is one of the great love stories (with soundtrack) of the century. His strength was in the juxtaposition of exquisite miniatures to form a convincing and cumulative mosaic, rather than the kind of ongoing developmental musical argument needed for sonata writing. ![]() Yet for all Schumann's caprice and fantasy, he was one of the purist musicians with innate sense of classical balance and proportion. Meanwhile, there was not a sonata to be seen at this point. ![]() His first review introduced Chopin to the world and his last, Brahms. In addition to composing, Schumann became the editor for the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik for ten years, during which time he was one of the most generous and perspicacious of critics. Here we have Florestan's energetic dotted rhythms contrasting with the introspective musings of Eusebius, and movements entitled Chopin and Paganini. All this is evident in pieces such as the Davisbundlertanze, 0pus 6, and the Carnival, Opus 9, where the movements depict Schumann's imaginary band of David against the philistines. Schumann was an idealistic champion for the purity and poetry of the new romantic spirit, and an enemy of the idle virtuousity and note spinning that were competing for the attention of the rising middle class audience. The Papillons, Opus 2, takes a Schubertian cycle of dances as its point of departure, but with Schumann these suites of character pieces become embodiments of his own dual nature, represented by the outgoing Florestan and the dreamy Eusebius. Schumann's early piano music is profoundly original. Hers was a strict classical training, and in later years she convinced Schumann that if he aspired to the loftiest goals, he must compose grand sonatas and symphonies in addition to the suites of fantastic dances, miniatures and poetic rhapsodies that were his natural metier. One can sympathize a bit with Clara's strict and imperious father, who considered Robert both too impetuous and certainly too old for his daughter, who he was successfully grooming to be one of the century's great pianists. The subsequent injury this caused changed his career path to composition. In his desire to make up for lost time, he built a mechanical device to strengthen his 4th finger. He was really somewhat of a late bloomer to be a serious musician but was intent on becoming a piano virtuoso. Robert dutifully tried law school per his mother's wishes, but could not resist hours of improvising at the piano. The first ten years of his compositions are a veritable diary of his courtship of Clara Wieck, the daughter of his piano teacher, who was nine years his junior. Born in 1810, the son of a bookseller, Schumann found his earliest musical inspirations in the German Romantic literature of Jean Paul and E.T.A. There is a good case to be made that Robert Schumann is the purest embodiment of early romanticism in music. ![]()
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