Robert Schumann
From Philosopedia
Schumann, Robert Alexander (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856)
A noted German musical composer, Schumann had studied law at Leipzig but decided instead on a career in music. Because of a hand injury which resulted in his abandoning any career as a pianist, he served as editor of the Newe Zeitschrift für Musik from its inception in 1834 until 1844, championing younger composers, particularly Chopin and Brahms.
Schumann wrote a “profane” oratorio, Paradise and the Peri (1840).
His Letters reveal his freethought and liking of Goethe’s pantheism and Jean Paul Richter’s rationalism. As a student, he gave up his earlier Christian beliefs.
He married his beloved Clara Wieck, a talented concert pianist, in 1840. During his wedding year he composed 150 songs, many based on Romantic tales. In 1841, he turned to orchestral music, in 1842 to chamber music, and in 1843 to choral music, including secular oratorio and Goethe's Faust. His lieder set to music words by such freethinking writers as Goethe, Heine, and Kerner.
Schumann had a devastating nervous breakdown, attended by hallucinations and suicidal impulses, in 1854. Although tended by Clara and his young protege and friend Johannes Brahms, Schumann did not recover. Although it has been speculated that Schumann was suffering from the final stages of syphilis, no one knows what caused his tragic, end-of-life insanity.
According to studies by the musicologist and literary scholar Eric Sams (1926 - 2004), Schumann's symptoms during his terminal illness and death appear consistent with those of mercury poisoning. Mercury was at the time a common treatment for syphilis, where he died two years later.
Schumann was buried in Bonn, where throngs collected. Johannes Brahms and Schumann's wife led the procession.
