Schumann, R.: Symphonies Nos. 2 And 4

Description

Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856) Symphony No.2 in C Major, Op. 61 Symphony No.4 in D Minor, Op. 120 Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau in 1810, the son of August Schumann, a bookseller, writer and publisher, and it was perhaps from his father that he acquired his interest and ability in literature as well as a tendency to nervous instability. In childhood and adolescence he showed both literary and musical talents, the former to be reflected both in his compositions and in his work for the Neue Leipziger Zeitschrift für Musika periodical which he was instrumental in founding in 1834 and which he later edited. Schumann enjoyed a good general education. His father died in 1826, and when he left school in 1828 it was his mother's wish that he should go on to university. There followed a period of intermittent study in Leipzig and in Heidelberg, where, in the society of his friends, he was able to indulge his gifts as a musician and as a writer. In 1831 he eventually persuaded his mother to allow him to leave the university and to study the piano with Friedrich Wieck, a well known teacher, who accepted his new pupil with some justifiable reservations about his steadiness of purpose. The relationship with Wieck was to change the course of Schumann's life. Wieck insisted on the study of formal harmony and counterpoint, which Schumann soon abandoned, and demanded restraint in personal habits of excessive drinking and cigar-smoking which proved impossible to achieve. Further, Schumann's ambitions as a pianist were brought to an end by a weakness in two fingers of the right hand, possibly the result of mercury poisoning after an attempt to cure syphilis. He continued, however, to write music, chiefly for the piano, and to serve as a contributor and later as editor for the Neue Zeitschrift. A brief infatuation and secret betrothal to a pupil of Wieck, Ernestine von Fricken, resulted in the composition of Carnaval, but ended when Schumann discovered that the girl was illegitimate and not the true daughter of the rich Bohemian Baron who had adopted her. The affair that followed was of much greater significance. Wieck, divorced from his wife, had concentrated his attention largely on his young daughter Clara, who had embarked on a remarkable career as a pianist under her father's guidance. Schumann and Clara Wieck, nine years his junior, were to marry in 1840, but only after her father had made every attempt, through the courts, to prevent a match that seemed to him thoroughly unsuitable. The year of Schumann's marriage was also a year of song, of which he wrote some 130 in 1840, but there were now adjustments to be made on both sides, as each tried to pursue a separate career, Schumann's achievement very much overshadowed by the fame of his wife, a fact that contributed to his periods of depression. In 1844 the couple moved to Dresden, after Schumann failed to secure appointment as director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts in succession to Mendelssohn.