罗伯特·舒曼 （Robert Schumann）

• 出生：茨维考，萨克森州，1810年6月8日
• 死于：波恩，1856年7月29日
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罗伯特·亚历山大·舒曼(Robert Alexander Schumann 1810年6月8日～1856年7月29日)德国作曲家、钢琴家，浪漫主义音乐成熟时期代表人物之一。舒曼生性热情敏感，富有民主主义思想。夫人克拉拉也是著名钢琴家。著名的作曲家勃拉姆斯受其帮助提携。

曾在莱比锡大学学法律,19岁起师从维克学钢琴，1834年创办《新音乐报》 ，刊发了大量评论文章，成为当时德国音乐艺术生活中革新与进步艺术倾向的喉舌。1840年与维克之女德国钢琴家克拉拉结婚。1854年精神错乱，后死于精神病院。代表作有钢琴曲《蝴蝶》 ， 《狂欢节》 ， 《童年情景》等，声乐套曲《妇女的爱情和生活》 ， 《诗人之恋》 ;艺术歌曲《月夜》 ，《奉献》 ， 《核桃树》等。舒曼继承发展了舒伯特歌曲创作传统，进一步丰富了钢琴伴奏的表现方法，注重选择富有诗意的歌词，故享有“诗人音乐家”的称号。

舒曼1810年出生在德国萨克森的小镇茨维考,他的父亲开着一家书店兼营出版。童年的舒曼最大兴趣是文学而不是音乐，并且热衷于写作小说和散文。偶尔也搞一些音乐活动，12岁的时候舒曼组织了一个小型的管弦乐队。之后出于对文学的热情，又组织了一个文学社，并开始写作关于艺术和诗歌的论文。

青年时期的舒曼被青春期的苦恼折磨着，他的父亲积引导他音乐方面的发展，然而舒曼的母亲希望儿子能学习法律以便将来能找到一份体面的工作。舒曼的父亲死后，他果然如母亲的愿望，去了莱比锡和海德堡学习法律，直到1830年舒曼听了一场帕格尼尼的演奏会，从此就立志要成为一名钢琴家。舒曼全心投入成为钢琴家的练习中，因为起步太晚，舒曼强迫自己大强度长时间的练习，据说他自己还发明了一种机械来锻炼手指的肌肉。这种错误的练习法使他右手的中指完全麻痹，成为音乐家唯一的希望就只有往作曲家的道路上走了。然而之后舒曼并没有放弃钢琴，钢琴的创作始终是舒曼的作品中最重要的一格部分。23岁时期创作了自己第一部的杰作，同一主题和十二格变奏的《交响练习曲》，之后是1834年至1835年间创作的《狂欢节》，是一部由二十一个乐章组成的钢琴杰作，也是舒曼最成功的作品之一。

1836年，舒曼26岁时，仍然没有停止学习钢琴，这时在维克教授处学习的时候舒曼结识了教授的女儿克拉拉，但遭到维克教授一家人的反对。后经过他不懈努力，1840年终于在莱比锡郊区的Schönefeld镇与克拉拉结婚。之后舒曼投身于艺术评论的写作，创办了一份音乐评论杂志，并用弗罗列斯坦和尤斯比乌斯作为自己的笔名，这两个人的观点体现了作者本人的思辨统一。

1850年舒曼搬到杜塞尔多夫，任乐队指挥。1854年曾一度投莱茵河自杀，幸被船夫救起。之后他被送入波恩一家精神病院。

1856年舒曼因晚期梅毒感染死于波恩。

舒曼和克拉拉的墓地均在波恩。

作品包括交响乐四首、协奏曲(如《a小调钢琴与乐队协奏曲》、《a小调大提琴与乐队协奏曲》、《d小调小提琴与乐队协奏曲》等)、室内乐、艺术歌曲(如《桃金娘》、《妇女的爱情和生活》和为诗人海涅《诗人之恋》、李尔克、艾兴多夫的诗歌而谱的曲)、钢琴作品(如《蝴蝶》、《狂欢节》、《交响练习曲》、《童年即景》等)、其他乐队和合唱作品(如《曼弗雷德序曲》)及歌剧一部。

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Born: Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810 Died: Bonn, July 29, 1856
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Schumann’s finest and greatest music is for the piano, closely followed by his songs. Up till 1840 he wrote little else but for the piano, works which are at the heart of every pianist’s repertoire, an enormous proportion of which are played and recorded regularly by every major (and minor) pianist; like Shakespeare’s plays, they provide an unending source of pleasure and challenge in their interpretation. The moods and forms they encompass are myriad, filled with the most poetic flights of fancy and the wildest imagination. Though he wrote successfully in some of the traditional forms (sonata, etc), he added to the Romantic tradition of loosely knit structures the idea of painting many small cameos and welding them all together onto one huge canvas.

7 A& g9 `5 i! K. f3 hAfter 1840, he wrote less for the piano and more for the voice. Schumann’s sensitivity to literature, to prose and verse, allied with his supreme melodic facility make his songs among the most important gifts to the art of lieder, a successor and companion to Schubert. He brings the same tenderness, passion and humanity to his settings but with touches of irony and self-deprecating wit that is missing from other Romantics.
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' I; @( a$ q$ y8 iLike Schubert, Schumann was not as happy with the large forms as he was with the small. Musicologists tut-tut at his orchestration, his inability to find a cohesive structure for the Symphonies and wince at the awkward writing of his chamber music. Yet, back they come again and again, entrancing the listener with their invention and spring-like inspiration. The lyrical beauty he could summon up at will, the warmth and sheer well-being they engender silences criticism after all.

The Life

Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Verdi and Wagner were born within four years of one another; composers were still writing music under their influence a hundred years later. Schumann is a key figure in the Romantic movement epitomised by these composers; arguably, none investigated the Romantic’s obsession with feeling and passion quite so thoroughly as him. For most of his life, Schumann suffered from an inner torment - he died insane - but then some psychologists argue that madness is a necessary attribute of genius.

! i$ A3 s! y- |  X1810 Schumann’s father was a Saxon bookseller and publisher, well-to-do and cultured. Robert was his fifth child and though he and his wife were not musical, they encouraged their son’s musical talents and at the age of 10 he began piano lessons. For a career, however, he was persuaded to study law and Schumann dutifully toddled off to nearby Leipzig where, at the same time, he began piano lessons with his future father-in-law, Friedrich Wieck.
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1829 A series of events then took place, events which twisted and turned the paths along which Schumann might normally have been expected to travel trouble-free. His elder sister Emilie committed suicide and shortly afterwards his father died at the age of 53 from a nervous disease no one has been able to diagnose. (Of Schumann’s three brothers, only one reached late middle age.) Schumann became absorbed in the fashionable Romantic malaise of Weltschmerz (a good German word meaning ‘world-weariness’), exemplified by the writings of Novalis, Byron and Lenau, among others, all who died romantically young in romantically tragic circumstances.

8 D8 b- M% B. D' U* R6 s" C: q1830 He persuaded his mother and guardian to allow him to study music and the same Friedrich Wieck was recommended. So he returned to the Wiecks’ house where he lodged and boarded, determined to become a world-famous virtuoso like Wieck’s talented young daughter Clara. Schumann’s mature career as a composer dates from about this time.

1832 A second tragic event intervened when he developed some sort of ailment in the index and middle fingers of his right hand. He tried all the fashionable remedies available including, fatally, a mechanical device which purported to help strengthen and lift the middle finger. It left his right hand permanently crippled, so much so that it exempted him from military service - a certificate exists showing that Schumann was unable to pull the trigger on a rifle. That was the end of his ambitions as a concert pianist.

1833 Worse was to come. Some theories have it that the original trouble to his two fingers was caused by the side-effects of mercury treatment for syphilis. He enjoyed the company of young ladies (he was a handsome man) but from this date onwards he noted unaccountable periods of angst and momentary losses of consciousness, bouts of breathing difficulty and aural hallucinations; he suffered from insomnia and acrophobia and confided in his diary that he was afraid of going mad. He thought of killing himself.
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' o2 P+ u" x. q4 GNevertheless, throughout the decade of the 1830s, Schumann’s career as a composer slowly grew while he also developed his literary activities. In 1834 he co-founded a progressive journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which fulminated against the vapid salon music of the day. His sharp and perceptive writing made him one of the foremost critics of the day, the first German critic to recognise Chopin (as early as 1831, Schumann writing under the name of Eusebius, wrote his famous welcome “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!”), among the first to champion Berlioz and predict Brahms’ greatness. Sometimes his judgements have proved to be askew but by and large, Schumann’s musical criticism was as fine as the style and objectivity with which he wrote.

+ ^' u( |+ j0 U& ^, bHe also translated his journalistic and musical convictions into real life, as it were. He formed an association of intimate friends which he named Davidsbündler: David against the Philistines - that was the idea - a group that would oppose philistinism in the arts and support passionately all that was new and imaginative. (Schumann immortalised his friends in his piano work Davidsbündlertanze.)

- d& M: j) E% z- m- ], f$ vConcurrent with all this, a fourth event befell him that had the benign effect of inspiring his music to heights which (who knows?) he may not have reached, had he not fallen in love with Clara Wieck and been prevented from marrying her. Perhaps surmising that Schumann was an unstable character, Friedrich Wieck violently opposed the relationship and his actions over the following seven years won him a place in music history, not as the obscure teacher of a great composer or as the father of a great pianist (which Clara would become) but as the disagreeable father-in-law who thwarted Young Love. He forced the couple to separate, opened their love letters and initiated a campaign of personal vilification against his former pupil, so set was he against his daughter’s marriage.

1840 The affair ended in court, judgement went against Wieck and the happy couple were married on September 12 the day before Clara’s 21st birthday. Was it a happy marriage? Schumann’s career as a composer clearly entered a new stage: in 1840 alone he wrote over 100 songs and in 1841, during the space of only four days, he sketched out his Symphony No 1 in B flat, the Spring Symphony. Many other masterful works followed rapidly but, though Clara was intensely ambitious for her husband, the two of them found it hard to balance the need for a pianist to practice and a composer to work in silence. On tour, he found it galling to be introduced at times as ‘the husband of Clara Schumann’ and returned home before her from a concert tour of Russia in 1844. His mental health began to fail, he resigned from the teaching post Mendelssohn had created for him at his new conservatory in Leipzig and in 1844, the Schumann’s moved to Dresden. The great Piano Concerto was composed here, the Second symphony, more songs, but from the late 1840s it was clear that Schumann was becoming increasingly unstable.

; [9 g0 K# x3 s1850 He accepted the post of Director of Music in Düsseldorf. It proved to be a disaster. Schumann was no conductor, a talent which the position pre-eminently demanded, and together with his natural reserve (Liszt and Wagner found him boring) now exaggerated by his inability to communicate and, at times unaware of his surroundings, he was forced to resign.
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; U- ]5 O1 |) L& |) r, i" V2 e1854 Aural hallucinations were now accompanied by visions of demons and angels and on February 27 he tried to kill himself by  drowning in the Rhine. He was rescued and placed at his own request in an asylum at Endenich near Bonn. Here, Brahms was one of the few welcome visitors (some sources say Schumann refused to see Clara or any of his seven children, others that Clara would not visit him for fear of upsetting him).

1856 Schumann lived on in this unhappy state for a further two years. He died in Clara’s arms and was buried the next day in Bonn. Opinions vary as to whether the cause of his final illness was tertiary syphilis, sclerosis of the brain (his own doctor’s verdict) or dementia pracox. Whatever, it was the cruellest and most un-Romantic of ends.