The buoyant propulsion of the ‘Rhenish’ Symphony’s first movement sounds like an anticipation of ‘Siegfried’s Rhine Journey’ from Wagner’s ‘Gotterdammerung,’ the profound slow movement of the Symphony No. “This is music-making with unbridled spirit and energy. Discussing recent recordings of Schumann’s symphonies, John Rockwell (1986) suggests that following the original score without any refinements or variations produces “neither clarity nor precision in the playing.” While this is completely in keeping with the idea of the Romantic, with its slight variations and imperfections, this approach also manages to pull at the emotions in ways that are significantly different from more traditional approaches.

This is the approach taken within Schumann’s orchestral pieces as the sound itself does not produce an impression of perfection or precision. A great element of this movement was a return of man to nature, which meant nothing too syncopated, too organized or too concise. Schumann wrote in the Romantic tradition, heavily influenced by the ideals of this artistic movement. In tracing through his works and his influence, it can be seen that Schumann’s music was heavily subjective and carried with it After a failed attempt at drowning himself in the Rhine, Schumann was voluntarily placed in a mental asylum where he spent the last two years of his life. By 1844, though, he’d suffered his first mental breakdown and by 1854, he was hearing voices and horrific music (Moss, 2007). As a composer, he explored the art song, orchestral music, chamber music and choral music, often bringing to it his own style and concerns and almost always managing to include his sentiments toward his life-long love Clara in them. By founding a music journal in 1834 dedicated to critiquing music for the masses, Schumann managed to gain widespread attention for new composers and musicians. Although he showed tremendous promise as a pianist and composer, a crippling of his right hand by November of 1832 and he gave up performing in favor of writing about music from a critical perspective and continued to compose. Besides … I have an imagination and perhaps a skill for the individual work of creation” (cited in Moss, 2007).

Although his father died when he was only 16 and his mother sent him to school to study law, Schumann was unable to resist the draw of his creative side and eventually wrote to his mother about his intention to study music, “I have arrived at the conviction that with work, patience and a good teacher, I would be able, within six years, to surpass any pianist. His interests were evenly divided between literature and poetry and music, particularly the piano. Born in 1810 the son of a shoemaker and his humble wife, Schumann was encouraged in his artistic abilities by his father and pressured to pursue a more practical career by his mother (Moss, 2007). This certainly seems to have been the case for Robert Schumann.

Clip studio paint pro free