| Contents |
Childhood and youth: 1810-1930 -- Leipzig book of life: Leipzig, 1831-1832 -- Reversals, renewals: Leipzig, 1833-1834 -- An even more important year: Leipzig, 1835 -- Wieck on the warpath: Leipzig, 1836 -- Love confirmed: Leipzig, May 1837-September 1837 -- New worlds: Leipzig, October 1837-October 1838 -- Toward the future: October 1838-May 1839 -- Final court battle: Leipzig, June 1839-August 1840 -- "With her forever": Leipzig, September 1840-1842 -- In conflict, in harmony: Leipzig, 1842-1844 -- Collapse and recovery: Dresden, December 1844-1847 -- Returning health, high ambitions: Dresden, 1848-August 1850 -- Music director in the Rhineland: Düsseldorf, September 1850-September 1853 -- Final crisis: Düsseldorf, October 1853-February 1854 -- The mind stripped bare: Endenich, 4 March 1854-29 July 1856 -- Afterword: Medical diagnosis of Schumann's illness. |
| Abstract |
Drawing on previously unpublished sources, this groundbreaking biography of Robert Schumann sheds new light on the great composer's life and work. With the rigorous research of a scholar and the eloquent prose of a novelist, Judith Chernaik takes us into Schumanns nineteenth-century Romantic milieu, where he wore many "masks" that gave voice to each corner of his soul. The son of a book publisher, he infused his pieces with literary ideas. He was passionately original but worshipped the past: Bach and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Byron. He believed in artistic freedom but struggled with constraints of form. His courtship and marriage to the brilliant pianist Clara Wieck--against her father's wishes--is one of the great musical love stories of all time. Chernaik freshly explores his troubled relations with fellow composers Mendelssohn and Chopin, and the full medical diary--long withheld--from the Endenich asylum where he spent his final years enables her to look anew at the mystery of his early death. By turns tragic and transcendent, Schumann shows how this extraordinary artist turned his tumultuous life into music that speaks directly--and timelessly--to the heart. |
