APTER VII.

ROBERT SCHUMANN.

ROBERT SCHUMANN.

Born January 8, 1810, at Zwickau in Saxony.
Died July 29, 1856, at Endenich, near Bonn.

Schumann was the son of a bookseller and a confirmed music lover. The
boy showed marked talent for music, playing to some extent upon the
more usual instruments, and even getting together and conducting a
small orchestra of the school-boys. For this orchestra he very early
composed pieces. His father died when the boy was sixteen and had
nearly completed his gymnasium course, and in 1828 Schumann entered at
the University of Leipsic as a student of law. After a time he left
Leipsic in favor of Heidelberg, where some very celebrated lectures
were at that time being given; but at Heidelberg he practically wasted
his time, so far as the law studies were concerned, and devoted himself
entirely to music. As early as 1829 he made a short vacation journey
into Italy, and at Milan heard the famous violin virtuoso Paganini, and
then became wholly influenced for music. Schumann's mother was
extremely averse to his fitting himself for the musical profession, and
it was only with great difficulty that she was brought to consent.
Accordingly, his serious musical studies began in 1830, when he came
back again to Leipsic and became a music student with Frederick Wieck
and Heinrich Dorn. It was Wieck's daughter Clara who afterward became
Mme. Schumann.

[Illustration: Robert Schumann]

Schumann had a great determination to become a piano virtuoso, not so
much for the repetition of effects already standard as for the
invention of new ones. In this direction he devoted himself to
practice with such assiduity that he very soon reached a point where
his fingers could not keep up with his imagination. In the effort to
impart a greater individuality and strength to the fourth finger of the
right hand, he made some experiments which resulted in disabling his
finger for a while, and he never afterward regained the use of it to a
complete degree. Thus his career as virtuoso was cut short, but the
studies he made and the playing he was afterward able to do resulted in
very singular and productive discoveries of musical effects possible to
the piano, so that it is not too much to say that the piano playing of
the present time is more indebted to Schumann than perhaps to any other
master in the history of the instrument.

He began his creative career by the arrangement of a collection o