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etween 1821 and 1828 he appears at these as pianist,
poet and speaker. With a school friend—Friedrich
August Pilzing—he plays a huge amount of music
arranged for piano duet: Weber, Hummel, Czerny,
symphonies by Haydn and Mozart, and Beethoven’s
Eroica arranged for four hands.
1822 (aged 12) Robert composes his first musical
works—small pieces with grand titles: Psalm 150 for
solo voices, piano and orchestra, and an Ouvertüre
with chorus. In order to perform these works he
establishes a school orchestra and takes over its direction.
A new piano from the Viennese firm of Streicher
is purchased for the Schumann household—in his
will of 1826 August Schumann leaves this instrument
to his youngest son Robert.
1823 (aged 13) Schumann, writing much later, dates
his passion for works of the lyric stage to the years
between 1823 and 1827. He broadens his knowledge
of opera with Weber’s Freischütz performed in the
Zwickau Gewandhaus. Works by Mozart and Rossini
are also heard, and other pieces are studied in piano
scores. From this year dates an anthology of verses—
his own and others’—entitled Leaves and Flowers
from the Golden Meadow. Gathered and assembled
by Robert Schumann, writing under the name of
Skülander. This collection, the first of many such
home-made anthologies, is a kind of preparation
for the writing of a projected tragedy to be entitled
Der Geist. He also reads an eighteenth-century
musicological treatise which begins to shape his ideas
on tonality—this is by Christian Friedrich Daniel
Schubart (the poet of Schubert’s Die Forelle) and is
entitled Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst.
1824 (aged 14) The young Schumann begins to make
a name for himself as a pianist and conductor of
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his own small school orchestra. At this time literary
activities exceed the musical. Robert is permitted to
contribute to some of the many articles for encyclopaedias
and yearbooks written by his father. Such
figures as Lord Byron and Hölderlin, hardly admired
by right-wing opinion, are already the subjects of the
young composer’s fervent admiration.
1825 (aged 15) To his later regret Robert stops taking
piano lessons—as it happens, both Chopin and Liszt
dispense with teachers from the age of fifteen—and
he begins to study the cello and flute. He gathers together
a volume of the poetry he has written between
1822 and 1825 (Allerley aus der Feder Roberts an
der Mulde) and he pens a short autobiography as well
as numerous translations from the Greek and Latin
classics. He show early signs of his left-of-centre
sympathies by founding a secret student organization;
he also establishes a literary society at his school
which will meet over thirty times. Robert’s eighteenyear-old
sister, Emilie, depressive by nature, commits
suicide. August Schumann asks Carl Maria von Weber
(1786–1826) to take Robert as a pupil—this never
happens because of Weber’s English visit and his
death in London in 1826.
1826 (aged 16) In the home of the well-to-do musiclover
Karl Erdmann Carus, managing director of a
chemical factory in Zwickau, Schumann hears
quartets by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. In March
and April Robert falls in love with two girls from his
home town: Nanni Petsch and, shortly afterwards,
Liddy Hempel. These relationships arouse passionate
feelings, but the friendships remain platonic (there
is no reciprocation from Liddy). He is eventually
disillusioned and disappointed in both girls.