Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

—
346 1810- SCHUMANN -1828
modern German music, and his sound musicianship
the originality of his ideas, and the skill
of their treatment, mark him as a worthy
member of the party which most strenuously
resists the attacks of the ultra-modem writers.
(Paul Hielscher, in Monographen modemer
Musiker ; Riemann's Lmkon.') m.
SCHUMANN, RoBBBT Alexander, bom
June 8, 1810, at Zwickau in Saxony, was the
youngest son of Friedrioh August Gottlob Schumann
(bora 1773), a bookseller, whose father
was a clergyman in Saxony ; the composer's
mother, Johanna Christiana (born 1771), was
the daughter of Herr Schnabel, Rathschirurgus
(surgeon to the town oouncU) at Zeitz. Schumann
cannot have received any incitement
towards music from his parents ; his father,
however, took a lively interest in the lelles lettres,
and was himself known as an author. He
promoted his son's leanings towards art in every
possible way, with which however his mother
seems to have had no sympathy. In the small
provincial town where Schumann spent the first
eighteen years of his life there was no musician
capable of helping him beyond the mere rudiments
of the art. There was a talented townmusician,
who for several decades was the best
trumpeter in the district,' but, as was commonly
the case, he practised his art simply as a
trade. 'The organist of the Marienkirche, J. G.
Kuntzsoh, Schumann's first pianoforte teacher,
after a few years declared that his pupil was
able to progress alone, and that his instruction
might cease. He was so impressed with
the boy's talent, that when Schumann subsequently
resolved to devote himself wholly to
art, Kuntzsch prophesied that he would attain
to fame and immortality, and that in him
the world would possess one of its greatest
musicians. Some twenty years later, in 1845,
Schumann dedicated to him his Studies for the
Pedal-Piano, op. 56. [See vol. ii. p. 612.]
His gift for music showed itself early. He
began to compose, as he tells us himself, before
he was seven. According to this he must have
begun to play the piano, at latest, in his sixth
year. When he was about eleven, he accompanied
at a performance of Friedrich Schneider's
' Weltgerioht, ' conducted by Kuntzsoh, standing
up at the piano to do it. At home, with the
aid of some young musical companions, he got
up performances of vocal and instrumental
music which he arranged to suit their humble
powers. In more extended circles, too, he
appeared as a pianoforte-player, and is said to
have had a wonderful gift for extempore playing.
His father took steps to procure for him
the tuition of 0. M. von Weber, who had
shortly before (1817) been appointed Capellmeister
in Dresden. Weber declared himself
ready to undertake the guidance of the young
genius, but the scheme fell through for reasons
1 BchamaDn's OetammeUe Bchri/ten, ii. 126 (lat ed.).
unknown. From that time Schumann remained
at Zwickau, where circumstances were not
favourable to musical progress ; he was left to
his own instruction, and every inducement to
further progress must have come from himself
alone. Under these circumstances, a journey
made when he was nine years old to Carlsbad,
where he first heard a great pianoforte-player
Ignaz Moscheles—must have been an event
never to be forgotten ; and indeed during hia
whole life he retained a predilection for certain
of Moscheles's works, and a reverence for his
person. The influence of the pianoforte technique
ofMoscheles on him appears very distinctly
in the variations published as op. 1.
At the age of ten he entered the fourth class
at the Gymnasium (or Academy) at Zwickau,
and remained there till Easter, 1828. He had
then risen to the first class, and left ^th a
certificate of qualification for the University.
During this period his devotion to music seems
to have been for a time rather less eager, in
consequence of the interference of his schoolwork
and of other tastes. Now, at the close
of his boyhood, a strong interest in poetry,
which had been previously observed in him,
but which had meanwhile been merged in
his taste for music, revived with increased
strength ; he rummaged through his father's
book-shop, which favoured this tendency, in
search of works on the art of poetry ;
poetical
attempts of his own were more frequent, and
at the age of fourteen Robert had already
contributed some literary efibrts to a work
brought out by his father and called Bildergallerie
der beriihmtesten Menschen aller Vblker
und Zeiten. That he had a gift for poetry is
evident from two Epithalamia given by Wasielewski
(Biographie, 3rd ed., Bonn, 1880, p.
305). In 1827 he set a number of his own
poems to music, and it is worthy of note that
it was not by the classical works of Goethe and
Schiller that Schumann was most strongly
attracted. His favourite writers were Sohulze,
author of Die ' bezauberte Rose '
; the unhappy
Franz von Sonnenberg ; Byron, and, above all,
Jean Paul, with whose works he made acquaintance
in his seventeenth year (at the same time
as with the compositions of Franz Schubert).
These poets represent the cycle of views,
sentiments, and feelings, under whose spell
Schumann's poetical taste, strictly speaking,
remained throughout his life. And in no
musician has the influence of his poetical
tastes on his music been deeper than in him.
On March 29, 1828, Schumann matriculated
at- the University of Leipzig as Studiosus Juris.
It would have been more in accordance with
his inclinations to have devoted himself at
once wholly to art, and his father would no
doubt have consented to his so' doing ; but he
had lost his father in 1826, and his mother
would not hear of an artist's career. Her son