Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

1828- SCHUMANN —1829 347
dutifully submitted, although he waa decidedly
averse to the study of jurisprudence. Before
actually joining the university he took a short
pleasure trip into South Germany, in April 1828.
He had made acquaintance in Leipzig with a
fellow -student named Gisbert Eosen ; and a
common enthusiasm for Jean Paul soon led to
a devoted and sympathetic friendship. Rosen
went to study at Heidelberg, and the first object
of Schumann's journey was to accompany him
on his way. In Munich he made the acquaintance
of Heine, in whose house he spent several
hours. On his return journey he stopped at
Bayreuth to visit Jean Paul's widow, and
received from her a portrait of her husband.
During the first few months of his university
life, Schumann was in a gloomy frame of mind.
A students' club to which he belonged for a,
time, struck him as coarse and shallow, and he
could not make up Bis mind to begin the course
of study he had selected. A large part of the
first half-year had passed by and still—as he
writes to his friend—he had been to no college,
but 'had worked exclusively in private, that
is to say, had played the piano and written a
few letters and Jean Pauliads.'
In this voluntary inactivity and solitude
the study of Jean Paul must certainly have
had a special charm for him. That writer,
unsurpassed in depicting the tender emotions,
with Ms dazzling and even extravagant play
of digressive fancy, his excess of feeling over
dramatic power, his incessant alternations between
tears and laughter, has always been
the idol of sentimental women and ecstatic
youths.
' If everybody read Jean Paul, ' Schumann
writes to Rosen, they would ' be betternatufed,
but they would be unhappier ; he has
often brought me to the verge of desperation,
still the rainbow of peace bends serenely above
all the tears, and the soul is wonderfully lifted
up and tenderly glorified.' Even in his latest
years Schumann would become violently angry if
any one ventured to doubt or criticise Jean Paul's
greatness as an imaginative writer, and the
close affinity of their natures is unmistakable.
Schumann himself tell us how once, as a child,
at midnight, when all the household were
asleep, he had in a dream and with his eyes
closed, stolen down to the old piano, and
played a series of chords, weeping bitterly the
while. So early did he betray that tendency
to overstrung emotion which found its most
powerful nourishment in Jean Paul's writings.
Music, however, is a social art, and it soon
brought him back again to human life. In the
house of Professor Cams' he made several
interesting acquaintances, especially that of
Marschner, who was then living in Leipzig, and
had brought out his 'Vampyr' there in the
spring of 1828. His first meeting with Wieok,
1 * PaHetaHmt Carua, led clarUB irOer doctot.' (Berlioz, Voyage
Muttcal, Letter IV.)
the father of his future wife, took place in the
same year ; and Schumann took several pianoforte
lessons from him. Several music-loving students
met together there, and all kinds of chambermusic
were practised. They devoted themselves
with especial ardour to the works of Schubert,
whose death, on Nov.. 19, 1828, was deeply felt
by Schumann. Impelled by Schubert's example,
he wrote at this time eight Polonaises for four
hands ; also a Quartet for piano and strings,
and a number of songs to Byron's words ; all of
which remain unpublished. Besides these occupations,
he made a more intimate acquaintance
with the clavier works of Sebastian Bach. It
is almost self-evident that what chiefly fascinated
Schumann in Bach's compositions was the
mysterious depth of sentiment revealed in them.
Were it not so, it would be impossible to conceive
of Bach in connection with the chaotic Jean
Paul ; and yet Schumann himself says that in
early life Bach and Jean Paul had exercised the
most powerful influence upon him. Considering
the way in which his musical education had
been left to itself, the fact of his so thoroughly
appreciating the wealth and fulness of life in
Bach's compositions at a time when Bach was
looked upon only as a great contrapuntist, is
clear evidence of the greatness of his own genius,
which indeed had some affinity to that of Bach.
The ingenuity of outward form in Bach's works
was neither strange nor unintelligible to him.
For although Schumann had hitherto had no
instructor in composition, it need scarcely be said
that he had long ago made himself familiar with
the most essential parts of the composer's art,
and that constant practice in composition must
have given him much knowledge and skill in
this branch of his art.
At Easter, 1829, Schumann followedhis friend
Eosen to the university of Heidelberg. The
young jurists were perhaps tempted thither by
the lectures of the famous teacher, A. F. J.
Thibaut ; but it is evident that other things
contributed to form Schumann's resolution : the
situation of the town,—a perfect Paradise,—the
gaiety of the people, and the nearness of Switzerland,
Italy, and France. A delightful prospect
promised to open to him there
'
: That will be
life indeed ! ' he writes to his friend
' at
;
Michaelmas we will go to Switzerland, and from
thence who knows where ? ' On his journey to
Heidelberg chance threw him into the society
of Willibald Alexis. Alexis had trodden the
path which Schumann was destined to follow,
and had reached art by way of the law. No
doubt this added to Schumann's interest in the
acquaintance. It cannot be denied that even
in Heidelberg Schumann carried on his legal
studies in a very desultory manner, though
Thibaut himself was a living proof that that
branch of learning could co-exist with a true
love and comprehension of music. Only a few
years before (in 1825) Thibaut. had published