CHAPTER 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.
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.