Unexpectedly, Schumann’s “Spring Symphony” had been a great success at its first performance under Felix Mendelssohn in 1841. In the wake of this triumph and his marriage to Clara, Schumann decided that an orchestra would “best portray his celebratory feelings.”

Robert Schumann (1810–1856), like Brahms after him, had to confront the symphonic legacy left to the world by Beethoven. Schumann was very much the composer of the Romantic where ‘music should be, above all else, a means of expressing intense

In 1840, Robert Schumann wrote to his beloved Clara, “This ceaseless inner music is almost killing me; I am almost obsessed by it. Oh Clara, what bliss it is to compose for the voice! I have done without it for

Many classical music lovers know the story of composer Robert Schumann and his pianist wife Clara Wieck: how they fell in love as young people, how Clara’s tyrannical father discouraged the match, and how they finally got married in 1840,

Robert Schumann was born in the town of Zwickau in present-day Germany in 1810. Along with his wife, the great pianist and composer Clara Schumann, he went on to become one of the leading figures of Romantic Era music. Here

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) made wide use of imaginary characters, which he imbued with distinctive characteristics, to extend the meaning of his piano works. His most famous, of course, are Florestan and Eusebius, who stood for the two sides of his

Pianist and composer Clara Schumann was one of the most influential musicians of her generation. One of the ways we can measure that influence is by looking at the many works that were dedicated to her by her colleagues. Going

Premiered at the Stadtteater in Leipzig on 25 June 1850, Robert Schumann’s (1810-1856) four-act opera Genoveva elicited a strong response from Richard Wagner. “Schumann is a strange man,” he writes, “who has no sense of melody, and his opera Genoveva