Composer Robert Schumann, quintessential Romantic composer, is famous for embracing the era’s love of cross-pollinating music and literature. For years, he had trouble fully committing to either music or writing, and he drew inspiration from storytelling and literature throughout his

The love story between Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck is surely the best-known love story in classical music history. According to legend, the young composer and the young pianist fell in love, but her cruel father kept the lovers apart,

Nowadays, we remember Robert Schumann as a composer. However, during his lifetime, he was also widely known as a music critic and founder of the periodical Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music). Today, we’re looking at Schumann’s work

Friedrich Wieck – Clara Schumann’s much-maligned father – is one of the great villains of classical music history, infamous for how he tried to keep Clara and her future husband Robert Schumann apart. However, Wieck had a fascinating biography apart

A Chilling Embrace Lay your hand, my loveJust lay your hand on my heart, my love;Ah, can you not hear it throbbing in there?A carpenter, wicked and evil, lives there,Fashioning me my coffin.He bangs and hammers day and night,And has

In June 1839, Robert Schumann famously wrote, “All my life I have regarded vocal music as inferior to instrumental music, and have never considered it great art.” Famous indeed, but not his last words on the subject. Only a couple

Every person with mental illness experiences it in different ways, with different symptoms of different severities. This deeply personal and subjective experience means that mental illness is famously difficult to diagnose, even with our comparatively advanced medical knowledge. If it’s

Robert Schumann’s Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17, opens with a passionate declaration of what scholars and performers often call the “Clara theme,” a five-note descending scale. But what is this melody, and why does it matter? To understand it, its