When Schumann gave up his journal in 1845 he moved to Dresden, and he
began to suffer severely from the dreadful disorder to which he fell a
victim twelve years later. This disease--an abnormal formation of
bone in the brain--afflicted him with excruciating pains in the head,
sleeplessness, fear of death, and strange auricular delusions. A sojourn
at Parma, where he had complete repose and a course of sea-bathing,
partially restored his health, and he gave himself up to musical
composition again. During the next three years, up to 1849, Schumann
wrote some of his finest works, among which may be mentioned his opera
"Genoviva," his Second symphony, the cantata "The Rose's Pilgrimage,"
more beautiful songs, much piano-forte and concerted music, and the
musical illustrations of Byron's "Manfred," which latter is one of his
greatest orchestral works.
During the years 1850 to 1854 Schumann composed his "Rhenish Symphony,"
the overtures to the "Bride of Messina" and "Hermann and Dorothea,"
and many vocal and piano-forte works. He accepted the post of musical
director at Dûsseldorf in 1850, removed to that city with his wife and
children, and, on arriving, the artistic pair were received with a
civic banquet. The position was in many respects agreeable, but the
responsibilities were too great for Schumann's declining health, and
probably hastened his death. In 1853 Robert and Clara Schumann made
a grand artistic tour through Holland, which resembled a triumphal
procession, so great was the musical enthusiasm called out. When they
returned Schumann's malady returned with double force, and on February
27, 1854, he attempted to end his misery by jumping into the Rhine.
Madness had seized him with a clutch which was never to be released,
except at short intervals. Every possible care was lavished on him by
his heartbroken and devoted wife, and the assiduous attention of the
friends who reverenced the genius now for ever quenched. The last two
years of his life were spent in the private insane asylum at Endenich,
near Bonn, where he died July 20, 1856. Schumann possessed a wealth of
musical imagination which, if possibly equaled in a few instances, is
nowhere surpassed in the records of his art. For him music possessed
all the attributes inherent in the other arts--absolute color and
flexibility of form. That he attempted to express these phases of art
expression, with an almost boundless trust in their applicability to
tone and sound, not unfrequently makes them obscure to the last degree,
but it also gave much of his composition a richness, depth, and subtilty
of suggestive power which place them in a unique niche, and will
always preserve them as objects of the greatest interest to the musical
student. There is no doubt that his increasing mental malady is evident
in the chaotic character of some of his later orchestral compositions,
but, in those works composed during his best period, splendor of
imagination goes hand in hand with genuine art treatment. This is
specially noticeable in the songs and the piano-forte works. Schumann
was essentially lyrical and subjective, though his intellectual breadth
and culture (almost unrivaled among his musical compeers) always kept
him from narrowness as a composer. He led the van in the formation of
that pictorial and descriptive style of music which has asserted itself
in German music, but his essentially lyric personality in his attitude
to the outer world presented the external thoroughly saturated and
modified by his own moods and feelings.
In his piano-forte works we find his most complete and satisfactory
development as the artist composer. Here the world, with its myriad
impressions, its facts, its purposes, its tendencies, met the man and
commingled in a series of exquisite creations, which are true tone
pictures. In this domain Beethoven alone was worthy to be compared with
him, though the animus and scheme of the Beethoven piano-forte works
grew out of a totally different method.
In personal appearance Schumann bore the marks of the man of genius. As
he reached middle age we are told of him that his figure was of middle
height, inclined to stoutness, that his bearing was dignified, his
movements slow. His features, though irregular, produced an agreeable
impression; his forehead was broad and high, the nose heavy, the eyes
excessively bright, though generally veiled and downcast, the mouth
delicately cut, the hair thick and brown, his cheeks full and ruddy. His
head was squarely formed, of an intensely powerful character, and the
whole expression of his face sweet and genial. Even when young he was
distinguished by a kind of absent-mindedness that prevented him from
taking much part in conversation. Once, it is said, he entered a lady's
drawing-room to call, played a few chords on the piano, and smilingly
left without speaking a word. But, among intimate friends, he could be
extraordinarily fluent and eloquent in discussing an interesting topic.
He was conscious of his own shyness, and once wrote to a friend: "I
shall be very glad to see you here. In me, however, you must not expect
to find much. I scarcely ever speak except in the evening, and most in
playing the piano." His wife was the crowning blessing of his life. She
was not only his consoler, but his other intellectual life, for she,
with her great powers as a virtuoso, interpreted his music to the world,
both before and after his death. It has rarely been the lot of an artist
to see his most intimate feelings and aspirations embodied to the world
by the genius of the mother of his children. Well did Ferdinand Hiller
write of this artist couple: "What love beautified his life! A woman
stood beside him, crowned with the starry circlet of genius, to whom he
seemed at once the father to his daughter, the master to the scholar,
the bridegroom to the bride, the saint to the disciple."
Clara Schumann still lives, though becoming fast an old woman in years,
if still young in heart, and still able to win the admiration of the
musical world by her splendid playing. Berlioz, who heard her in her
youth, pronounced her the greatest virtuoso in Germany, in one of his
letters to Heine; and while she was little more than a child she had
gained the heartiest admiration in England, France, and Germany. Henry
Chorley heard her at Leipzig in 1839, and speaks of "the organ-playing
on the piano of Mme. Schumann (better known in England under the name of
Clara Wieck), who commands her instrument with the enthusiasm of a sibyl
and the grasp of a man." Since Schumann's death, Mme. Schumann has been
known as the exponent of her husband's works, which she has performed in
Germany and England with an insight, a power of conception, and a beauty
of treatment which have contributed much to the recognition of his
remarkable genius.