A German Romantic composer and critic known for his piano cycles and songs.
Robert Schumann began as a young pianist bent on a virtuoso career, until a persistent problem with his right hand turned him toward composing and writing about music instead. He became one of the most important music critics of his day, championing new talents including the young Brahms and Chopin. In 1840 he married Clara Wieck, herself a celebrated pianist and composer, after a long struggle against her father’s opposition.
Much of Schumann’s early work is for solo piano, and it is intensely poetic — music of moods, characters and hidden meanings, often gathered into cycles of short linked pieces such as Carnaval, Kreisleriana and the Kinderszenen (“Scenes from Childhood”). His writing prizes inner voices and singing lines, and it repays a player who reads it as storytelling rather than display.
Schumann wrote some of the finest music ever composed expressly for young players, above all the Album for the Young. From Kinderszenen, the tender “Träumerei” is a reachable goal that has moved listeners for generations. He is proof that music written simply need not be music written small.