Tim Dowley - Stravinsky

Illustrations reproduced by kind permission of The Mansell Collection, Radio Times Hulton Picture Library and the Mary Evans Picture Library.

Robert Alexander Schumann was born in the small riverside town of Zwickau, Saxony, in 1810. The local paper, the Zwickauer Wochenblatt, announced:

On 8 June to Herr August Schumann, notable citizen and bookseller here, a little son.

Robert Schumanns home in Zwickau

The son of a clergyman, August Schumann was born in 1773, and did not become a notable citizen without great effort. His early life was an uphill struggle against poverty and his parents opposition. Poor himself, Augusts father tried to steer his son into a safe, solid career. But August was irresistibly drawn to poetry, and even sent some of his early efforts to the bookseller Heinse for criticism. Heinse was not terribly impressed, but in 1792 August Schumann, now working as a grocers assistant in Leipzig, enrolled as an arts student at the citys university. There he remained until money ran out. Driven back penniless to his fathers house, he began work on a novel, Knightly Scenes and Monkish Tales, and although Heinse was again non-committal about its literary merits, the bookseller did offer August a job, as assistant in his shop at Zeitz.

August accepted, and all went well until he fell for Johanna Schnabel, the daughter of his landlord, who was the municipal surgeon. Objections to their match were strong, and an engagement was allowed only after Schumann agreed to give up bookselling for the more lucrative trade of grocery.

With his predilection for literature, over the next eighteen months August published several books, including novels and a commercial handbook, The Merchants Companion, and scraped together 1000 thaler to buy a shop. In 1799 August was able to turn once more to bookselling, opening his own shop in Zeitz. In 1808 he moved to the small town of Zwickau on the river Mulde, where, partnered by one of his brothers, he ran a prosperous business from a shop in the main square.

August does not seem to have been particularly musical, but his literary drive was strong, and he published many novels and stories. However his commercial and statistical works were more readily received by the reading public. He also launched a series of successful pocket editions of the classics of all the nations, and translated Byrons Beppo and Childe Harold into German.

Occasionally Augusts restlessness and anxiety threatened his stability, and he verged on nervous breakdown. He suffered particularly severely during the year of Roberts birth.

Of Roberts mother Johanna we have a much vaguer picture. One writer claimed that in later life:

She fell into an exaggerated state of romance and sentimentalism, together with sudden, violent passion, and a tendency to eccentricity, to which marital differences may have contributed.

She is also described as pedantic, unimaginative and intensely morbid. Unfortunately Robert seems to have inherited something of both his parents neurotic characteristics.

The youngest of five children, Robert Schumann was brought up in comfortable, middle-class respectability. As a child, he apparently exhibited no particularly remarkable abilities, and the Schumanns home life was generally secure and peaceful. Possibly, as the youngest of five, Robert was rather spoiled.

Robert Schumann

In 1812, Europe was still blasted by war. Napoleon raised a great army of half-a-million men, and marched east towards Russia. His route lay through the little town of Zwickau, which found itself traversed by columns of marching soldiers and platoons of cavalry, who took two days to pass through. The following year, during the disastrous retreat from Moscow, their route again brought them through Zwickau. Starving soldiers looted for food, and brought disease and plague. The wounded filled the towns hospitals, unhygenic conditions encouraged the spread of cholera, and nearly five hundred citizens of Zwickau died in a matter of weeks. Such devastation inevitably marked the Schumann family, and particularly the impressionable children.

At the age of six, Robert was sent to the local preparatory school, run by Archdeacon Dhner. He had in fact already begun his education, with the young tutor who gave lessons in exchange for board and lodging at the Schumann home.

At the age of seven Robert received his first piano lessons, from Johann Gottfried Kuntzsch, organist at St Marys Church, and schoolmaster at the Zwickau Lyceum. Kuntzsch was a kindly, conservative musician of limited abilities; his knowledge stemmed from leisure-time study. Despite his persistent attempts to drum up musical interest in Zwickau by joint performances by the choir, orchestra and military band, Kuntzschs musical gifts were not great. Nevertheless, Robert was soon improvising, and even composing a set of dances for the piano. A friend remembered: