Schumann's struggle against fate in Symphony No.4

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If ever there was a composer whose life was utterly reflected in his work, it was Robert Schumann. Mentally troubled throughout his life, possibly due to the Syphilis he contracted as a student and the mercury treatment he was given, and obsessively in love with his piano teacher’s young daughter, Clara Wieck, who was soon to become his wife, Schumann’s music bursts with emotion and often an instability born of his states of mind. His anguish wasn’t helped by a self-inflicted injury that had prevented him from a young age from developing as a concert pianist – a contraption that he had devised himself to help his fingers move independently – effectively crippled him.

But the concert platform’s loss was to be Western music’s gain, and from the age of 19, Schumann was exceptionally prolific. Unusually for a composer, he tended to concentrate on one genre of music at a time, starting with piano works, each on a massive scale, from the ETA Hoffman inspired Kleisleriana to his depiction of a masked ball with Papillons. And each contained musical codes and messages for his beloved Clara, but also references to what he recognised as his split personality – Florestan being his extrovert, passionate side, Eusebius his more tempered, lyrical, introverted character.

In 1840, Schubert embarked upon his year of song, as he put it, writing around 250 of them that year alone. Each an emotional microcosm exploring themes of marriage, love, loss, loneliness – you name it, and setting poetry by the likes of Goethe, Byron and Heine. The following year, Schumann set to work on the first of four symphonies, which have often been criticised for their heavy-handed orchestrations. Nothing could be further from the truth – and each one is a beautifully crafted, focused, personal statement, from the spring-like freshness of Symphony No. 1, to an exploration of manic depression in No. 2 and his finest, freest and most inventive Symphony, No. 4, a Beethoven-inspired struggle against the forces of fate. One of his early symphonic efforts was eventually transformed into his wonderful A minor Piano Concerto, one of the most popular and enduring in the repertoire.

But despite his massive productivity, Schumann’s health continued to slide, and by the 1850s, his music, particularly the late piano works, gave listeners clues to his mental breakdown, its structures often broken, its musical flow faltering – and in 1853, he attempted suicide by walking into the Rhine. Rescued by fishermen, he was committed to an asylum, where he was effectively abandoned by Clara and his family, and died alone just a couple of years later.

It’s a tragedy that Schumann died believing himself a failure, exacerbated by a late encounter with Brahms whom he regarded as a far superior composer to himself. But Schumann occupies the very highest place in classical music for works that explore the fragility, the joy and the determination of the human spirit.

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