Robert & Clara Schumann

Robert Schumann was a German composer and critic, born in Zwickau, Germany on June 8, 1810. Although he was no child prodigy, Schumann went on to become one of the most important composers of the Romantic movement in the 19th century and is recognized as such 200 years after his birth. One of music's supreme fantasists, Schumann brought a new lyrical impulse to the German strongholds of the symphony, sonata, and concerto. After a series of family tragedies, he became fascinated by the Romantics. At age 20, he left his legal studies to study music with Fredrich Wieck. After seeing the great Italian violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini in action, Schumann's ambition was to become a piano virtuoso. However, he developed focal, task-specific dystonia of the right hand, also referred to as "pianist's cramp", causing pain and rigidity of his fingers that increased with stress. Unfortunately, this type of dystonia is a frequent clinical symptom in musicians and has been described as muscle spasms and hand cramps in pianists. He also suffered from other health problems including blackouts and hallucinations, which may have been caused by the popular mercury treatments of syphilis of his time. Despite his ailments, Schumann continued his career as a composer and music critic, promoting the careers of Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Chopin.

In 1840, Schumann finally won Clara's hand in marriage despite her father's opposition, followed by a period of intense creativity. He turned exclusively to songwriting and composed his Piano Concerto in A Minor (one of my favorites!). Tragically, just as his creative revival was to be completed, Schumann's self-doubt set in and he became overwhelmed by despair. He resigned from his post as director of music in Dusseldorf and attempted half-heartedly to drown himself in the Rhine in 1854. It now seems he was suffering from the long-term effects of the syphilitic infection he had during his student days.

It seems evident that Schumann was mentally ill since his childhood. Modern scientists have diagnosed him with dementia praecox, an illness more known by the name schizophrenia, and manic-depressive illness. He spent the last two years of his life in an asylum and eventually died on July 29, 1856, near Bonn, Germany. His death in a mental asylum posed a problem for the Nazis because they premiered his late Violin Concerto in 1937 to introduce a replacement for the racially banned Mendelssohn's much-loved concerto. So, a 1943 medical dissertation described that Schumann had suffered from vascular dementia (small strokes caused by hypertension, or high blood pressure) rather than schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness, and dismissed Schumann and his family from having a hereditary mental illness. This diagnosis continued despite an abundance of contrasting evidence until the mid-1980s. After World War II, the British psychiatrists Eliot Slater and Alfred Meyer argued for manic-depressive illness followed by syphilis and the discussion regarding Schumann's ailments continued. Read more here.