Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780300163988)

Shattering longstanding myths, this new biography reveals the robust and positive life of one of the nineteenth century's greatest composers

This candid, intimate, and compellingly written new biography offers a fresh account of Robert Schumann's life. It confronts the traditional perception of the doom-laden Romantic, forced by depression into a life of helpless, poignant sadness. John Worthen's scrupulous attention to the original sources reveals Schumann to have been an astute, witty, articulate, and immensely determined individual, who--with little support from his family and friends in provincial Saxony--painstakingly taught himself his craft as a musician, overcame problem after problem in his professional life, and married the woman he loved after a tremendous battle with her father. Schumann was neither manic depressive nor schizophrenic, although he struggled with mental illness. He worked prodigiously hard to develop his range of musical styles and to earn his living, only to be struck down, at the age of forty-four, by a vile and incurable disease.

Worthen's biography effectively de-mystifies a figure frequently regarded as a Romantic enigma. It frees Schumann from 150 years of mythmaking and unjustified psychological speculation. It reveals him, for the first time, as a brilliant, passionate, resolute musician and a thoroughly creative human being, the composer of arguably the best music of his generation.

Author: John Worthen
ISBN-10: 0300163983
ISBN-13: 9780300163988
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/18/2010
Pages: 496
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.79lbs
Size: 9.18h x 6.42w x 1.54d