Ebba Simone’s Reviews > Schumann: The Faces and the Masks > Status Update

When Robert's father died, he got a male guardian. But his mother still had a say and both his guardian and his mother wanted him to study law. He never went to class. But wrote letters to his mother studies were going well. I believe it was Wieck who could convince his mother that Robert could make a living as composer and piano player and then he was allowed to pursue this path of music.

Robert on Clara:

"Hardly 3 foot tall and her heart is already developed."

Clara had offered him help and he accepted it.

Clara was so talented even when she was a child (10/11) and Robert 20/21 years old. Robert had struggled to play an intracate piece by Chopin which Clara was able to play effortlessly and virtously. They practised Chopin every morning on 6 am before his studies with her father Wieck.

He had a very loving and supportive father and mother. He was the youngest child. He lost all of his siblings, first his sister aged 28, she was suffering from depression, and his father also died when Schumann was aged 16.
His and his father's favourite poem was Nightthoughts by Edward Young. And also James Thompson's The Seasons. The Seasons in the German version, set so memorably to music by Haydn.

"He was writing poems at eight to his nine years old love."

He usually was in love with two girls at a time when he was a teenager.

"His real traveling took place in his mind and in his music."

"He was a true romantic in his embrace of poetry and feeling, his love of emotional extremes, his intermingling of life and art."