Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
WILD AT HEART
Schumann had to battle to win the hand of his beloved wife Clara, but in the end the biggest struggle he faced was with his own demons
FEBRUARY 1830 This must be recorded as the most debauched week of my life. My friends and I decided to take a break from the tedium of our law books and visit Baden Baden. We saw little of the parks or spa, but spent our hours carousing in the taverns. Oh, the women there, such temptresses. We were weak and very willing. They taught us things it is impossible to learn in any textbook. I remember very little, save an endless river of Champagne, cigars and flesh.
I am now broke and I dread to think what disease I may have picked up from those upstairs rooms. I am assured that mercury will help prevent anything spreading.
SEPTEMBER 1830 The law is not for me. I have decided the keyboard is my future. I have moved in with the family of my piano teacher Friedrich Wieck. He is a harsh master, but promises that within three years I shall be the greatest pianist alive.
His children, however, are a delight. They play music with such great skill, especially Clara, who is 11. She will one day shine bright, I am sure – she has already made her debut at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the city’s most famous concert venue where Mozart once performed. I enjoy reading bedtime stories to Clara and her younger brothers.
Tomorrow I have promised I shall take the children to the zoo, though Wieck insists Clara can only have two hours away from the piano.
NOVEMBER 1831 My first composition has been published: I released to the world my Variations On The Name Abegg, over which I toiled all of last summer. May this momentous event inaugurate a period of creativity and betterment; if I cannot be the world’s greatest pianist, I shall be the world’s greatest piano composer. What a sensation it is to see my composition in my hands. I have sent 40 copies to my friends and family and I have presented to young Clara the deluxe edition, she who plays those cascading arpeggios with such bravura.
JULY 1832 The middle finger of my right hand has been seized with a numbness. It’s been troubling me for some time and I’ve tried various splints and devices to try to rectify the seizure, which renders my hand as pliable as a block of marble. But to no avail. My playing
days, I fear, are over. I must now concentrate on composition.
SEPTEMBER 1834 Clara has blossomed into such a talent, as beautiful as the lilies that grow near the riverbank. Her playing is so delicate and pure. To write music for her is a thrill as I know she will allow my suite of piano pieces, Papillons [ French for butterflies], to take flight.
DECEMBER 1835 Wieck is taking Clara on another tour. He is determined that she shall secure him fame and fortune. Ah, if only Clara could see how her father takes advantage of her golden talents.
I am abandoned in Leipzig. It is a loss I cannot bear, so I have taken a carriage to Zwickau, my birthplace, to watch her play – my God, has anyone played Beethoven so well? After her performance and the 13 – 13! – ovations, I stole her away from her father and in the shadow of the church we kissed for the first time. Oh, what a kiss. I am determined to marry her, to give up women, to give up wine, to give up all that is dissolute in my life.
JANUARY 1836 Wieck has discovered that I am in love with Clara. He says it cannot be tolerated, that Clara is too young, a precious jewel that cannot leave his protection. I have told him in no uncertain terms that he is wrong. I shall prove it so. He has taken her off to Dresden and told me that if I write to her, he will burn my letters.
FEBRUARY 1836 Clara has written asking me to return her love letters. That monster is behind this scheme. I know it. Clara still loves me and he is doing all he can to destroy our passion. I shall kill myself if I cannot have her. MARCH 1836 Sti l l no news of Clara. I cannot breathe, I cannot eat, I cannot sleep. My landlady has warned me that she will throw me out if I continue to keep my rooms in such squalor. What do I care? I’d rather be in the gutter than be without Clara. AUGUST 1836 Clara and I have made contact through a secret route. Her nanny has agreed to send my letters, in envelopes in her handwriting, so Wieck will not recognise the hand.
JULY 1837 Clara’s father – the grasp-
ing monster, whose only motive is gold – has agreed to us marrying. But, oh the conditions, he is a lunatic. Clara must give up her own earnings and pay a huge sum to get her piano back. The list goes on and on. But I am determined Clara and I will be man and wife by the time she is 21.
JULY 1839 Clara and I have taken Wieck to court in order to marry without his permission. That it has come to this! My poor Clara has now been rent asunder from her family, through no fault of her own.
DECEMBER 1839 Wieck has presented his evidence to the court that I am a drunkard. This is just not true. Yes, I do sometimes drink a couple of bottles of wine in the tavern with friends – but I only do this in order to dull the pain of Clara’s absence.
Wieck is making it difficult to resolve this interminable dispute over my right to Clara’s hand, and he has driven a dagger into my heart. He’s treated me like the dirt beneath his feet. He has called me ‘lazy, unreliable and conceited’, and unfit to marry Clara, whom he has sent off to Paris hoping she will forget about me. But she will not.
Worse, he called me ‘a mediocre composer whose music is unclear and almost impossible to perform’. I shall win this battle, even if it sends me mad.
1 AUGUST 1840 The court has ruled in our favour. May the angels sing praises. I am now free to marry her without that monster’s consent.
12 SEPTEMBER 1840 Joy unconfined. I am now a married man, to my beloved, my beautiful Clara. It has taken such a struggle to release her from the clutches of her father that I feared my nerves would melt as ice before a fire. But now I know I shall finally find happiness.
OCTOBER 1840 I am on course to complete 140 songs this year, my creativity knows no bounds. My year of song! What a joy it is to write for the human voice. I must never cease writing – it is the only thing that keeps me sane. That and my dearest Clara, whose abounding love for me fuels my creativity like a furnace. Today I heard her sing my Widmung, a song I wrote especially for her as a wedding present. Her voice, as she sings, ‘You raise me lovingly above myself,’ is pure gold. As the poet Heinrich Heine has written, ‘When I look in her eyes all my pain and woe fades; when I kiss her mouth I become whole.’
What a line! Tomorrow I am determined to finish my homage to Heine, and turn this into another song.
JUNE 1843 Aaagh, this is such torture. I have ringing in my brain, the same note incessantly. Ding, ding, ding. It is as if someone is sitting at the pianoforte and hitting the same key, time after time after time. If it continues, I fear I will go mad.
25 JUNE 1850 Genoveva, my opera on which I have striven for so long, has premiered. What a disaster. The Leipzig opera house was barely full, the critics have failed to understand that this, truly, is the future of music. They are obsessed by Wagner, but his operas lack the delicacy, the true human spirit.
7 SEPTEMBER 1850 Clara and I have been honoured with a concert to welcome us to Dusseldorf, where I have been offered a role as director of music for the city. A fusillade of trumpets! And they played the overture to Genoveva – the good people of this Rhineland city recognise what a great opera this is. I feel, at last, that I shall be recognised for my output and that it was right to move here. I shall write a symphony in honour of this great town. However, I shall only receive 700 thalers a year [equivalent to around £11,500 today] in my new job. This sum is not enough to support Clara and my five little chickens.
SEPTEMBER 1853 Sleeplessness. My nights are a terror. And my days barely any better. I cannot conduct; my arms refuse to move. The doctor says it’s rheumatism and a cold water cure should ease the pain.
OCTOBER 1853 A ray of sunshine has entered my otherwise darkening life. A young, handsome composer by the name of Johannes Brahms came to visit Clara and me. He is just 20 years old, but he has already composed some truly fine pieces that seem to capture the spirit of
this restless age. Clara and I have insisted he visit us often, even if his attentiveness to Clara makes me jealous. NOVEMBER 1853 The music council have now asked me to step down and conduct only my own work. Traitors. They were so cowardly that they asked Clara to deliver the final blow, like a blade through my heart. A shameful plot.
JANUARY 1854 I have barely slept for a week. Every night I am visited by angels, who dictate music to me. In the morning, I discover I have written down page upon page of notes. But this is a hellish, not a heavenly existence, to be unable to sleep.
27 FEBRUARY 1854 Oh, what hell have I succumbed to? I have failed miserably to end my wretched life. I had desired to end it all in the waters of the river Rhine but then fate intervened. It was near to Shrove Tuesday and Dusseldorf was full of carnival preparations and all the idiots, dressed up, did not see another idiot determined to find peace at last in a cold, watery grave at the bottom of the Rhine. I jumped from a bridge dressed in just the dressing gown I was wearing when I rushed out of the house. But, alas, I was rescued by some fishermen, who found the whole episode more comic than tragic. This is what I have now become – a figure of fun in this godforsaken city, peopled by imbeciles.
I shall return to work on my Ghost Variations, a piano piece, though I fear it is the angels themselves that have sent me mad.
4 MARCH 1854 I have bidden farewell to Clara and entered the sanatorium of Dr Franz Richarz in Endenich. Young Brahms has promised me he will look after Clara and the chickens. Pray to God that Brahms is able to distract Clara from the shame and disgrace of my condition.
Dr Richarz assures me that bleeding me, and letting the wound fester, will rid me of my voices. Oh, the voices. I am not allowed to see Clara or receive her let ters, but I am allowed a piano and to walk in the garden. Small mercies. I wonder if I shall ever see Clara or the children again. Schumann never left the sanatorium and he died there just over two years later. The only occasion he was allowed to see Clara was in the days leading up to his death.