Lived: 1810 – 1856
Mostly in: Leipzig, Dresden, Düsseldorf
Best Known For: Lieder, Kinderszenen, Symphonies, Piano and Chamber Works
Similar To: Mendelssohn, Brahms

“I’m affected by everything that goes on in the world and think it all over in my own way – politics, literature and people – and then I long to express my feelings and find an outlet for them in music. That is why my compositions are sometimes difficult to understand, because they are connected with different interests; and sometimes striking, because everything extraordinary that happens impresses me, and impels me to express it in music.” So saying, Robert Schumann encapsulated his artistic vision as the defining composer of the Romantic era. From now on, composing was not merely a craft but a cathartic, uncontrollable surge of inspiration – the transcendent product of a creative genius’s boundless imagination.

Robert Schumann

Nurtured by his father’s passion for literature and his mother’s Romantic idealism, Schumann’s heightened teenage sensitivities were fuelled by the fantasy...