Schumann: The Songs

Personality

Four main aspects of Schumann’s complex character are reflected in his song-writing. First comes his cyclic disposition, fluctuating between extremes of elation and depression. Next is the quite different (but equally marked) duality which Schumann himself called Florestan and Eusebius, the active or passive voices of his outgoing or inward moods. On these two innate dualities his life superimposed a pattern of growth and decline. Betrothal and marriage in 1840 brought maturity and responsibility. Thereafter his world, and hence his music, was no longer composed solely from his own intensely personal feelings. Finally the organic disease which destroyed his mind in 1854 must surely have already damaged his creativity at an earlier stage.