Robert Schumann was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era.

Schumann began receiving general musical and piano instruction at the age of seven. The boy immediately developed a love of music and worked at creating musical compositions himself. At age 14, Schumann wrote an essay on the aesthetics of music 

Schumann began to compose before the age of seven, but his boyhood was spent in the cultivation of literature as much as music – undoubtedly influenced by his father, a bookseller, publisher, and novelist. He possessed an undeniable talent to play the piano, and he studied in the hopes to become a virtuous of the instrument until he permanently injured his right hand. He had to abandon his ideas of a concert career and devote himself instead to composition.

Several crisis, depression and periods of absolute reclusion were frequent all through his life and they accentuated from 1834, and kept increasing their intensity up until his death. Schumann’s great creative intensity concentrated in his lucid periods in an admirable way.

He studied with Friedrich Wieck, notable music pedagogue, and it is in his house where he meets Clara Wieck, his daughter. He eventually gets married to her – after a judicial fight with her father. The couple had eight children and they remained married until Robert’s death. He dedicated his composition Frauenlieben und –leben to her.

In 1844, after a trip to Russia, he went through a new period of depression and abandoned Leipzig to settle in Dresden. The following years his mental and physical health debilitated, but that did not stop him from creating a multitude of new work. In time, hallucinations of angels and demons would add up and he, on his own, declares to his wife Clara he is afraid of hurting himself. On 27 September 1854, Schumann jumped into the Rhine River. He was rescued in time, but his mind was lost forever. He is committed in a private clinic in Endenich, near Bonn, Germany, where he remains until his death, 29 July 1856. He was buried in the old cemetery of Bonn, and in 1880 a statue of A. Donndorf was erect on his tomb.