Robert Schumann

Born in Zwickau in 1810 to a middle-class family with no music background, Schumann drifted between law school and the piano, studying with Friedrich Wieck until a worsening hand problem ended his hopes as a virtuoso. He poured himself into composition instead, writing Carnaval, Kinderszenen, and the rest of the major piano works between 1834 and 1838, and co-founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, where he split his critical voice between impetuous "Florestan" and gentle "Eusebius." In 1840 he married Wieck's daughter Clara over her father's bitter opposition, then spent the next years in a s…