Who is florestan

Schumann was deeply touched by Jean Paul's novel Flegeljahre , published in With the unequal pair of twins Vult and Walt described in the book Schumann could identify himself. The correspondence between the characters of the non-conformist Vult and the calm and down-to-earth Walt with the characters of the extroverted, stormy Florestan and the elegiac, contemplative Eusebius indicate that the characters from Jean Paul's novel served as models.

The criticism was presented in novelistic form, which was a common stylistic device at the time. Even the writer ETA Hoffmann had written poetic music reviews for the Leipziger musical newspaper with his literary figure, the "Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler". Decades later, the composer Claude Debussy also invented a fictional interlocutor for his music reviews, " Monsieur Croche " - who, however, was by no means poetic, but rather humorless and dry.

The difference in character between Florestan and Eusebius follows an intended dramaturgy: Schumann used it to portray different perspectives on the plays he was discussing.

In some reviews, however, the antithetical approach reflects less a different view of art than the different temperament of the characters serving as mouthpieces. Florestan and Eusebius are often supported by Master Raro originally Friedrich Wieck was the godfather of this. He takes on the function of an objective observer and softens polarizations. Even where Florestan and Eusebius are not mentioned in reviews or are identified as their "authors", their characteristics and sometimes their naughtiness shape many of Schumann's texts.

Schumann labelled the two emotional extremes in his changeable personality "Florestan" and "Eusebius", the former an outward-going, robust figure, the latter a moody introspective. These also appear regularly in his piano music. Schumann was very fond of musical ciphers. Throughout his life Schumann was plagued by dizzy spells, auditory hallucinations, and momentary losses of consciousness.

Following a paralytic attack that left his speech impaired, he attempted to drown himself in the Rhine. The marriage was hardly the idyll for which the young lovers had been hoping. Tensions surfaced increasingly as the years went by, but initially Clara was Schumann's muse and musical voice, using her fame as a performer to propagate her husband's works.

They had several children, and Schumann's career developed acceptably. He was never an international superstar, like his friend and mentor, Mendelssohn, but that was hardly surprising. Mendelssohn was a great pianist, a fine conductor, and a social charmer. Schumann could no longer play the piano, was a hopeless conductor, and would sit in silence at social gatherings, lost in his own thoughts and dreams.

Furthermore, much of his music explored his own deeply private world: rather than tailoring his works to the successful performers or public tastes of his day, he allows us to eavesdrop on his inner life.

But both his inner and outer lives were to reach a crisis. By early , he had lost his job, his marriage was deeply problematic and his mental health was failing. Schumann attempted suicide, throwing himself into the Rhine the inspiration for one of his most joyous works, the Rhenish symphony — cruel irony.

Rescued against his will, he was still desperate to escape from the world. A few days later, he had himself committed to the asylum at Endenich, near Bonn.

Lingering for two-and-a-half dreadful years, a living ghost, he described himself as "Robert Schumann, honorary member of heaven". He died there in ; Clara's only visit took place as he lay, changed almost beyond recognition, on his deathbed. The cause of his madness was probably tertiary syphilis, although his apparent manic depression cannot have helped. Clara, bereft and shamed, supported the household by endless concert tours, often leaving her children in the charge of a young man who had fallen passionately in love with her — Johannes Brahms.

Poor Brahms, who had met Schumann about four months before his incarceration, still revered the older man, and was one of the few people to visit him in the asylum; the emotional crisis scarred him for life. Brahms was not the only one to be shattered by Schumann's condition. The tragedy had a devastating effect upon many of the older composer's inner circle, many of whom later suffered nervous breakdowns.

His children, in effect abandoned by both parents and pretty horribly treated by Clara , were scattered, and most of them met sad ends. Even today, there seems to be something of a curse on those who become too closely involved with Schumann.

The scholar who edited Robert and Clara's letters suffered a breakdown and was hospitalised; the author of one of the few good books in English about Schumann, John Daverio, drowned in mysterious circumstances in the Charles river in Boston; and then there is the group of writers who have been rude about Schumann over the years, and have all suffered from a strange form of writers' cramp that has prevented them from writing another word.

No, that last sentence was just wishful thinking on my part. But Schumann's late music seems to have emanated a dangerous glow. Perhaps it is not surprising that Clara, the most famous champion of her husband's works, suppressed or ignored almost all the late works, forever associated in her mind with his illness.

But surely, over the years, the lack of understanding of Schumann's later thoughts should have been corrected, as it has been with so many other composers Beethoven included?