In 1836 Schumann's acquaintance with Clara Wieck, already famous as a pianist, ripened into love, and a year later he asked her father's consent to their marriage, but was met with a re fusal. The series of Phantasiestiicke for the piano (op. 12) once more illustrates the fusion of literary and musical ideas as em bodied conceptions in such pieces as "Warum" and "In der Nacht." In the Kreisleriana, written in 1838, the composer's realism is again carried a step farther. Kreisler, the romantic poet brought into contact with the real world, was a character drawn from life by the poet E. T. A. Hoffmann (q.v.), and Schumann used him as a mouthpiece for the recital in music of his own personal experiences. The Phantasie (op. 17), written in the summer of 1836, is a work of the highest quality of passion. With the Faschingschwank aus Wien, his most pictorial work for the piano, written in 1839, after a visit to Vienna, this period of his life comes to an end. As Wieck still withheld his consent to their marriage, Robert and Clara dispensed with it, and were married on Sept. 12 at Schonefeld, near Leipzig.
Until now Schumann had written almost solely for the piano forte, but in 1840 he wrote about a hundred and fifty songs. Schumann's biographers represent him as caught in a tempest of song, the sweetness, the doubt and the despair of which are all to be attributed to varying emotions aroused by his love for Clara. Yet it would be idle to ascribe to this influence alone the lyrical perfection of "Friihlingsnacht," "Im wunderschonen Monat Mai" and "Schiine Wiege meiner Leiden." His chief song-cycles of this period were his settings of the Liederkreis of J. von Eichendorff (op. 39), the Frauenliebe und Leben of Chamisso (op. 42), the Dichterliebe of Heine (op. 48) and Myrthen, a collection of songs, including poems by Goethe, Riickert, Heine, Byron, Burns and Moore. The songs "Belsatzar" (op. 57) and "Die beiden Grena diere" (op. 49), each to Heine's words, show Schumann at his best as a ballad writer, though the dramatic ballad is less con genial to him than the introspective lyric. As Grillparzer said, "He has made himself a new ideal world in which he moves almost as he wills." But in his lifetime the sole tokens of honour be stowed upon Schumann were the degree of Doctor by the Uni versity of Jena in 184o, and in 1843 a professorship in the Con servatorium of Leipzig. In 1841 he wrote two o f his four sym phonies. The year 5842 was devoted to the composition of chamber music, and includes the pianoforte quintet (op. 44). In 1843 he wrote Paradise and the Peri, his first essay at concerted vocal music. He had now mastered the separate forms, and from this time forward his compositions are not confined during any particular period to any one of them. In Schumann, above all
musicians, the acquisition of technical knowledge was closely bound up with the growth of his own experience and the impulse to express it. The stage in his life when he was deeply engaged in his music to Goethe's Faust (1844-1853) was a critical one for his health. The first half of the year 1844 had been spent with his wife in Russia. On returning to Germany he had abandoned his editorial work, and left Leipzig for Dresden, where he suffered from persistent nervous prostration. As soon as he began to work he was seized with fits of shivering, and an apprehension of death which was exhibited in an abhorrence for high places, for all metal instruments (even keys) and for drugs. He suffered perpetually also from imagining that he had the note A sounding in his ears. In 1846 he had recovered, and in the winter revisited Vienna, travelling to Prague and Berlin in the spring of 1847 and in the summer to Zwickau.
To 1848 belongs his only opera, Genoveva. It is interesting for its attempt to abolish the recitative, which Schumann regarded as an interruption to the musical flow. The music to Byron's Manfred is pre-eminent in a year (1849) in which he wrote more than in any other. The insurrection of Dresden caused Schumann to move to Kreischa, a village near the city. In August, on the occasion of the centenary of Goethe's birth, such scenes of Schu mann's Faust as were already completed were performed in Dres den, Leipzig and Weimar, Liszt as always giving unwearied as sistance and encouragement. The rest of the work was written in the latter part of the year, and the overture in 1853. From 185o to 1854 the text of Schumann's works is extremely varied. In 185o he succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as musical director at Dussel dorf in 1851-1853 he visited Switzerland and Belgium as well as Leipzig. In January 1854 Schumann went to Hanover, where he heard a performance of his Paradise and the Peri. Soon after his return to Dusseldorf, a renewal of the symptoms that had threatened him before showed itself. Besides the single note he now imagined that voices sounded in his ear. One night he sud denly left his bed, saying that Schubert and Mendelssohn had sent him a theme which he must write down, and on this theme he wrote five variations for the pianoforte, his last work. On Feb. 27 he threw himself into the Rhine. He was rescued by some boatmen, and taken to a private asylum in Endenich near Bonn, where he remained until his death on July 29,1856.