PREFACE

Summary

Those who expect to find in the following pages a complete and exhaustive life of Robert Schumann must of necessity be disappointed. The time for writing such a life is not yet come; while so many of the composer's most intimate friends and relations are still living, much must needs be left unsaid. Not that there was any action of his life which would not bear the closest scrutiny, but certain circumstances, and in particular those which darkened the close of his career, must for the present be hinted at rather than described.

Nor can the present sketch lay claim to any important accession of new material to that which has been already published in the German lives of the master. For several details which clear up one or two points where the existing lives are at variance, and for some of the anecdotes, the author is indebted to the kindness of Madame Schumann, Herr Joachim, and others; but the bulk of the book cannot boast of much originality, since it is mainly based on the work of others.

Among the biographies of Schumann, Wasielewski's stands first; with regard to all the facts of the composer's life, it is absolutely reliable, and is also valuable as being founded in great part on personal recollection. The analyses of the compositions are exceedingly good, —in the original German at least, for in the English translation many of them are omitted or curtailed.