Robert Schumann

Schumann trained to be a concert pianist until his right hand failed — probably from a mechanical device he used to strengthen it, possibly from the mercury then given for syphilis — and he turned to composition and to criticism instead. As a critic he was generous in a way the profession rarely is: he announced the unknown Chopin with the line that here was a genius, and near the end of his career did the same for the twenty-year-old Brahms. His songs and piano cycles came in bursts, whole years given to a single form.

He married Clara Wieck in 1840 after suing her father for permission, and the marriage joined the leading pianist of the age to a composer who needed her to play him into the concert halls. In 1854, hearing voices that dictated music and afraid he would harm her, he threw himself into the Rhine, was pulled out by boatmen, and asked to be taken to an asylum. He spent two and a half years at Endenich near Bonn; Clara was not allowed to see him until the last days. He is buried in Bonn, and she beside him.