Schumann
Researched Bibliographic Dossier
Verified edition data and a musicological research note prepared specifically for this work.
- Title
- Schumann
- Author
- Eric Frederick Jensen
- Series
- The Master Musicians
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Place
- Oxford and New York
- Year
- 2001
- ISBN
- 9780195135664
- Language
- English
- Type
- Scholarly biography / works study
SCOPE & CONTENT
Jensen’s Schumann combines a chronological life with focused discussion of the music, drawing on journals, correspondence and modern research to reassess familiar biographical narratives. Literary culture, the relationship with Clara, Schumann’s work as critic and editor, and his changing professional ambitions are treated as essential to the composer’s artistic identity. The book moves beyond the piano and song cycles to give serious attention to orchestral, choral, dramatic and late works.
RESEARCH VALUE
The study is particularly useful for challenging the older habit of interpreting Schumann’s final years only through illness and decline. Jensen examines the late repertory on its own terms and treats the Endenich period with greater documentary caution. For researchers, this makes the book a bridge between traditional narrative biography and the revisionist Schumann scholarship that has questioned assumptions about chronology, mental illness and compositional value.
BIOGRAPHY AND GENRES
Biographical chapters are interwoven with consideration of Schumann’s principal fields of composition. This helps show that the celebrated “years” of piano music and song were part of a larger sequence of changing ambitions that later included symphony, chamber music, choral writing and opera.
THE LATE-WORK QUESTION
Jensen participates in the broader reassessment of late Schumann. Rather than treating stylistic differences as automatic symptoms of pathology, the book asks what can actually be established from documents and from the works themselves, an approach that remains central to current Schumann studies.
- Format
- File size
- 2.2 MB
- Subjects / people
- Books & Essays · Composers · Robert Schumann · Essays & Reception
- Catalogue completeness
- 9 / 10 core bibliographic fields
Extended Editorial Dossier
Existing Classical Archive editorial content associated with this document, integrated here as reference material. File controls and direct PDF/DOC links are excluded from this bibliographic copy.
Bibliographical details
- Author: Eric Frederick Jensen
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- First publication: 2001
- Series: Oxford Master Musicians
- Length: approximately 330–360 pages, depending on the edition
Conceived as a modern scholarly biography, the book aims to integrate life, works, and historical context without the speculative psychology or Romantic mythmaking that characterized much earlier Schumann literature.
The Author: Eric Frederick Jensen
Eric Frederick Jensen is an American musicologist and academic, specializing in nineteenth-century German music, with particular emphasis on Schumann, Mendelssohn, and the cultural history of Romanticism. He has taught at major universities in the United States and is known for combining archival precision with cultural interpretation.
Jensen’s scholarship is marked by:
- Careful use of primary sources (letters, diaries, contemporary criticism)
- Skepticism toward retrospective diagnosis and anecdotal legend
- Attention to institutional, social, and economic realities of musical life
Approach and structure of the book
Schumann is organized chronologically, but with strong thematic undercurrents. Jensen follows Schumann’s life from:
- Childhood and education in Zwickau
- Abandoned legal studies and musical formation
- Years as critic and editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
- Marriage to Clara Schumann and the intense creative decades
- Decline in mental health and final years in Endenich
At each stage, compositions are discussed in direct relation to life circumstances, professional pressures, and intellectual commitments.
View of Schumann
Jensen presents Schumann as:
- A deeply literary and intellectual composer
- A figure shaped by German Romantic philosophy and poetry
- Artistically disciplined, despite surface impressions of volatility
- Less impulsive and less fragmented than older biographies suggest
Crucially, Jensen resists pathologizing Schumann’s creativity. Mental illness is treated as a serious historical reality, but not as a simplistic explanatory key for the music.
Music and criticism
The book places special emphasis on Schumann’s dual identity as composer and critic. Jensen shows how:
- Schumann’s criticism shaped early Romantic musical values
- His fictional personae (Florestan, Eusebius) functioned as aesthetic metaphors, not clinical symptoms
- His compositional evolution reflects long-term artistic planning, not erratic inspiration
Musical discussion is analytical but readable, focusing on form, genre, and expressive intent rather than technical minutiae.
Position within Schumann literature
This biography marked a turning point in English-language Schumann studies, standing apart from:
- Highly romanticized early biographies
- Psychoanalytic or speculative accounts of Schumann’s illness
It is now regarded as one of the most reliable and balanced modern lives of Schumann, frequently cited alongside the major German documentary editions.
In summary
Eric Frederick Jensen’s Schumann is a clear-eyed, authoritative, and humane biography. It restores Schumann as a thinking artist and cultural actor, grounding his music in history without diminishing its poetic power. For readers seeking a serious, modern understanding of Robert Schumann, this book remains an essential reference.