Robert Alexander Schumann
1810 - 1856
Biography
Robert Alexander Schumann (1810–1856), usually known as Robert Schumann, was a German Romantic composer, pianist, and music critic. He was born in Zwickau, Saxony, on June 8, 1810, into the family of a publisher and bookseller. His early life combined literary and musical interests, and although he initially studied law at Leipzig and Heidelberg, he eventually committed himself to music and studied piano with Friedrich Wieck.
After a hand injury ended his hopes for a virtuoso performing career, Schumann concentrated on composition and criticism. He founded and edited the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and used it to advocate for composers whose work he believed represented serious artistic renewal. His own catalog includes major piano works such as Carnaval and Kinderszenen, song cycles including Dichterliebe, chamber music, concertos, choral works, and four symphonies. In 1840 he married pianist and composer Clara Wieck, one of the foremost interpreters of his music.
Schumann did not compose CANONBURY as a hymn tune. The tune used in English-language hymnody was derived later from the fourth piece of his Nachtstücke, Op. 23, composed in 1839. Hymnary records CANONBURY as first appearing as a hymn tune in J. Ireland Tucker's Hymnal with Tunes, Old and New in 1872. Thus Schumann is the composer of the musical source from which the hymn tune was adapted, while the hymn-tune adaptation itself belongs to a later editorial history. Schumann died near Bonn on July 29, 1856.
After a hand injury ended his hopes for a virtuoso performing career, Schumann concentrated on composition and criticism. He founded and edited the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and used it to advocate for composers whose work he believed represented serious artistic renewal. His own catalog includes major piano works such as Carnaval and Kinderszenen, song cycles including Dichterliebe, chamber music, concertos, choral works, and four symphonies. In 1840 he married pianist and composer Clara Wieck, one of the foremost interpreters of his music.
Schumann did not compose CANONBURY as a hymn tune. The tune used in English-language hymnody was derived later from the fourth piece of his Nachtstücke, Op. 23, composed in 1839. Hymnary records CANONBURY as first appearing as a hymn tune in J. Ireland Tucker's Hymnal with Tunes, Old and New in 1872. Thus Schumann is the composer of the musical source from which the hymn tune was adapted, while the hymn-tune adaptation itself belongs to a later editorial history. Schumann died near Bonn on July 29, 1856.
Hymns by Robert Alexander Schumann
How Beauteous Were the Marks Divine
Role: Composer
We Give Thee But Thine Own
Role: Composer