Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius

by Lise Deschamps Ostwald and Peter Ostwald

Book Overview

After obtaining access to long sought-after archival material about the final years of Robert Schumann, Lise Deschamps Ostwald, the author's widow, is finally able to detail the composer's last years... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555530141
• ISBN13: 9781555530143
• Release Date: March 1987
• Publisher: Northeastern University Press
• Length: 390 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Insightful and Realistic

The late Peter Ostwald's biography is still the most insightful, intelligent and accurate account of Schumann's life and his illness. Dr. Ostwald undertook a very careful study of all the factual material available and drew the most realistic, sensible and compelling conclusions about Schumann's life. Schumann, like other composers, was long regarded as schizophrenic while some writers are still recycling the old notion that he suffered from syphilis and that it was the cause of his mental decline. Schumann was, as Ostwald rightly claims, bipolar. The signs of his illness were in place long before he might have contracted syphilis and even that possibility is in doubt. Ostwald brought Schumann scholarship into the 20th century and debunked a lot of misconceptions about the composer, his illness and his relationships. Highly recommended.

Mind, music, and emotion.

Ostwald has written a careful and insightful biography. Not only are effects of mental illness in musical creativity explored, but there are a number of interesting philosophical issues raised about mind and it's functioning. The subjective experience of creativity, musical or otherwise, is impossible to communicate fully, but Ostwald does a remarkable job. Ostwald's thoughts on musical expression and meanings therein are original, and not extensions of Suzanne Langer's (or other philosophers') interpretation. That Ostwald himself is a pianist as well as psychiatrist allows an intimate understanding of musical cognition, and this in conjuntion with his psychiatric training makes for an unusual analysis. This is not light reading,but definitely in range of an interested reader. It is thought-provoking and facinating. I highly recommend it.

Music, meaning and madness

Ostwald isn't a normal biographer. He is concerned with more than the 'facts'. His focus is on the complex relationship between Schumann's music, his life, his mental state and his relationship with Clara. But to this end he has done a major service to our understanding of Schumann by going well beyond the published sources. Ostwald has translated hitherto unpublished diaries and correspondence that reveal a Schumann who is considerably more complex than he appears in biographies up to this. Certainly, Ostwald's interest in the psychiatric elements of Schumann's life results in a certain amount of terminology, but this is not jargon; there is a chapter which reviews Schumann's illnesses using current American diagnostic guildelines, so this is hardly psychobabble! Ostwald is also a tireless advocate of the less-well-known Schumann, for which he also deserves credit.And finally, the chapter on Schumann's final illness is haunting and chilling. He died a much more wretched death than we supposed.Strongly recommended.