Quotes About Schumann

#1. Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.
What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.

David Markson

#2. Just as surely as every new language mastered opens up a new world, so knowledge of a Beethoven, a Chopin, or a Schumann opens up a new world in spiritual beauty and thought.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

#3. It is impossible to communicate with Schumann. The man is hopeless; he doesn't talk at all.

Richard Wagner

#4. Schumann's 'Quintet in E flat for Piano and Strings' is one of the sublime moments in Romantic music.

Robert Gottlieb

#5. I've got great joy from rediscovering Western music. I love Schumann and Chopin, and those amazing symphonies of Bruckner.

John Tavener

#6. True originality has its foundations in the soul, not in the mind, and when there is an effort to create something different it is usually a failure. Beethoven or Schumann or Chopin did not try to be original. They were original.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

#7. One encounters very capable fathers abashed by their piano-playing daughters. Three measures of Schumann make them red with embarrassment.

Alfred Doblin

#8. The Germans are incapable of any conception of greatness: proof Schumann.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#9. God answers every prayer, Rabbi Schumann once told him, years ago. Mostly His answer is 'no'.

Paul Russell

#10. It's rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether it's Hemingway, Van Gogh ... Robert Schumann has been mentioned ... Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath ... some of them with rather grim ends.

Stephen Fry

#11. And if the little flowers knew how deeply wounded my heart is They would weep with me to heal my pain. - "AND IF THE LITTLE FLOWERS KNEW" BY HEINRICH HEINE, MUSIC BY ROBERT SCHUMANN

Alan Elsner

#12. How can you have faith in human nature when you think that a sewer and certain moments of Schumann or Brahms are connected by secret, shadowy, subterranean passageways.

Ernesto Sabato

#13. Send light to the dark hearts of men, that is the duty the artist.

Robert Schumann

#14. Only when the form grows clear to you, will the spirit become so too.

Robert Schumann

#15. Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder.

Robert Schumann

#16. People compose for many reasons, to become immortal; because the piano happens to be open; because they want to become a millionaire; because of the praise of friends; because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes; or for no reason whatsoever.

Robert Schumann

#17. My whole life has been a struggle between Poetry and Prose, or call it Music and Law.

Robert Schumann

#18. Mendelssohn I consider the first musician of the day; I doff my hat to him as my superior. He plays with everything, especially with the grouping of the instruments in the orchestra, but with such ease, delicacy and art, with such mastery throughout.

Robert Schumann

#19. Music - so different from painting - is the art which we enjoy most in company with others. A symphony, presented in a room with one other listener, would please him but little.

Robert Schumann

#20. Without enthusiasm nothing great can be effected in art.

Robert Schumann

#21. Endeavour to play easy pieces well and with elegance; that is better than to play difficult pieces badly.

Robert Schumann

#22. You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you've looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.

Robert Schumann

#23. Treasures are no longer to be got by instrumental art.

Clara Schumann

#24. The aesthetic principle is the same in every art, only the material differs.

Robert Schumann

#25. By means of industry and perseverance you will rise higher and higher.

Robert Schumann

#26. Every man has his faults; I have and so have you - you will allow me to say so!

Clara Schumann

#27. Music induces nightingales to sing, pug dogs to yelp.

Robert Schumann

#28. Art was not created as a way to riches. Strive to become a true artist; all else will take care of itself.

Robert Schumann

#29. Can that which has cost the artist days, weeks, months and even years of reflection be understood in a flash by a dilettante?

Robert Schumann

#30. The flame that is naturally clear always gives the most light and heat. If I could blend my talent for poetry and music into one, the light would burn still clearer, and I might go far.

Robert Schumann

#31. If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.

Robert Schumann

#32. When you play, do not trouble yourself as to who is listening. Yet always play as though a master listened to you.

Robert Schumann

#33. If all would play first violin, we could not obtain an orchestra. Therefore esteem every musician in his place.

Robert Schumann

#34. That first concept is alway the most naturally and best. The mind errs, the emotion never.

Robert Schumann

#35. Play always as if in the presence of a master.

Robert Schumann

#36. It is the curse of talent that, although it labors with greater steadiness and perseverance than genius, it does not reach its goal, while genius already on the summit of the ideal, gazes laughingly about.

Robert Schumann

#37. My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn't each person give his life for his calling?

Clara Schumann

#38. My symphonies would have reached Opus 100 if I had but written them down ... Sometimes I am so full of music, and so overflowing with melody, that I find it simply impossible to write down anything.

Robert Schumann

#39. We have learned to express the more delicate nuances of feeling by penetrating more deeply into the mysteries of harmony.

Robert Schumann

#40. Believe me, were I ever to accomplish anything, it would be in music, which has always attracted me; and, without overestimating myself, I am conscious of possessing a certain creative faculty.

Robert Schumann

#41. I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose - there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?

Clara Schumann

#42. My indifference to money and my spendthrift ways are disgraceful. You have no idea how reckless I am; how often I practically throw money out of the window. I am always making good resolutions, but the next minute I forget and give the waiter eightpence.

Robert Schumann

#43. Think it a vile habit to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.

Robert Schumann

#44. I cannot be so bad when everybody is so fond of me.

Clara Schumann

#45. We shouldn't repeat the same for ages on end, but look into the new as well.

Robert Schumann

#46. If I have known much trouble in my youth, I have also known much joy.

Clara Schumann

#47. How often have I actually discovered in myself that enthusiasm raises the artist above himself, how in an ordinary mood one would not have been able to accomplish many of the things for which enthusiasm lends one everything, energy, fire.

Clara Schumann

#48. When you play, never mind who listens to you.

Robert Schumann

#49. He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.

(on Liszt)

Clara Schumann

#50. Look deeply into life, and study it as diligently as the other arts and sciences.

Robert Schumann

#51. My heart pounds sickeningly and I turn pale ... I often feel as if I were dead ... I seem to be losing my mind.

Robert Schumann

#52. When young, one learns his craftsmanship, may become a young master, and it is youth that is most auspicious for developing certain skills.

Robert Schumann

#53. I feel so entirely in my element with a full orchestra; even if my mortal enemies were marshalled before me, I could lead them, master them, surround them, or repulse them.

Robert Schumann

#54. To send light into the darkness of men's hearts
such is the duty of the artist.

Robert Schumann

#55. The poet sees better than other mortals. I do not see things as they are, but according to my own subjective impression, and this makes life easier and simpler.

Robert Schumann

#56. The study of jurisprudence, by which I must earn my bread, has so withered and frozen the flowers of my fancy that they will never again seek the light. (To his Mother, November 11, 1829)

Robert Schumann

#57. I do not want horses or diamonds - I am happy in possessing you.

Clara Schumann

#58. Is an artist much more than a beggar?

Clara Schumann

#59. Talent works, genius creates.

Robert Schumann

#60. Thus it is ever in life. The aims we once pursued no longer satisfy us; we aim, we strive, we aspire, until sight fails, and mind and body find rest in the grave.

Robert Schumann

#61. Know what you want to do - then do it. Make straight for your goal and go undefeated in spirit to the end.

Ernestine Schumann-Heink

#62. A fiery, good beginner always stands higher than a master in mediocrity ...

Robert Schumann

#63. Remember, there are more people in the world than yourself. Be modest! You have not yet invented nor thought anything which others have not thought or invented before. And should you really have done so, consider it a gift of heaven which you are to share with others.

Robert Schumann

#64. Why hurry over beautiful things? Why not linger and enjoy them?

Clara Schumann

#65. To compose is to remember music that has never been written.

Robert Schumann

#66. Confidence and courage are special skills to the art ... Within the four walls of his study, the artist should be modest, work diligently and conscientiously. While for the public, he'll show himself audacious, yes even into cheerful boldness. And so a new public's darling has arisen.

Robert Schumann

#67. You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods.

Robert Schumann

#68. You should neither play bad compositions, nor, unless compelled, listen to them.

Robert Schumann

#69. Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

Robert Schumann

#70. You appear in the Novelletten in every possible circumstance, in every irresistible form ... They could only be written by one who knows such eyes as yours and has touched such lips as yours.

Clara Schumann

#71. It was no use to tell a person to forget. No matter how hard you tried to put it out of your mind, the hurt would still be there, festering under the forgetfulness, sending poison through your veins.

Mary Schumann

#72. I will yield to popular demands only insofar as they do not betray my own convictions.

Clara Schumann

#73. Perhaps only a Genius can truly understand Genius.

Robert Schumann

#74. Composing gives me great pleasure ... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.

Clara Schumann

#75. An evil fate has deprived me of the full use of my right hand, so that I am not able to play my compositions as I feel them. The trouble with my hand is that certain fingers have become so weak, probably through writing and playing too much at one time, that I can hardly use them.

Robert Schumann

#76. For me, music is always the language which permits one to converse with the Beyond.

Robert Schumann

#77. We may be sure that a genius like Mozart, were he born today, would write concertos like Chopin and not like Mozart.

Robert Schumann

#78. There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it.

Clara Schumann

#79. I cannot give a single concert at which I do not play one piece after the other in an agony of terror because my memory threatens to fail me. This fear torments me for days beforehand.

Clara Schumann

#80. For me Wagner is impossible ... he talks without ever stopping. One can't just talk all the time.

Robert Schumann

#81. I was a God-fearing child, innocent and physically attractive.

Robert Schumann

#82. My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.

Clara Schumann

#83. I am so fresh in soul and spirit that life gushes and bubbles around me in a thousand springs.

Robert Schumann

#84. Let your intimate friends be chosen from such as are better informed than yourself.

Robert Schumann

#85. I wish to lead a life free from care, and I see that I shall be unhappy if I cannot always work at my art.

Clara Schumann

#86. Does it not seem as if Mozart's works become fresher and fresher the oftener we hear them?

Robert Schumann

#87. "We liked it" or "I didn't like it" people say. As if it were nothing higher than to please the people!

Robert Schumann

#88. I sometimes lack confidence in public, although I am proud enough inwardly.

Robert Schumann

#89. The tea is ice-cold, the room grows colder and colder, but I grow warmer and warmer.

Clara Schumann

#90. From a pound of iron, that costs little, a thousand watch-springs can be made, whose value becomes prodigious. The pound you have received from the Lord,
use it faithfully.

Robert Schumann