144-394: Syndestructible is a studio album by The Syn , released in 2005 on Umbrello Records . Personnel adapted from Syndestructible liner notes. Album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music ) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track or cassette ), or digital . Albums of recorded sound were developed in
288-707: A Requiem Mass , described by the critic Ivan March as "long-neglected and under-prized". Like Mozart before him, Schumann was haunted by the conviction that the Mass was his own requiem. All of Schumann's major works and most of the minor ones have been recorded. From the 1920s his music has had a prominent place in the catalogues. In the 1920s Hans Pfitzner recorded the symphonies, and other early recordings were conducted by Georges Enescu and Toscanini. Large-scale performances with modern symphony orchestras have been recorded under conductors including Herbert von Karajan , Wolfgang Sawallisch and Rafael Kubelík , and from
432-403: A compilation of songs created by any average listener of music. The songs on a mixtape generally relate to one another in some way, whether it be a conceptual theme or an overall sound. After the introduction of Compact discs, the term "Mixtape" began to apply to any personal compilation of songs on any given format. The sales of Compact Cassettes eventually began to decline in the 1990s, after
576-493: A composer beyond solo piano works. During 1840 Schumann turned his attention to song, producing more than half his total output of Lieder , including the cycles Myrthen ("Myrtles", a wedding present for Clara), Frauenliebe und Leben ("Woman's Love and Life"), Dichterliebe ("Poet's Love"), and settings of words by Joseph von Eichendorff , Heinrich Heine and others. In 1841 Schumann focused on orchestral music. On 31 March his First Symphony , The Spring ,
720-480: A concert tour of Russia; her husband joined her. They met the leading figures of the Russian musical scene, including Mikhail Glinka and Anton Rubinstein and were both immensely impressed by Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The tour was an artistic and financial success but it was arduous, and by the end Schumann was in a poor state both physically and mentally. After the couple returned to Leipzig in late May he sold
864-424: A current or former member of a musical group which is released under that artist's name only, even though some or all other band members may be involved. The solo album appeared as early as the late 1940s. A 1947 Billboard magazine article heralded " Margaret Whiting huddling with Capitol execs over her first solo album on which she will be backed by Frank De Vol ". There is no formal definition setting forth
1008-561: A customer buys a whole album rather than just one or two songs from the artist. The song is not necessarily free nor is it available as a stand-alone download, adding also to the incentive to buy the complete album. In contrast to hidden tracks , bonus tracks are included on track listings and usually do not have a gap of silence between other album tracks. Bonus tracks on CD or vinyl albums are common in Japan for releases by European and North American artists; since importing international copies of
1152-560: A daughter in September, the first of the Schumanns' seven children to survive. The following year Schumann turned his attention to chamber music. He studied works by Haydn and Mozart, despite an ambivalent attitude to the former, writing: "Today it is impossible to learn anything new from him. He is like a familiar friend of the house whom all greet with pleasure and with esteem, but who has ceased to arouse any particular interest". He
1296-624: A developing reputation. According to Chissell, her concerto debut at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 9 November 1835, with Mendelssohn conducting, "set the seal on all her earlier successes, and there was now no doubting that a great future lay before her as a pianist". Schumann had watched her career approvingly since she was nine, but only now fell in love with her. His feelings were reciprocated: they declared their love to each other in January 1836. Schumann expected that Wieck would welcome
1440-473: A large project, the largest I've yet undertaken – it's not an opera – I believe it's well-nigh a new genre for the concert hall". Szenen aus Goethes Faust (Scenes from Goethe's Faust), composed between 1844 and 1853, is another hybrid work, operatic in manner but written for concert performance and labelled an oratorio by the composer. The work was never given complete in Schumann's lifetime, although
1584-457: A letter of introduction from a mutual friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim . Brahms had recently written the first of his three piano sonatas, and played it to Schumann, who rushed excitedly out of the room and came back leading his wife by the hand, saying "Now, my dear Clara, you will hear such music as you never heard before; and you, young man, play the work from the beginning". Schumann was so impressed that he wrote an article – his last – for
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#17327870787791728-405: A little son". He was the fifth and last child of August Schumann and his wife, Johanna Christiane ( née Schnabel). August, not only a bookseller but also a lexicographer, author and publisher of chivalric romances , made considerable sums from his German translations of writers such as Cervantes , Walter Scott and Lord Byron . Robert, his favourite child, was able to spend many hours exploring
1872-496: A mixed critical reception, both during his lifetime and since, but there is widespread agreement about the high quality of his solo piano music. In his youth the familiar Austro-German tradition of Bach , Mozart and Beethoven was temporarily eclipsed by a fashion for the flamboyant showpieces of composers such as Moscheles . Schumann's first published work, the Abegg Variations , is in the latter style. But he revered
2016-564: A pianist was evident from an early age: in 1850 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Universal Musical Journal) printed a biographical sketch of Schumann which included an account from contemporary sources that even as a boy he possessed a special talent for portraying feelings and characteristic traits in melody: From 1820 Schumann attended the Zwickau Lyceum, the local high school of about two hundred boys, where he remained till
2160-433: A single artist, genre or period, a single artist covering the songs of various artists or a single artist, genre or period, or any variation of an album of cover songs which is marketed as a "tribute". Robert Schumann Robert Schumann ( German: [ˈʁoːbɛʁt ˈʃuːman] ; 8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic era . He composed in all
2304-522: A single case, or a triple album containing three LPs or compact discs. Recording artists who have an extensive back catalogue may re-release several CDs in one single box with a unified design, often containing one or more albums (in this scenario, these releases can sometimes be referred to as a "two (or three)-fer"), or a compilation of previously unreleased recordings. These are known as box sets . Some musical artists have also released more than three compact discs or LP records of new recordings at once, in
2448-511: A slow movement". Its unorthodox structure may have made it less appealing and it is not often performed. Schumann composed six overtures, three of them for theatrical performance, preceding Byron 's Manfred (1852), Goethe 's Faust (1853) and his own Genoveva . The other three were stand-alone concert works inspired by Schiller's The Bride of Messina , Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea . The Piano Concerto (1845) quickly became and has remained one of
2592-433: A solo album for several reasons. A solo performer working with other members will typically have full creative control of the band, be able to hire and fire accompanists, and get the majority of the proceeds. The performer may be able to produce songs that differ widely from the sound of the band with which the performer has been associated, or that the group as a whole chose not to include in its own albums. Graham Nash of
2736-414: A studio. However, the common understanding of a "live album" is one that was recorded at a concert with a public audience, even when the recording is overdubbed or multi-tracked. Concert or stage performances are recorded using remote recording techniques. Albums may be recorded at a single concert , or combine recordings made at multiple concerts. They may include applause, laughter and other noise from
2880-430: A studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation , to assist in mixing different takes; other locations, such as concert venues and some "live rooms", have reverberation, which creates a "live" sound. Recordings, including live, may contain editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology , artists can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to
3024-676: A successful secular oratorio , Das Paradies und die Peri (Paradise and the Peri ), based on an oriental poem by Thomas Moore . It was premiered at the Gewandhaus on 4 December and repeat performances followed at Dresden on 23 December, Berlin early the following year, and London in June 1856, when Schumann's friend William Sterndale Bennett conducted a performance given by the Philharmonic Society before Queen Victoria and
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#17327870787793168-406: A theme such as the "greatest hits" from one artist, B-sides and rarities by one artist, or selections from a record label , a musical genre , a certain time period, or a regional music scene. Promotional sampler albums are compilations. A tribute or cover album is a compilation of cover versions of songs or instrumental compositions. Its concept may involve various artists covering the songs of
3312-403: A time he also had cello and flute lessons with one of the municipal musicians, Carl Gottlieb Meissner. Throughout his childhood and youth his love of music and literature ran in tandem, with poems and dramatic works produced alongside small-scale compositions, mainly piano pieces and songs. He was not a musical child prodigy like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Felix Mendelssohn , but his talent as
3456-516: A trend of shifting sales in the music industry , some observers feel that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album . An album may contain any number of tracks. In the United States, The Recording Academy 's rules for Grammy Awards state that an album must comprise a minimum total playing time of 15 minutes with at least five distinct tracks or a minimum total playing time of 30 minutes with no minimum track requirement. In
3600-547: A trend towards playing the orchestral music with smaller forces in historically informed performance . After the successful premiere in 1841 of the first of his four symphonies the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung described it as "well and fluently written ... also, for the most part, knowledgeably, tastefully, and often quite successfully and effectively orchestrated", although a later critic called it "inflated piano music with mainly routine orchestration". Later in
3744-430: A way of promoting the album. Albums have been issued that are compilations of older tracks not originally released together, such as singles not originally found on albums, b-sides of singles, or unfinished " demo " recordings. Double albums during the seventies were sometimes sequenced for record changers . In the case of a two-record set, for example, sides 1 and 4 would be stamped on one record, and sides 2 and 3 on
3888-509: A year Schumann called his Liederjahr (year of song). These are Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) comprising sixteen songs with words by Heine; Frauenliebe und Leben (Woman's Love and Life), eight songs setting poems by Adelbert von Chamisso ; and two sets simply titled Liederkreis – German for "Song Cycle" – the Op. 24 set, consisting of nine Heine settings and the Op. 39 set of twelve settings of poems by Eichendorff. Also from 1840
4032-580: Is any vocal content. A track that has the same name as the album is called the title track. A bonus track (also known as a bonus cut or bonus) is a piece of music which has been included as an extra. This may be done as a marketing promotion, or for other reasons. It is not uncommon to include singles, B-sides , live recordings , and demo recordings as bonus tracks on re-issues of old albums, where those tracks were not originally included. Online music stores allow buyers to create their own albums by selecting songs themselves; bonus tracks may be included if
4176-555: Is not necessarily just in MP3 file format, in which higher quality formats such as FLAC and WAV can be used on storage media that MP3 albums reside on, such as CD-R-ROMs , hard drives , flash memory (e.g. thumbdrives , MP3 players , SD cards ), etc. The contents of the album are usually recorded in a studio or live in concert, though may be recorded in other locations, such as at home (as with JJ Cale's Okie , Beck's Odelay , David Gray's White Ladder , and others), in
4320-402: Is recorded on both the "A" and "B" side of the tape, with cassette being "turned" to play the other side of the album. Compact Cassettes were also a popular way for musicians to record " Demos " or "Demo Tapes" of their music to distribute to various record labels, in the hopes of acquiring a recording contract . Compact cassettes also saw the creation of mixtapes , which are tapes containing
4464-516: Is still his piano works and songs from the 1830s and 1840s on which his reputation is primarily based. He had considerable influence in the nineteenth century and beyond. In the German-speaking world the composers Gustav Mahler , Richard Strauss , Arnold Schoenberg and more recently Wolfgang Rihm have been inspired by his music, as were French composers such as Georges Bizet , Gabriel Fauré , Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel . Schumann
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4608-542: Is technically challenging for the pianist Schumann also wrote simpler pieces for young players, the best-known of which are his Album für die Jugend (Album for the Young, 1848) and Three Sonatas for Young People (1853). He also wrote some undemanding music with an eye to commercial sales, including the Blumenstück (Flower Piece) and Arabeske (both 1839), which he privately considered "feeble and intended for
4752-401: Is the cycle of short, interrelated pieces, often programmatic , though seldom explicitly so. They include Carnaval , Fantasiestücke , Kreisleriana , Kinderszenen and Waldszenen (Wood Scenes). The critic J. A. Fuller Maitland wrote of the first of these, "Of all the pianoforte works [ Carnaval ] is perhaps the most popular; its wonderful animation and never-ending variety ensure
4896-403: Is the set Schumann wrote as a wedding present to Clara, Myrthen ( Myrtles – traditionally part of a bride's wedding bouquet), which the composer called a song cycle, although comprising twenty-six songs with lyrics from ten different writers this set is a less unified cycle than the others. In a study of Schumann's songs Eric Sams suggests that even here there is a unifying theme, namely
5040-544: The Neue Zeitschrift für Musik titled " Neue Bahnen " (New Paths), extolling Brahms as a musician who was destined "to give expression to his times in ideal fashion". Hall writes that Brahms proved "a personal tower of strength to Clara during the difficult days ahead": in early 1854 Schumann's health deteriorated drastically. On 27 February he attempted suicide by throwing himself into the River Rhine . He
5184-687: The Musikverein on 1 January 1847 attracted a sparse and unenthusiastic audience, but in Berlin the performance of Das Paradies und die Peri was well received, and the tour gave Schumann the chance to see numerous operatic productions. In the words of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians , "A regular if not always approving member of the audience at performances of works by Donizetti , Rossini, Meyerbeer , Halévy and Flotow , he registered his 'desire to write operas' in his travel diary". The Schumanns suffered several blows during 1847, including
5328-663: The Cello Concerto (1850) remain in the concert repertoire and are well represented on record. The late Violin Concerto (1853) is less often heard but has received several recordings. Schumann composed a substantial quantity of chamber pieces, of which the best-known and most performed are the Piano Quintet in E ♭ major , Op. 44, the Piano Quartet in the same key (both 1842) and three piano trios,
5472-571: The Great C major Symphony . Ferdinand allowed him to take a copy away and Schumann arranged for the work's premiere, conducted by Mendelssohn in Leipzig on 21 March 1839. In the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Schumann wrote enthusiastically about the work and described its " himmlische Länge " – its "heavenly length" – a phrase that has become common currency in later analyses of the symphony. Schumann and Clara finally married on 12 September 1840,
5616-712: The Neue Zeitschrift , and in December the family moved to Dresden. Schumann had been passed over for the conductorship of the Leipzig Gewandhaus in succession to Mendelssohn, and he thought that Dresden, with a thriving opera house, might be the place where he could, as he now wished, become an operatic composer. His health remained poor. His doctor in Dresden reported complaints "from insomnia, general weakness, auditory disturbances, tremors, and chills in
5760-535: The Prince Consort . Although neglected after Schumann's death it remained popular throughout his lifetime and brought his name to international attention. During 1843 Mendelssohn invited him to teach piano and composition at the new Leipzig Conservatory , and Wieck approached him with an offer of reconciliation. Schumann gladly accepted both, although the resumed relationship with his father-in-law remained polite rather than close. In 1844 Clara embarked on
5904-488: The River Rhine but was rescued and taken to a private sanatorium near Bonn , where he lived for more than two years, dying there at the age of 46. During his lifetime Schumann was recognised for his piano music – often subtly programmatic – and his songs. His other works were less generally admired, and for many years there was a widespread belief that those from his later years lacked the inspiration of his early music. More recently this view has been less prevalent, but it
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6048-582: The University of Heidelberg which, unlike Leipzig, offered courses in Roman , ecclesiastical and international law (as well as reuniting Schumann with his close friend Eduard Röller who was a student there). After matriculating at the university on 30 July 1829 he travelled in Switzerland and Italy from late August to late October. He was greatly taken with Rossini 's operas and the bel canto of
6192-410: The first and second from 1847 and the third from 1851. The Quintet was written for and dedicated to Clara Schumann. It is described by the musicologist Linda Correll Roesner as "a very 'public' and brilliant work that nonetheless manages to incorporate a private message" by quoting a theme composed by Clara. Schumann's writing for piano and string quartet – two violins, one viola and one cello –
6336-520: The iPod , US album sales dropped 54.6% from 2001 to 2009. The CD is a digital data storage device which permits digital recording technology to be used to record and play-back the recorded music. Most recently, the MP3 audio format has matured, revolutionizing the concept of digital storage. Early MP3 albums were essentially CD-rips created by early CD- ripping software, and sometimes real-time rips from cassettes and vinyl. The so-called "MP3 album"
6480-524: The 1970s. Appraising the concept in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau said most "are profit-taking recaps marred by sound and format inappropriate to phonographic reproduction (you can't put sights, smells, or fellowship on audio tape). But for Joe Cocker and Bette Midler and Bob-Dylan -in-the-arena, the form makes a compelling kind of sense." Among
6624-415: The 21st-century have mostly focused on CD and MP3 formats. The 8-track tape was the first tape format widely used alongside vinyl from 1965 until being phased out by 1983, being gradually supplanted by the cassette tape throughout the 1970s and early 1980s; the popularity of the cassette reached its peak during the late 1980s before sharply declining during the 1990s. The cassette had largely disappeared by
6768-443: The 25-minute mark. The album Dopesmoker by Sleep contains only a single track, but the composition is over 63 minutes long. There are no formal rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as "albums". If an album becomes too long to fit onto a single vinyl record or CD, it may be released as a double album where two vinyl LPs or compact discs are packaged together in
6912-525: The German Lied . His affinity with the piano is heard in his accompaniments to his songs, notably in their preludes and postludes, the latter often summing up what has been heard in the song. Schumann acknowledged that he found orchestration a difficult art to master, and many analysts have criticised his orchestral writing. Conductors including Gustav Mahler , Max Reger , Arturo Toscanini , Otto Klemperer and George Szell have made changes to
7056-496: The Hollies described his experience in developing a solo album as follows: "The thing that I go through that results in a solo album is an interesting process of collecting songs that can't be done, for whatever reason, by a lot of people". A solo album may also represent the departure of the performer from the group. A compilation album is a collection of material from various recording projects or various artists, assembled with
7200-610: The League of David), Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces), Kreisleriana and Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) (1834–1838). He was a co-founder of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Musical Journal) in 1834 and edited it for ten years. In his writing for the journal and in his music he distinguished between two contrasting aspects of his personality, dubbing these alter egos "Florestan" for his impetuous self and "Eusebius" for his gentle poetic side. Despite
7344-494: The Long Playing record format in 1948, it was natural the term album would continue. Columbia expected that the record size distinction in 78s would continue, with classical music on 12" records and popular music on 10" records, and singles on 78s. Columbia's first popular 10" LP in fact was Frank Sinatra's first album, the four-record eight-song The Voice of Frank Sinatra , originally issued in 1946. RCA's introduction of
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#17327870787797488-608: The US in 1987. She finds the work "full of high drama and supercharged emotion. In my opinion, it's very stageworthy, too. It’s not at all static". Unlike the opera, Schumann's secular oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri was an enormous success in his lifetime, although it has since been neglected. Tchaikovsky described it as a "divine work" and said he "knew nothing higher in all of music." The conductor Sir Simon Rattle called it "The great masterpiece you've never heard, and there aren't many of those now. ... In Schumann's life it
7632-591: The United Kingdom, the criteria for the UK Albums Chart is that a recording counts as an "album" if it either has more than four tracks or lasts more than 25 minutes. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs . Albums such as Tubular Bells , Amarok , and Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield , and Yes's Close to the Edge , include fewer than four tracks, but still surpass
7776-572: The age of eighteen, studying a traditional curriculum. In addition to his studies he read extensively: among his early enthusiasms were Schiller and Jean Paul . According to the musical historian George Hall, Paul remained Schumann's favourite author and exercised a powerful influence on the composer's creativity with his sensibility and vein of fantasy. Musically, Schumann got to know the works of Haydn , Mozart, Beethoven , and of living composers Carl Maria von Weber , with whom August Schumann tried unsuccessfully to arrange for Robert to study. August
7920-413: The album can be cheaper than buying a domestically released version, Japanese releases often feature bonus tracks to incentivize domestic purchase. Commercial sheet music is published in conjunction with the release of a new album (studio, compilation, soundtrack, etc.). A matching folio songbook is a compilation of the music notation of all the songs included in that particular album. It typically has
8064-526: The album's artwork on its cover and, in addition to sheet music, it includes photos of the artist. Most pop and rock releases come in standard Piano/Vocal/Guitar notation format (and occasionally Easy Piano / E-Z Play Today). Rock-oriented releases may also come in Guitar Recorded Versions edition, which are note-for-note transcriptions written directly from artist recordings. Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one-half of
8208-511: The album. If a pop or rock album contained tracks released separately as commercial singles , they were conventionally placed in particular positions on the album. During the sixties, particularly in the UK, singles were generally released separately from albums. Today, many commercial albums of music tracks feature one or more singles, which are released separately to radio, TV or the Internet as
8352-479: The amount of participation a band member can solicit from other members of their band, and still have the album referred to as a solo album. One reviewer wrote that Ringo Starr 's third venture, Ringo , "[t]echnically... wasn't a solo album because all four Beatles appeared on it". Three of the four members of the Beatles released solo albums while the group was officially still together. A performer may record
8496-510: The audience, comments by the performers between pieces, improvisation, and so on. They may use multitrack recording direct from the stage sound system (rather than microphones placed among the audience), and can employ additional manipulation and effects during post-production to enhance the quality of the recording. Notable early live albums include the double album of Benny Goodman , The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert , released in 1950. Live double albums later became popular during
8640-406: The best selling live albums are Eric Clapton 's Unplugged (1992), selling over 26 million copies, Garth Brooks ' Double Live (1998), over 21 million copies, and Peter Frampton 's Frampton Comes Alive! (1976), over 11 million copies. In Rolling Stone ' s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time , 18 albums were live albums. A solo album , in popular music , is an album recorded by
8784-423: The bitter opposition of Wieck, who did not regard his pupil as a suitable husband for his daughter, Schumann married Clara in 1840. In the years immediately following their wedding Schumann composed prolifically, writing, first, songs and song‐cycles including Frauenliebe und Leben ("Woman's Love and Life") and Dichterliebe ("Poet's Love"). He turned his attention to orchestral music in 1841, completing
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#17327870787798928-416: The classics of literature in his father's collection. Intermittently, between the ages of three and five-and-a-half, he was placed with foster parents, as his mother had contracted typhus . At the age of six Schumann went to a private preparatory school, where he remained for four years. When he was seven he began studying general music and piano with the local organist, Johann Gottfried Kuntsch , and for
9072-432: The composer himself. Although during the twentieth century it became common practice to perform these cycles as a whole, in Schumann's time and beyond it was usual to extract individual songs for performance in recitals. The first documented public performance of a complete Schumann song cycle was not until 1861, five years after the composer's death; the baritone Julius Stockhausen sang Dichterliebe with Brahms at
9216-443: The composer), Friedrich Schorr , Alexander Kipnis and Richard Tauber , followed in a later generation by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau . Although in 1955 the authors of The Record Guide expressed regret that so few of Schumann's songs were available on record, by the early twenty-first century every song was on disc. A complete set was published in 2010 with the songs in chronological order of composition;
9360-467: The day before her twenty-first birthday. Hall writes that marriage gave Schumann "the emotional and domestic stability on which his subsequent achievements were founded". Clara made some sacrifices in marrying Schumann: as a pianist of international reputation she was the better-known of the two but her career was continually interrupted by motherhood of their seven children. She inspired Schumann in his composing career, encouraging him to extend his range as
9504-414: The death of their first son, Emil, born the year before, and the deaths of their friends Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. A second son, Ludwig, and a third, Ferdinand, were born in 1848 and 1849. Genoveva , a four-act opera based on the medieval legend of Genevieve of Brabant , was premiered in Leipzig, conducted by the composer, in June 1850. There were two further performances immediately afterwards, but
9648-590: The deepest spirit of the Romantic era ", and concludes: "As both man and musician, Schumann is recognized as the quintessential artist of the Romantic period in German music. He was a master of lyric expression and dramatic power, perhaps best revealed in his outstanding piano music and songs ..." Schumann believed the aesthetics of all the arts were identical. In his music he aimed at a conception of art in which
9792-456: The earlier German masters, and in his three piano sonatas (composed between 1830 and 1836) and the Fantasie in C (1836) he showed his respect for the earlier Austro-German tradition. Absolute music such as those works is in the minority in his piano compositions, of which many are what Hall calls "character pieces with fanciful names". Schumann's most characteristic form in his piano music
9936-551: The early 1900s, the typical 10-inch disc could only hold about three minutes of sound per side, so almost all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length. Classical-music and spoken-word items generally were released on the longer 12-inch 78s, playing around 4–5 minutes per side. For example, in 1924, George Gershwin recorded a drastically shortened version of his new seventeen-minute composition Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. The recording
10080-456: The early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records (78s) collected in a bound book resembling a photo album ; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl long-playing (LP) records played at 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm . The album was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption from the mid-1960s to the early 21st century, a period known as the album era . Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in
10224-506: The early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78s were bundled in book-like albums (one side of a 78 rpm record could hold only about 3.5 minutes of sound). When LP records were introduced, a collection of pieces or songs on a single record was called an "album"; the word was extended to other recording media such as compact disc, MiniDisc , compact audio cassette, 8-track tape and digital albums as they were introduced. An album (Latin albus , white), in ancient Rome,
10368-532: The edge of the repertory". With a large family to support, Schumann sought financial security and with the support of his wife he accepted a post as director of music at Düsseldorf in April 1850. Hall comments that in retrospect it can be seen that Schumann was fundamentally unsuited for the post. In Hall's view, Schumann's diffidence in social situations, allied to mental instability, "ensured that initially warm relations with local musicians gradually deteriorated to
10512-425: The feet, to a whole range of phobias". From the beginning of 1845 Schumann's health began to improve; he and Clara studied counterpoint together and both produced contrapuntal works for the piano. He added a slow movement and finale to the 1841 Phantasie for piano and orchestra, to create his Piano Concerto, Op. 54. The following year he worked on what was to be published as his Second Symphony , Op. 61. Progress on
10656-624: The field – as with early blues recordings, in prison, or with a mobile recording unit such as the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio . Most albums are studio albums —that is, they are recorded in a recording studio with equipment meant to give those overseeing the recording as much control as possible over the sound of the album. They minimize external noises and reverberations and have highly sensitive microphones and sound mixing equipment. Band members may record their parts in separate rooms or at separate times, listening to
10800-543: The first of his four symphonies. In the following year he concentrated on chamber music, writing three string quartets , a Piano Quintet and a Piano Quartet . During the rest of the 1840s, between bouts of mental and physical ill health, he composed a variety of piano and other pieces and went with his wife on concert tours in Europe. His only opera, Genoveva (1850), was not a success and has seldom been staged since. Schumann and his family moved to Düsseldorf in 1850 in
10944-491: The first decade of the 2000s. Most albums are recorded in a studio , although they may also be recorded in a concert venue , at home, in the field, or a mix of places. The time frame for completely recording an album varies between a few hours to several years. This process usually requires several takes with different parts recorded separately, and then brought or " mixed " together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live", even when done in
11088-494: The first movement of a symphony (it was too thinly orchestrated according to Wieck and was never completed). An additional activity was journalism. From March 1834, along with Wieck and others, he was on the editorial board of a new music magazine, Neue Leipziger Zeitschrift für Musik (New Leipzig Music Magazine), which was reconstituted under his sole editorship in January 1835 as the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik . Hall writes that it took "a thoughtful and progressive line on
11232-500: The form of a prototype. Compact Cassettes became especially popular during the 1980s after the advent of the Sony Walkman , which allowed the person to control what they listened to. The Walkman was convenient because of its size, the device could fit in most pockets and often came equipped with a clip for belts or pants. The compact cassette used double-sided magnetic tape to distribute music for commercial sale. The music
11376-480: The form of boxed sets, although in that case the work is still usually considered to be an album. Material (music or sounds) is stored on an album in sections termed tracks. A music track (often simply referred to as a track) is an individual song or instrumental recording. The term is particularly associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks; the term is also used for other formats such as EPs and singles . When vinyl records were
11520-633: The four and is influenced by Beethoven and Schubert. The Third Symphony (1851), known as the Rhenish , is, unusually for a symphony of its day, in five movements, and is the composer's nearest approach to pictorial symphonic music, with movements depicting a solemn religious ceremony in Cologne Cathedral and outdoor merrymaking of Rhinelanders. Schumann experimented with unconventional symphonic forms in 1841 in his Overture, Scherzo and Finale , Op. 52, sometimes described as "a symphony without
11664-415: The front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight compositions per album. By the mid-1930s, record companies had adopted the album format for classical music selections that were longer than the roughly eight minutes that fit on both sides of a classical 12" 78 rpm record. Initially the covers were plain, with
11808-474: The hope that his appointment as the city's director of music would provide financial security, but his shyness and mental instability made it difficult for him to work with his orchestra and he had to resign after three years. In 1853 the Schumanns met the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms , whom Schumann praised in an article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik . The following year Schumann's always-precarious mental health deteriorated gravely. He threw himself into
11952-552: The influence of Schumann's". The first movement pitches against each other the forthright Florestan and dreamy Eusebius elements in Schumann's artistic nature – the vigorous opening bars succeeded by the wistful A minor theme that enters in the fourth bar. No other concerto or concertante work by Schumann has approached the popularity of the Piano Concerto, but the Concert Piece for Four Horns and Orchestra (1849) and
12096-434: The instrumentation before conducting his orchestral music. The music scholar Julius Harrison considers such alterations fruitless: "the essence of Schumann's warmly vibrant music resides in its forthright romantic appeal with all those personal traits, lovable characteristic and faults" that make up Schumann's artistic character. Hall comments that Schumann's orchestration has subsequently been more highly regarded because of
12240-683: The ladies". The authors of The Record Guide describe Schumann as "one of the four supreme masters of the German Lied ", alongside Schubert, Brahms and Hugo Wolf . The pianist Gerald Moore wrote that "after the unparalleled Franz Schubert", Schumann shares the second place in the hierarchy of the Lied with Wolf. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians classes Schumann as "the true heir of Schubert" in Lieder . Schumann wrote more than 300 songs for voice and piano. They are known for
12384-541: The later chamber works are the Sonata in A minor for Piano and Violin , Op. 105 – the first of three chamber pieces written in a two-month period of intense creativity in 1851 – followed by the Third Piano Trio and the Sonata in D minor for Violin and Piano , Op. 121. In addition to his chamber works for what were or were becoming standard combinations of instruments, Schumann wrote for some unusual groupings and
12528-702: The later years of the 1830s were marked by an unsuccessful attempt by Schumann to establish himself in Vienna, and a growing friendship with Mendelssohn, who was by then based in Leipzig, conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra . During this period Schumann wrote many piano works, including Kreisleriana (1837), Davidsbündlertänze (1837), Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood, 1838) and Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Prank from Vienna, 1839). In 1838 Schumann visited Schubert's brother Ferdinand and discovered several manuscripts including that of
12672-419: The law as a career, he wrote to his mother on 30 July 1830 telling her how he saw his future: "My entire life has been a twenty-year struggle between poetry and prose, or call it music and law". He persuaded her to ask Wieck for an objective assessment of his musical potential. Wieck's verdict was that with the necessary hard work Schumann could become a leading pianist within three years. A six-month trial period
12816-560: The law as a profession. After his final examinations at the Lyceum in March 1828 he entered Leipzig University . Accounts differ about his diligence as a law student. According to his roommate Emil Flechsig [ de ] , he never set foot in a lecture hall, but he himself recorded, "I am industrious and regular, and enjoy my jurisprudence ... and am only now beginning to appreciate its true worth". Nonetheless reading and playing
12960-477: The main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber groups , orchestra, choir and the opera. His works typify the spirit of the Romantic era in German music. Schumann was born in Zwickau , Saxony, to an affluent middle-class family with no musical connections, and was initially unsure whether to pursue a career as a lawyer or to make a living as a pianist-composer. He studied law at
13104-428: The mid-1840s), either because of his declining health, or because his increasingly orthodox approach to composition deprived his music of the Romantic spontaneity of the earlier works. The late-nineteenth century composer Felix Draeseke commented "Schumann started as a genius and ended as a talent". In the view of the composer and oboeist Heinz Holliger , "certain works of his early and middle period are praised to
13248-487: The mid-1960s to the late 1970s when the Compact Cassette format took over. The format is regarded as an obsolete technology, and was relatively unknown outside the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation , along with Ampex , Ford Motor Company , General Motors , Motorola , and RCA Victor Records . It
13392-554: The mid-1990s smaller ensembles such as the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées with Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique with John Eliot Gardiner have recorded historically informed readings of Schumann's orchestral music. The songs featured in the recorded repertoire from the early days of the gramophone, with performances by singers such as Elisabeth Schumann (no relation to
13536-500: The most popular Romantic piano concertos. In the mid-twentieth century, when the symphonies were less well regarded than they later became, the concerto was described in The Record Guide as "the one large-scale work of Schumann's which is by general consent an entire success". The pianist Susan Tomes comments, "In the era of recording it has often been paired with Grieg's Piano Concerto (also in A minor) which clearly shows
13680-423: The name of her home town, Asch . The Symphonic Studies are based on a melody said to be by Ernestine's father, Baron von Fricken, an amateur flautist. Schumann and Ernestine became secretly engaged, but in the view of the musical scholar Joan Chissell , during 1835 Schumann gradually found that Ernestine's personality was not as interesting to him as he first thought, and this, together with his discovery that she
13824-481: The name of the selection and performer in small type. In 1938, Columbia Records hired the first graphic designer in the business to design covers, others soon followed and colorful album covers cover became an important selling feature. By the later '30s, record companies began releasing albums of previously released recordings of popular music in albums organized by performer, singers or bands, or by type of music, boogie-woogie , for example. When Columbia introduced
13968-704: The new music of the day". Among the contributors were friends and colleagues of Schumann, writing under pen names: he included them in his Davidsbündler (League of David) – a band of fighters for musical truth, named after the Biblical hero who fought against the Philistines – a product of the composer's imagination in which, blurring the boundaries of imagination and reality, he included his musical friends. During successive months in 1835 Schumann met three musicians whom he regarded with particular respect: Felix Mendelssohn , Chopin and Moscheles. Of these, he
14112-491: The other a worldly realist – both in love with the same woman at a masked ball. Schumann had by now come to regard himself as having two distinct sides to his personality and art: he dubbed his introspective, pensive self "Eusebius" and the impetuous and dynamic alter ego "Florestan". Reviewing an early work of Chopin in 1831 he wrote: Schumann's pianistic ambitions were ended by a growing paralysis in at least one finger of his right hand. The early symptoms had come while he
14256-443: The other parts of the track with headphones to keep the timing right. In the 2000s, with the advent of digital recording , it became possible for musicians to record their part of a song in another studio in another part of the world, and send their contribution over digital channels to be included in the final product. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing or multi-tracking are termed "live", even when done in
14400-438: The other parts using headphones ; with each part recorded as a separate track . Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, and lyrics or librettos . Historically, the term "album" was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage, the word was used for collections of short pieces of printed music from
14544-414: The other. The user would stack the two records onto the spindle of an automatic record changer, with side 1 on the bottom and side 2 (on the other record) on top. Side 1 would automatically drop onto the turntable and be played. When finished, the tone arm's position would trigger a mechanism which moved the arm out of the way, dropped the record with side 2, and played it. When both records had been played,
14688-484: The paper cover in small type were the words "Record Album". Now records could be stored vertically with the record not touching the shelf, and the term was applied to the collection. In the early nineteenth century, "album" was occasionally used in the titles of some classical music sets, such as Robert Schumann 's Album for the Young Opus 68, a set of 43 short pieces. With the advent of 78 rpm records in
14832-549: The piano occupied a good deal of his time, and he developed expensive tastes for champagne and cigars. Musically, he discovered the works of Franz Schubert , whose death in November 1828 caused Schumann to cry all night. The leading piano teacher in Leipzig was Friedrich Wieck , who recognised Schumann's talent and accepted him as a pupil. After a year in Leipzig Schumann convinced his mother that he should move to
14976-582: The piano. Stockhausen also gave the first complete performances of Frauenliebe und Leben and the Op. 24 Liederkreis . After his Liederjahr Schumann returned in earnest to writing songs after a break of several years. Hall describes the variety of the songs as immense, and comments that some of the later songs are entirely different in mood from the composer's earlier Romantic settings. Schumann's literary sensibilities led him to create in his songs an equal partnership between words and music unprecedented in
15120-593: The piece was not the success Schumann had been hoping for. In a 2005 study of the composer, Eric Frederick Jensen attributes this to Schumann's operatic style: "not tuneful and simplistic enough for the majority, not 'progressive' enough for the Wagnerians ". Franz Liszt , who was in the first-night audience, revived Genoveva at Weimar in 1855 – the only other production of the opera in Schumann's lifetime. Since then, according to Kobbé's Opera Book , despite occasional revivals Genoveva has remained "far from even
15264-422: The poetic was the main element. According to the musicologist Carl Dahlhaus , for Schumann, "music was supposed to turn into a tone poem , to rise above the realm of the trivial, of tonal mechanics, by means of its spirituality and soulfulness". In the late nineteenth century and most of the twentieth it was widely held that the music of Schumann's later years was less inspired than his earlier works (up to about
15408-504: The point where his removal became a necessity in 1853". During 1850 Schumann composed two substantial late works – the Third ( Rhenish ) Symphony and the Cello Concerto . He continued to compose prolifically, and reworked some of his earlier works, including the D minor symphony from 1841, published as his Fourth Symphony (1851), and the 1835 Symphonic Studies (1852). In 1853 the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms called on Schumann with
15552-406: The primary medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves and many album covers or sleeves included numbers for the tracks on each side. On a compact disc the track number is indexed so that a player can jump straight to the start of any track. On digital music stores such as iTunes the term song is often used interchangeably with track regardless of whether there
15696-457: The production of its full effect, and its great and various difficulties make it the best possible test of a pianist's skill and versatility". Schumann continually inserted into his piano works veiled allusions to himself and others – particularly Clara – in the form of ciphers and musical quotations. His self-references include both the impetuous "Florestan" and the poetic "Eusebius" elements he identified in himself. Although some of his music
15840-460: The proposed marriage, but he was mistaken: Wieck refused his consent, fearing that Schumann would be unable to provide for his daughter, that she would have to abandon her career, and that she would be legally required to relinquish her inheritance to her husband. It took a series of acrimonious legal actions over the next four years for Schumann to obtain a court ruling that he and Clara were free to marry without her father's consent. Professionally
15984-432: The publishers of photograph albums. Single 78 rpm records were sold in a brown heavy paper sleeve with a large hole in the center so the record's label could be seen. The fragile records were stored on their sides. By the mid-1920s, photo album publishers sold collections of empty sleeves of heavier paper in bound volumes with stiff covers slightly larger than the 10" popular records. (Classical records measured 12".) On
16128-409: The quality of the texts he set: Hall comments that the composer's youthful appreciation of literature was constantly renewed in adult life. Although Schumann greatly admired Goethe and Schiller and set a few of their verses, his favoured poets for lyrics were the later Romantics such as Heine , Eichendorff and Mörike . Among the best-known of the songs are those in four cycles composed in 1840 –
16272-404: The record industry as a standard format for the "album". Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums. The term "album" was extended to other recording media such as 8-track tape , cassette tape , compact disc , MiniDisc , and digital albums, as they were introduced. As part of
16416-452: The release and distribution Compact Discs . The 2010s saw a revival of Compact Cassettes by independent record labels and DIY musicians who preferred the format because of its difficulty to share over the internet . The compact disc format replaced both the vinyl record and the cassette as the standard for the commercial mass-market distribution of physical music albums. After the introduction of music downloading and MP3 players such as
16560-529: The skies, while on the other hand a pious veil of silence obscures the more sober, austere and concentrated works of the late period". More recently the later works have been viewed more favourably; Hall suggests that this is because they are now played more often in concert and in recording studios, and have "the beneficial effects of period performance practice as it has come to be applied to mid-19th-century music". Schumann's works in some other musical genres – particularly orchestral and operatic works – have had
16704-448: The smaller 45 rpm format later in 1948 disrupted Columbia's expectations. By the mid-1950s, 45s dominated the singles market and 12" LPs dominated the album market and both 78s and 10" LPs were discontinued. In the 1950s albums of popular music were also issued on 45s, sold in small heavy paper-covered "gate-fold" albums with multiple discs in sleeves or in sleeves in small boxes. This format disappeared around 1960. Sinatra's "The Voice"
16848-500: The soprano Giuditta Pasta ; he wrote to Wieck, "one can have no notion of Italian music without hearing it under Italian skies". Another influence on him was hearing the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini play in Frankfurt in April 1830. In the words of one biographer, "The easy-going discipline at Heidelberg University helped the world to lose a bad lawyer and to gain a great musician". Finally deciding in favour of music rather than
16992-465: The theme on which the variations are based. The use of a musical cryptogram became a recurrent characteristic of Schumann's later music. In 1831 he began lessons in harmony and counterpoint with Heinrich Dorn , musical director of the Saxon court theatre, and in 1832 he published his Op. 2, Papillons (Butterflies) for piano, a programmatic piece depicting twin brothers – one a poetic dreamer,
17136-540: The third section was successfully performed in Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar in 1849 to mark the centenary of Goethe's birth. Jensen comments that its good reception is surprising as Schumann made no concessions to popular taste: "The music is not particularly tuneful ... There are no arias for Faust or Gretchen in the grand manner". The complete work was first given in 1862 in Cologne , six years after Schumann's death. Schumann's other works for voice and orchestra include
17280-441: The universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg but his main interests were music and Romantic literature . From 1829 he was a student of the piano teacher Friedrich Wieck , but his hopes for a career as a virtuoso pianist were frustrated by a worsening problem with his right hand, and he concentrated on composition. His early works were mainly piano pieces, including the large-scale Carnaval , Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of
17424-464: The user would pick up the stack, turn it over, and put them back on the spindle—sides 3 and 4 would then play in sequence. Record changers were used for many years of the LP era, but eventually fell out of use. 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8: commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or simply eight-track) is a magnetic tape sound recording technology popular in the United States from
17568-399: The work was slow, interrupted by further bouts of ill health. When the symphony was complete he began work on his opera, Genoveva , which was not completed until August 1848. Between 24 November 1846 and 4 February 1847 the Schumanns toured to Vienna, Berlin and other cities. The Viennese leg of the tour was not a success. The performance of Schumann's First Symphony and Piano Concerto at
17712-400: The work with a preconceived idea of what an opera must be like, and finding that Genoveva did not match their preconceptions they condemned it out of hand. In Harnoncourt's view it is a mistake to look for a dramatic plot in this opera: Harnoncourt's view of the lack of drama in the opera contrasts with that of Victoria Bond , who conducted the work's first professional stage production in
17856-480: The year a second symphony was premiered and was less enthusiastically received. Schumann revised it ten years later and published it as his Fourth Symphony . Brahms preferred the original, more lightly-scored version, which is occasionally performed and has been recorded, but the revised 1851 score is more usually played. The work now called the Second Symphony (1846) is structurally the most classical of
18000-452: Was a board chalked or painted white, on which decrees, edicts, and other public notices were inscribed in black. It was from this that in medieval and modern times, album came to denote a book of blank pages in which verses, autographs, sketches, photographs and the like are collected. This in turn led to the modern meaning of an album as a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item. The first audio albums were actually published by
18144-496: Was a further development of the similar Stereo-Pak four-track cartridge created by Earl "Madman" Muntz . A later quadraphonic version of the format was announced by RCA in April 1970 and first known as Quad-8, then later changed to just Q8. The Compact Cassette was a popular medium for distributing pre-recorded music from the early 1970s to the early 2000s. The first "Compact Cassette" was introduced by Philips in August 1963 in
18288-420: Was a setback to Schumann's career: he had a severe and debilitating mental crisis. This was not the first such attack, although it was the worst so far. Hall writes that he had been subject to similar attacks at intervals over a long period, and comments that the condition may have been congenital, affecting August Schumann and Emilie, the composer's sister. Later in the year, Schumann, having recovered, completed
18432-420: Was agreed. Later in 1830 Schumann published his Op. 1, a set of piano variations on a theme based on the name of its supposed dedicatee, Countess Pauline von Abegg (who was almost certainly a product of Schumann's imagination). The notes A-B♭-E-G-G (A-B-E-G-G in German nomenclature, which uses "B" for the note known elsewhere as B♭ and "H" for the note known elsewhere as B[♮]), played in waltz tempo, make up
18576-586: Was also a major influence on the Russian school of composers, including Anton Rubinstein and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky . Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau , in the Kingdom of Saxony (today the German state of Saxony ), into an affluent middle-class family. On 13 June 1810 the local newspaper, the Zwickauer Wochenblatt (Zwickau Weekly Paper), carried the announcement, "On 8 June to Herr August Schumann , notable citizen and bookseller here,
18720-441: Was an illegitimate, impecunious, adopted daughter of Fricken, brought the affair to a gradual end. According to the biographer Alan Walker , Ernestine may have been less than frank with Schumann about her background and he was hurt when he learnt the truth. Schumann felt a growing attraction to Wieck's daughter, the sixteen-year-old Clara . She was her father's star pupil, a piano virtuoso emotionally mature beyond her years, with
18864-663: Was in contrast with earlier piano quintets with different combinations of instruments, such as Schubert's Trout Quintet (1819). Schumann's ensemble became the template for later composers including Brahms, Franck , Fauré , Dvořák and Elgar . Roesner describes the Quartet as equally brilliant as the Quintet but also more intimate. Schumann composed a set of three string quartets (Op. 41, 1842). Dahlhaus comments that after this Schumann avoided writing for string quartet, finding Beethoven's achievements in that genre daunting. Among
19008-399: Was issued in 1952 on two extended play 45s, with two songs on each side, in both packagings. The 10-inch and 12-inch LP record (long play), or 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. A single LP record often had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, and it was adopted by
19152-508: Was issued on both sides of a single record, Victor 55225 and ran for 8m 59s. By 1910, though some European record companies had issued albums of complete operas and other works, the practice of issuing albums was not widely taken up by American record companies until the 1920s. By about 1910, bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records (the term "record album"
19296-547: Was likely to distress all concerned and reduce the chances of recovery. Friends, including Brahms and Joachim, were permitted to visit Schumann but Clara did not see her husband until nearly two and a half years into his confinement, and only two days before his death. Schumann died at the sanatorium aged 46 on 29 July 1856, the cause of death being recorded as pneumonia . Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (2001) begins its entry on Schumann: "[G]reat German composer of surpassing imaginative power whose music expressed
19440-526: Was most influenced in his compositions by Mendelssohn, although the latter's restrained classicism is reflected in Schumann's later works rather than in those of the 1830s. Early in 1835 he completed two substantial compositions: Carnaval , Op. 9 and the Symphonic Studies , Op.13. These works grew out of his romantic relationship with Ernestine von Fricken [ de ] , a fellow pupil of Wieck. The musical themes of Carnaval derive from
19584-404: Was not a great success in Schumann's lifetime and has continued to be a rarity in the opera house. From its premiere onwards the work was criticised on the grounds that it is "an evening of Lieder and nothing much else happens". The conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt , who championed the work, blamed music critics for the low esteem in which the work is held. He maintained that they all approached
19728-401: Was not particularly musical but he encouraged his son's interest in music, buying him a Streicher grand piano and organising trips to Leipzig for a performance of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and Carlsbad to hear the celebrated pianist Ignaz Moscheles . August Schumann died in 1826; his widow was less enthusiastic about a musical career for her son and persuaded him to study for
19872-481: Was often flexible about which instruments a work called for: in his Adagio and Allegro , Op. 70 the pianist may, according to the composer, be joined by either a horn, a violin or a cello, and in the Fantasiestücke , Op. 73 the pianist may be duetting with a clarinet, violin or cello. His Andante and Variations (1843) for two pianos, two cellos and a horn later became a piece for just the pianos. Genoveva
20016-647: Was premiered by Mendelssohn at a concert in the Gewandhaus at which Clara played Chopin's Second Piano Concerto and some of Schumann's works for solo piano. His next orchestral works were the Overture, Scherzo and Finale , the Phantasie for piano and orchestra (which later became the first movement of the Piano Concerto ) and a new symphony (eventually published as the Fourth, in D minor ). Clara gave birth to
20160-462: Was printed on some covers). These albums came in both 10-inch and 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than the records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them. In the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78s by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums, typically with artwork on
20304-407: Was rescued by fishermen, and at his own request he was admitted to a private sanatorium at Endenich , near Bonn , on 4 March. He remained there for more than two years, gradually deteriorating, with intermittent intervals of lucidity during which he wrote and received letters and sometimes essayed some composition. The director of the sanatorium held that direct contact between patients and relatives
20448-475: Was still a student at Heidelberg, and the cause is uncertain. He tried all the treatments then in vogue including allopathy , homeopathy , and electric therapy, but without success. The condition had the advantage of exempting him from compulsory military service – he could not fire a rifle – but by 1832 he recognised that a career as a virtuoso pianist was impossible and he shifted his main focus to composition. He completed further sets of small piano pieces and
20592-419: Was stronger in his praise of Mozart: "Serenity, repose, grace, the characteristics of the antique works of art, are also those of Mozart's school. The Greeks gave to 'The Thunderer' a radiant expression, and radiantly does Mozart launch his lightnings". After his studies Schumann produced three string quartets, a Piano Quintet (premiered in 1843) and a Piano Quartet (premiered in 1844). In early 1843 there
20736-399: Was the most popular piece he ever wrote, it was performed endlessly. Every composer loved it. Wagner wrote how jealous he was that Schumann had done it". Based on an episode from Thomas Moore 's epic poem Lalla Rookh it reflects the exotic, colourful tales from Persian mythology popular in the nineteenth century. In a letter to a friend in 1843 Schumann said, "at the moment I'm involved in
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