Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856) was a German composer,
pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely
regarded as one of the greatest composers of the
Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending
to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher,
Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist, had assured him that
he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a
hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his
musical energies on composing. In 1840, Schumann
married Friedrich Wi...(+)
Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856) was a German composer,
pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely
regarded as one of the greatest composers of the
Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending
to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher,
Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist, had assured him that
he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a
hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his
musical energies on composing. In 1840, Schumann
married Friedrich Wieck's daughter Clara Wieck, after a
long and acrimonious legal battle with Friedrich, who
opposed the marriage. A lifelong partnership in music
began, as Clara herself was an established pianist and
music prodigy. Clara and Robert also developed a close
relationship with German composer Johannes Brahms.
Until 1840, Schumann wrote exclusively for the piano.
Later, he composed piano and orchestral works, and many
Lieder (songs for voice and piano). He composed four
symphonies, one opera, and other orchestral, choral,
and chamber works. His best-known works include
Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen,
Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in C. Schumann was known
for infusing his music with characters through motifs,
as well as references to works of literature. These
characters bled into his editorial writing in the Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a
Leipzig-based publication that he co-founded.
Schumann suffered from a mental disorder that first
manifested in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive
episode—which recurred several times alternating with
phases of "exaltation" and increasingly also delusional
ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic
items. What is now thought to have been a combination
of bipolar disorder and perhaps mercury poisoning led
to "manic" and "depressive" periods in Schumann's
compositional productivity. After a suicide attempt in
1854, Schumann was admitted at his own request to a
mental asylum in Endenich (now in Bonn). Diagnosed with
psychotic melancholia, he died of pneumonia two years
later at the age of 46, without recovering from his
mental illness.
"Du bist wie eine Blume" ("You are like a Flower") Op.
25 No. 24, appeared in the Book of Songs in 1827 and is
the 47th poem in the cycle The Homecoming . The work,
which was probably written in 1823 or 1824, is one of
Heinrich Heine's best-known love poems. The catchy poem
begins with an extremely well-known comparison. The
attributed attributes of fair , beautiful and pure do
not deviate from the traditional gender role of a young
woman. Consequently, the speaker does not venture any
closer to the girl in the second stanza. The gesture of
laying on of hands goes hand in hand with the desire to
preserve the qualities mentioned. Hans H. Hiebel sees a
threat to “untouchedness” through reality,
“physical sexuality, perhaps also rudeness [...]”.
Consequently, the “state of purity - despite all
threats - is aesthetically immortalized”. The serious
tone of the song is not ironized - unless one assumes
that the lyrical self wants to understand the
supposedly pious gesture of laying on of hands as a
possibility of physical assault on the flowery,
untouchable young woman. As a result, the lyrical self
itself becomes a cause of the threat to sexual
intangibility described by Hiebel. The social
impossibility of this action and thus of the erotic
rapprochement would then be the reason for the
“wistfulness” of the lyrical ego evoked in the
first verse.
The love song is extremely popular. The poem has been
set to music 388 times alone, including classical
composers such as Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Richard
Wagner, Anton Bruckner, Johannes Brahms, Sergei
Rachmaninoff and Jean Sibelius. The most famous setting
comes from Robert Schumann.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_bist_wie_eine_Blume)<
br>
Although originally composed for Voice and Piano, I
created this Interpretation of "Du bist wie eine Blume"
(You are like a Flower Op. 25 No. 24) for Oboe &
Strings (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).
SHEET MUSIC