Disciples, Gamblers and Eccentrics: Chris Walton is intrigued by the overlapping friendships of Wagner and the Schumanns

Reviewing an edition of correspondence with and by Robert and Clara Schumann might seem odd in a journal devoted to Richard Wagner. After all, he’s mentioned in the index barely one-and-a-half dozen times. And the Schumanns didn’t like him much, nor he them – he was variously charming or nasty about them, depending on whether he needed them or not. As we know, within just a few years of Robert Schumann’s death, he and Wagner were already being seen as the major representatives of very different aesthetics. But as this edition proves, people don’t need to share an aesthetic outlook to have things in common.