Disciples, Gamblers and Eccentrics: Chris Walton is intrigued by the overlapping friendships of Wagner and the Schumanns
Disciples, Gamblers and Eccentrics: Chris Walton is intrigued by the overlapping friendships of Wagner and the Schumanns
Review of Annegret Rosenmüller, ed., Briefwechsel Robert und Clara Schumanns mit Theodor Kirchner, Alfred Volkland und anderen Korrespondenten in der Schweiz, Schumann Briefedition Series II, Briefwechsel mit Freunden und Künstlerkollegen, ed. Thomas Synofzik and Michael Heinemann (Dohr, 2022).
March 2024, Volume 18, Number 1, 93–6.
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.