DESCRIPTION:
This track is from the album "The Carnival Leaves Town" which is getting favourable reviews, both in the UK and abroad. It tells the story of German composer Robert Schumann and his wife Clara.

Schumann, was born 200 years ago on 8 June 1810. He was one of the most famous and important Romantic composers of the 19th century.

In 1840, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with his piano instructor, Friedrich Wieck, Schumann married Wieck's daughter, Clara, who also played the piano and composed music. She had a considerable concert career, including premieres of many of her husband's works.

Prior to the legal case and subsequent marriage, the lovers exchanged love letters and rendezvoused in secret. Robert would often wait in a cafe for hours in a nearby city just to see Clara for a few minutes after one of her concerts.

The strain of this long courtship and its consummation led to this great outpouring of lieder (vocal songs with piano accompaniment). Schumann's biographers have attributed the sweetness, the doubt and the despair of these songs to the varying emotions aroused by his love for Clara and the uncertainties of their future together.

Carnaval is one of Schumann's most genial and characteristic piano works.

Schumann imagined that voices sounded in his ear and he heard angelic music. One night he suddenly left his bed, having dreamt or imagined that a ghost (purportedly the spirit of either Schubert or Mendelssohn) had dictated a "spirit theme" to him.

In late February 1854 Schumann's symptoms increased, the angelic visions sometimes being replaced by demonic visions.
He warned Clara that he feared he might do her harm.

On 27 February 1854, he attempted suicide by throwing himself from a bridge into the Rhine River. Rescued by boatmen and taken home, and for the last two years of his life he was confined to a mental institution at his own request.

He died aged 46 on 29 July 1856.