Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic whose work is regarded as a defining expression of the early Romantic era in German music. He is especially celebrated for his piano compositions, including Carnaval, Kreisleriana, and Kinderszenen, and for song cycles such as Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und Leben, alongside four symphonies, a piano concerto, and chamber works including a piano quintet. A hand injury ended his ambitions as a concert pianist and redirected him toward composition, and his music often carries programmatic elements and hidden musical references to himself and to his wife, the pianist and composer Clara Schumann, whom he married in 1840.