Robert Schumann Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer 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 Schumann that Robert could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing. In 1840, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with Wieck, who opposed the marriage, Schumann married Wieck's daughter
Friedrich Wieck German periodical, "Caecilia". Chopin found the review so embarrassingly cloying that he blocked Wieck's attempts to publish the review in French. In a letter to a friend, Chopin wrote that Wieck, "instead of being clever, is very stupid" and that he did not want his musical integrity to "die" because of "the imagination of that ... stubborn German." Friedrich Wieck Johann Gottlob Friedrich Wieck (18 August 1785 – 6 October 1873, aged 88) was a noted German piano teacher, voice teacher, owner of a piano store, and music reviewer. He is remembered as the teacher of his daughter, Clara, a