In the ‘Leipzig circle’ Schumann was always something of an outsider. Though he was much more of Leipzig than Mendelssohn, he was too much of a revolutionary to be immediately influential. Nor did he have Mendelssohn’s advantages in laying hold on the public. For the first twenty years of his life his connection with music was only that of the enthusiastic dilettante. Though his father, a bookseller of Zwickau in Saxony, favored the development of his musical gifts, his mother feared an artistic career and kept him headed toward the profession of lawyer until his inclinations became too strong. In the meantime he had graduated from the Gymnasium of Zwickau, where he was born in 1810, and entered the University of Leipzig as a student of law. His sensitiveness to all artistic influences in his youth was extremely marked, especially to the efflorescent poet and pseudo-philosopher, Jean Paul Richter (Jean Paul), on whom Schumann later based his literary style. In his youth he would organize amateur orchestras among his playfellows or entertain them with musical descriptions of their personalities on the piano. When, at about seventeen, he arrived in Leipzig to study in the University, he plunged into music, in particular studying the piano under Frederick Wieck, whose daughter, the brilliant pianist, Clara Wieck, later became his wife. An accident to his hand, due to over-zeal in practice, shattered his hopes of becoming a concert pianist, and he took to composition. He now devoted his efforts to repairing the gaps in his theoretical education, though not until a number of years later was he completely at home in the various styles of writing. His romantic courtship of Clara Wieck culminated, in 1840, in their marriage, against her father’s wishes. Their life together was devoted and happy. The year of their marriage is that of Schumann’s most fertile and creative work. His life from this time on was the strenuous one of composer and conductor, with not a few concert tours in which he conducted and his wife played his compositions. But more immediately fruitful was his literary work as editor of the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_, founded in 1834 to champion the romantic tendencies of the younger composers. Toward 1845 there were signs of a failing in physical and mental powers and at times an enforced cessation of activity. In 1853 he suffered extreme mental depression, and his mind virtually gave way. An attempted suicide in 1854 was followed by his confinement in a sanatorium, and his death followed in 1856.