Robert Schumann was a German composer and pianist. He was one of the most famous Romantic composers of the first half of the 19th century. An intellectual as well as an aesthete, his music, more than any other composer, reflects the deep personal nature of Romanticism. Introspective and often whimsical, his early music was an attempt to break with the tradition of classical forms and structure which he thought too restrictive. Little understood in his lifetime, much of his music is now regarded as daringly original in harmony, rhythm and form. Born on the June 8, 1810 in Zwickau in Saxony. His father was a publisher, and it was in the cultivation of literature quite as much as in that of music that his boyhood was spent. In 1828 he left school, and after a tour, during which he met Heine at Munich, he went to Leipzig to study law. His interest in music had been stimulated when he was a child by hearing Moscheles play at Carlsbad, and in 1827 his enthusiasm had been further excited by the works of Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn. But his father, who had encouraged the boy`s musical aspirations, had died in 1826, and neither his mother nor his guardian approved of a musical career for him. The question seemed to be set at rest by Schumann`s expressed intention to study law, but both at Leipzig and at Heidelberg, whither he went in 1829, he neglected the law for the philosophers, and though