Customer Reviews

Schumann: Music and Madness

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ostwald has written a careful and insightful biography. Not only are effects of mental illness in musical creativity explored, but there are a number of interesting philosophical issues raised about mind and it's functioning. The subjective experience of creativity, musical or otherwise, is impossible to communicate fully, but Ostwald does a remarkable job. Ostwald's thoughts on musical expression and meanings therein are original, and not extensions of Suzanne Langer's (or other philosophers') interpretation. That Ostwald himself is a pianist as well as psychiatrist allows an intimate understanding of musical cognition, and this in conjuntion with his psychiatric training makes for an unusual analysis. This is not light reading,but definitely in range of an interested reader. It is thought-provoking and facinating. I highly recommend it.

Ostwald isn't a normal biographer. He is concerned with more than the 'facts'. His focus is on the complex relationship between Schumann's music, his life, his mental state and his relationship with Clara. But to this end he has done a major service to our understanding of Schumann by going well beyond the published sources. Ostwald has translated hitherto unpublished diaries and correspondence that reveal a Schumann who is considerably more complex than he appears in biographies up to this.
Certainly, Ostwald's interest in the psychiatric elements of Schumann's life results in a certain amount of terminology, but this is not jargon; there is a chapter which reviews Schumann's illnesses using current American diagnostic guildelines, so this is hardly psychobabble!
Ostwald is also a tireless advocate of the less-well-known Schumann, for which he also deserves credit.
And finally, the chapter on Schumann's final illness is haunting and chilling. He died a much more wretched death than we supposed.
Strongly recommended.

The late Peter Ostwald's biography is still the most insightful, intelligent and accurate account of Schumann's life and his illness. Dr. Ostwald undertook a very careful study of all the factual material available and drew the most realistic, sensible and compelling conclusions about Schumann's life. Schumann, like other composers, was long regarded as schizophrenic while some writers are still recycling the old notion that he suffered from syphilis and that it was the cause of his mental decline. Schumann was, as Ostwald rightly claims, bipolar. The signs of his illness were in place long before he might have contracted syphilis and even that possibility is in doubt. Ostwald brought Schumann scholarship into the 20th century and debunked a lot of misconceptions about the composer, his illness and his relationships. Highly recommended.

Peter Ostwald's biography of Schumann provides a nice introduction to Schumann's life and works, though I wish a little more time had been spent on his music. The book provides a detailed enough overview of Schumann's childhood and adolescence, with insights into the events that shaped his adult life and world view. The account of the long struggle with Clara's father for permission for the couple to marry was tedious, perhaps providing us with an existential glimpse of the couple's frustration. What was lacking, however, was a convincing explanation of how the licentious and worldly adolescent became an introverted, retiring adult. We are left to observe and speculate without assistance from the author.

What I found tiresome about the book was Ostwald's obvious psychoanalytic epistemology. Schumann's behaviors are described in classical psychoanalytic jargon, which tended to obscure Schumann the person behind a two-dimensional Freudian stereotype. Ostwald's nterpretations are reductionistic and trite, and demonstrate a lack of imagination in exploring the subtle nuances of human behavior, which is as much a criticism of psychoanalytic interpretation of human behavior as it is a criticism of Ostwald's approach in particular. There is a certain intellectual tyranny here that is unappealing. Sometimes, this Freudian speculation borders on the absurd. Ostwald describes a medical treatment where Schumann must insert an injured hyperextended finger into the intestines of a recently slaughtered animal - a treatment which is designed to act much like a heating pad. Ostwald describes this as a form of necrophilia. How might we describe the use of bleeding by leeches from a psychoanalytic perspective? I shudder to think.

I wish psychiatrists or psychologists from orientations other than psychoanalytic would write musical biographies. Maynard Solomon (Beethoven & Mozart biographies) is also a psychoanalyst, but at least he is a bit more subtle. I wonder how a cognitive-behaviorist would handle a biography of Beethoven, Schumann, or Bruckner? Perhaps I'll have to write one.

While there is much interesting information in this book about one of my favorite composers, the book is tedious to read. Every event, decision, feeling of Schumann is analyzed in psychological terms, and never insightful in any way.. each of the (TOO FREQUENT) observations breaks the flow of the story, and they never provide insights that we wouldn't have drawn ourselves, and this finally distracts so much that the reading becomes tedious. For example, what is the point of telling the reader about the psychological effects of a death of a sister or father? I'm a human being, I know this all too well, just tell the story of this great composer.. the only point of reading this ultimately is to make the music come alive for me. There is not much discussion of Schumann's music, what is there is not deep enough to provide any deeping of appreciation or understanding of the music. Regret I didn't get the other newer biography (but more expensive)