Editing Robert Schumann (section)

=== Childhood ===
[[File:Schumannhaus ALT.JPG|thumb|upright=1.25|alt=Exterior of substantial town house seen from the square outside it|Schumann's birthplace, now the [[Robert Schumann House]], after an anonymous colourised lithograph]]
Robert Schumann{{refn|group=n|name=alexander}} was born in [[Zwickau]], in the [[Kingdom of Saxony]] (today the German state of [[Saxony]]), into an affluent middle-class family.<ref name=perrey6>Perrey, Schumann's lives, p. 6</ref> On 13 June 1810 the local newspaper, the {{lang|de|Zwickauer Wochenblatt}} (Zwickau Weekly Paper), carried the announcement, "On 8 June to Herr [[August Schumann]], notable citizen and bookseller here, a little son".<ref>Dowley, p. 7</ref> He was the fifth and last child of August Schumann and his wife, [[Christiane Schumann|Johanna Christiane]]. August, not only a bookseller but also a lexicographer, author, and publisher of [[chivalric romances]], made considerable sums from his German translations of writers such as [[Cervantes]], [[Walter Scott]] and [[Lord Byron]].<ref name=g760/> Robert, his favourite child, was able to spend many hours exploring the classics of literature in his father's collection.<ref name=g760/> Intermittently, between the ages of three and five-and-a-half, he was placed with foster parents, as his mother had contracted [[typhus]].<ref name=perrey6/>

At the age of six Schumann went to a private preparatory school, where he remained for four years.<ref name=c3>Chissell, p. 3</ref> When he was seven he began studying general music and piano with the local organist, [[Johann Gottfried Kuntsch]], and for a time he also had cello and flute lessons with one of the municipal musicians, Carl Gottlieb Meissner.<ref>Geck, p. 8</ref> Throughout his childhood and youth his love of music and literature ran in tandem, with poems and dramatic works produced alongside small-scale compositions, mainly piano pieces and songs.<ref name=hall1125>Hall, p. 1125</ref> He was not a musical child prodigy like [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart]] or [[Felix Mendelssohn]],<ref name=perrey6/> but his talent as a pianist was evident from an early age: in 1850 the {{lang|de|[[Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung]]}} (Universal Musical Journal) printed a biographical sketch of Schumann which included an account from contemporary sources that even as a boy he possessed a special talent for portraying feelings and characteristic traits in melody:
{{blockindent|Indeed, he could sketch the different dispositions of his intimate friends by certain figures and passages on the piano so exactly and comically that everyone burst into loud laughter at the accuracy of the portrait.<ref>Wasielewski, p. 11</ref>|}}

From 1820 Schumann attended the Zwickau Lyceum, the local high school of about two hundred boys, where he remained till the age of eighteen, studying a traditional curriculum. In addition to his studies he read extensively: among his early enthusiasms were [[Friedrich Schiller|Schiller]] and [[Jean Paul]].<ref>Geck, p. 49</ref> According to the musical historian George Hall, Paul remained Schumann's favourite author and exercised a powerful influence on the composer's creativity with his sensibility and vein of fantasy.<ref name=hall1125/> Musically, Schumann got to know the works of [[Haydn]], Mozart, [[Beethoven]], and of living composers [[Carl Maria von Weber]], with whom August Schumann tried unsuccessfully to arrange for Robert to study.<ref name=hall1125/> August was not particularly musical but he encouraged his son's interest in music, buying him a [[Johann Baptist Streicher|Streicher]] grand piano and organising trips to [[Leipzig]] for a performance of ''[[Die Zauberflöte]]'' (The Magic Flute) and [[Karlovy Vary|Carlsbad]] to hear the celebrated pianist [[Ignaz Moscheles]].<ref>Chissell, p. 4</ref>

[[File:Portrait of A Young Age of Robert Schumann.png|thumb|Schumann {{circa|1826}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Schumann around 1826 |publisher=Schumann Portal |url=https://www.schumann-portal.de/um-1826.html |access-date=9 June 2024 |archive-date=5 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230705233411/https://www.schumann-portal.de/um-1826.html |url-status=live }}</ref>|alt=miniature oil painting of a young, clean-shaven white youth in early-19th-century costume]]