# Robert Schumann and BACH



## PaulineBR (Feb 13, 2012)

Doing an essay on the similarities between schumann and JS Bach. Any advice ?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Yes, make sure you capitalize Schumann. He is a proper noun after all.


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

Well, they both are German-speaking composers who lived in Leipzig during certain periods of their lives. They fathered almost 30 children between the two of them, although Bach's 20 was more than double Schumann's 8 kids. They both wrote compositions for their wives to play, although Clara Schumann was a far better pianist than Anna Magdalena Bach.

Schumann was a renowned musicologist who certainly was aware of Bach's music, but you sure can't hear any of Bach's influence in Schumann's compositions. The two composers hardly even write in the same general forms - I suppose that the _Requiem for Mignon_ is the closest thing that Schumann wrote to a cantata, and that there are probably some parallels between _Carnaval/Papillons/Davidsbundlertanzen_ and the Bach Partitas and suites for keyboard.

Bach was considered to be a very conservative composer for his time - actually he was a fantastically advanced Baroque composer who just never wrote in the new Classical style. Schumann was considered to be somewhere between a revolutionary and a lunatic by the musical press of his day, and he truly was a revolutionary in harmonic innovation. Bach culminated his era - even his sons wrote in the new style, and his true successors were those who discovered his works long after he died. Schumann, on the other hand, had a huge impact on his immediate successors - most notably, Brahms - but also including composers as diverse as Grieg, Debussy, and Dvorak.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Well, he wrote six fugues using Bach's name as a theme, and a Toccata. And he used French overture rhythms fairly frequently.

Edit: And he referred to Bach a lot in his writings (he was a music critic as well as composer).


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