Robert Schumann’s lifelong struggle with mental and physical illness has been written about and analyzed so often that there is no need to summarize it here.
Intriguing as it might be to speculate, through the lens of 21st-century medical understanding, whether he had schizophrenia or syphilis or both or neither, it would be wrong to define him and his music in terms of his illness.
So let’s focus on the happiest aspect of his life: his relationship with his wife, Clara.
At first, her father was a significant obstacle to Robert and Clara’s love (see week 220) but meeting in secret probably made them cherish any moment they could get with each other. Once they finally married in 1840, Robert’s creative output peaked; 138 songs in that year alone.
It was during their courtship that Robert Schumann wrote his famous Kinderszenen, or Scenes From Childhood. Thirteen short pieces for piano, relatively easy to play but full of wonder and playfulness. Apparently, it was Clara’s comment that he was endearingly child-like that inspired the compositions.
“Child Falling Asleep” is the twelfth of the set.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. It really does evoke a dozy-eyed infant on the brink of slumber. Which is funny, because at the time he wrote this, he and Clara didn’t have any kids. But he’d get plenty of opportunities to witness a child falling asleep in the coming years; they ended up having eight.
2. The piece’s lowest notes occur almost exactly at its midpoint, while the beginning and end are a bit higher – mirroring the consciousness of someone falling into, and then climbing slowly out of, a deep sleep.
3. While many of the Kinderszenen pieces feel intentionally frivolous and childish, this one has real weight and melancholy to it. As if it’s less about watching one’s own child fall asleep, and more about wishing for a return to the deep, innocent sleep that only children can experience.
Recommended listening activity:
Using a stuffed toy as a pillow.