Did Robert Schumann go mad?
I wasn’t aware that he was actually ‘certified’ as insane as Alberich says (I’m not contradicting him, I simply didn’t know), but there’s much evidence to suggest a disorder, or at least a huge dose of eccentricity. If he did indeed suffer from a single ‘note in his head’, it was undoubetedly tinnitus, an ailment common to musicians and people exposed to loud noises often. I occasionally experience it in one ear, for a very short time. It is a high, shrill ringing; the frequency or pitch of the ring can be pinpointed or approximated by the victim, making it especially annoying when performing music. If the note is an F sharp, it may clash with a piece in C major. I suppose that may have been maddening to him, besides the annoyance of having the noise there at all. I know it buggs me. He also had some strange ideas that could have had him labeled Artistic Genius, or crazy. Many of his pieces focused on a theory of a split personality, a seperation of parts of himself. He even created tw
