I have read this book twice through and then some, and have found it a revealing and moving portrait of this gentle genious, among the most underrated of composers.

The previous reviewer's dismissal of this book is very unfair. There is generally enough musical analysis here to whet the appetite. I would agree that many of Schumann's later works have been neglected (The author would also agree, by the way.) and that a few early works such as Papillons and Carnaval are overexposed. Inevitably in a book of this sort, one will have favorite pieces that he feels have been given short shrift. (I do too.) But to trash the book because attention is not lavished on a rather minor output such as Gesang der Fruhe is seriously out of whack.

Jensen's biography of Schumann is a merely adequate portrayal of this most extraordinary composer. The prose is incredibly flat and repetitive--the "insight" that Schumann loved children--hardly original considering the "Kinderszenen" and "Album fur die Jugend"--is made several times, though any further elucidation is avoided. Another glaring failure of the book is the lack of musical analysis. After spending far too much time on the youthful "Papillons," Jensen practically ignores such ground-breaking works as the "Gesange der Fruhe" and the eerily gorgeous "Geistervariationen." Often, such works receive only a curious aside, such as "dense texture" and the like. Altogether an unsatisfying read.

SCHUMANN is a work of sound and thorough scholarship, refreshingly free of cant, pomposity, bombast, condescension, self-aggrandizement and arrogance, six pillars in the temple of bad academic writing. Mr. Jensen's thoughtful prose is eminently readable, his argument clear and convincing thanks in no small part to a masterly balancing of distance from and sympathy for his primary subject. The plight of temperament (in Schumann's case, genius) in conflict with ignorance, incomprehension, complacent professionalism and "benign" authoritarianism continues to be a matter of interest and concern. Who or what today would keep Schumann in a cage?