Schumann

He meant to be a pianist and turned to composition and criticism after something went wrong with his hand — what exactly is still disputed. He founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and wrote under two pen names, the hot-headed Florestan and the inward Eusebius, which are the two personalities audible in the music. In 1854 he threw himself into the Rhine, was pulled out, and spent his last two years in an asylum. He died at forty-six.

In 1840 he finally married Clara Wieck, and in that one year wrote more than a hundred and thirty songs, including Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben. His piano cycles are an invention of a different kind: Carnaval and Kinderszenen are not sonatas but strings of short character pieces, held together by temperament rather than by structure.