The Great Composer Quiz – July 17, 2020
Time’s up, pencils down, the Great Composer whose likeness has appeared in books and up on the silver screen. Andrew Crumey, in his 2004 novel, re-writes the story of Robert Schumann’s hospitalization in a mental health clinic, “an asylum,” as known in 1850, in Endenich. It’s not for lovers of Kinderszenen.
The glossy and sentimentalized film Spring Symphony (1983) has Schumann played by Herbert Gronemeyer, with Nastassja Kinski on his arm. A young Katherine Hepburn plays Clara in Song of Love (1947), the first time the Schumann fable came to life in movie theaters. Robert is played by Paul Henreid (Casablanca’s Victor Lazlo).
The Seinfeld Schumann-sighting was not an in-person-by-proxy experience, rather, Jerry tries to explain about how Schumann went insane by hearing the same note over and over inside his head, over and over.
Around here, Schumann appears often, notably in my novel High’d Up. Schumann actually sits up and talks. Click here for books by DJB.