Robert Schumann's Madness

Composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) has often been claimed by the bipolar community as one of its own. Today's common practice of diagnosing long-dead artists is understandable: it shows that persons with mental illness have made great contributions and may help destigmatize the illness. We also have no guarantee of this practice's accuracy.

Schumann did undoubtedly show many features of bipolar disorder. He had years of melancholy and little compositional output opposing years of joy and great productivity. In middle age, he began to have musical hallucinations and struggled to write down what he heard, believing he was hearing the voices of angels. But soon enough these angelic voices turned into twisted melodies and demons. Following this slow descent into madness, ostensibly an acute manic episode, he tried to commit suicide by throwing himself off of a bridge. Schumann lived out the rest of his years in an institution.

Yet, there are competing explanations for Schumann's moods and behavior, and these do not claim bipolar disorder--or any mental illness--as his original, underlying condition.

In his book Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician, John Worthen sets the blame for Schumann's symptoms on heavy drinking and syphilis, which he is thought to have contracted at a young age. He cites numerous entries from Schumann's diary as a young man: for example, Schumann refers to a "dreadful and moral hangover," an "iron hammer in [his] head," and "the worst hangover in [his] life--as if [he had] died."

While syphilis is easily cured now with antibiotics, at the time it had no effective treatment. In its advanced stages syphilis often leads to mental degeneration. The common effects of this are personality changes in memory loss, but in rarer cases, it can lead to depression, mania, or psychosis.