Sunday Feature: The Many Diagnoses of Robert Schumann

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The Many Diagnoses of Robert Schumann

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, The Many Diagnoses of Robert Schumann

Phil Hebblethwaite traces the explanations for Schumann‘s illness and death.

Phil Hebblethwaite traces the many explanations for Robert Schumann’s illness and death, uncovering a history of psychiatry, politics and social values.

Robert Schumann attempted suicide by casting himself into The Rhine in 1854. He survived, only to be admitted at his own request to a mental asylum in Endenich, near Bonn, where he died two years later in 1856, aged just 46. 

It’s one of music’s most tragic stories, and it would go on to have a life of its own. What happened? What was the nature of his illness? Was he suffering from bipolar disorder? Schizophrenia? Syphilis? 

In this Sunday Feature, music journalist Phil Hebblethwaite finds that Schumann has been the focus of vast quantities of research conducted by psychiatrists. In tracing these many post-death diagnoses, a bigger story emerges – a history of psychiatry itself since the 1850s, as well as a portrait of political upheaval and changing social values. 

The musicologist and physician Yael Braunschweig has plotted these developments and acts as one of many guides through Schumann’s retrospective diagnoses.

With contributions from Yael Braunschweig, Judith Chernaik, Professor David Healey, Professor Kay Redfield Jamison, Professor Erik Levi, Dr Catherine Oppenheimer and Steven Isserlis.  

Written and presented by Phil Hebblethwaite
Produced by Tom Woolfenden
Readings by Oliver Soden
A Loftus Media production

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