Robert Winston’s Musical Analysis
Radio 4
WE KNOW that Robert Winston is musical. He played the saxophone on BBC television to prove it. Now he turns his attention to the relationship between illness and creativity, focusing especially on musical genius. It was Aristotle, in a reckless moment, who gave currency to the idea that madness and genius were closely aligned and thus provided generations of Freudians with much to talk about. Indeed, Gustav Mahler personally consulted Freud about his sexual problems. The cure, apparently, was achieved at some cost to his creativity.
Robert Schumann died in 1856 at Endenrich Sanatorium, Bonn. He was 46. He’d had several mental breakdowns and made a number of suicide attempts. Schumann’s music has an unmatched immediate charm. I was captivated by the piano concerto when I first heard it broadcast from the Proms when I was in my teens. The Allegro Appassionato drifts over you like music heard in a trance. The Dichterliebe (his setting of Heinrich Heine’s verse), when the voice stops and the piano quietly concludes, is heart-stoppingly beautiful. There’s nothing more exhilarating than the opening of the Konzertstuck for Four Horns, it’s a bombardment of sunbeams. And there’s no more innocent music than Kinderszenen.
Edge and and bitterness are also to be found in Schumann, to be sure – but was this genius the result of madness? That’s the question Lord Winston set out to explore.
Was Schumann a manic depressive (as it used to be called)? Or did he suffer from syphilis? This was another theory. Winston heard evidence from others who had endured bi-polar disorder and also the pianist Lucy Parham who discussed some of the curious emotional shifts in Schumann’s music and the curious aspect of Schumann’s life that encompassed various imaginary friends, such as many children create for company and amusement.
Although I was persuaded that syphilis played a very small part in all this, I was no means convinced of the connection between the music and the mental condition of the composer. All great music is emotional and speaks directly to the deeper emotions of the soul – hence its importance in religious ritual and public ceremony. However, the connections between derangement and creative genius were by no means credibly established.
The connections are interesting, as the therapeutic qualities of music in the treatment of mentally-disturbed patients has been established since Robert Burton in the 17th century.
But are all creative people barmy? Any why aren’t more barmy people creative? The connections between personal biography and creative genius have never been established as far as I’m concerned. Charles Dickens worked in a blacking factory as a boy and as young man was in love with his sister-in-law. He was also a great novelist. Why aren’t all those others who worked in factories and had the hots for their wives’ sisters also great novelists? I think there’s probably a great deal more to be done on this. Nevertheless, it will doubtless remain a great consolation for boring, sane and humdrum people to go round saying creative artists are all bonkers.
Robert Giddings
