A Day With Robert Schumann

To France were returning two Grenadiers, In Russia they long did languish, And as they came to the German frontier, They hung down their heads with anguish. (Die Beiden Grenadieren). Mozart is to him, as to all great artists, a veritable divinity. "Do not put Beethoven," says he, "too soon into the hands of the young: steep and strengthen them in the fresh animation of Mozart.... The music of the first act of Figaro I consider the most heavenly that Mozart ever wrote."