1810: The Year of Chopin and Schumann
Music is the most abstract of the arts yet it tells us truths about the world through its impact on our emotional life.
The human experience which the composers convey is not simply the product of past musical influences but is shaped by the historical context. This is borne out by the strange coincidence that Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann, the two greatest composers of romantic piano music, were born in the same year.