“Genevieve” was given in Leipsic in June 1850, directed by the composer.  Two more performances were given and then the work was laid away.

In 1848, Schumann, who loved children dearly and often stopped his more serious work to write for them, composed the “Album for the Young,” Op. 68, a set of forty-two pieces.  The title originally was:  “Christmas Album for Children who like to play the Piano.”  How many children, from that day to this have loved those little pieces, the “Happy Farmer,” “Wild Rider,” “First Loss,” “Reaper’s Song,” and all the rest.  Even the great pianists of our time are not above performing these little classics in public.  They are a gift, unique in musical literature, often imitated, but never equaled by other writers.  Schumann wrote of them:  “The first thing in the Album I wrote for my oldest child’s birthday.  It seems as if I were beginning my life as a composer anew, and there are traces of the old human here and there.  They are decidedly different from ‘Scenes from Childhood’ which are retrospective glances by a parent, and for elders, while ’Album for the Young’ contains hopes, presentments and peeps into futurity for the young.”

After the children’s Album came the music to Byron’s “Manfred.”  This consists of an overture and fifteen numbers.  The whole work, with one exception, is deep in thought and masterly in conception.  The overture especially is one of his finest productions, surpassing other orchestral works in intellectual grandeur.

A choral club of sixty-seven members, of which Schumann was the director, inspired him to compose considerable choral music, and his compositions of this time, 1848-9, were numerous.

The intense creative activity of 1849 was followed by a period of rest when the artist pair made two trips from Dresden, early in 1850.  Leipsic, Bremen, and Hamburg were visited.  Most of the time in Hamburg was spent with Jenny Lind, who sang at his last two concerts.

The late summer of 1850 brought Schumann an appointment of director of music in Duesseldorf, left vacant by the departure of Ferdinand Hiller for Cologne.  Schumann and his wife went to Duesseldorf the first week of September and were received with open arms.  A banquet and concert were arranged, at which some of the composer’s important works were performed.  His duties in the new post were conducting the subscription concerts, weekly rehearsals of the Choral Club and other musical performances.  He seemed well content with the situation and it did not require too much of his physical strength.

Outside of his official duties his passion for work again gained the ascendent.  From November 2, to December 9, he sketched and completed the Symphony in E flat in five parts, a great work, equal to any of the other works in this form.

From this time on, one important composition followed another, until increasing illness forshadowed the sad catastrophe of the early part of 1854.  He wrote in June 1851, “we are all tolerably well, except that I am the victim of occasional nervous attacks; a few days ago I fainted after hearing Radecke play the organ.”  These nervous attacks increased in 1852.  He could not think music in rapid tempo and wished everything slow.  He heard special tones to the exclusion of all others.