Golden Years (and no, I don't mean the David Bowie song)

Oh, to time travel back to the 1800s, just to witness the flowering of the Romantic period in music, and the Victorian period in literature, around me. Here we have a very extraordinary musical culture; the "Schumann circle" as it is called embodies what today could be an ideal artistic environment. The Schumanns and their friends had the great good fortune of being alive at the same time, and the musical world has never been the same.
What strikes me about this chapter, is how much literature played a role in the music and musical theories of the time. Composers before this time had set texts to music, of course, primarily biblical ones, but in the nineteenth century suddenly there is an outpouring of instrumental music based on literature. And composers were interested in literature; Mendelssohn was friends with the great poet Goethe, and wrote music inspired by his poetry.He was also a huge fan of Shakespeare's works (this obsession inspiring, of course the wonderful music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, with its overture that departed from traditional form in order to follow the arc of the play). Many other composers wrote music inspired by literature (think of Liszt's Dante sonata). It was Schumann himself, though, who used literature the most. His reviews of music and composers are extremely literary, and we know he read poetry avidly, and, what is most interesting to me, advocated reading poetry as a way of improving one's musicianship.
Obviously, literature, especially poetry, was incredibly important to Schumann, as well as to his friends, and I think it should also be important to us as modern pianists. Not only is the subject matter of poetry helpful in putting words and sentiments to music, but also the meter of music is often closely related to the meter of poetry (most often iambic pentameter). Also, if we relate a musical phrase to a sentence in speech, would it not be helpful if we read the great sentences of the master poets? The poets and the musicians had the same artistic ideas, and it is of great worth to help in understanding the one by studying the the other (it goes both ways; literature is enhanced by music, as well).
We shouldn't live in a box that only encompasses music. Schumann espoused exercise out in the open, as well as reading, and I think he's right. As we said with Chopin, exercise can only help our playing, and using the time when we aren't practicing for that, and for reading and taking in other art forms can only enhance it as well.