We’ve all heard of the great composer Schumann. But some may not know that there were two
great composers Schumann. In addition to
the familiar Robert, there was also his wife, Clara; who was an equally
talented composer and a better pianist.
Clara Wieck was born in 1819 in Leipzig. Her father was a talented musician and piano
teacher. He was Clara’s earliest teacher
and she remained with her father after her parents divorced. At age eight, playing in the salon of one of
her father’s friends, she met Robert Schumann (who was nine years her
senior). Schumann was taken with Clara’s
playing that he abandoned his law studies and started taking music lessons from
Clara’s father.
Clara was making concert tours by age eleven and
playing in all the major cities of Europe.
Chopin praised her playing to Franz Liszt, who was equally impressed
after hearing her. Her series of piano
recitals in Vienna during the 1837-1838 season created a sensation, leading one
reviewer to write, “The appearance of this artist can be regarded as
epoch-making.... In her creative hands, the most ordinary passage, the most
routine motive acquires a significant meaning, a color, which only those with
the most consummate artistry can give.”
Clara was also composing and her works found favor with the public. Here’s an example of her early work, 3
Romances for Violin and Piano:
Clara was also taken with her father’s former pupil,
Robert Schumann. Clara’s father was
definitely not in favor of the match, as he felt Schumann had no prospects
(Robert had permanently injured his hand using a mechanical device to try and
strengthen his fingers and had ended his career as a pianist – his career as a
composer was starting slow too.) Clara
thought otherwise and the two conducted a clandestine romance. They eloped a day shy of Clara’s twenty-first
birthday (had they waited one day, they would not have required her father’s
permission – this led, incredibly, to a lengthy court battle that was
eventually resolved in Robert and Clara’s favor – probably after they began to
have children.)
Robert Schumann was influential not only as a composer,
but as a promoter of music. His Neue
Zeitschrift für Musik was one of the leading music journals of the
day. The growing Schumann family,
however, was supported by Clara’s concert tours; especially after Robert began
showing signs of mental illness. In the
1850s, Robert began trumpeting the virtues of a young composer named Johannes
Brahms. Much speculation has been raised
by Brahms’ passionate attraction to Clara, who was fourteen years his
senior. Whatever feelings were between
the two were soon swamped by Robert Schumann’s deteriorating mental
condition. A failed suicide attempt
resulted in Robert’s commitment to a mental asylum. He died in 1865. For two years following Schumann’s death,
Brahms virtually abandoned music to assist Clara and the Schumann children.
Clara Schumann resumed concertizing to support her
family (she refused all charity). She
became one of the most renowned pianists of her day, acclaimed throughout
Europe. In the music world, she was most
definitely in the more traditionalist camp of her late husband and Brahms,
rather than the “New Music” of Liszt and Wagner (Clara loathed Wagner, calling Tristan und Isolde, "the most
repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life". For fourteen years, she was the teacher of
piano at the conservatory in Frankfort, and venerated throughout musical
Europe. Edvard Grieg said of her that
she was "One of the most soulful and famous pianists of the day." She
played her last concert on March 12, 1891 in Frankfort. She died five years later. The last piece she ever played in public was
by her friend, Brahms.
Clara’s promise as a composer was stunted by the
financial necessity of her concert tours, and her fanatical devotion to the
music of her husband, Robert; and her friend, Brahms. That’s a shame, because her work was
excellent and showed great promise.
Because she died before the advent of sound recording, there is no aural
record of Clara Schumann as a pianist.
We do, however, have an idea what her pianism was like through her
works. To celebrate Clara Schumann the
composer, and to get an idea of what kind of pianist she was, I’d like to share
with you the first movement of her Piano Concerto in A Minor. Enjoy!
Movement 1
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