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Clara Schumann

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Clara Schumann
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Clara Schumann

Clara Josephine Wieck Schumann (September 13, 1819 – May 20, 1896), wife of composer Robert Schumann, was one of the leading pianists of the Romantic era as well as a composer.

Contents

Biography

Clara Schumann on 100 Deutsche Mark, Obverse
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Clara Schumann on 100 Deutsche Mark, Obverse
Clara Schumann trained from an early age with her father, the well-known piano pedagogue Friedrich Wieck. She had a brilliant career as a pianist from the age of thirteen up to her marriage.  The union between Clara and Robert was opposed by her father.  She continued to perform and compose after the marriage even as she bore and raised eight children.  In the various tours on which she accompanied her husband, she extended her own reputation farther than the outskirts of Germany, and it was thanks to her efforts that his compositions became generally known in Europe.   Johannes Brahms, at age twenty, met the couple in 1853 and his friendship with Clara lasted until her death.  Later that year, she also met violinist Joseph Joachim who became one of her frequent performance partners.  Schumann is credited with refining the tastes of audiences through her presentation of works by earlier composers including those of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven as well as those of Robert Schumann and Brahms.
Clara often took charge of the finances and general house running due to Robert's inclination to depression and instability. Part of her responsiblity included making money, which she did performing --often Robert's music. She continued to play not only for the financial stability, but because she wished not to be forgotten as a pianist. She had grown up performing and desired to continue performing. Robert, while admiring her talent, wanted a traditional wife to bear children and make a happy home, which in his eyes and the eyes of society were in direct conflict. Furthermore, while Clara loved touring, Robert hated it and preferred to sit at his piano and compose.

From the time of her husband's death she devoted herself principally to the interpretation of her husband's works. But, when she first visited England in 1856, the critics received Schumann's music with a chorus of disapproval. She returned to London in 1865 and continued her visits annually, with the exception of four seasons, until 1882. She also appeared there each year from 1885 to 1888. In 1878 she was appointed teacher of the piano at the Hoch Conservatorium at Frankfurt am Main, a post she held until 1892, and in which she contributed greatly to the improvement of modern piano playing technique.

As an artist she will be remembered, together with Joachim, as one of the first executants who really played like composers. Besides being remembered for her eminence as a performer of nearly all kinds of pianoforte music, at a time when such technical ability was considerably rarer than in the present day, she was an impressive composer in her own right. Additionally, she was the authoritative editor of her husband's works for the publishing firm of Breitkopf & Härtel. She was buried at Bonn (Alter Friedhof/old cemetery).

Music of Clara Schumann

Clara began her first composition, a piano concerto in A minor, at 14, which she completed at 16 and played with the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, conducted by Felix Mendelssohn.

Schumann considered herself a performing artist rather than a composer and no longer composed after age thirty-six. It is suggested that negative attitudes toward women's ability to compose, which she largely internalized as her statements show: "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose --there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" This cultural and internalized oppression influenced her composing as well perhaps the intimidating geniuses of Brahms and her husband and without a doubt the stress her greater fame placed on her marriage. However, her compositions are increasingly performed and recorded. Her works include songs, piano pieces, a piano concerto, a piano trio with violin and cello, and three Romances for violin and piano. Inspired by her husband's birthday, the three Romances were composed in 1853 and dedicated to Joseph Joachim who performed them for George V of Hanover. He declared them a "marvelous, heavenly pleasure."

Quotes

»Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out.«
—Robert Schumann in the joint diary of Robert and Clara Schumann.

»Composing gives me great pleasure...there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.«
—Clara herself on composing.

»I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?«
—Clara Schumann at 20.

Works (under construction)

This is a partial list of recordings in the WorldCat database.

References

 

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