Clara Schumann

German musician

• Born: September 13, 1819
• Birthplace: Leipzig, Saxony (now in Germany)
• Died: May 20, 1896
• Place of death: Frankfurt, Germany

Schumann was one of the most admired musicians of her time. As a child piano prodigy she dazzled audiences all over Europe, and as an adult she promoted the work of her husband, composer Robert Schumann, by performing it in her own concerts. She was renowned for the integrity and breadth of her playing and was also a gifted composer.

Early Life

Clara Schumann (SHEW-mahn) seemed destined from birth to become a piano virtuoso. Her father, Friedrich Wieck, a respected piano teacher in Leipzig, Germany, took her education and training in hand almost before she could walk. Her mother, who had been born Marianne Tromlitz, was a gifted musician with a performing and teaching career of her own. Having inherited considerable musical talent from both her parents, Clara responded well to the training she received. Her father trained her on the piano and in religion and languages, and she studied the violin, theory, composition, harmony, orchestration, and counterpoint under the best available teachers, not only in Leipzig, but also in Dresden and Berlin.

With her father as her manager, Clara embarked on a concert career at the age of nine and made her formal solo debut at the famed Leipzig Gewandhaus at the age of eleven. She appeared in Paris soon afterward and at the age of eighteen took Vienna by storm. She was admired by the leading musical celebrities of the day, including Niccolò Paganini, Louis Spohr, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Felix Mendelssohn. During all this time, Clara and her father together kept a diary. Clara also copied her father’s letters, including those setting up her performances. These exercises taught her the business aspect of a musical career.

Along with her virtuoso playing, Clara wrote music for herself to play, as had Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig von Beethoven, and many other composers before her. At her debut as a solo performer she played one of her own works, and she continued throughout her youth to delight audiences with her compositions. One of her most remarkable childhood works is her Piano Concerto, Op. 7, which she began in 1832 at the age of thirteen and performed three years later in the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

Life’s Work

In 1840, at the age of twenty-one, Clara married the composer Robert Schumann, whom she had known since childhood. Her father’s strenuous opposition to their marriage gave rise to a now-legendary legal battle. At the time of her marriage, Clara had an international reputation as a virtuoso pianist. In contrast, her husband—though nine years older—was still relatively unknown, and Clara actively promoted his works by presenting them regularly in her own concerts. Robert did not usually accompany his wife on her concert tours because he, during the early years, did not care to be recognized only as “the husband of Clara.”

Despite these problems, Clara’s marriage to Robert Schumann was in many ways a partnership. Clara and Robert studied scores together, read poetry for possible song settings, and advised each other about their compositions. Clara also arranged a number of Robert’s works for piano and acted as rehearsal pianist for orchestras that he conducted. Clara’s concert tours took her to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Switzerland, Russia and England and helped her husband’s work become quickly known to the musical world. Because Robert did not play publicly himself and therefore could not perform his own music, Clara premiered almost every piece he wrote for piano, and virtually all his works for orchestra were introduced in concerts in which Clara appeared as solo pianist.

Robert encouraged Clara to continue to write music of her own, and her mature compositions fulfilled her early promise. Her Trio, Op. 17 (1846), for example, shows a masterly use of the sonata form and contrapuntal technique and is considered by many to be her finest work. There were also other facets to Robert’s life, in addition to his compositions. He taught and conducted and managed the publication of both his and Clara’s works. He was also a respected critic and the founding editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, a respected journal that still existed in the early twenty-first century.

The Schumanns supported each other in all their musical endeavors, but certain telling details in Clara’s life suggest that all was not perfect. She lamented the fact that she could not practice while Robert was working and had to fit her needs around his. When a plaster relief sculpture portraying both their profiles was proposed, the sculptor wanted to put Clara’s image in front and Robert’s in back, but Robert overrode him, arguing that the creative artist was more important than the performing artist. His profile was placed in the foreground. On the Schumann memorial, Clara is portrayed sitting on a step, gazing up at Robert’s image in an attitude of loving admiration, almost worship. This deferential image of Clara persisted in the public mind for many years after her lifetime. There is some truth to it; she acquiesced because of her absolute devotion to Robert, and perhaps also because society accepted the idea that women were inferior to men.

Throughout her marriage—even during her pregnancies—Clara continued to perform, compose, and teach. Robert, however, suffered increasingly from mental illness. After he attempted suicide in 1854, at the age of forty-four, he was hospitalized for the rest of his life. After a hiatus following his death in July, 1856, Clara eventually resumed performing and teaching. However, she never again wrote music for public consumption during the remaining forty years of her own life. Dressed in black for mourning, she was revered as the serious elder stateswoman of her art. In order to support her seven living children, two of whom were very young, she spent long periods on tour, with the ironic result that she had to send her children to live with relatives or friends while she toured. Four of her children eventually predeceased her, two after long illnesses.

Ever devoted to her husband’s memory and music, Clara spent much time and effort promoting both. She eventually brought out the authoritative complete edition of Robert Schumann’s works, prepared an instructional edition of his piano compositions, and arranged many of his vocal works. This she accomplished with the help of her trusted friend Johannes Brahms and others.

The Schumanns met Brahms not long before Robert’s hospitalization, when Brahms was a young composer just beginning what would become a distinguished career. Robert Schumann befriended the young man and was pleased to promote his work. Brahms remained loyal to the Schumanns and provided support to Clara after Robert’s death. Although Clara’s relationship with Brahms has drawn much speculation, there is no solid evidence to conclude that Clara regarded Brahms as anything but a cherished friend.

In 1878, Clara became the principal piano instructor at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt and drew students from many countries. She performed in her last concert in 1891, and her work at the conservatory ended in 1892. On May 20, 1896, she died in Frankfurt.

Significance

Clara Schumann’s reputation as a teacher, and especially as a performer, endured after she died. However, her compositions were all but forgotten until the 1970’s, when recordings of her works began to appear. Since then, her discography has grown to more than one hundred recordings, and printed editions of her work have also increased significantly.

Schumann was not a feminist as the term is used in the twenty-first century. She simply did the only things she was trained to do—give concerts, teach, and write music. After she reached the age of eighteen, she became her own manager, which required a certain amount of business acumen. During the early years of her marriage, before her husband became well known, hers was often the more dependable income for her family, even though she often had to subjugate her professional needs to those of her husband. After Robert’s death she was the sole breadwinner for her family. One of her daughters later suggested in her autobiography that she and her siblings would have fared better had her mother been a more constant presence in their lives. That observation may simply be a reflection of the time in which it was written. However, it is true the very nature of Clara’s work demanded that she make the same kinds of choices, compromises, and sacrifices that are made by many Western women in the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Galloway, Janice. Clara: A Novel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Fictional depiction of Clara Schumann’s life that is accurate in many ways.

Litzmann, Berthold. Clara Schumann: An Artist’s Life, Based on Material Found in Diaries and Letters. Translated and abridged from the 4th edition by Grace E. Hadow. New introduction by Elaine Brody. New York: Da Capo, 1979. An old work, which first appeared in 1902 and was later revised several times, that is the foundation of much of the later research on Clara Schumann.

Reich, Nancy B. Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman. Rev. ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001. A landmark biography that strives to show Schumann as she was, rather than as she has been idealized.

Steegman, Monica. Clara Schumann. London: Haus, 2004. A concise biography that is both interesting and easy to read.