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(1. Synopsis/Intro)

Clara Schumann (/ˈʃuːmɑːn/; née Clara Josephine Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished composers and pianists of the Romantic era. She exerted her influence throughout a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital and the tastes of the listening public, while also having composed a body of work including various piano concertos, chamber works, and choral pieces. She was married to composer Robert Schumann, and together they encouraged and maintained a close relationship with Johannes Brahms. She was the first to perform publicly any work by Brahms, notably the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. She was also an influential piano educator at Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt.

(2. and 3. Biography, and Family and Later Career)

Early life and Family Background
Clara Josephine Wieck was born in Leipzig on 13 September 1819 to Friedrich Wieck and Marianne Wieck (née Tromlitz). Marianne Tromlitz was a famous singer in Leipzig at the time and was singing solos on a weekly basis at the well-known Gewandhaus in Leipzig. The differences between her parents were irreconcilable, in large part due to her father's unyielding nature. After an affair between Clara's mother and Adolph Bargiel, her father's friend, the Wiecks divorced in 1824 and Marianne married Bargiel. Five-year-old Clara remained with her father while Marianne and Bargiel eventually moved to Berlin, limiting contact between Clara and her mother to written letter and the irregular visit.

Child prodigy
From an early age, Clara's career and life were planned down to the smallest detail by her father. She received daily one-hour lessons in piano, violin, singing, theory, harmony, composition, and counterpoint and had to practice for two hours, using the teaching methods her father had developed largely at the expense of her broader general education (although she still studied religion and languages under her father's control). In 1828, at the age of nine, Clara Wieck performed at the Leipzig home of Dr. Ernst Carus, director of the mental hospital at Colditz Castle. There, she met another gifted young pianist who had been invited to the musical evening, Robert Schumann, who was nine years older. Schumann admired Clara's playing so much that he asked permission from his mother to stop studying law, which had never interested him much, and take music lessons with Clara's father. While taking lessons, he rented a room in the Wieck household, staying about a year. He would sometimes dress up as a ghost and scare Clara, and this created a bond.

(Clara Wieck, from an 1835 lithograph)

In 1830, at the age of eleven, Clara left on a concert tour to Paris and other European cities, accompanied by her father. She gave her first solo concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. In Weimar, she performed a bravura piece by Henri Herz for Goethe, who presented her with a medal with his portrait and a written note saying: "For the gifted artist Clara Wieck". During that tour, Niccolò Paganini was in Paris, and he offered to appear with her. However, her Paris recital was poorly attended, as many people had fled the city due to an outbreak of cholera.

"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 colour, which only those with the most consummate artistry can give." The above quote is attributed to an anonymous music critic, writing on Clara Wieck's 1837–1838 Vienna recitals.

From December 1837 to April 1838, Clara Wieck performed a series of recitals in Vienna when she was 18. Franz Grillparzer, Austria's leading dramatic poet, wrote a poem entitled "Clara Wieck and Beethoven" after hearing Wieck perform the Appassionata sonata during one of these recitals. Wieck performed to sell-out crowds and laudatory critical reviews; Benedict Randhartinger, a friend of Franz Schubert (1797–1828), gave Wieck an autographed copy of Schubert's Erlkönig, inscribing it "To the celebrated artist, Clara Wieck." Frédéric Chopin described her playing to Franz Liszt, who came to hear one of Wieck's concerts and subsequently "praised her extravagantly in a letter that was published in the Parisian Revue et Gazette Musicale and later, in translation, in the Leipzig journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik." On 15 March, Wieck was named a Königliche und Kaiserliche Kammervirtuosin ("Royal and Imperial Chamber Virtuoso"), Austria's highest musical honor.

Marriage to Robert
Robert was a little more than 9 years older than Clara. He moved into the Wieck household as a piano student of Friedrich's by the end of 1830 when she was only 11 and he was 20. In 1837 when she was 18, he proposed to her and she accepted. Then Robert asked Friedrich for Clara's hand in marriage. Wieck was strongly opposed to the marriage, as he did not much approve of Robert, and did not give permission. Robert and Clara had to go to court and sue Friedrich. The judge's decision was to allow the marriage, which notably took place on September 12, 1840, the day before Clara's 21st birthday, when she would have attained what would come to be known as majority status. They maintained a joint musical diary. See "Family Life" section for specific detail.

Meeting Joseph Joachim
She and Robert first met violinist Joseph Joachim in November 1844, when he was just 14 years old. A year later she wrote in her diary that in a concert on Nov. 11, 1845 "little Joachim was very much liked. He played a new violin concerto of Mendelssohn's, which is said to be wonderful". In May 1853 they heard Joachim play the solo part in Beethoven's violin concerto. Clara wrote that he played "with a finish, a depth of poetic feeling, his whole soul in every note, so ideally, that I have never heard violin-playing like it, and I can truly say that I have never received so indelible an impression from any virtuoso." From that time there was a friendship between Clara and Joachim, which "for more than forty years never failed Clara in things great or small, never wavered in its loyalty."

Over her career, Clara gave "over 238" concerts with Joachim in Germany and Britain, "more than with any other artist." "The two were particularly noted for their playing of Beethoven's sonatas for violin and piano."

Brahms coming on the scene
Also in the spring of 1853, the then unknown 20-year-old Brahms met Joachim (only a few years older, but by then an acknowledged virtuoso) in Hanover, made a very favorable impression on him, and got from him a letter of introduction to Robert Schumann. Brahms went and presented himself at the Schumanns' home in Düsseldorf. He played some of his own piano solo compositions. Both Schumanns were deeply impressed. Robert published an article highly lauding Brahms. Clara wrote in the diary that Brahms "seemed as if sent straight from God." During Robert's last years of his life confined to the asylum, Brahms was a strong presence in Clara's life, and a series of letters were shared between the two, known to contain Brahms' strong feelings for Clara. Their relationship has been interpreted as bordering between friendship and love.

Robert's confinement and death
Robert attempted suicide in February 1854 and then was committed to an asylum for the last two years of his life. In March 1854, Brahms, Joachim, Albert Dietrich, and Julius Otto Grimm spent time with Clara, playing music for or with her to divert her mind from the tragedy. Robert died July 29, 1856.

Tours, often to Britain, often with Joachim
Drawing of Clara, 1859

Clara first went to England in April 1856, while Robert was still living (but unable to travel). She was invited to play in a London Philharmonic Society concert by conductor William Sterndale Bennett, a good friend of Robert's. Clara was displeased with the little time spent on rehearsals: "They call it a rehearsal here, if a piece is played through once." She wrote that musical "artists" in England "allow themselves to be treated as inferiors." She was happy, though, to hear the cellist Alfredo Piatti play with "a tone, a bravura, a certainty, such as I never heard before." In May 1856 she played Robert's Piano Concerto in A minor with the New Philharmonic Society conducted by a Dr. Wylde, who Clara said had "led a dreadful rehearsal" and "could not grasp the rhythm of the last movement." Still, she returned to London the following year and performed in Britain in over 15 years of her career.

In October–November 1857 Clara and Joachim took a recital tour together to Dresden and Leipzig. St. James's Hall, London, which opened in 1858, hosted a series of "Popular Concerts" of chamber music, of which programs from 1867 through 1904 are preserved. Joachim visited London annually beginning in 1866. Clara also spent a few months of many years in London and participated in Popular Concerts with Joachim and Piatti. Most often on the same concert programmes would be second violinist Joseph Ries and violist J. B. Zerbini. George Bernard Shaw, the leading playwright who was also a music critic, wrote that the Popular Concerts helped greatly to spread and enlighten musical taste in England. Playing chamber music bypassed the issues Clara had with English orchestra conductors.

In January 1867 Clara and Joachim took a tour to Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland, along with Piatti, Ries, and Zerbini, two English sisters named Pyne, one a singer, and a Mr. Saunders who managed all the arrangements. Clara was accompanied by her oldest daughter Marie, who wrote from Manchester to her friend Rosalie Leser that in Edinburgh Clara "was received with tempestuous applause and had to give an encore, so had Joachim. Piatti, too, is always tremendously liked." Marie also wrote that "For the longer journeys we had a saloon [car], comfortably furnished with arm-chairs and sofas... the journey ... was very comfortable." On this occasion, the musicians were not "treated as inferiors"!

Later career; views of some other composers
She was initially interested in the works of Liszt, but later developed an outright hostility to him. She ceased to play any of his works; she suppressed her husband's dedication to Liszt of his Fantasie in C major when she published Schumann's complete works. She refused to attend a Beethoven centenary festival in Vienna in 1870 when she heard that Liszt and Richard Wagner would be participating.

Clara was particularly scathing of Wagner. Of Tannhäuser, she said that he "wears himself out in atrocities"; she described Lohengrin as "horrible" and wrote that Tristan und Isolde was "the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life". She also wrote that Wagner had spoken of Robert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms in a "scornful" way. (citation?)

In 1878 she was appointed teacher of the piano at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, a post she held until 1892 and in which she contributed greatly to the improvement of modern piano playing technique.

She held Anton Bruckner, whose 7th Symphony she heard in 1885, in very low esteem. She wrote to Brahms, describing it as "a horrible piece". She was more impressed with Richard Strauss's early Symphony in F minor in 1887.

Clara Schumann played her last public concert in Frankfurt on 12 March 1891. The last work she played was Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Haydn, in the piano-duet version. Her partner was James Kwast.

She suffered a stroke on 26 March 1896, dying on 20 May at age 76. She is buried at Bonn's Alter Friedhof (Old Cemetery) with her husband.

Family Life
Robert Schumann gave Clara Schumann a diary book on the day of their marriage. Robert Schumann wrote the first diary entry to indicate that this diary should act as an autobiography of the Schumann family's personal lives, especially for the Schumann couple, and their desires and accomplishments in the arts. It also functioned as a record of Robert and Clara's artistic endeavors and growth; she fully accepted the diary in her many written entries.This diary resembled Clara Schumann's love for Robert with absolute loyalty, as a desire to combine two lives into one artistically, although this life-long goal may have contained risks.

During their lives, Clara and Robert remained as joint partners in both family life and their careers, with periodic vague divisions between family life and career. Clara premiered many works by Robert, from solo piano works to the piano versions of the introductions of Robert's orchestral works.

Clara often took charge of finances and general household affairs. Part of her responsibility included making money, which she did by giving concerts, although she continued to play throughout her life not only for the income, but because she was a concert artist by training and by nature. However, the huge burden of duties in family lives continued to increase over time and had narrowed her ability as an artist. As Robert Schumann's wife, she was limited in her explorations and displays of her artistic abilities, while her husband flourished in his artistic development.

She was the main breadwinner for her family, and the sole one after Robert was hospitalized and then died, through giving concerts and teaching. She did most of the work of organizing her own concert tours. She hired a housekeeper and a cook while she was away on her long tours. She refused to accept charity when a group of musicians offered to put on a benefit concert for her.

Clara and Robert had eight children:


 * Marie (1841–1929)
 * Elise (1843–1928)
 * Julie (1845–1872)
 * Emil (1846–1847)
 * Ludwig (1848–1899)
 * Ferdinand (1849–1891)
 * Eugenie (1851–1938)
 * Felix (1854–1879).

During the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849, she famously walked into the city through the front lines, defying a pack of armed men who confronted her, rescued her children, then walked back out of the city through the dangerous areas again. On the evening of May 3rd, Robert and Clara heard that the revolution against the Saxon king Friedrich Augustus II for not accepting the "constitution for a German Confederation" had arrived in Dresden. Most of the family left and hid in a "neighbourhood security brigade", and on May 7th Clara bravely went back to Dresden on foot to rescue her 3 children who have been left with a maid (she was also pregnant at this time).

Clara's life was punctuated by tragedy. In 1854, her husband Robert had a mental collapse, attempted suicide, and was committed, at his request, to an insane asylum for the last two years of his life. Her eldest son Ludwig suffered from mental illness like his father and, in her words, had eventually to be "buried alive" in an institution. She herself became deaf in later life and she often needed a wheelchair.

Not only did her husband predecease her, but four of her children did as well. Clara's first son Emil died in infancy in 1847, aged only one. Her daughter Julie died in 1872, leaving two small children aged only 2 and 7; Clara took on the responsibility of raising her grandchildren. In 1879, her son Felix died, aged 25. Clara was also required to raise Felix's children as he was no longer married. In 1891, her son Ferdinand died, at the age of 42.

Clara and Robert's oldest child, their daughter, Marie, was of great support and help to Clara. When she was of age, she took over the position of household cook. It was Marie who dissuaded Clara from continuing to burn letters she had written to Brahms and he had returned, requesting that she destroy them. Another daughter, Eugenie, who had been too young when he died to remember her father, wrote a book on the Schumanns and Brahms.

(4. Repertoire Section)

Performance Repertoire
During her lifetime, Clara Schumann was an internationally renowned concert pianist. Over 1300 concert programs from Schumann's performances throughout Europe between 1831 through 1889 have been preserved. She championed the works of her husband, Robert Schumann, and other contemporaries Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, and Felix Mendelssohn.

In her early years, her repertoire, selected by her father, was showy and popular and in the style common to the time, with works by Kalkbrenner, Henselt, Thalberg, Herz, Pixis, Czerny, and her own compositions. In 1835, she performed her Piano Concerto in A Minor with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, led by Felix Mendelssohn. Her only other piano concerto, Konzersatz F moll (1947), was left unfinished. In 1841, she premiered Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in Dresden.

Her busiest years as a performer were between 1856 and 1873, after Robert Schumann's death. During this period, she experienced success as a performer in Great Britain, where her 1865 performance of Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5 was met "with enormous applause." As a chamber musician, she often concertized with violinist Joseph Joachim and played songs frequently on recitals in the later years of her career.