Clara Schumann

The Artist and the Woman

Nancy Reich

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780801468292
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

This absorbing and award-winning biography tells the story of the tragedies and triumphs of Clara Wieck Schumann (1819–1896), a musician of remarkable achievements. At once artist, composer, editor, teacher, wife, and mother of eight children, she was an important force in the musical world of her time. To show how Schumann surmounted the obstacles facing female artists in the nineteenth century, Nancy B. Reich has drawn on previously unexplored primary sources: unpublished diaries, letters, and family papers, as well as concert programs. Going beyond the familiar legends of the Schumann literature, she applies the tools of musicological scholarship and the insights of psychology to provide a new, full-scale portrait.The book is divided into two parts. In Part One, Reich follows Clara Schumann's life from her early years as a child prodigy through her marriage to Robert Schumann and into the forty years after his death, when she established and maintained an extraordinary European career while supporting and supervising a household and seven children. Part Two covers four major themes in Schumann's life: her relationship with Johannes Brahms and other friends and contemporaries; her creative work; her life on the concert stage; and her success as a teacher.Throughout, excerpts from diaries and letters in Reich's own translations clear up misconceptions about her life and achievements and her partnership with Robert Schumann. Highlighting aspects of Clara Schumann's personality and character that have been neglected by earlier biographers, this candid and eminently readable account adds appreciably to our understanding of a fascinating artist and woman.For this revised edition, Reich has added several photographs and updated the text to include recent discoveries. She has also prepared a Catalogue of Works that includes all of Clara Schumann's known published and unpublished compositions and works she edited, as well as descriptions of the autographs, the first editions, the modern editions, and recent literature on each piece. The Catalogue also notes Schumann's performances of her own music and provides pertinent quotations from letters, diaries, and contemporary reviews.

PART I

THE LIFE OF
CLARA SCHUMANN

CHAPTER 1

Prelude: The Wiecks
of Leipzig

On January 9, 1838, a poem, “Clara Wieck und Beethoven,” appeared in the Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst.1 Written by Franz Grillparzer, Austria’s leading dramatic poet, the verse linked the name of the great composer with that of a young woman who had just given her third Viennese recital at the age of eighteen. Grillparzer’s response to her performance of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 57, the “Appassionata,” reflected the wild enthusiasm the young pianist aroused in Vienna.

Clara Wieck had arrived in the Austrian capital from her native Leipzig with her father, Friedrich, in December 1837. From her first concert on the fourteenth in the Musikvereinsaal to her last appearance in April, when she played for the emperor in the Burg, she was greeted with the kind of adoration the Viennese reserved for artists of the rank of Niccolo Paganini and Sigismund Thal-berg.2 Music lovers fought to buy seats in the overcrowded halls where she played; critics vied with one another in expressions of admiration. At her fourth concert, frenzied applause recalled her to the stage thirteen times. Princes and barons invited her to play at their palaces and showered her with jewels and treasure. The empress herself let her deepest satisfaction be known with a gift of fifty gold ducats.3 Recalling Clara’s reception, Eduard Hanslick, the Viennese critic and music historian, described her as “not a wonderchild—and yet still a child and already a wonder.”4

On March 15, 1838, she received the greatest honor Austria could bestow: she was named Königliche Kaiserliche Kammervirtuosin (Royal and Imperial Chamber Virtuosa), a distinction without precedent for an eighteen-year-old who was, moreover, a Protestant, a foreigner, and a female. The emperor had agreed to make an exception for Clara Wieck. On March 21 the emperor dubbed her Wundermadchen and assured her that he had made the award with great personal satisfaction.5

Who was Clara Wieck? How did this slender, oval-eyed daughter of an unknown Leipzig piano teacher and music dealer manage to reach such heights of artistry? The question is still more intriguing when we consider that this girl, born in an age when musical talent in a female was generally regarded only as an asset in the marriage market, subsequently built a glorious career that spanned over sixty years, a career that influenced the concert and musical life of the nineteenth century. Acknowledged as the peer of Franz Liszt, Thalberg, and Anton Rubinstein, she was a thorough professional and a working wife and mother, managing the manifold problems of career, household, husband, and children. At twenty-one she was married to a major composer; at thirty-seven, a widow with seven children, she became involved in a lifelong friendship with another major composer. Furthermore, the indefatigable Clara composed music (twenty-three published opus numbers and an equal number without opus numbers),1 taught, and was responsible for the authoritative edition of the Collected Works of Robert Schumann.

This remarkable woman was a creative partner of three men: Friedrich Wieck, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. The first, her father, sole teacher, and concert manager, much maligned for the role he was later to play in the romance between his daughter and Robert Schumann, was a self-made man and self-trained musician, obsessive and ambitious. Convinced that gender was no handicap in the race for artistic greatness, he gave Clara the instruction and musical understanding that carried her beyond the ranks of the merely gifted to a position in the constellation of the great nineteenth-century virtuosi. His discipline and pride in her achievements provided the practical sense and stability that sustained her through personal and artistic crises. Wieck firmly believed that his pedagogical genius alone was responsible for the creation of the young pianist who generated such excitement in Vienna in 1838, overlooking entirely the role of Clara’s mother, the girl’s own remarkable talents, and the series of circumstances, at once tragic, auspicious, fortuitous, and predictable, which went into the making of the “Queen of the Piano.” Wieck was at first, of course, the dominating figure in her life, but Clara soon grew to be the more significant, and he eventually shone only in the reflected glory of her light.

FRIEDRICH WIECK, 1785–1873

Friedrich Wieck, the youngest son of a merchant in Pretzsch, a small town about forty-five kilometers from Leipzig, was born in 1785 into a family with declining fortunes and very little interest in music.6 Always passionately fond of the art, he studied where he could. At age thirteen he was given the opportunity to attend the Thomas-Schule in Leipzig, but was forced to return home after six weeks because of illness. A weak and sickly youngster, he remained in Pretzsch until 1800, when he went to the Torgau gymnasium to prepare for the university and his eventual goal, the ministry. In Torgau and later at the University of Wittenberg, where he matriculated in 1803, his musical education was haphazard. His only formal piano lessons were some six hours with Johann Peter Milchmeyer, who was in Torgau for a short time to give lessons to the wife and children of a well-to-do townsman.2

When Wieck completed his theological studies at the university and had preached the obligatory trial sermon in Dresden, he left theology and turned to the traditional occupation of the German university graduate who had neither money nor connections: he became a Hauslehrer, a private tutor in the home of a wealthy family. Over the next nine years he worked for several aristocratic families in Thuringia. His first position was with a baron von Seckendorff in Querfurth, where Adolph Bargiel, the music teacher of the Seckendorff children, became a close friend. Bargiel will appear again at a critical point in Wieck’s life.

Conscientious, observant, and intelligent, Wieck was a perceptive teacher. He understood the latest thought in educational psychology (dominated, at that period, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Emile and such educators as Johann Basedow and Johann Pestalozzi) and applied it successfully to his students. The young teacher speculated on such concepts as individualized learning and the critical role of motivation in teaching. And, like other progressive educators of his time, he placed great importance on regular physical exercise in the open air. His daughter’s musical education, which was to begin in 1824, was influenced by his reading and experiences as a Hauslehrer.

In keeping with the rationalist spirit of the time, the young man insisted that the goal of moral training should be to educate the child to be a good person. Religion should not be a matter for the mind but should come from the heart, he wrote. He was particularly concerned with Ehrtrieb (which can be loosely translated as a striving for a higher state) and how it could be used as a positive force by the teacher. He cautioned that great care had to be exercised so that Ehrtrieb would not degenerate into mere ambition, a passion for glory, vanity, boastfulness, and malicious pleasure in denigrating others. Consistency, however, was not one of Wieck’s virtues. In view of his later preoccupation with his daughter’s musical career and bitter anger at her, his own Ehrtrieb seems to have been easily sullied by ambition.

Wieck came to music late. During his years as a tutor, he had little exposure to events in the musical world; his experience was limited to small-town musicians and church choirs, perhaps a performance of a neighboring nobleman’s Kapelle. He did not attend a large-scale public concert until he was well into his twenties.

Since symphonic and choral works were performed only in a few large German cities in the early years of the nineteenth century, opportunities to hear a Beethoven symphony or a Haydn oratorio simply did not exist in the provincial centers where Wieck was working. In 1811 the young tutor heard, probably for the first time in his life, orchestral works by Beethoven, Louis Spohr, and Mozart, and the Haydn oratorio Die Schöpfung (The Creation). His copy of the program, preserved by his family, testifies to his attendance at the second German Musikfest, a two-day music festival in which forces from a number of Thuringian towns joined to play large works.7

Where and when Wieck learned enough theory to compose and enough about piano technique to set himself up as a teacher are still not clear. Yet by 1815 he was confident enough to dedicate and send a group of his songs to Carl Maria von Weber. To Wieck’s delight, the composer took the time and trouble to write a detailed criticism of the works.8 After publication, the songs were reviewed in a Leipzig journal, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.9 Some shortcomings were noted, and Wieck was advised to study voice because his vocal lines were “unnatural” and hard to sing. At the same time, however, the critic noted that the songs showed “some indications of talent.” Wieck must have been gratified to see that his work was taken seriously and that a career in music appeared to be possible.

Wieck left his tutorial post and, applying his keen intelligence, energy, soaring ambition, and native talents to music, undertook a new vocation at the age of thirty. In 1815 he was established in Leipzig—with the financial help of a friend—as a piano teacher and owner of a piano store and music shop.

Although the actual date of his settling in Leipzig is not known, it must have been well before the April 19, 1815, issue of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, which referred to him as “the popular Leipzig music teacher.” Wieck’s business—which he kept going until 1840, when he moved to Dresden—was called a Piano-Fabrik, usually translated as “piano factory.” The enterprise was not a piano factory, however, but a store in which he rented and sold pianos, and tuned and repaired them as well. The term Fabrik was justified in part by his explanation that he stood behind every piano he sold.10

Leipzig was the natural place for an ambitious man to establish himself. Located in a flat basin at the confluence of several rivers and the crossroads of ancient north-south and east-west roads, the city had no natural beauty to recommend it, but from the time of its founding in the twelfth century it had been an important trading and cultural center. Though situated in Saxony and subject to its ruler, Leipzig was governed by a town council of middle-class citizens, mostly merchants and manufacturers, which had considerable political and fiscal independence. The semi-annual trade fairs that for more than five centuries had drawn buyers and sellers from all over Europe gave the city a cosmopolitan air and international renown. Leipzig’s musicians were always particularly busy during the fair, for visitors enjoyed musical interludes in their business affairs. The founding of the university in 1409 and the establishment of the printing industry in 1480 contributed to the city’s importance as an intellectual and cultural center.

In settling in Leipzig in 1815, then, Wieck had established himself in the right place at the right time. It not only was a metropolis with a strong commercial and middle-class tradition but one in which music had always had a special position and musicians a favored status. In 1841 a citizen wrote, “In our Leipzig, music . . . the interpreter of all human feelings, was held in high esteem and cultivated with an unmistakable preference.”11

An active musical life had been recorded in the city since the thirteenth century. Music composed for daily and ceremonial events and performed by town-appointed musicians was described as early as the fifteenth century, and by the seventeenth century private citizens and university students had joined together in a collegium musicum, one of the first in Germany. Cultivation of the musical art was well established when Johann Sebastian Bach was employed by the town council in 1723. Unlike Dresden, the nearest large city and the royal seat of Saxony, with a courtly musical tradition and court-sponsored musical activities, Leipzig was a commercial center whose musical life served the needs of middle-class families.

The unusual interest and pride in church music, the traditions associated with the university (where music had been taught as a discipline since its founding), and the musical activities of the middl...

Table of contents

• List of Illustrations
• Part I. The Life of Clara Schumann
• Part II. Themes from the Life of Clara Schumann
• Catalogue of Works
• Notes
• Bibliography