Clara Schumann

Abstract

Clara Schumann, née Wieck (b. 1819–d. 1896), ranks among the most important musical artists of the 19th century. As composer, she published twenty-one numbered compositions—including a piano concerto, piano trio, songs, and Lieder—in an era when it was uncommon for women to do so. As pianist, she was one of the first to consistently program the music of J. S. Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and her husband, Robert Schumann. And with a career that spanned more than half a century—from her solo debut in Leipzig at the age of eleven until her death sixty-six years later in Frankfurt—she came into contact with most of the major and minor artists of the day, including Woldemar Bargiel, Frédéric Chopin, Niels Gade, Joseph Joachim, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, and Richard Wagner. Yet, despite these activities and associations, prior to about the 1980s she was rarely the subject of sustained scholarly study, except in cases where she provided context for the understanding of her husband’s life and works. Since the late 1970s, however, studies have proliferated (albeit almost exclusively in English- and German-language publications), with extensive coverage devoted to her family and associates, the cities she toured and places she called home, the role(s) in which gender played in shaping her image and compositions, her composition oeuvre, her editorial and pedagogical legacy, and her posthumous reception. These studies have benefited from the appearance of critical editions of almost her entire compositional catalogue. (Note that before her marriage in 1840, she was named Clara Wieck; from 1840 onward, Clara Schumann. For consistency’s sake, this article always refers to her as “Clara Schumann,” even if the respective scholarship does not or if the topic exclusively concerns her life or activities before marriage.)