Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman

I have this book on my Feminist Reading List, though it’s not overtly political. It doesn’t need to be. Clara Schumann’s life speaks for itself. She had amazing talent from a young age, coupled with iron discipline and stamina. She toured Paris on her own at nineteen, and toured Russia during winter amid conditions that nearly killed her poor husband. She was one of the first pianists to perform entirely from memory, and also a great improviser. Ever the virtuoso, she despised any kind of showmanship. As one reviewer put it, “the beautiful and refined playing of Frau Dr. Schumann was more effective than the stormy extravagances of Herr Liszt.”The issues are here, of course. Clara was turned down for a teaching position, and later became the only woman on the faculty of the Hoch Conservatory. Society frowned on her touring without her husband. She had to balance work and family, and her husband’s career as a struggling composer. She raised eight children and, in an era when this was considered inappropriate, continued to work and perform while pregnant.Clara Schumann’s performing career, over sixty years, is a window into the development of music in the nineteenth century. In addition to her husband, she worked regularly with Joachim, Brahms, and Stockhausen. Her concert programming helped shift popular taste away from fantasies and overtures, toward more serious works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann. If this is what interests you, you may skip directly to chapter twelve.Chapters 9 through 13 are “themes” like this, with Clara’s life story in the first eight, plus lists and tables for the music scholars. I was mainly interested in her biography, and I recommend starting there. The book is well organized and well researched. I give it five stars.

Reich's beautifully written, thoroughly researched and objective book is certainly the best biography on Clara Weick Schumann in English. It is also one of the finest biographies I have read of any subject by any author.From her childhood as a piano virtuoso through her 50 year performing career, Schumann was an international star of the concert stage, a composer and champion of the composers close to her, a woman who astounded and compelled those who knew her, a legend in her own time.She was, as we know, beset by personnal tragedies of the most anguishing kind, beginning with her complex relationship with her taskmaster father, who taught her, drove her mercilessly, and made her a star at the age of 12, then refused to allow her to marry the love of her life,She defied him at a dear price and married Robert Schumann anyway. The book explores at length her life as a beloved, then shunned daughter; as a lover, wife, mother, composer and performer.She suffered terribly Robert Schumann's early and probably syphilis-induced insanity and death, the deaths of most of her seven children at a young age, and extreme financial straits in which she found herself most of her life.Reich takes us step by step through all of the contingencies of her professional life: her lifelong celebration of Schumann's work; the 'Young Werther' relationship with her beloved Johannes Brahms, whose career she promoted tirelessly; her complex personality and deep involvement in her career and their effect on her maternal relationship with each of her children.Throughout, Reich draws a richly variegated picture of the world of classical music in Europe from the early 19th century onward -- its characters, creations, rivalries, performances, highs and lows. Schumann interacted with many of the centuries' finest composers and performers: Chopin, Joachim, Liszt, Schumann (of course), Brahms...the list goes on.Reich presents the incredible strength and courage for which Schumann is well-known, but does not flinch at exploring her more problematic qualities, for which friends, family, children and Schumann herself, paid a price.Clara's deep understanding of the music of Robert Schumann and others, and its profound physical and emotional effects on its her play throughout. Here is Clara Schuman, de-mythologized, de-romanticized, and still amazing.Intriguing, richly embued with testimony from original sources, a pleasure to read, Reich does not just tell the tale. She performs a symphony.

Author Nancy Reich's scholarship is impeccable, her research, comprehensive, and her passion for accuracy, uncompromising.This is a completely thorough and compelling biography which reads as smoothly as an easy novel. It is powerful and sensitive; objective and personal. Dr. Reich's depth as a scholar and skill as a writer provide us with a rarely-, possibly never-seen view of this extraordinary woman, Clara Wieck Schumann.Clara's life was fraught with pain, sorrow, frustration, and self-doubt, and how her genius managed to prevail is nothing short of remarkable. I took pause many times while reading to catch my emotional breath.Dr. Reich also shares with us her enormous insight into the personalities of ill and troubled husband, Robert, dear friend and confidant, Johannes Brahms, and domineering father, Friedrich Wieck, making sense and coherence of the disjointed facts many of us know regarding these three very important men in, not only her life, but in the life of Nineteenth Century European music.Clara Schumann was a truly astonishing figure - both as an artist (prolific composer, formidable virtuosa - some say Liszt's equal or superior), and as a woman (dedicated wife, mother, daughter, loyal friend). This book takes a major step toward giving a just measure of recognition to this awesome woman. It contains wonderful photos, sketches, pastels, and paintings - some, particularly of Clara alone, are especially moving. Her expressions tell nearly as complete a story as the text.Though replete with musical discussion and analysis, one need not be a scholar or musician to comprehend and be totally struck by Nancy Reich's telling of Clara's story. If you care anything about wives, mothers, daughters, friends, or music, this book is a MUST READ.I discovered this marvelous book on the Clara Schumann Society website of Dr. David Kenneth Smith, Geneva College. I recommend doing a GOOGLE on "Clara '96" (the name of the site celebrating the anniversary of her death in 1996). You will get an abundance of hits, all of which are very worthwhile.

Todo llegó en tiempo y forma. El libro llegó en excelentes condiciones. Nunca había comprado en línea y esta experiencia fue un buen primer inicio.

Quality of paper not that great. It could be better.

It's hard to imagine a better account of the life and works of Clara Schumann being written. The way Nancy B Reich has ordered this book makes Clara's story most accessible,even to the relatively uninformed like this critic. Clara Schumann has long dwelt in the shadow of her more famous husband. She was not only the woman behind the man but a great talent in her own right.The full story,of course,cannot be told without introducing Johannes Brahms into the plot. Reich gives us the truth,pruned of any "romantic notions" Clara was not some giddy female to be swept along by overwhelming passion. In all she did,Clara was sensible,unselfish and a truly remarkable person. I will get years of pleasure from this book,such is the wealth of information and insight. You won't find better anywhere else.

La autora va mucho más allá en su estudio de Clara Wieck que en cualquier otra literatura que haya leído hasta ahora. Libro indispensable.

Anyone with an interest in piano music will find this book fascinating, not only for the portrait of an amazing pianist and multifaceted musician who was a pioneer along with Liszt of the modern piano recital, but for the pen portraits of the musicians she worked and performed with including Brahms, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt and of course her husband. Very readable despite the huge amount of research that clearly went into its writing.