Clara Schumann was a concert pianist born to Frederick Wieck and Marianne Tromlitz in Leipzig, Germany on September 13, 1819 (Comminfo). Clara was the second of five children and the daughter of a prominent music teacher and piano proprietor (Friedrich Wieck) and an opera soprano singer (Marianne Tromlitz). She died in 1896, renowned as a classical pianist and composer in the nineteenth-century Romantic style. During her height of popularity, the press deemed Clara as the “Queen of the Piano” (Schumann, Clara [Josehpine], The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music).
Despite Clara’s professional and popular success, she was also a captive of her time and the prevailing social norms in a male dominated culture. Unfortunately, as a woman, critics at the time defined Clara not so much on her talent and accomplishments as those of her father and husband, Friedrich Wieck and German composer Robert Schumann respectively. As a performing pianist, she publicly championed her husband’s keyboard works while minimizing her unique playing style and music compositions. Some of her association with her husband is undoubtedly a reflection of her professional selflessness and devotion to her husband. However, in some part, the subordination of her achievements reflects the supremacy of males during her lifetime. Today, Clara Wieck Schumann professional accomplishments are in a process of renaissance in the classical music industry as the interest of role of women in history has grown.
Indeed, when Clara’s life is examined independently of her father and husband specifically, it is a rather difficult one. Her mother left Clara when she was five, and her father, Friedrich Wieck, a controlling and dictatorial but musically informed...
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...re increasingly performing and recording Clara’s songs, piano pieces, choral pieces, and three Romances for violin and piano (Kamien).
Bibliography http://comminfo.rutger.edu/~biogra1.html. 15 December 1997. Internet Document. 27 April 2014.
Kamien, Roger. Music: An Appreciation. Chicago: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1997. 415. Book.
"An Artists's Life." Litzmann, Berthold. An Artist's Life. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979. 532. Book.
Ostwald, Peter. Robert Schumann - The inner voice of a musical genius. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985. 139. Book.
Reich, Nancy B. Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001. 385. Book.
Schumann, Clara (Josehpine), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. 2006. Encyclopedia of World Biography. 27 April 2014.
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The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 20 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1980)9: 708-709
A peer to such keyboard greats - such as Rubenstein, Thalberg, and Liszt - Clara Schumann (1819-1896) was a brilliant pianist and composer. Carrying a career which extended over sixty years, Schumann contributed a great deal of repertoire to the world of Lieder. Much like her performing technique, her compositions were famous for carrying a beautiful tone and poetic temperament. In analyzing Clara Schumann’s Liebst du um Schönheit, one can cultivate an understanding of Schumann’s compositional techniques, as they are implemented in the style of German lieder.
Worthen, John. Robert Schumann: life and death of a musician. New Haven [Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007.
Kate Chopin was born on February 8, 1851, into a wealthy Catholic family in St. Louis Missouri. As a little girl, her father died a few years later in 1855 and was raised at home with her other sisters and mother, strong willed and prominent women who believed in self sufficiency. Soon, on June 9, 1870, Chopin married a man named Oscar. She graduated from St. Louis convent school. In the meanwhile, Kate was soon busy by the occupations of a being a mother and wife to the prestigious business man, Oscar whom she married. Throughout this escapade of life, Kate was forced to relocate often due to her husband’s change of business. Although, it was difficult to build upon these circumstances, Kate managed a small farm and plantation farm to keep things running. Even through these circumstances, Kate pulled through only to discover that all these locals would soon be her inspirations and se...
John Schumann is one of the very few songwriters who has changed the way a nation thinks. John first
Kate Chopin was born February 8, 1850 in St. Louis. She was raised by a single woman; this impacted her views in the family at an early age. She began her own family at a young age; Kate had a different method compare too many women in her time. As time progressed, she developed a bad habit of dressing inappropriately. Soon she started to publish stories about the experiences and stories of her interests such as women’s individuality and miserable
With his unforgettable and unparalleled uses of speed and dynamic range, as well as his ability to evoke the Romantic repertoire of highly expressive pianism, it is certain that Vladimir Horowitz will remain in
On January 31, 1797, Franz Schubert was born in Himmelpfortgrund, Austria. He was the fourth surviving son of Franz Theodor and Elisabeth Schubert. His musical gift was demonstrated ever since his youth. His family’s love of music influenced Schubert from early on. As a child, he already had the ability to play the “piano, organ, and violin.” (Thompson) He also had excellent talent as a singer. And because of his father’s occupation as a schoolmaster, he was able to receive a comprehensive musical education.
Major works by Clara Schumann included ‘Quatre Polonaises pour le pianoforte’, published in 1831, ‘4 Pièces caractéristiques for piano’ published in 1836, ‘Piano Trio in G minor’, published in 1846, and ‘Drei romanzen für pianoforte und violine’, published in 1855. In 1838, Clara was awarded the Royal and Imperial Chamber Virtuoso, Austria's highest musical honor. She was one of the most prominent female composers of the Romantic era, during a time there weren’t
Music in the nineteenth century saw the creation and evolution of new music genres such as the piano miniature, short expressive piano pieces. During this time raw emotion and expressionism prevailed as the focus of music during this described “Romantic” movement. Robert Schumann’s “Grillen”, from Fantasiestucke, Opus 12 was written in July 1837 contains several virtues of music during his time period. Schumann’s uses various qualities in his music such as form, pitch, rhythm and meter, and texture so express different attitudes within his music. These qualities convey music that characterizes romanticism as very emotional, expressional, and dramatic. Schumann’s piano miniature remains a supreme example of the Romantic style in its uses of form, pitch, rhythm, and texture.
Interviewer: Good day Ms. Brown and 1303 Music Appreciation Class. I will be giving an interview with Frederic Chopin also called the “Poet of the Piano”.
Sadie, Stanley “Bach, Johann Sebastian.” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2002, Vol. 2, pp. 309-346
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “Kate Chopin.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, Sep2013. Academic Research Database. 1 Nov. 2013
Johannes Brahms was born on May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany and died on April 3, 1897 in Vienna, Austria. He was a German composer and pianist who wrote symphonies, concerti, chamber music, piano works and choral compositions. He was also a master of the symphonic and sonata style in the second half of the 19th century. He was the second of Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen and Johann Jakob Brahms’ three children and was introduced to music at a young age. Brahms was an accomplished musician by the the time he was a teenager and earned money playing local inns, brothels, and along the city docks to ease his family’s financial conditions. In 1853 Brahms was introduced to a German composer and music critic Robert Schumann.They soon became close
Catherine O’Flaherty, better known as Kate Chopin, pictured at the left (O’Neil), was born on February 8, 1850 in St. Louis, Missouri to parents Eliza and Thomas. She was the third of five children, but the only one to live past the age of twenty-five. Her mother, who had a strong French background, raised Chopin in a bilingual and bicultural home (“Biography”). The French language and culture would have a strong influence on Chopin’s literary works later in life. At the age of five, Chopin began attending The Sacred Heart Academy, a Catholic boarding school. While attending, nuns mentored Chopin, who rose to the top of her class and received many awards (Wyatt). Along with the nuns, other female figures in her life had a strong impact on young Chopin. These women included her mother, grandmother, and especially her beloved great-grandmother who taught her French, music, and gossip of past St. Louis women. These women’s intelligence and independence show a great influence on Chopin’s work (“Biography”).