Clara Schumann's Life And Music

Clara Schumann was born September 13, 1819 in Leipzig, Germany. Clara was born into a musical family in school her father Friedrich Weick studied theology but made his career in music. He later settled in Leipzig where he taught piano, opened a business selling instruments, and began a music lending library. He taught his wife Marianne and his future son-in-law Robert Schumann, he also received the reputation as a first-rate piano teacher. Wieck an and Marianne divorced after eight years of marriage when Clara was five years old, leaving Clara’s father to raise her and her four brother when her mother moved to Berlin. Unfortunately her father felt he neglected her general education but recognized her talents and saw that Clara had the finest musical education. In Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin Clara studied piano with her father and violin, theory, and different areas of composition with the best teachers. In Leipzig she attended all of the important performances and learned about business of music.

In her teens Clara fell in love Robert Schumann, which was one of her fathers students, and later on became one of the most prominent composers of the 19th century. Schumann was 9 years older than Clara and had been living in her house as a piano student. In

1928, at the age of nine, Clara performed for the first time and made her formal debut at the age of eleven. Clara started to compose when she was just 14 years old and composed the piano concerto in A minor. Two years later she performed an completed concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, that was conducted by Felix Mendelssohn. When she was 18 Clara performed a series of recitals in Vienna from December 1837 until April 1838. She was one of the few pianists of her time to preform music from memory.
Clara married Robert against the will of her father on September 12, 1840.
Even though she was often identified as the wife of eminent composer Robert Schumann, she herself was also a composer. If she would have been able to devote more of her time to composition and not to of been so busy with her eight children she might have been able to reach the heights of her husband. Since she was in the last quarter of the twentieth century her status as a composer started to grow and her talent started to be greatly admired. She wrote some brilliant compositions in both the keyboard and vocal realms, which were highly praised.
Clara Schumann had to endure a great amount of pain during her lifetime.

She saw her husband die and four out of eight of her children die in front of her own eyes. Her first son died when her was just an year old in 1847. One of her sons and her husband both ended their lives in a mental asylum. In 1854 her husband attempted suicide and was committed into an insane asylum for the last two years of his life. Her son Ludwig suffered from a mental illness just like his father in Clara’s words he had to be “buried alive” in an institution. When her son Ferdinand died at the age of 43 he left behind his children to be raised by their grandmother. Later in life she became deaf and was also confined to a

wheelchair.
When her husband was alive they embarked on a musical life together she was mainly a concert pianist and Robert was a composer. However her husband Robert encouraged and always encouraged her to compose. Without the knowledge of Clara during their first year of marriage Robert published some of her work. Later her presented it to her on their one-year anniversary. The were intense with their musical interaction and studied symphony scores together, shared how they felt about the performances together, and read similar literature. Although Robert admired Clara’s talents he wanted to have a quiet, stable home life as well.
Clara underwent a physical pain, whenever she preformed. She was constantly proscribed opium because she was suffering from rheumatism. She tried several different treatments such as going to spa’s, got massages, and water treatment. In March of 1896 she suffered from a stroke. When she was on her deathbed she demanded that her grandson Ferdinand to play her husband’s F-sharp major romance, which was the last piece of music Clara heard. On May 20, 1896 Clara Schumann passed away.
In her piece Sie liebten sich beide I feel that the music has a very nice rhythm and the tempo is very slow. Through out the piece there are places where the music crescendos and seems to be monophonic. The tempo starts out largo and then transfers to allegretto and afterwards becomes allegro.