wodzinska:Robert Schumann & Clara WieckRobert Schumann, composer and pianist - Clara Schumann, v
wodzinska:Robert Schumann & Clara WieckRobert Schumann, composer and pianist - Clara Schumann, virtuoso pianist, composer, and wife of Robert Schumann - their lives and careers intertwined almost indefinably in history.Friedrich Wieck recognized Robert’s talent, but from the first, he doubted Robert’s stability and discipline. These early impressions of the young man influenced Herr Wieck in his later assessment of his qualifications as a suitable husband for his daughter Clara Josephine Wieck.Clara Wieck, nine years younger than Robert Schumann, was a gifted pianist. Under her father’s tutelage since the age of five, Clara had long been recognized as a musical child prodigy with a touring career that began at age nine. As a teenager, she was elected to the honored Music Society of Vienna.Friedrich Wieck, still convinced of Schumann’s lack of fortitude, forbade his daughter to see Robert. For more than sixteen months, Robert was exiled from the Wieck’s home. Alone and dejected, he poured his emotion into the composition of “Fantasy in C Major.“ On her eighteenth birthday, Clara found an extremely distressed - and by some accounts, drunken - Schumann. Their relationship was reestablished and Robert asked Clara’s father for her hand in marriage. This was denied.While Clara appealed to the courts, she refused to disobey her father and marry Schumann without either her father’s permission or the court’s sanction, fearing loss of her inheritance and with it, financial security. The courts did finally grant the appeal and Clara Wieck became Clara Schumann at the age of twenty-one, her husband thirty.The year that followed was one of the most prolific of Robert’s lifetime. He produced over one hundred Lieder, many of which were composed for his wife to play. Clara encouraged him to broaden his style, leading him into orchestral music as well as chamber works. Robert combined his love for the piano with symphonic orchestration, producing the “Piano Concerto in A Minor.”Clara continued to tour and also taught at the Leipzig Conservatory. She composed twenty-three opuses and countless piano songs, including polonaises, waltzes, and a piano concerto. Still, female composers were not readily received by the musical world. Clara wrote in her diary, “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose - there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?“ Clara chose instead to become the chief interpreter of her husband’s music. He wrote. She played.The years from 1854 to 1856 were fraught with frequent periods of depression and the onset of auditory hallucinations. At times, Robert confessed to hearing variations of themes from the spirits of Schubert or Mendelssohn. It was during one of these times that a frustrated Schumann made his way to the Rhine River and tried to drown himself. Rescued by fisherman and quite shaken, Robert asked to be taken to an asylum. He died there in 1856.After Robert’s death, Clara Schumann toured the concert piano circuit to support herself and her children. She edited her husband’s work, still the principal interpreter of his genius, not only at the keyboard but in its preservation. Clara died in 1896. [x] -- source link
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