MADAME COMPOSER

Biography of the 19th-century pianist and composer better known today as the wife of Robert Schumann.

Trained by her demanding father to be a child prodigy, Clara Schumann (1819–1896) learned to write music before learning the alphabet, improvised at the piano before she talked in sentences, and was giving private performances by age 7. She made her official debut at 9 in her hometown of Leipzig, touring Europe throughout her teens to acclaim by admirers ranging from Paganini to Goethe. When she married Robert in 1840—after a lawsuit to free her from her controlling father—she was so famous that he was sometimes referred to as “the husband of Clara Wieck.” She used that fame to promote Robert’s compositions and those of their friend Johannes Brahms; neither of these men, musicologist Fritz writes in her impassioned introduction, would have entered the classical music canon without Clara’s efforts, which also boosted the reputations of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Mendelssohn. Unsurprisingly, given a relentless touring schedule and the eight children she bore, her work as a composer suffered. “Internalized misogyny sank its claws into her creative will,” is Fritz’s way of describing the generally dismissive attitude toward female composers that certainly had an impact. The biographer’s commendable desire to reclaim Clara’s proper stature as an artist leads too often to such overheated phrases, but her cause is better served by Fritz’s detailed, appreciative descriptions of her compositions, including some interesting observations on how both Robert and Brahms quoted from Clara’s melodies in their own works. Profiles of other then-renowned, now virtually unknown female composers, such as Pauline Viardot and Maria Szymanowska, amply make the point that female artists struggled for recognition then—and now, when their works rarely appear on concert programs. Fritz’s tendency to beat this well-established point into the ground only slightly mars her punchy, vividly written narrative.

A persuasive brief for Clara Schumann’s right to an honored place in the classical music canon.