Status Updates From Clara Schumann: The Artist ...

Op 17 trio for piano, violin and cello
Composed in Dresden. She had played much chamber music and with Robert had begun to study the chamber music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven but had never ventured to compose in this genre herself. This is her remedy of that.
During their Dresden time, she organized a chamber music series-first of its kind there.

Written and loved by herself. Published in 1879. Performed frequently.

Piano concerto in Am Op 7. Began when Clara was 13 yrs old!
Second mvmt is a nocturne with cello accompaniment. Should learn it.

There is nothing that surpasses the joy of creative activity, even if only for those hours of self forgetfulness in which one breathes solely in the realm of tones. Clara Schumann

Wow. Clara met Chopin and Chopin liked and praised her playing. She championed some of his work in the the early years and often played them on her concerts. In later years there was always at least one of his works on her programs. Concerto in Fm was the last concerto the 71 yr old played in public on 11/7/1890.

Chapter 9 is so sweet. The Brahms and Clara chapter.

Brahms’ Vier ernste Gesange, tho written before Clara died, he wrote to her daughter asking her to consider them quite literally a funeral offering to Clara.
Clara died on May 20th, 1896.
Brahms died 11 months later.

In a letter of response to Brahms who was asking her to take it a bit easier as she has enough money she doesn’t have to work so hard which is affecting her health etc…
Her response: author points out this could be her motto: “my health may well be preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn’t each person give his life for their calling”?

Her praises about certain pieces. Review these

Clara plays a few Mozart piano concertos (just at home) and just gushes in a letter to Brahms over them. Mozart amazes the amazers.

Robert Schumann's Drei Romanzen, Op. 28 is a set of three solo piano pieces completed in December 1839 and published in September 1840. The composer gave the manuscript to his fiancé, Clara Wieck, as a Christmas present

As she lay dying, she asked her grandson, Ferdinand to play for her. The music, from Schumann‘s Intermezzi Op. four and his F Sharp, major romance, Op. 28 was the last she heard.

At her last public concert, in March 1891, 72 year-old Clara joined with a colleague to perform Brahms arduous Variations on a theme by Haydn for two pianos, and until she was felled by a stroke in 1896, she played, taught, improvised, edited, arranged, and reveled in music (despite bouts of arm pain, some hearing loss and other ailments).

The section: Winding down.
Beautiful

1852, the Schumann’s moved into a new apartment in which she had her own piano where she could practice without disturbing Robert. She began to compose here again, and she wrote pieces that were to be her last published works: variations on a theme by Robert Schumann, three romances for piano, three romances for violin and piano, and six songs from Jucunde opus #20 through 23.

The Düsseldorf years saw Schumann‘s deepening mental illness, his suicide attempt, and the tragic closing of his life; for Clara, it was a time of unending worries about her children, the beginning of a 40 year widowhood, the inauguration of close friendships with Joseph Joaquim and Brahms, and a renewal of her concert career.

The first two Dresden years were also productive for Clara Schumann, the composer. It was during this stressful period that her preludes and fugues and the trio and G minor were completed.

Despite the ill health, the Dresden years were in fact very productive. Many of Robert‘s best known works: the piano Concerto, the C major symphony, the song album for the young, the concert piece for four horns and Orchestra stem from this period.

Art is a beautiful gift. What is more beautiful than to clothe one’s feelings and sounds, what a comfort in sad hours, what a pleasure, what a wonderful feeling, to provide an hour of happiness to others. And what a sublime feeling to pursue art so that one gives one’s life for it.
Clara to Robert in a letter

Clara’s father separated Robert and Clara the a year by taking her on tour after tour. He basically kicked him out of their lives. Schumann threw himself into work creating his best known works:
Davidsbundlertanze, the Fantasiestucke, the Fantasie in C Maj and the three piano sonatas.
He dedicated his Son in F# minor to her and after receiving the copy, father made her return it and all his letters. Argh!

At 21 she was married to a major composer; at 37, a widow with seven children, she became involved in a lifelong friendship with another major composer. She also composed 23 published opus numbers and an equal number without opus numbers, taught, and was responsible for the authoritative addition of the collected works of Robert Schumann.

Clara Schumann was always her own person, perceiving herself as an artist who was a woman, and eternally grateful for the art that was to sustain her through a lifetime of tragedy and triumph.

Clara had little interest in women’s rights or the struggle for recognition that other creative German women were just beginning to launch in the mid 19th century. She concentrated on her own career and her many obligations as she endeavored to reconcile the conflicts that inevitably arise when a woman steps out of her conventional place.