Citation

Novak J. Biography - An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 2022; 45(1).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022)

DOI

10.1353/bio.2022.0015

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Clara Schumann, née Wieck, is known today as one of the most distinguished concert pianists of European Romanticism, a major influence on the development of the nineteenth-century piano recital, and a renowned piano teacher and composer.1 She is also remembered as one half of a famous musical couple, and as the subject of a secret romantic courtship and a spectacular legal dispute between her father and future husband. Clara began her career early as a wunderkind trained by her father Friedrich Wieck, and she fell in love with Robert Schumann at the age of sixteen. When Wieck opposed the match and slandered Schumann publicly, Schumann took him to court and finally obtained permission to marry Clara in 1840. The marriage lasted for sixteen years, until the end of Robert Schumann's life, during which Clara gave birth to eight children (one of whom died in infancy). In 1854, Robert Schumann was committed to an insane asylum following a suicide attempt, and he died there in 1856. © 2022 University of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved.

Language: en