I've spent some time over the last week trawling through my books, trying to pin down a particular incident in the life of Clara Schumann, while promising myself, for the umpteenth time, that when I have some spare cash I must buy a copy of the diaries Clara kept during her marriage to the composer Robert Schumann.
Why? No reason other than a long-running fascination with a character who is one of the most interesting and vital figures in 19th century musical history. Clara, born Clara Wieck, just about spanned the century, born in 1819 and dying in 1896. I did note idly, during my trawl last week, that in four years we will reach the 200th anniversary of Clara's birth. I think a flourish of trumpets and a celebration of this extraordinary woman's life would be appropriate.
Clara was born to music. Trained from the age of five with remorseless rigour by her father, Friedrich Wieck, who seemed to be grooming her for stardom, Clara made her professional debut as a concert pianist when she was nine. At 12 she began concert touring, and by 16 she was touring Europe and becoming one of the most celebrated concert pianists of the period. She was the antithesis of the growing breed of crash-bang-wallop display pianists. Her father, who soon turned very nasty indeed, had at least imbued in Clara the priority of expressiveness over flashy showmanship.
And all went swimmingly (for Friedrich) until the arrival in his household of the new lodger, the young composer Robert Schumann. He and Clara became attracted to each other, fell in love and wanted to marry by her 19th birthday. Robert asked for Clara's hand, and her father went ballistic in a vicious campaign of bitter opposition. When he failed to discredit Schumann, he turned his ire on Clara, with a series of threats that are unspeakable. Clara would be disinherited. Friedrich would confiscate all her earnings. The couple would not be allowed to live in Saxony during his lifetime. For the next five years Wieck would keep Clara's earnings, allowing her 4% interest on which to live. Her earnings for the previous seven years would revert to her half-brothers. On and on he went, even to the extent of charging Clara a large sum to repossess her piano, held in Wieck's home.
Clara appears to have stayed quiet on all this, while Schumann, leading from the front, went on the warpath. Eventually, they had no option other than taking her father to court. They did, and he was charged with defamation. Ultimately, Clara and Robert won and, on the day before her 20th birthday, they married. That wasn't quite the end of Wieck, but fast forward to 1849, with Clara already having four of the eight children she would bear Schumann, and pregnant with a fifth. (one died in infancy.)
Europe was in revolutionary turmoil and the Schumanns, now living in Dresden, were dangerously close to it. They could literally hear it. On May 4, Clara reported in her diary that they had ventured into the city, where she noticed "the barricades and 14 dead bodies". The following day, May 5, the revolution came to their door, in the presence of a security brigade, looking to enlist able-bodied men to the revolutionary cause. Schumann's biographer, the late John Daverio, reported that Clara managed to "fend them off twice" (how?) but when they threatened to search the house, Robert and Clara grabbed their eldest daughter, Marie, fled through the garden, leaving the other three children with a housekeeper, and headed for the station.
To this day their decision to abandon three of the children is debated. I suspect it was terror and sheer panic, though no parent could imagine such a thing. Clara reported in her diary there was no time to fetch all the children; "and we thought we'd be back by evening". She wasn't. The family headed out of town to the estate of a friend. By the 6th, Clara was climbing the wall with anxiety. That night, at 3am, Clara, seven months pregnant and accompanied by the daughter of a steward, left the estate. On foot and part of the time unaccompanied, she headed for the outskirts of the city "amidst continuous cannonading", recording at one point coming up against 40 scythe-armed soldiers. She pressed on into the city, made her way to the house and, incredibly, found the children asleep in bed. No hesitation this time: she hauled them up, dressed them, packed what she could, and within an hour, they were outside the town, in the fields, beginning the slog back to the estate, where they arrived about noon to find Schumann waiting anxiously. Some tale, eh? I must buy those diaries!
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