Editing Clara Schumann (section)

== Music ==
=== Performance repertoire ===
During her lifetime, Schumann was an internationally renowned concert pianist.{{sfn|Weingarten|1972|p=96}} Over 1,300 concert programs from her performances throughout Europe between 1831 through 1889 have been preserved.{{sfn|Kopiez|2008|pp=50–73}} She championed the works of her husband and other contemporaries such as Brahms, Chopin and Mendelssohn.{{sfn|Kopiez|2008|pp=50–73}}

[[File:Famous Composers and their Works v2 117.jpg|thumb|alt=Drawing of a woman sitting at an upright piano and a man standing in front of the instrument, looking at her, with his right hand at his chin|Clara and Robert Schumann, illustration from ''Famous Composers and their Works'', 1906]]

The Schumanns were admirers of Chopin, especially of his ''[[Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" (Chopin)|Variations on "Là ci darem la mano"]]'', and she played the piece herself. When she was 14 and her future husband 23, he wrote to her:
{{blockquote|text=Tomorrow precisely at eleven o'clock I will play the adagio from Chopin's Variations and at the same time I shall think of you very intently, exclusively of you. Now my request is that you should do the same, so that we may see and meet each other in spirit.|author=Robert Schumann{{sfn|Jensen|2012|p=79}}}}

In her early years, her repertoire, selected by her father, was showy and in the style common to the time, with works by [[Friedrich Kalkbrenner]], [[Adolf von Henselt]], [[Sigismond Thalberg]], [[Henri Herz]], [[Johann Peter Pixis]], [[Carl Czerny]] and her own compositions. She turned to including compositions by Baroque composers such as [[Domenico Scarlatti]] and [[Johann Sebastian Bach]], but performed especially contemporary music by Chopin, Mendelssohn and her husband, whose music did not attain popularity until the 1850s.{{sfn|Klassen|2011}}

In 1835, she performed her [[Piano Concerto (Clara Schumann)|Piano Concerto in A minor]] with the [[Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra]], conducted by Mendelssohn. On 4 December 1845, she premiered Robert Schumann's [[Piano Concerto (Schumann)|Piano Concerto]] in Dresden.{{sfn|Schwarm|2013}} Following the advice of Brahms she performed Mozart's [[Piano Concerto No. 24 (Mozart)|Piano Concerto in C minor]] at the [[House of Hanover|Hanoverian court]]{{sfn|Nauhaus Images|2019}} and in Leipzig.{{sfn|Avins Book|1997|p=231}}

Along with [[Arabella Goddard]] she was one of the first woman pianists to perform Beethoven's [[Hammerklavier Sonata]] in public, doing so on two occasions before 1856.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://crumey.co.uk/beethoven_8_hammerklavier_sonata.html |title=Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata |website=crumey.co.uk |last=Crumey |first=Andrew |access-date=25 July 2023 |author-link=Andrew Crumey}}</ref> Her busiest years as a performer were between 1856 and 1873, after her husband's death.{{sfn|Kopiez|2008|pp=50–73}} During this period, she experienced success as a performer in Britain, where her 1865 performance of Beethoven's [[Piano Concerto No. 4 (Beethoven)|Piano Concerto in G major]] was met with enormous applause. As a chamber musician, she often gave concerts with violinist Joachim. In her later career, she frequently accompanied [[lied]]er singers in recitals.{{sfn|Kopiez|2008|pp=50–73}}

=== Compositions ===
{{See also|List of compositions by Clara Schumann}}
As part of the broad musical education given to her by her father, Clara Wieck learned to compose, and from childhood to middle age she produced a good body of work. Clara wrote that "composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound". Her Op. 1 was ''[[4 Polonaises (Clara Schumann)|Quatre Polonaises pour le pianoforte]]'' composed in 1831, and Op. 5 ''[[4 Pièces caractéristiques (Clara Schumann)|4 Pièces caractéristiques]]'' in 1836, all piano pieces for her recitals. She wrote her [[Piano Concerto (Clara Schumann)|Piano Concerto in A minor]] at age 14, with some help from her future husband.{{sfn|Reich Book|2001}} She planned a second piano concerto, but only a ''Konzertsatz'' in F minor from 1847 survived.{{sfn|Reich Book|2001}}

[[File:Schumann op37 op12.jpg|thumb|alt=Highly decorated cover page of a composition, showing the title and other information in swinging lines, framed by a garland reminiscent of Gothic wood-carving|''Zwölf Lieder auf F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling'' by Clara and Robert Schumann]]

After her marriage, she turned to lieder and choral works. The couple wrote and published one joint composition in 1841, setting a cycle of poems by [[Friedrich Rückert]] called ''Liebesfrühling'' (''Spring of Love'') in ''Zwölf Lieder auf F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling'', her Op. 12 and his Op. 37.{{sfn|Klassen|2011}} Her chamber works include the [[Piano Trio (Clara Schumann)|Piano Trio in G minor]], Op. 17 (1846) and [[Three Romances for Violin and Piano]], Op. 22 (1853), inspired by her husband's birthday. They were dedicated to Joachim, who performed them for [[George V of Hanover]], who declared them a "marvellous, heavenly pleasure".{{sfn|Dunsmore|2013}}{{sfn|Clara Schumann Score|2001}}

As she grew older, she became more preoccupied with other responsibilities in life and found it hard to compose regularly, writing, "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose&nbsp;– there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?"{{sfn|Savage|2017}} Her husband also expressed concern about the effect on her composing output:

{{blockquote|text=Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out.|author=Robert Schumann{{sfn|Murray|2018|p=129}}}}

She produced one to eight compositions every year beginning at age 11, until her output stopped in 1848, producing only a choral work that year for her husband's birthday and leaving her second piano concerto unfinished.{{sfn|Reich Book|2001}} These two works, while reserved for her opus 18 and 19, were never published.{{sfn|Koch|1991|p=24}} Five years later, however, when she was 34 in 1853, the year she met Brahms, she engaged in a flurry of composing, resulting in 16 pieces that year: a set of piano variations on an "Album Leaf" of her husband (his Op. 99 No. 4), eight "Romances" for piano solo and for violin and piano, and seven songs. These works were published a year later, after Robert's confinement, as her Op. 20 through 23.{{sfn|Reich Book|2001|pp=289–337 (Catalogue of Works)}}

For the next 43 years of her life, she only composed piano transcriptions of works by her husband and Brahms, including 41 transcriptions of Robert Schumann's lieder (commissioned by a publisher in 1872), and a short piano duet commissioned for a friend's wedding anniversary in 1879. In the last year of her life, she left several sketches for piano preludes, designed for piano students, as well as some published cadenzas for her performances of Beethoven and Mozart piano concertos.{{sfn|Klassen|2011}}{{sfn|Reich Book|2001|pp=327–328}}

Most of Clara Schumann's music was never played by anyone else and largely forgotten until a resurgence of interest in the 1970s. Today her compositions are increasingly performed and recorded.{{sfn|Savage|2017}}

=== Editor ===
Schumann was the authoritative editor, aided by Brahms and others, of her husband's works for the publishing firm of [[Breitkopf & Härtel]].{{sfn|Allihn|2019}}{{sfn|Robert Schumann Score|1879}} She also edited 20 sonatas by [[Domenico Scarlatti]], letters (''Jugendbriefe'') by her husband in 1885, and his piano works with fingering and other instructions (''Fingersatz und Vortragsbezeichnungen'') in 1886.{{sfn|Klassen|2011}}

=== "War of the Romantics" ===
In the early 1840s the Schumanns were interested in the works of [[Franz Liszt]] and his young composer friends of what eventually became known as the [[New German School]],{{sfn|Walker|1993|p=340}} but in the second half of the decade they both became openly hostile toward Liszt{{sfn|Walker|1993|p=342}} because of their more musically conservative outlook and beliefs,{{sfn|Walker|1993|p=343}} Clara more so than Robert, as she had long been the more conservative aesthete in the Schumann marriage.{{sfn|Walker|1993|p=344}} By the mid-1850s, after Robert's decline, the young Brahms had joined the cause,{{sfn|Swafford Book|1997|p=68}} and to promote her ideals and protect what she saw as an attack on her husband's beliefs, she, Brahms, and Joseph Joachim{{sfn|Walker|1993|p=346}}{{sfn|Swafford Book|1997|p=206}} formed a group of conservative musicians{{sfn|Swafford Book|1997|p=195}} who defended Robert Schumann's critical ideals of the legacy and respectability of music, the pinnacle of which had been Beethoven.{{sfn|Bonds|2001|pp=835,837}}

The opposing side of this "[[War of the Romantics]]", a group of radical progressives in music (most of them from Weimar) led by Liszt and [[Richard Wagner]], desired to escape composing under the shadow of Beethoven, but to transcend the old forms and ideas of what music had been and instead create what music ''should'' be for the future. The Weimar school promoted the idea of ''[[program music]]'',{{sfn|Bonds|2001|p=838}} while both the Schumanns and Brahms of the Leipzig/Berlin school were strict in their stance that music must and can only be ''[[absolute music]]'',{{sfn|Walker|1993|pp=361,365–366}} a term derisively coined by Wagner.{{sfn|Dahlhaus|1991}}

One of Clara Schumann's difficulties with Liszt stemmed from a philosophical difference in performance practice. He believed that the artist, through physical and emotional performance, interpreted music for the audience. When he performed, Liszt flailed his arms, tossed his head, and pursed his lips,{{sfn|Pedroza|2010|p=309}} inspiring a [[Lisztomania]] across Europe which has been compared to the [[Beatlemania]] of female fans of [[The Beatles]] over a century later.{{sfn|Walker|1993|pp=340–341}} Clara, in contrast, came to believe that the personality of the musician should be suppressed so that the composer's vision would be clearly evident to listeners.{{sfn|Walker|1993|p=341}}{{sfn|Pedroza|2010|p=311}}

Partisans led active campaigns with public demonstrations at concerts, writings published in the press denigrating reputations, and other public slights designed to embarrass their adversaries. Brahms published a [[Art manifesto|manifesto]] for the "Serious Music" side on 4 May 1861,{{sfn|Walker|1993|p=350}} signed by Clara Schumann, Joachim, [[Albert Dietrich]], [[Woldemar Bargiel]], and twenty others, which decried the purveyors of the "Music of the Future" as "contrary to the innermost spirit of music, strongly to be deplored and condemned".{{sfn|Walker|1993|pp=348–49}} The ''New Weimar Club'', a formal society with Liszt at its center, held an anniversary celebration of the ''[[Neue Zeitschrift für Musik]]'', the magazine Robert Schumann had founded, in his birthplace Zwickau, and conspicuously neglected to invite members of the opposing party, including his widow, Clara. Clara Schumann ceased to perform any of Liszt's works, and she suppressed her husband's dedication to Liszt of his ''[[Fantasie in C (Schumann)|Fantasie in C major]]'' when she published his complete works. When she heard that Liszt and Richard Wagner would be participating in a Beethoven centenary festival in Vienna in 1870, she refused to attend.{{sfn|Braunstein|1971}}

In describing the works of the opposing school, Clara Schumann was particularly scathing of Wagner, writing of his ''[[Tannhäuser (opera)|Tannhäuser]]'', that he "wears himself out in atrocities", describing ''[[Lohengrin (opera)|Lohengrin]]'' as "horrible", and referring to ''[[Tristan und Isolde]]'' as "the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life".{{sfn|Braunstein|1971}} She also complained that Wagner had spoken of her husband, [[Felix Mendelssohn|Mendelssohn]], and Brahms in a "scornful" way.{{sfn|Reich Book|2001|pp=202–03}} Wagner had poked fun at the musical conservatives in an essay, portraying them as "a musical temperance society" awaiting a Messiah. She held [[Anton Bruckner]]'s [[Symphony No. 7 (Bruckner)|Seventh Symphony]] in very low esteem and wrote to Brahms, describing it as "a horrible piece". Bruckner's symphonies were seen as representative of the New Music due to their advanced harmony, massive orchestration and extended time-scale.{{sfn|Bonds|2001|p=839}} Schumann was more impressed, however, with the early [[Symphony No. 1 (Strauss)|First Symphony in F minor]] by [[Richard Strauss]];{{sfn|Braunstein|1971}} this was before Strauss began composing the highly programmatic music for which he later became famous.

Brahms secretly held Wagner's music in high esteem,{{sfn|Swafford Book|1997|pp=195,267–68}} and eventually publicly praised Liszt's works as well. Several of the proponents and signers of the manifesto, including Joachim, relented and joined the "other side". The controversy eventually died down, but Clara Schumann remained steadfast in her disapproval of the New German School's music.