Clara Machumann Research Paper

Clara Schumann was the wife of Robert Schumann, the famous German composer. She was a concert pianist, a talented composer, and she mothered seven children. Being the time that is was, a famous woman composer was few and far between, but Clara was able to make a name for herself as a respected musician. The goal of this paper is to explore the areas of Clara Schumann’s life as not only a devoted mother to her husband and children, but her skill as a concert pianist and her talent as a composer as well. Clara Josephine Wieck Schumann was considered to be one of the greatest pianists of her time. She was born on September 13th, 1819 and dies on May 20th, 1896. She had a sixty-one-year career when it came to performing concerts. Clara was …show more content…
She was also a remarkable composer in her day and started composer piano compositions when she was a teenager, along with the help of her future husband Robert Schumann. Her first ever piano concerto was written when she was only fourteen years old and it took off without a hitch. It was performed first in Leipzig when she was on tour and she performed it to a sold-out theatre. Which is accredited to her growing fame as a performer but also due to the fact the Felix Mendelssohn was conducting. While Clara did not have many compositions under her belt, it was the few that she did have that showed her potential as a great composer. As she grew older (and married Robert Schumann and began a family with him) it was becoming more difficult for her to compose at all. She even described this to be heartbreaking. She described herself as having the potential to be a great composer, and that she believed that her talent as a musician was good enough. However, she believed that a woman “…must not desire to compose—There has never been one able to do so. Should I expect to be the one?”1 This was tragic in its own way, for the time that she lived in did not allow her to express fully her true potential as a composer. It is a shame that she was unable to find more time to compose, or that she did not allow herself, for the compositions that were possible could have been magnificent. Even …show more content…
She accepted the proposal from Robert and planned to marry Robert whom she had known for half of her life. Clara’s father however, was strongly opposed to the marriage and forbade the two from marrying each other. Clara and Robert eventually had to take Weick to court and sue him. It was a difficult legal battle that took nearly three years, but finally the judge had allowed for Robert and Clara to marry. They went on to have seven children throughout their marriage, having loss one child to cholera. She had may responsibilities as both a mother and a wife. She was part of the income of the family, preforming concerts throughout the years of her marriage to help support the household. Throughout the marriage, Clara brought in most of the income and it was often Robert who was depending on her for support.3 She took care of her children and Robert with great passion and dedicated her life to them. After Robert passed away, she was the only one left to take care of her children. She would constantly book tours in order to feed and clothe her family, and would hire people to take care of her children while she was away. Clara was such a loving and dedicated mother that when one of her eldest children became deathly ill, she took on the care of her