Review Summary: An Extraordinary Woman Living in a Man's World.
Women of Classical Music. No. 2
If there’s one female in music history whose reputation has never languished, it’s Clara Schumann’s. As soon as she attained her fame, Clara never lost it, neither in her own lifetime nor in posterity. Never was there a moment when the guardians of music history looked down on her either as a pianist or musician for any reason. The parallels for this in music history are few and far between even for a male, let alone a female musician. Off the top of my head I can think only of three others to whom this exalted status applies: Handel, Beethoven, and Chopin. Pachelbel’s works are unknown outside his Canon in D, the cognoscenti often chide Vivaldi as frivolous, Haydn remains in the domain of the connoisseur, Bach and Mozart needed their respective “revivals”, Schubert took a century to gain acceptance, Liszt is not considered a top tier composer (he isn’t), Wagner’s reputation is tainted by his egomania and antisemitism, and Brahms has always had his detractors. I could go on and on. Yet somehow the lovely Clara Schumann remains immortal.
I say “somehow” tongue in cheek. Clara was a musician’s musician, learned through and through, proficient in all the musical demands of her day. As a child Clara was one of the foremost piano virtuosi, her proficiency at the instrument having been beaten, if not literally, into her by her father, the imperious Friedrich Wieck. Wherever she went her playing created a furor and she was admired by many of the musical giants of the day such as Chopin, Liszt, Paganini, and Brahms.
But her playing is only a small part of the story. There were actually plenty of female piano virtuosi both before, in Clara’s day, and after, whose reputations preceded them. I hate to have to say this, especially because it’s so unfair, but in addition to her own other worldly musicianship, a large part of Clara’s undying reputation, at least during her lifetime—we know better now, comes from the fact that she was married to Robert Schumann. In other words, she’s famous yes, but for a long-long-long time it wasn’t for the right reasons. This is harsh. But I have a hard time believing that the male attitude towards Clara would have been the same if she was married to a lesser musician, let alone someone not involved with music at all. I doubt publishing companies would have had any sympathy for her if she was married to a cook. Since this a review of Clara and not Robert I won’t get into the particulars about his music or personality, but it suffices to say that he was beyond excellent, and is one of the handful of faces that belong on the Mt. Rushmore of music history.
If you haven’t noticed, I did not say that Clara’s reputation as a
composer never languished; I said that her reputation as a
pianist and
musician never languished. Even though she was married to the mighty Robert Schumann, there was a cap on just how far the 19th century male attitude towards female musicians would let a woman go. It took a long time before Clara’s work was considered even half decent. Of course, this has to do with her sex rather than her music. Clara was born in 1819 and died in 1896 and did about 90% of her composing before the age of thirty-six. For the next four decades of her life Clara stoically assumed the responsibilities of womanhood even going so far as to say, “I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose—there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one？” The venom of the age had apparently begun to course its way through her veins.
It’s needless to say, but the whole thing is tragic. In addition to being an excellent pianist and musician, Clara was a superb composer. Who knows what could have been. Alas, this review is supposed to be a celebration not a eulogy, and a fantastic place to start is with Clara’s Op. 16 Three Preludes and Fugues for Piano. Written and published in early 1845, Op. 16 was the first fruits of a joint undertaking between Clara and Robert to master the art of counterpoint. Robert had decided he needed to improve his skills in the art and so the couple decided to tackle the issue together. This not only speaks to just how deeply in love Robert was with Clara, but to how wonderful of a musician Clara truly was; Bach hadn’t done the same thing with Anna Magdalena.
But what exactly are preludes？It’s what it sounds like, a kind of introduction that sets an informal tone for the upcoming piece or pieces. In Bach’s day, preludes were often used as the first piece in a dance suite or partita. A dance suite was simply too important to begin as is; it needed something to present itself with, like an overture to an opera. As was his custom, Bach transformed what was supposed to be something unimportant into something important by giving it weight and depth equal to the other pieces in the suite. Rather than simply acting as a passive introduction, Bachian preludes typically demonstrate the enormous musicality of a
single motivic idea. In other words, Bach’s preludes are often musically monothematic. The famous prelude in C-Major BWV 846a, for example, demonstrates the utility of rising arpeggiated triads.
But in Clara’s day, dance suites were more arcane than the Holy Roman Empire. This meant that Allemandes, Gigues, Sarabands, etc., had not been treated seriously for some ninety-five years (J.S. died 1750). The prelude, however, had seized the minds of the Romantics, and everyone from Chopin to Rachmaninoff understood that serious musicians published polished sets of them. Obviously, this led to a widening of the expressive possibilities of the genre. Where Bach used only the ideas contained in the notes themselves to write his preludes, 19th century musicians evoked moods, feelings, and expressions with theirs. But Clara, one of the guardians of the traditions of the “Old Wigs” understood that if you wanted to become a more capable musician, studying the preludes of Bach rather than the preludes of Chopin yielded more fruitful results.
The first of the set of three preludes and fugues are in G-minor, and the homage to J.S. is evident from the get go. Praeludium I makes use of a single rhythmic figure, syncopated action that attacks on the second half of each beat in 3/4 except for the first beat where it attacks on both. The melody being punctuated in this way allows the bass freedom to roam which in Clara’s treatment feels as if each measure is one leg of a spider moving forward, walking as it does through a series of flavorful chords and keys: G-minor, Bb-Major, Eb-Major, F-minor, and a really bizarre sequence from Ab-Major to G-Major which I don’t know what to make of but is beautiful nonetheless. The reason for this treatment is evident from Clara’s stated aim, to attain mastery in the art of counterpoint, the art of setting note against note. As the piece heads towards the finish, Clara doubles the melody in thirds which not only showcases a hold on a more difficult species of counterpoint, but also adds a touch of sweet melodiousness right before ending on a poignant authentic cadence back in G-minor.
Fuga I is a furious
allegro vivace that does not let up for a single second. The theme is masterful and sounds as if it came straight from the pen of Bach himself. To make the theme’s twenty-eight absurdly tight notes breathe the way they do demonstrates a firm grasp on the most difficult question that fugue poses. How do you make series of clashed notes that don’t conform to key or chord sound like they do？In Clara’s theme, the notes are packed so tightly that sounding the theme at any other interval other than the octave might make it seem like juvenile banging. But through careful adherence to contrapuntal principals, Clara makes her theme sing, and sing it does. This addresses another important question of fugue. How do you make note against note sound musical rather than mathematical？Clara certainly figured it out because her theme is really quite memorable. You always know it when you hear it, even if it’s flying by at a zillion notes per second. About halfway through the piece she even begins to start toying with us; she sounds the theme in
inversus (upside-down), a quite advanced technique. Like the last third of P.1, Clara doubles the melody, this time in sixths, which, again, not only staves off any feelings of pedantry one might have towards “The Learned Style”, but lends to it an air of sweet decoration.
P/F.2 are set in Bb-Major and in 3/4. P.2 has one foot in the world of Bach and the other in the 19th century, and Clara manages to extract the best from each era. While there’s certainly contrapunctus going on, the mood is like that of a Nocturne or Romanza; the left hand arpeggiation is typical of Field or Chopin, and the melody soars at the top of the stave. There are feelings of tranquility and joyousness to go along with its restless
con moto counterpoint.
With its ascending perfect fourths, the theme of F.2 is noble with a touch of the heroic. What’s impressive, though, is that Clara manages to take the theme’s one accidental, E-natural, and use it to spin the theme through a variety of keys and moods. The aforementioned perfect fourths at once lend the piece it’s a heroism and a crystalline spirituality. Nowhere is this more felt than in the second entrance of the theme in m.4 in F-major. But I would be remiss if I were to fail to point out Clara’s inventive counterpoint which features Bach-like tied non-chordal tones across bars.
P/F.3 are set in common time in D-minor. P/F.3 are perhaps the weakest of the three sets. It seems as if Clara’s imagination may have flagged a bit as their harmonic and rhythmic inventiveness is a tad amateurish. P.3’s key cycle is ordinary and its rhythm does not venture beyond eighth notes. The melody even features the same perfect fourth leap. It also sounds a bit too much like F.2 in its choralic atmosphere; some of its moods are not all that indistinguishable from F.2. Nevertheless, its counterpoint is correct and its minor mood is certainly individual from F.2. There’s also a harmonically exciting minor-second clash between Bb and A it its middle section that’s immediately recognizable. F.3 is clearly fashioned from the same material as P.3 as its theme features the same melodic and harmonic shape. Here, though, Clara’s imagination is a bit less muted; the counterpoint is fuller and more inventive. Moreover, Clara fashions the fugue out of a single rhythmic idea in an impressive Bachian fashion before ending with a bright Picardy third in D-Major to close out the set.
I could have chosen to review Clara’s “masterpiece” the G-minor Piano Trio. The air quotes aren’t sarcastic. The piece is quite wonderful. I could have chosen to review one of Clara’s virtuosic piano variations or the Piano Concerto in A-minor. But Clara’s Op. 16 speaks antithetically to the heart of one of the 19th century’s more derogatory attitudes towards the female sex, that they, on the whole, are not as smart as men. Op. 16, above all, is learned music. Counterpoint is a notoriously difficult skill to conquer—I studied it for four years, and I would never have dreamed of writing an even quarter-decent fugue. Op. 16’s counterpoint is on the order of at least a Liszt, maybe even a Chopin, and much better than a Wagner, Berlioz, or Schubert.
Even though Clara remained the legal guardian of Robert’s music for four decades after his tragic psychosis and death, even though Clara remained the authoritative interpreter, to whom deference was always given, of Robert’s music for the rest of her life, and even though Clara’s reputation as a pianist and musician never languished, and all of these facts speak to what a grand musician she must have been living in a man’s world, Clara the composer was never treated equally. What could have been…
