August 18, 2025 • 19 mins
Dive into the captivating world of Gustav Kobbe, a German-American music critic who lived during the vibrant era of Liszt and Wagner. With a distinct flair for storytelling, Kobbe offers a romantic and entertaining exploration of the loves and lives of seven iconic composers, all while firmly aligning himself with the Wagnerian perspective. His unique writing style, filled with rich imagery and unusual sentence constructions, transports listeners to the 19th century, making each chapter a delightful auditory experience. Wagner receives an especially thorough account, reflecting Kobbes personal claims of familiarity with both Liszt and Wagner, as well as Cosima Wagner. This blend of anecdote and insight creates an original narrative that stands apart from more traditional biographies. (Peter Thomlinson)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter five of the Loves of Great Composers by Gustav Cobe.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Peter Tomlinson, Chapter five. The Schumanns Robert and Clara. Robert
and Clara Schumann are names as closely linked in music
(00:22):
as those of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in literature.
Robert Schumann was a great composer, Clara Schumann a great pianist.
In her dual role of wife and virtuosa, she was
the first to secure proper recognition for her husband's genius.
Surviving him by many years, she continued the foremost interpreter
(00:45):
of his works, winning new laurels, not only for herself
but also for him. He was in his grave, yet
she had but to press the keyboard, and he lived
in her. Despite the fact that tastes underwent a change
and Wagner became the musical giant of the nineteenth century, Clara,
faithful to the ideal of her youth and her young womanhood,
(01:09):
saw to it that the fame of him whose name
she bore remained undimmed. Hers was indeed a consecrated widowhood.
Robert was eighteen years old Clara only nine when they
first met, but while he had not yet definitely decided
on a profession, she, in the very year of their meeting,
(01:29):
made her debut as a pianist, and thus began a
career which lasted until eighteen ninety six, a period of
nearly seventy years. When they first met, Schumann was studying
law at the Leipsick University. Born in Sirwikau, Saxony in
eighteen ten, he showed, both as a boy and as
a youth, not only strong musical proclivities but also decided
(01:53):
literary predilections. In the latter, his father, a bookseller and
publisher who loved his trade, saw a reflection of his
own tastes, and they were encouraged rather more, said usefully,
than the boy's musical bent. It was in obedience to
his father's wishes that he matriculated at Leipzig. Although he
(02:13):
composed and played the piano, and he desired to make music,
his profession was beginning to get the upper hand. His
meeting with the nine year old girl decided him. So
early in her life did she begin to influence his career.
Schumann had been invited by his friends, doctor and missus
Curras to an evening of music, and especially to hear
(02:34):
the piano playing of a wonder child, a musical fairy,
his hostess called her. In the course of the evening,
he accompanied Frau CAUs in some Stubert songs. When chancing
to look up, he saw a child dressed in white,
her pretty face framed in dark hair, her expressive eyes
raised towards the singer in rapt admiration. The song over
(02:58):
and the applause having died away, he stepped up to
the child, laid his hand kindly on her head, and asked,
are you musical, too, little one? A curious smile played
around her lips. She was about to answer when a
man came to her and led her to the piano,
and the first thing Schumann knew, the shape little hand
(03:18):
struck in to Beethoven's F minus Sonata and played it
through with a firm, sure touch and fine musical feeling.
No wonder she had smiled at his question. Was I
writ in calling her a musical fairy? Asked Frau Carros
of Schumann. Her face is like that of a guardian
angel in the picture that hangs in my mother's room
(03:40):
at home, was his reply. Little he knew then that
this child was destined to become his own good fairy
and guardian angel. Had he foreseen what she was to
be to him, he could not more aptly have described her.
The most important immediate result of the meeting was that
he became a pupil of her father, Frederic Viek, whose
(04:03):
remarkable skill as a teacher had carried his daughter so
far at such an early age. The lesson stopped when
Schumann went to Heidelberg to continue his studies, but he
and Vieck, who was convinced of the young man's musical genius,
corresponded in a most friendly manner. Clara, who was born
in Leipzig in eighteen nineteen, became her father's pupil in
(04:27):
her fifth year. It is she who chiefly reflected glory
upon him as a master. But among his father pupils,
Hans von Bulou became famous, and Clara's half sister, Marie
also was a noted pianist. V ex system was not
a hard and fast one, but varied according to the
individuality of each pupil. He was to his day what Leschiesski,
(04:51):
the teacher of Paderewski is now. Very soon after her
meeting with Schumann, Clara made her public debut, and with
great success. Among those who heard and praised her highly
during this first year of her public career was Paganini.
In eighteen thirty, two years after the first meeting of
Robert and Clara Schumann, his father, having died, wrote to
(05:14):
his mother and his guardian and begged them to allow
him to choose a musical career, referring them to VIEH
for an opinion as to his musical abilities. The mother
wrote to the ech letter which is highly creditable to
her heart and judgment, and v X replies equally credible
to him as a friend and teacher. Evidently his powers
(05:37):
of penetration led him to entertain the highest hopes for Schumann.
Among other things, he writes that, with due diligence, Robert
should in a few years become one of the greatest
pianists of the day. Why v X hopes in this
particular were not fulfilled, and why for this reason Clara's
gifts as a penist were doubly useful to Schumann. We
(05:59):
shall see sure Schumann entered with enthusiasm upon the career
of his choice. He left Heidelberg and took lodgings with
the VX in Leipzig. Clara, then a mere girl, though
already winning fame as a concert pianist, certainly was too
young for him to have fallen seriously in love with
or for her to have responded to any such feeling.
(06:21):
Even at that early age. However, she exercised the strange
power of attraction over him. His former literary taste had
given him a great fund of stories and anecdotes, and
he delighted in the evenings to gather about him the
children of the family, Clara among them, and entertained them
with tales from the Arabian nights, and ghost stories and
fairy stories. Among his compositions at this time are a
(06:45):
set of impromptues on a theme by Clara, and it
is significant of his regard to her that later he
worked them over, as if he did not consider them
in the original shape good enough for her. Then we
have from this period a letter which she wrote to
the twelve year old girl while she was constantising in Frankfort,
and in which the expressions certainly transcend those of a
(07:07):
youth for a child, or of an elder brother for
a sister if one cared to picture their relations as such. Indeed,
he writes to her that he often thinks other, not
as a brother does of a sister, nor as one
friend of another, but as a pilgrim of a distant
altar picture. He asks her if she has composed much,
(07:30):
adding in my dreams, I sometimes hear music, so you
must be composing. He confides in her about his own work,
tells her that his theoretical studies with Heinrich Dawn have
progressed as far as the three part few, and that
he has a sonata in B minor and a set
of papillions ready. Then jokingly asks her how the Frankfurt
(07:52):
apples taste, and inquires after the health of the f
above the staff in the Jumpy Chopalm variation, and informs
her that his paper is giving out. Everything gives out,
save the friendship in which I am Frauleine c W's
warmest admirer. For a letter from a man of twenty
one to a girl of twelve, the above is remarkable.
(08:15):
If Clara had not afterward become Robert's wife, it would
have interest merely as a curiosity. As matters eventuated, it
is a charming prelude to the love symphony of two Lives. Moreover,
there seems to have been ample ground for Schumann's admiration.
Dawn has left a description of Clara as she was
(08:36):
at this time, which shows her to have been unusually attractive.
He speaks of her as a fascinating girl of thirteen,
graceful in figure of blooming complexion, with delicate white hands,
a profusion of black hair, and wise glowing eyes. Everything
about her was appetizing. And I never have blamed my pupil,
(08:56):
young Robert Schumann, that only three years later he should
have been completely carried away by this lovely creature, his
former fellow pupil and future wife. Her purity and her genius,
added to her beauty, may well have combined to make
Robert musical dreamer and enthusiast on the threshold of his
career think of her when absent as a pilgrim of
(09:19):
a distant altar picture. She was clever too, and through
her concert tours, was seeing much of the world. For
those days in Weimar she played for Gerta, the great
poet himself, getting a cushion for her and placing it
on the piano stool in order that she might sit
high enough, and not only praising her playing, but also
(09:39):
presenting her with his likeness in a medallion. The poet
gorill Pasa, after hearing her play in Vienna Beethoven's F
Minus Sonata, wrote a delightful poem Clara yek and Beethoven's
F Minus Sonata. It tells how a magician, weary of life,
locked all his charms in a shrine, drew the key
(10:00):
into the sea, and died. In vain men tried to
force open the shrine. At last, a girl, wandering by
the strand, and watching their vain efforts, simply dipped her
white fingers into the sea and drew forth the key
with which she opened the shrine and released the charms.
And now the freed spirits rise and fall at the
(10:21):
bidding of their lovely, innocent mistress, who guides them with
her white fingers as she plays. The imagery of this
tribute to Clara's playing is readily understood. In Paris, she
heard Chopin and Mendelssohn. All these experiences tended to her
early development, and there is little wonder if Schumann saw
(10:42):
her older than she really was. In eighteen thirty four,
Schumann's early literary tastes asserted themselves, but now in connection
with music. He founded that neu Zeischicht for Music, which
under his editorship soon became one of the foremost musical
periodicals of the day. Among his own writings for it
(11:04):
is the enthusiastic essay on one of Chopin's early works,
in which Schumann, as he did later in the case
of Brahms, discovered the unmistakable marks of genius. The name
of Chopin brings me back to vx's prophecy regarding Schumann
as a pianist. The latter, in his enthusiasm, devised and
apparatus for finger gymnastics, which he practiced so assiduously that
(11:28):
he strained one of his fingers and permanently impaired his technique,
making a pianistic career and impossibility. Through this accident, he
was unable to introduce his own piano works to the public,
so that the importance of the service rendered him by
Clara in taking his compositions into her repertoire both before
and after their marriage, was doubled. One evening at VIX,
(11:52):
Schumann was anxious to hear some new chopin works which
he had just received. Realizing that his lame finger rendered
him incapable of playing, he called out despairingly, who will
lend me fingers? I will, said Clara, and sat down
and played the pieces for him. She lent him her fingers,
(12:12):
and that is precisely what she did for him through life,
in making his piano and chamber music compositions known. Familiarity
with Schumann's music enables us of to day to appreciate
its beauty. But for its day it was like Brahms's music.
Later of a kind that makes its way slowly. Left
(12:36):
to the general music called public, it probably would have
been years in sinking into their hearts. Such music requires
to be publicly performed by a sympathetic interpreter before receiving
its meed of merit. Schumann had hoped to be his
own interpreter. He saw that hope vanish, but a lovely
(12:58):
being came to his lia. She saw his works come
into life. Their creation was part of her own existence.
She fathomed his genius to its utmost depths. Her whole
being vibrated in sympathy with his. And when she sat
down at the piano and pressed the keys. It was
as though he himself were the performer. She was his fingers,
(13:22):
fingers at once deft and delicate. She played with a
double love, love for him and love for his music.
And why should she not love it? She was as
much the mother of his music as of his children.
I have already indicated that Clara probably developed early. At
all events, There are letters from Schumann to her at fourteen,
(13:44):
which leaves no doubt that he was in love with
her then, or that she could have failed to perceive this.
In one of these letters, he proposes this highly poetic,
not to say, psychological, method of communicating with her. Promptly
at eleven o'clock to morrow morning, he writes, I will
play the adagio from the chopin variations, and will think strongly,
(14:09):
in fact only of you. Now. I beg of you
that you would do the same, and that we may
meet and see each other in spirit. Should you not
do this and there break to morrow at that hour accord,
you will know that it is I. However far the
affair may or may not have progressed at this time,
(14:30):
there was a curious interruption during the following year. Robert
appears to have temporarily lost his heart to a certain
Ernestine von Fricken, a young lady of sixteen who was
one of the ex pupils. Clara consoled herself by permitting
a musician named Bank to pay her attention. For reasons
(14:51):
which never have been clearly explained, Schumann suddenly broke with
Ernestine and turned with renewed ardor to Clara. While well,
Clara at once withdrew her affections from Bank and retransferred
them to Schumann. We find him writing to her again
in eighteen thirty five. Through all the autumn festivals. Their
(15:12):
looks out an angel's head that closely resembles a certain Clara,
who is very well known to me. By the following year, Clara,
then being seventeen, things evidently had gone so far that
between themselves they were engaged. Fate has destined us for
each other. He writes to her, I myself knew that
(15:34):
long ago, but I had not the courage to tell
you sooner, nor the hope to be understood by you.
Viek evidently had remained in ignorance of the young people's attachment,
for when, on Clara's birthday the following year eighteen thirty seven,
Schumann made formal application in writing for her hand. Her
(15:55):
father gave an evasive answer, and on the suit being pressed,
he who had been almost like a second father to Robert,
became his bitter enemy. Clara, however, remained faithful to her
lover through the three years of unhappiness which her father's
sudden hatred of Robert caused them. In eighteen thirty nine,
(16:17):
she was in Paris, and from there she wrote to
her father, My love for Schumann is it is true,
a passionate love. I do not, however, love him solely
out of passion and sentimental enthusiasm, but furthermore because I
think him one of the best of men, because I
believe no other man could love me as purely and
(16:39):
nobly as he, or so understandingly. And I believe also
on my part, I can make him wholly happy through
allowing him to possess me, and that I understand him
as no other woman could. This love, obviously, was one
not lightly bestowed, but Viek remained obdurate and refused consent.
(17:01):
Then Schumann took the only step that under the circumstances
was possible, the ex refusal of his consent being a
legal bar to the marriage, Robert inok the law to
set his future father in law's objections aside. The case
was tried, decided in Schumann's favor, and so on September twelfth,
eighteen forty, Robert Schumann and Clara Vieck were married in
(17:24):
the village of Schunefield near Leipzig. That year, Schumann composed
no less than one hundred and thirty eight songs, among
them some of his most beautiful. They were his wedding
gifts to Clara after their marriage, as inspiration blossomed under
her very eyes. She was the companion of his innermost
thoughts and purposes. Meanwhile, his musical genius and critical acumen
(17:49):
were ever at her command in her work as a pianist. Happily, too,
a reconciliation was affected with Viek, and we find Clara
writing to him about the first performance of Schumann's Piano Quintet,
now ranked to one of the finest compositions of its class,
on which occasion she, of course played the piano part.
(18:10):
Four years after their marriage, the Schumanns removed to Dresden,
remaining there until eighteen fifty, when they settled in Dusseldorf,
where Robert had been appointed musical director. There was but
one shadow over their lives. At times a deep melancholy
came over him, and in this clare of discerns with
dread possible symptoms of coming mental disorder. Her fears were
(18:33):
only too well founded. Early in February eighteen fifty four,
he arose during the night and demanded light, saying that
Schubert had appeared to him and given him a melody
which he must write out forthwith. On the twenty seventh
of the same month, he quietly left his house, went
to the bridge across the Rhine, and threw himself into
the river. Boatmen prevented his intended suicide. When he was
(18:57):
brought home and had changed his wet clothes for dry ones,
he sat down to work on a variation as if
nothing had happened. Within less than a week, he was
removed at his own request to a sanatorium at Endernich,
where he died on July twenty ninth, eighteen fifty six.
Clara survived him forty years, wearing a crown of laurels
(19:18):
and thorns, the laurels of a famous pianist, the thorns
of her widowhood. It was a widowhood consecrated as much
as her wife would had been, to her husband's genius.
She died at Frankfort May nineteenth, eighteen ninety six and
is buried beside her husband in Bonn. End of Chapter
(19:40):
five
Chapter five of the Loves of Great Composers by Gustav Cobe.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Peter Tomlinson, Chapter five. The Schumanns Robert and Clara. Robert
and Clara Schumann are names as closely linked in music
(00:22):
as those of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in literature.
Robert Schumann was a great composer, Clara Schumann a great pianist.
In her dual role of wife and virtuosa, she was
the first to secure proper recognition for her husband's genius.
Surviving him by many years, she continued the foremost interpreter
(00:45):
of his works, winning new laurels, not only for herself
but also for him. He was in his grave, yet
she had but to press the keyboard, and he lived
in her. Despite the fact that tastes underwent a change
and Wagner became the musical giant of the nineteenth century, Clara,
faithful to the ideal of her youth and her young womanhood,
(01:09):
saw to it that the fame of him whose name
she bore remained undimmed. Hers was indeed a consecrated widowhood.
Robert was eighteen years old Clara only nine when they
first met, but while he had not yet definitely decided
on a profession, she, in the very year of their meeting,
(01:29):
made her debut as a pianist, and thus began a
career which lasted until eighteen ninety six, a period of
nearly seventy years. When they first met, Schumann was studying
law at the Leipsick University. Born in Sirwikau, Saxony in
eighteen ten, he showed, both as a boy and as
a youth, not only strong musical proclivities but also decided
(01:53):
literary predilections. In the latter, his father, a bookseller and
publisher who loved his trade, saw a reflection of his
own tastes, and they were encouraged rather more, said usefully,
than the boy's musical bent. It was in obedience to
his father's wishes that he matriculated at Leipzig. Although he
(02:13):
composed and played the piano, and he desired to make music,
his profession was beginning to get the upper hand. His
meeting with the nine year old girl decided him. So
early in her life did she begin to influence his career.
Schumann had been invited by his friends, doctor and missus
Curras to an evening of music, and especially to hear
(02:34):
the piano playing of a wonder child, a musical fairy,
his hostess called her. In the course of the evening,
he accompanied Frau CAUs in some Stubert songs. When chancing
to look up, he saw a child dressed in white,
her pretty face framed in dark hair, her expressive eyes
raised towards the singer in rapt admiration. The song over
(02:58):
and the applause having died away, he stepped up to
the child, laid his hand kindly on her head, and asked,
are you musical, too, little one? A curious smile played
around her lips. She was about to answer when a
man came to her and led her to the piano,
and the first thing Schumann knew, the shape little hand
(03:18):
struck in to Beethoven's F minus Sonata and played it
through with a firm, sure touch and fine musical feeling.
No wonder she had smiled at his question. Was I
writ in calling her a musical fairy? Asked Frau Carros
of Schumann. Her face is like that of a guardian
angel in the picture that hangs in my mother's room
(03:40):
at home, was his reply. Little he knew then that
this child was destined to become his own good fairy
and guardian angel. Had he foreseen what she was to
be to him, he could not more aptly have described her.
The most important immediate result of the meeting was that
he became a pupil of her father, Frederic Viek, whose
(04:03):
remarkable skill as a teacher had carried his daughter so
far at such an early age. The lesson stopped when
Schumann went to Heidelberg to continue his studies, but he
and Vieck, who was convinced of the young man's musical genius,
corresponded in a most friendly manner. Clara, who was born
in Leipzig in eighteen nineteen, became her father's pupil in
(04:27):
her fifth year. It is she who chiefly reflected glory
upon him as a master. But among his father pupils,
Hans von Bulou became famous, and Clara's half sister, Marie
also was a noted pianist. V ex system was not
a hard and fast one, but varied according to the
individuality of each pupil. He was to his day what Leschiesski,
(04:51):
the teacher of Paderewski is now. Very soon after her
meeting with Schumann, Clara made her public debut, and with
great success. Among those who heard and praised her highly
during this first year of her public career was Paganini.
In eighteen thirty, two years after the first meeting of
Robert and Clara Schumann, his father, having died, wrote to
(05:14):
his mother and his guardian and begged them to allow
him to choose a musical career, referring them to VIEH
for an opinion as to his musical abilities. The mother
wrote to the ech letter which is highly creditable to
her heart and judgment, and v X replies equally credible
to him as a friend and teacher. Evidently his powers
(05:37):
of penetration led him to entertain the highest hopes for Schumann.
Among other things, he writes that, with due diligence, Robert
should in a few years become one of the greatest
pianists of the day. Why v X hopes in this
particular were not fulfilled, and why for this reason Clara's
gifts as a penist were doubly useful to Schumann. We
(05:59):
shall see sure Schumann entered with enthusiasm upon the career
of his choice. He left Heidelberg and took lodgings with
the VX in Leipzig. Clara, then a mere girl, though
already winning fame as a concert pianist, certainly was too
young for him to have fallen seriously in love with
or for her to have responded to any such feeling.
(06:21):
Even at that early age. However, she exercised the strange
power of attraction over him. His former literary taste had
given him a great fund of stories and anecdotes, and
he delighted in the evenings to gather about him the
children of the family, Clara among them, and entertained them
with tales from the Arabian nights, and ghost stories and
fairy stories. Among his compositions at this time are a
(06:45):
set of impromptues on a theme by Clara, and it
is significant of his regard to her that later he
worked them over, as if he did not consider them
in the original shape good enough for her. Then we
have from this period a letter which she wrote to
the twelve year old girl while she was constantising in Frankfort,
and in which the expressions certainly transcend those of a
(07:07):
youth for a child, or of an elder brother for
a sister if one cared to picture their relations as such. Indeed,
he writes to her that he often thinks other, not
as a brother does of a sister, nor as one
friend of another, but as a pilgrim of a distant
altar picture. He asks her if she has composed much,
(07:30):
adding in my dreams, I sometimes hear music, so you
must be composing. He confides in her about his own work,
tells her that his theoretical studies with Heinrich Dawn have
progressed as far as the three part few, and that
he has a sonata in B minor and a set
of papillions ready. Then jokingly asks her how the Frankfurt
(07:52):
apples taste, and inquires after the health of the f
above the staff in the Jumpy Chopalm variation, and informs
her that his paper is giving out. Everything gives out,
save the friendship in which I am Frauleine c W's
warmest admirer. For a letter from a man of twenty
one to a girl of twelve, the above is remarkable.
(08:15):
If Clara had not afterward become Robert's wife, it would
have interest merely as a curiosity. As matters eventuated, it
is a charming prelude to the love symphony of two Lives. Moreover,
there seems to have been ample ground for Schumann's admiration.
Dawn has left a description of Clara as she was
(08:36):
at this time, which shows her to have been unusually attractive.
He speaks of her as a fascinating girl of thirteen,
graceful in figure of blooming complexion, with delicate white hands,
a profusion of black hair, and wise glowing eyes. Everything
about her was appetizing. And I never have blamed my pupil,
(08:56):
young Robert Schumann, that only three years later he should
have been completely carried away by this lovely creature, his
former fellow pupil and future wife. Her purity and her genius,
added to her beauty, may well have combined to make
Robert musical dreamer and enthusiast on the threshold of his
career think of her when absent as a pilgrim of
(09:19):
a distant altar picture. She was clever too, and through
her concert tours, was seeing much of the world. For
those days in Weimar she played for Gerta, the great
poet himself, getting a cushion for her and placing it
on the piano stool in order that she might sit
high enough, and not only praising her playing, but also
(09:39):
presenting her with his likeness in a medallion. The poet
gorill Pasa, after hearing her play in Vienna Beethoven's F
Minus Sonata, wrote a delightful poem Clara yek and Beethoven's
F Minus Sonata. It tells how a magician, weary of life,
locked all his charms in a shrine, drew the key
(10:00):
into the sea, and died. In vain men tried to
force open the shrine. At last, a girl, wandering by
the strand, and watching their vain efforts, simply dipped her
white fingers into the sea and drew forth the key
with which she opened the shrine and released the charms.
And now the freed spirits rise and fall at the
(10:21):
bidding of their lovely, innocent mistress, who guides them with
her white fingers as she plays. The imagery of this
tribute to Clara's playing is readily understood. In Paris, she
heard Chopin and Mendelssohn. All these experiences tended to her
early development, and there is little wonder if Schumann saw
(10:42):
her older than she really was. In eighteen thirty four,
Schumann's early literary tastes asserted themselves, but now in connection
with music. He founded that neu Zeischicht for Music, which
under his editorship soon became one of the foremost musical
periodicals of the day. Among his own writings for it
(11:04):
is the enthusiastic essay on one of Chopin's early works,
in which Schumann, as he did later in the case
of Brahms, discovered the unmistakable marks of genius. The name
of Chopin brings me back to vx's prophecy regarding Schumann
as a pianist. The latter, in his enthusiasm, devised and
apparatus for finger gymnastics, which he practiced so assiduously that
(11:28):
he strained one of his fingers and permanently impaired his technique,
making a pianistic career and impossibility. Through this accident, he
was unable to introduce his own piano works to the public,
so that the importance of the service rendered him by
Clara in taking his compositions into her repertoire both before
and after their marriage, was doubled. One evening at VIX,
(11:52):
Schumann was anxious to hear some new chopin works which
he had just received. Realizing that his lame finger rendered
him incapable of playing, he called out despairingly, who will
lend me fingers? I will, said Clara, and sat down
and played the pieces for him. She lent him her fingers,
(12:12):
and that is precisely what she did for him through life,
in making his piano and chamber music compositions known. Familiarity
with Schumann's music enables us of to day to appreciate
its beauty. But for its day it was like Brahms's music.
Later of a kind that makes its way slowly. Left
(12:36):
to the general music called public, it probably would have
been years in sinking into their hearts. Such music requires
to be publicly performed by a sympathetic interpreter before receiving
its meed of merit. Schumann had hoped to be his
own interpreter. He saw that hope vanish, but a lovely
(12:58):
being came to his lia. She saw his works come
into life. Their creation was part of her own existence.
She fathomed his genius to its utmost depths. Her whole
being vibrated in sympathy with his. And when she sat
down at the piano and pressed the keys. It was
as though he himself were the performer. She was his fingers,
(13:22):
fingers at once deft and delicate. She played with a
double love, love for him and love for his music.
And why should she not love it? She was as
much the mother of his music as of his children.
I have already indicated that Clara probably developed early. At
all events, There are letters from Schumann to her at fourteen,
(13:44):
which leaves no doubt that he was in love with
her then, or that she could have failed to perceive this.
In one of these letters, he proposes this highly poetic,
not to say, psychological, method of communicating with her. Promptly
at eleven o'clock to morrow morning, he writes, I will
play the adagio from the chopin variations, and will think strongly,
(14:09):
in fact only of you. Now. I beg of you
that you would do the same, and that we may
meet and see each other in spirit. Should you not
do this and there break to morrow at that hour accord,
you will know that it is I. However far the
affair may or may not have progressed at this time,
(14:30):
there was a curious interruption during the following year. Robert
appears to have temporarily lost his heart to a certain
Ernestine von Fricken, a young lady of sixteen who was
one of the ex pupils. Clara consoled herself by permitting
a musician named Bank to pay her attention. For reasons
(14:51):
which never have been clearly explained, Schumann suddenly broke with
Ernestine and turned with renewed ardor to Clara. While well,
Clara at once withdrew her affections from Bank and retransferred
them to Schumann. We find him writing to her again
in eighteen thirty five. Through all the autumn festivals. Their
(15:12):
looks out an angel's head that closely resembles a certain Clara,
who is very well known to me. By the following year, Clara,
then being seventeen, things evidently had gone so far that
between themselves they were engaged. Fate has destined us for
each other. He writes to her, I myself knew that
(15:34):
long ago, but I had not the courage to tell
you sooner, nor the hope to be understood by you.
Viek evidently had remained in ignorance of the young people's attachment,
for when, on Clara's birthday the following year eighteen thirty seven,
Schumann made formal application in writing for her hand. Her
(15:55):
father gave an evasive answer, and on the suit being pressed,
he who had been almost like a second father to Robert,
became his bitter enemy. Clara, however, remained faithful to her
lover through the three years of unhappiness which her father's
sudden hatred of Robert caused them. In eighteen thirty nine,
(16:17):
she was in Paris, and from there she wrote to
her father, My love for Schumann is it is true,
a passionate love. I do not, however, love him solely
out of passion and sentimental enthusiasm, but furthermore because I
think him one of the best of men, because I
believe no other man could love me as purely and
(16:39):
nobly as he, or so understandingly. And I believe also
on my part, I can make him wholly happy through
allowing him to possess me, and that I understand him
as no other woman could. This love, obviously, was one
not lightly bestowed, but Viek remained obdurate and refused consent.
(17:01):
Then Schumann took the only step that under the circumstances
was possible, the ex refusal of his consent being a
legal bar to the marriage, Robert inok the law to
set his future father in law's objections aside. The case
was tried, decided in Schumann's favor, and so on September twelfth,
eighteen forty, Robert Schumann and Clara Vieck were married in
(17:24):
the village of Schunefield near Leipzig. That year, Schumann composed
no less than one hundred and thirty eight songs, among
them some of his most beautiful. They were his wedding
gifts to Clara after their marriage, as inspiration blossomed under
her very eyes. She was the companion of his innermost
thoughts and purposes. Meanwhile, his musical genius and critical acumen
(17:49):
were ever at her command in her work as a pianist. Happily, too,
a reconciliation was affected with Viek, and we find Clara
writing to him about the first performance of Schumann's Piano Quintet,
now ranked to one of the finest compositions of its class,
on which occasion she, of course played the piano part.
(18:10):
Four years after their marriage, the Schumanns removed to Dresden,
remaining there until eighteen fifty, when they settled in Dusseldorf,
where Robert had been appointed musical director. There was but
one shadow over their lives. At times a deep melancholy
came over him, and in this clare of discerns with
dread possible symptoms of coming mental disorder. Her fears were
(18:33):
only too well founded. Early in February eighteen fifty four,
he arose during the night and demanded light, saying that
Schubert had appeared to him and given him a melody
which he must write out forthwith. On the twenty seventh
of the same month, he quietly left his house, went
to the bridge across the Rhine, and threw himself into
the river. Boatmen prevented his intended suicide. When he was
(18:57):
brought home and had changed his wet clothes for dry ones,
he sat down to work on a variation as if
nothing had happened. Within less than a week, he was
removed at his own request to a sanatorium at Endernich,
where he died on July twenty ninth, eighteen fifty six.
Clara survived him forty years, wearing a crown of laurels
(19:18):
and thorns, the laurels of a famous pianist, the thorns
of her widowhood. It was a widowhood consecrated as much
as her wife would had been, to her husband's genius.
She died at Frankfort May nineteenth, eighteen ninety six and
is buried beside her husband in Bonn. End of Chapter
(19:40):
five
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