Was Clara Schumann a Composer? The Pianist Who Wrote a Concerto at 14 and Played for 61 Years

Yes, Clara Schumann (1819–1896) was a composer as well as one of the greatest pianists of the nineteenth century. She began a piano concerto at 13, finished it before she turned 16, and later wrote songs, piano pieces, a piano trio and romances for violin and piano. But she stopped composing almost completely in her thirties, and for most of her life the world knew her as a performer and teacher, not as a writer of music. Her story is about extraordinary talent, a father who controlled it, a marriage she fought a court case to win, and a career that lasted more than six decades.

A childhood built around the piano

Clara Josephine Wieck was born in Leipzig on 13 September 1819. Her father, Friedrich Wieck, was a piano teacher, and her mother, Mariane, was a singer; the parents divorced when Clara was five.

Friedrich Wieck had a plan for his daughter, and he followed it with remarkable discipline. Clara had daily one-hour lessons in piano, violin, singing, theory, harmony, composition and counterpoint, followed by two hours of practice. Few children of any era received such a complete musical education, and few girls of her time were taught composition at all.

The child prodigy on tour

The results came early. Clara made her debut at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 28 October 1828, when she was nine. From 1831 to 1832 her father took her on a tour that reached Paris. On the way, in Weimar, she played for the elderly poet Goethe, who gave her a medal.

In Vienna, in 1838, the eighteen-year-old pianist was named Royal and Imperial Austrian Chamber Virtuoso, an extraordinary honour for a young foreign woman. She also became one of the first pianists to play from memory, which reviewers noticed as something exceptional. Today every concert pianist is expected to do it; in the 1830s it was unusual.

A concerto written by a teenager

Clara's most ambitious early work was her Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 7. She began it in January 1833, at the age of 13, and completed it in September 1835. It was premiered in Leipzig on 9 November 1835 with the Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn, and Clara herself as soloist.

The concerto has some surprising ideas. Its slow movement, a Romance, is written for piano and solo cello alone, with the orchestra silent, and a timpani roll leads straight into the finale. The young Robert Schumann, one of her father's students, had revised the orchestration of an early version of the first movement; when Clara later orchestrated the work herself, she reversed his changes.

Marrying Robert against her father's will

Robert Schumann was about nine years older than Clara. He proposed in 1837, and Friedrich Wieck opposed the match fiercely. The couple took the unusual step of going to court, and the court allowed them to marry. The wedding took place on 12 September 1840, the day before Clara's 21st birthday.

Marriage changed her working life. Over 13 years she had eight children, and the household had to fit around Robert's composing. Yet she kept performing, and in 1841 the couple even published a joint song collection on poems by Friedrich Rückert, with her songs numbered as her Op. 12 and his as Op. 37.

Why did she stop composing?

Clara's mature works include the Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17 (1846), and the Three Romances for violin and piano, Op. 22 (1853). In 1853 she wrote 16 pieces, published as Op. 20–23. After that, for the remaining 43 years of her life, she composed only transcriptions.

Her own words show the conflict. She wrote that composing gave her great pleasure, yet she also wrote that she had given up believing she had creative talent, and that a woman must not desire to compose. Robert himself noted that family duties and his own creative life did not fit easily with her composing. Many modern listeners hear in her small catalogue the sound of a career that was cut short by expectations rather than by lack of ability.

Holding the family together

In February 1854 Robert suffered a mental collapse and spent his last two years in a sanatorium at Endenich, near Bonn. Clara was not permitted to visit him during that period, and he died on 29 July 1856. She was left to support a large family, and she did it the way she knew best: by playing concerts.

Two younger musicians became her closest friends. The violinist Joseph Joachim gave more than 238 concerts with her, more than any other partner. The young Johannes Brahms, who had visited the Schumanns in 1853, wrote piano pieces to console her during Robert's illness, and she premiered many of his works. She also became the authoritative editor of Robert's music for the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel.

A 61-year career and a teaching legacy

Clara's concert career lasted 61 years, and more than 1,300 of her concert programmes from 1831 to 1889 survive. She toured England 16 times between 1865 and 1888. In 1878 she became the first piano teacher at Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt, the only woman on its faculty, and she taught there until 1892.

She gave her last public concert in Frankfurt on 12 March 1891 and died there on 20 May 1896, aged 76. As she wished, she was buried in Bonn beside Robert. From 1989 until the arrival of the euro, her portrait appeared on Germany's 100 Deutsche Mark banknote. Today her concerto, trio and romances are recorded and performed far more often than in her own lifetime.

Learn with Clara Schumann: English phrases about talent and careers

Phrase	Meaning	Example
a child prodigy	a child with an exceptional talent	Clara was a child prodigy who performed at nine.
to play by heart	to perform without reading music	She was one of the first pianists to play by heart.
against someone's wishes	although someone did not agree	They married against her father's wishes.
to put something aside	to stop doing something for a while	She put composing aside to support her family.
to stand the test of time	to stay valuable for a long time	Her piano trio has stood the test of time.

Try this: Write four English sentences about a skill you learned as a child. Use "by heart" and "put aside" at least once each.