This absorbing and award-winning biography tells the story of the tragedies and triumphs of Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-1896)--at once artist, composer, editor, teacher, wife, and mother of eight children.

Describes the life of the German pianist and composer who made her professional debut at age nine and who devoted her life to music and to her family.

Develops a holistic and gender-aware understanding of Clara Schumann as pianist, composer and teacher in nineteenth-century Germany.

Well before she married Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann was already an internationally renowned pianist, and she concertized extensively for several decades after her husband's death. Despite being tied professionally to Robert, Clara forged her own career and played an important role in forming what we now recognize as the culture of classical music. Becoming Clara Schumann guides readers through her entire career, including performance, composition, edits to her husband's music, and teaching. Alexander Stefaniak brings together the full run of Schumann's concert programs, detailed accounts of her performances and reception, and other previously unexplored primary source material to illuminate how she positioned herself within larger currents in concert life and musical aesthetics. He reveals that she was an accomplished strategist, having played roughly 1,300 concerts across western and central Europe over the course of her six-decade career, and she shaped the canonization of her husband's music. Extraordinary for her time, Schumann earned success and prestige by crafting her own playing style, selecting and composing her own concerts, and acting as her own manager. By highlighting Schumann's navigation of her musical culture's gendered boundaries, Becoming Clara Schumann details how she cultivated her public image in order to win over audiences and embody some of her field's most ambitious aspirations for musical performance.

Focusing on Clara Schumann's central contributions to the genre of the Lied (or German art song), this is the first book-length critical study of her songs. Although relatively few in number, they were published and reviewed favorably in the press during her lifetime, and they continue to be programmed regularly in recitals by professional and amateur performers alike. Highlighting the powerful and distinctive features of the songs, the book treats them as a prism, casting light not just on them but also through them to explore questions that foster a deeper understanding of the work of female composers. The author argues for the importance of taking Clara Schumann's music on its own terms, the intimate relationship between text and musical form, and the vital role of musical analysis in recuperating the contributions of previously understudied composers.

A woman in a man??'s world, Clara Schumann was one of the most gifted and original musicians of her day

About the life of Clara Schumann with emphasis on her musical development, illustrated with examples of musical notations. Clara Weick Schumann.