Clara Schumann
&
Fanny Mendelssohn
AN ILLUSTRATED TALK ON THE TWO COMPOSERS
WITH ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS
Prelude
I will start by giving you a very brief historical framework. The preceding generation was that of Beethoven and Schubert. Beethoven died in 1827 and Schubert one year later. At this time Mendelssohn, Chopin and Schumann were about 17 years old. However much these three composers differed from one another, they had something essential in common: the delineation of classical cadences was still very clearly enunciated in their music and all three had a gift for capturing the lyrical moment. This gift is still reflected in the music of Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, and so we really have a group of five composers who share a similar idiom. When I refer generically to ‘the men’ I mean these three. My own inclination for women in the arts was instinctive and had nothing to do with Feminism, though I greatly appreciate that the Women’s Movement brought more of their compositions to light, especially those of Fanny Mendelssohn. While I was still at school a small number of Clara’s works were recorded and I made a grab for them. Later I went on an epic journey through London to find the sheet music of Fanny Mendelssohn’s compositions, and I still had some problems when I found the right shop, because she was published under her husband’s name, Hensel. Fanny was a Mendelssohn through and through and should not be published or referred to by her husband’s name. Clara’s case is quite different: after her marriage she became Clara Schumann to all effects, called herself by that name, was known throughout Europe by it, so it is an error to refer to her as Wieck, except in her girlhood compositions, and to stick that alien name before her new surname. She became Clara Schumann for once and for all.
The mere fact that music is composed by women does not suffice: it must also have something to say and have a value in itself. In this I have not been disappointed. The music of these two women withstands repeated hearings. As we are already familiar with the music of their men-folk, there may be a sense, at first of déjà vu, of a conventional sweetness: we have to listen, play again and to rise above our own indoctrination. Both Clara and Fanny have a gift for developing their material. They need space in which to find themselves. Quite often they will start with a familiar sounding theme and then gather creative impetus as they develop their material. These two relatively new islands in the landscape of music have treasures all their own, breezes that waft touched by sunlight, mysterious shadows and hiding places. The very fact that they do not possess the unequivocal mastery of the males, makes them more eloquent on the different paths they follow, which are less certain and more impulsive. Theirs is a shyer search for seashells, and anemones which history has trodden on and forgotten. We have to look for the hidden treasures to bring back the splendour of these two women.
(At this point I played an Impromptu never published by Clara. It reflected everything I had just said, and I didn’t want to add further comment at this stage. A Flemish Pianist, Josef de Beenhouver, recorded all Clara Schumann’s works for the piano for Partridge on three CDs.. What a blessing to have them! Of course, all the pieces are not of the same standard).
Childhood
As the oldest of this group of five, Fanny Mendelssohn was the first to become a brilliant pianist and composer, a child prodigy. When she was born her mother said, this baby had the fingers for playing Bach. When she was twelve she was indeed able to play 24 of the 48 Preludes and Fugues from memory. Bach was the guiding spirit, the source of all richness for this whole group of composers. Fanny and Felix were privileged and belonged to a highly cultured Jewish family. On the one hand there was the King’s court in Berlin on the other, the Mendelssohn’s abode as a focal point of culture. In their house there was a large hall, which accommodated orchestras, choirs and soloists and an audience.
In the young Mendelssohns the sun of Classicism was reborn; the guardian angel at their birth was the spirit of Enlightenment, of which their grandfather, Moses, was an important protagonist, even if he arrived in Berlin as a peddler. As children they had a Mozartian command of form coloured by Romanticism Fanny and Felix’s music was guided by an idea of lucid and transparent form even if it was often borne by shadowy and intense passions. Both Clara and Robert set out, instead with the imprint of character in their music. For them – for Clara a bit later – music was thought transformed into sound and also a kind of musical imagery.
Clara was destined by her father to become one of the greatest pianists in Europe, and fortunately she had the requisites for this role. Wieck was often harsh and even cruel in his teaching, but he never exaggerated. He only allowed a limited number of hours of work at the instrument, after which Clara could play and go for walks in the countryside, often with Robert, who was a pupil in Wieck’s house and told her stories, including ones about ghosts and he played at charades with her. The fun and games entered her early music, including a Hexentanz of spirits C.lara loved Schumann throughout her adolescent years, a love that was returned when she was 17.
Clara gave her first concert at the age of nine. When she was eleven she added a brand new work of Chopin’s to her repertoire: his Variations on a theme of Mozart, op.2.In her diary she wrote that this was the most difficult work she had ever studied, that it had taken her 8 days to master it and that she would be giving it its first performances in Berlin and other cities. Chopin, who had little sympathy with his contemporaries, made an exception of her. To a friend he wrote. “I’m glad you admire Clara Wieck. Better than her doesn’t exist.” He also liked her music some of which was frankly under his influence but always with a character of its own, and left her house with the manuscripts (or autograph copy?) of her Soirées Musicales.
Apart from Bach, who was the daily bread for all these composers, the Mendelssohns had a special admiration for, among others, Handel. Later Fanny criticised the effeminate morbidity of Chopin’s music and thought he had not studied enough Handel. The whole Mendelssohn family was quite anxious to integrate itself into the German middle-class and avoided anything that might make them externally conspicuous or eccentric be it in their lives or in their music. Under this ‘classical’ surface Felix and Fanny could be very passionate and original, and in one of her piano pieces, which I will discuss later, Fanny beats them all at being wildly eccentric. Clara grew up with the virtuoso piano music of the 19th century, though John Field was her model for sensitive touch. Schumann and Chopin, who were alien to Fanny, soon became new models for Clara.
I will now play you a Nocturne of Clara’s, which belongs to a group of pieces composed between the ages of 14 and 16, her Soirées musicale, op. 6. During her girlhood Clara was an audacious composer, without the fear of originality, which came later when she was mature. What strikes me in this Nocturne is the way she dissolves the foursquare structure of the men without being in the least bit incoherent. Her melodic line, which is very free and improvisatory, keeps rediscovering itself from moment to moment. Toward the end of its first long period it falls, semitone by semitone, into darkness. The repetition of the melody is a free improvisation as is the recapitulation after a brief middle section in the minor. It is like handwriting with bold and graceful flourishes as one finds in Clara’s letters. (See my reproduction of an original letter in my keeping). There are delicate starry garlands thrown across the page with a touch of shyness. I don’t want to go into too much detail for the layman, but her use of remote key at the end the piece is inspired and subtle. (An extended Neapolitan cadence) What might these women not have achieved if they had had the courage! All the elements of genius are there and might well have developed Romantic lyricism in a different direction. I shall be returning to this subject later.
(At this point in the talk I played the Finale of a Sonata Fanny Mendelssohn wrote when she was 16. It does not have that searching quality I have been talking about but is remarkable for its very Mendelssohnian vitality. Felix and Fanny had a fondness for Italian dances like the Tarantella or the Salterello. Her brother couldn’t have managed better at this age The Saltarella composed later is a far superior piece.)
Clara Wieck aged 13. Lithograph by Edward Fechner 1832
Robert-Schumann-Huas Zwickau, Germany
"At a first glance one could take Clara for a loveable girl like any other, but if one observes her more closely - then everything changes! That exquisitely lovely face with its slanted foreign eyes, the friendly mouth with a touch of sentimentality, which, now and then, has a look of mockery or of pain - especially when she replies. And then, the gracious nonchalance of her movements - not at all studied and far beyond her age -! All this - I confess it openly! - filled me with a strange sense of wonder.” These words may be by Heine and were published in 1833 in a journal called Caecilia.
Among Clara’s youthful works that are still well worth hearing, I would single out for special delights her Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 7. She started to compose it when she was 14 and completed it when she was 17. When I first obtained the Concerto on LP I was, not surprisingly, disappointed, having all the great Romantic Piano Concertos ringing in my ears. The faults are evident: meagre orchestration at the beginning, although the first theme itself is decisive enough; some bravura passage work, some scrambling over the keyboard as behoved a young virtuoso, though this is quickly absorbed into the substance of the music and the links between the three movements are rather paltry. If anyone expects a regular sonata form first movement, they don’t get it, but I do not see this as a fault, as Clara creates her own form, which is perfectly coherent. If one listens to the Piano Concertos of another half forgotten composer of the period, John Field, it is obvious from the start that he is a greater master of composition than Clara, but, as one goes on listening to Field, his suave lyricism becomes monotonous. This is the last thing one could say about Clara’s Concerto: it is full of vitality and fresh inventiveness, bright and sparkling. She must have had a whale of a time composing it. Her father describes her as a wild, impetuous creature already at the age of 11. The first movement consists of lyrical episodes. The initial theme of the slow movement may well sound sentimental to many; to me it doesn’t. It has a quality that is very hard to describe, as of a young girl leaning out into the world and risking her feelings with a plaintive sincerity. “Here am I, in all my vulnerability,” it seems to say. The extended melody is, at first, for piano alone, then it is played by a solo cello – clearly representing Robert Schumann – while the piano weaves garlands around it in one of the most beautiful of declarations of love. The last movement is a very lively Polonaise. Something very refreshing in it is that she continues the main theme in different ways every time it returns, whereas our great composers usually make the repeats identical. This movement has one particularly charming trait: it is the way in which Clara picks up the casual ending of a phrase, two notes, a little sigh motive, which she turns into a coquettish game that continues throughout the piece. Sometimes it is inverted and becomes an aspiring motive and both reappear in ever-changing guises. – If I were a concert pianist this Concerto would feature regularly in my repertoire, not only to redress the balance between male and female composers, but also because the work is a delight in it self. (I am capable of listening to it on CD three times in succession). (I played a recording of the last movement, either here or at the end of the talk to cheer the audience up).
Inferiority
As Fanny and Clara matured they began to lose their courage and feel like second-class citizens in the world of music. But their weakness remains double-edged: while ceding to the superiority of the men they continue to explore the lights and shades of an intermediate zone and reveal different musical landscapes.
Fanny was forbidden the profession of music by her father and even by her brother. As we all know, a woman’s task was to stay at home and bring up children: Music could be indulged in as a pastime. Felix travelled developed, published while Fanny was left behind. Most of her music was unrevised, and composers often hit on their best ideas in the process of revision. Felix published some of Fanny’s songs under his name, but did not hide her identity when asked about them. Worse than this external barrier, against which one could rebel, was the internal one. Clara was free to compose, encouraged both by her father and her husband, but was convinced from the start of her own inferiority. There was nothing to be done about it, she said, women can’t compose. This feeling of hers is written into her music, but, paradoxically, gives it an eloquence all her own. The trait appears in falling lines that seem to say, “But who am I?” but it is precisely here that she touches on the marvellous glow of an alter ego.
Clara’s Romanza op.7 represents a turning point in her life, the moment when she was transforming from Clara Wieck into Clara Schumann. She was alone in Paris, touring without her hostile father and waiting for her future with Robert. I have the impression that her state of mind was reflected in this piece. If I think of a musical space as a room into which a composer enters to take possession of it. Clara remains on the threshold. All the first part of the piece asks a musical question. In the middle section she seems to remember girlish games but these too develop immediately into improvised pensiveness. The questions return and nothing is established and the piece ends, not with a regular cadence, but with the most open of questions in the poignant succession of two minor chords. In fact, they are the two minor chords of the plagal cadence – the ‘amen’ cadence, but Clara changes its nature completely by making the melody rise to the sensitive 3rd of the Eb minor chord - Thus the piece has an eloquent charm all of its own. (I wonder if Schumann didn’t remember those two chords in his later work, for example his Cello Concerto).
Marriage
After her marriage, as I said, Clara Wieck becomes Clara Schumann. The purely virtuoso composers began to disappear from the scene, not immediately from concert programmes as both she and her husband thought the new music was too difficult for a popular audience. Otherwise her only spiritual guides, as of now, were Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Mendelssohn and her husband. Music was thought, lyrical reflection. Clara remained pessimistic about women as composers, but wrote some of her finest compositions nonetheless. She lost the dash of her girlhood, she was now a sub-Schumann, Mendelssohn and Chopin composer and bows her head to them but as she progresses with a composition, her very own nature takes flight. It is clearly distinguishable from her husband’s. I once turned on the radio and heard a Romantic Piano Concerto playing. I thought, “But this is Clara Schumann’s idiom! And it can’t be, because she only wrote one concerto during her adolescent years.” I tried to think of other composers of that period, but in the end I found out it was indeed by Clara, an unfinished Concerto that was dug out of her manuscripts. This shows that she has her own recognisable style
Clara and Robert composed and published a Rueckert cycle of songs together. In these she approaches him most closely, but he also seems to move closer to her style. The first song by Clara is very impressive and passionate as good as anything by her husband. (Song on CD). Robert and Clara composed and studied together. There would be a year of studying Haydn Quartets, another year of studying Bach’s Fugues. Clara wrote three Fugues using themes by Bach, which are fine works and well worth hearing and playing today. They were never published by her. It is easy to imagine what happened. Robert would have suggested that she try to write fugues using Bach themes, then to be compared to the original. Clara then wrote three Preludes and Fugues of her own: She follows Mendelssohn’s procedure of writing a lyrical piece as Prelude and then turning to the stricter form in the Fugue. During the chamber music years she composed her fine Piano Trio in G minor.
Fanny, after her happy marriage to the artist Wilhelm Henselt, felt musically defeated and demeaned as a composer. The marriage to Henselt, not due to him but to the Mendelssohn family, closed the door on all her youthful promise. Fanny’s husband, Wihelm Henselt, did all he could to encourage her to compose and put manuscript paper on her music stand the day after their wedding, but the authority of the family was greater. Fanny continued, nevertheless to be musically active directing the performances in the concert room, where she conducted too and played pieces of her own, so long as she didn’t publish them. Despite all this, Fanny and Felix were kindred spirits and I believe their attachment to each other exceeded that to their spouses.
Fanny often felt very bitter about her predicament, and this sometimes comes out in her music. In a letter to a friend, C,B, Klingemann in 1829 she wrote: “That, moreover, a woman’s Lords and Masters remind her every day, with every step she takes through her life, of her miserable female nature, is a point which could so enrage a woman as to cause her to lose her femininity, if it were not for the dire consequences which would ensue.” Later she would rebel against the family edict
In the case of Fanny Mendelssohn we have unfortunately few opus numbers to help us identify the works. I have a Henle edition dated 1986 of Selected Pieces. N.6 is untitled but I would call it a Song without Words, or Mélodie, the title Fanny preferred, perhaps so as not to copy her brother. The melody at the beginning is sweet and conventional: it could be saying, “aren’t I a nice little girl with a blue bow in my hair?” Then, unlike the males, she doesn’t repeat the first period, but starts developing it in a disconcerting direction...A new turn of events follows: a catastrophe: all hell breaks loose with bare octaves tumbling in the middle voices, harsh sounds, and bizarre modulations. This is not a nice girl at all, but a very, very wicked one: Knowing this, the pianist should play the beginning with subtle irony: Then, somehow or other, following classical-romantic principles, she has to find her way back, which she does with an ambivalently intermediate passage. But she only just touches the initial key and melody and then develops again into a quite disconcerting Coda. Not surprisingly she does not know how to end the piece and does so with conventional chords. Who knows what she would have done had she revised this piece for publication? Maybe she was aiming at a rupture in form that even the men would not have been able to deal with. Similar eruptions in Chopin’s pieces were exquisitely managed.
Let us imagine a young girl who has lived in Bronte-like solitude on an island surrounded by nature, animals, flowers and woods. She has to go back to the civilised world and has a brother there who must help her to become socially integrated. He holds her tightly by the arm and insists, “You simply must make it.” This is not only an image, but literally what every classical-romantic lyric requires of its composers: to bring to a felicitous conclusion the tension between nature or expression and society, a conclusion that re-echoes even in failure and tragedy. Chopin often becomes back to reaffirmation with a broken heart, not to mention Schubert in his Impromptu in Ab major op. 142. At a certain crucial moment in Fanny’s life, her Felix does emerge with the guiding brother’s admonishments. He criticises a composition she has sent him, saying that if she wanted to follow her capricious impulses, she would have to justify these doubly in the coherence of the whole. He was writing about one of her finest compositions, her String quartet in Eb major. Fanny, with her more spontaneous impulses liberates the sonata form from its rigidified contours and yet remains entirely coherent. Her brother missed the point.
In the last of Fanny’s Mélodies op. 5, we feel the ‘brother’s’ hand and something that resists it like the beating of waves on a boat that has to arrive in port. The firmer the grasp of the hand, the more the waves resist, creating dissonances. The waves beat harder and calm returns, they start lashing out almost toppling the boat, but calm returns again. Every time this happens Fanny opens new dimensions in a way her brother does not in his Songs without Words. Toward the end of the piece, the waves gain the upper hand and their crests pour down from above, now in the pianist’s right hand. The left hand is saying, “You must, you must,” while the right is resisting with all its might. In the end we do reach the shore but, in a dramatic change of scene, it has distanced itself and is lying somewhere, far faraway in perfect peace and only one phrase of the melody is heard pianissimo. (I played it)
Another equally fine piece is Fanny’ s Notturno in G minor which has no opus number but is in the Henle selection I quoted above. It is equally, if not more, rich in inspired and impulsive developments. I prefer to think of it as a Barcarolle and maybe Fanny’s choice of an Italian title justifies me. It has that rocky motion, is gloomy and dark with striking illuminations and seems to tell of some terrible destiny, maybe of doomed lovers (I played it).
Salvation for Fanny
& a vocation for Clara
It was a trip to Italy that brought salvation to Fanny Mendelssohn as a composer. This came much later than it should have done and was unfortunately brief in its duration. The high point of the Italian tour was Rome and there they were accorded a happiness, such as one hopes might occur at least once in the life of every person. The Henselts were surrounded by musicians, artists and others who adored Fanny and never tired of listening to her playing Bach all day, as well as her own compositions. Among these admirers there were some young Frenchman including Charles Guonod.. They all went on picnics in the countryside and composed choral works, which were immediately executed. The young musicians did everything they could to encourage Fanny in her self-esteem. When she returned to Berlin she was no longer afraid of her family and announced to Felix that she was going to publish her music, whether he liked it or not. He agreed – reluctantly.
Among the works she composed and published there was her magnificent Piano Trio in D minor. (surely I played a recording of the 1st Movement?)
In the meanwhile, the Schumanns, who already knew the Mendelssohns well, decided to move to Berlin for the sole reason that they would be near Fanny Mendelssohn. Tragically, Fanny died of a stroke. Her brother could not take the blow and died six months later in 1947.No-one knows what she might still have been capable of had she lived.
As we know, Schumann died in an asylum near Bonn in 1856. Clara spent Christmas with her children and Brahms and wrote a short and very moving piece, a Romance, to which she added the words “in remembrance with love.” She, who had never been prevented from composing, stopped doing so altogether. Her real vocation was that of pianist and interpreter. Reading through biographies I see that she often had a piece of Fanny Mendelssohn’s on her programme.
(I played the Romance)
