Clara Schumann

The brilliant girl with unbelievable father issues, that you can't get out of your head 

It is difficult today to talk about Clara (nee Wieck) Schumann’s extraordinary career as both a virtuoso performer and gifted composer without acknowledging the dumpster fire the first two decades of her personal life were, and her herculean efforts to maintain some semblance of normalcy during most of the rest of it. And it is sadly predictable that history has been much more interested in the details of her relationship with Johannes Brahms than in the expressive, harmonic language she created in her compositions, or the fact that she toured as a concert pianist for fifteen years while being pretty much continuously pregnant, all the while supporting an erratic and emotionally unbalanced husband.

But yet there it is again: love. Clara’s love for Robert was irrefutable and unwavering; supportive and nurturing; selfless and honest - even as he slipped further and further into whatever it was that made him finally give up. Did she also love Johannes? Most certainly, but in a very different way. Love is funny like that.

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