Sara Costa - Clara & Robert Schumann: Correspondences (2020)

Clara grew up as a child prodigy, taking Europe by storm with her impeccable piano performances and with her youthful compositions; her musicianship was probably the first spark which would later ignite love in the heart of Robert Schumann, who was her senior by nine years. Robert used to study under Clara’s father’s guidance, to whom, as he frankly acknowledged, he owed much. When Clara was just thirteen, she wrote a Romance varié (op. 3), dedicated to Robert Schumann; impressed by the gift, Robert used Clara’s theme for his own Impromptu sur une Romance de Clara Wieck, op. 5, which he dedicated to her father, Friedrich Wieck. The relationship between Robert Schumann and Friedrich Wieck grew increasingly uncomfortable, and reached a rupture point when Robert and Clara sued him in court in order to obtain the permission to get married to each other, in spite of Wieck’s persistent disapproval.

Since Wieck could not stand the idea of having Schumann for a son-in-law, and also given the role of music in the lives of the two young lovers and in their relationship, it comes as no wonder that their courtship and engagement were interwoven with music. In particular, there is evidence that Robert Schumann started to symbolize Clara through a descending scale of at least five notes, especially from the time of the forced separation they had to endure in 1836-7. Moreover, many scholars agree that Robert made use of a cipher system whereby all the letters of the alphabet (and not just the first eight) could be associated to pitches, thus allowing him to hide allusions, messages and references in his music by means of motifs. Thus, Clara’s name was “written” as C-B-A-G-A, a theme which is frequently found in his most important works between 1834 and 1841. It mattered little that virtually no hearer could discern the reference: in fact, it is likely that he delighted in this kind of musical secret language precisely because it was secretive and mysterious.

Among the other works in which he employed it, there is a beautiful miniature which would later become No. 4 of Robert Schumann’s Bunte Blätter, a collection of earlier works which had initially been conceived as belonging to other piano cycles (such as Kinderszenen, Papillons, Album für die Jugend etc.) and had been discarded from their original destination. The eventual cycle, somewhat confusingly, is therefore made of three “Little Pieces”, five “Album Leaves” and a further six pieces with individual titles (9-14); No. 4 thus is the first of the “Album Leaves”, and this element already points to the piece’s role as a memory, as a trace of somebody, like the signatures, dedications, sketches and mementos people used to write in each other’s “albums” in the nineteenth century. Written in 1841, it features the “Clara theme” very prominently, and it is strongly reminiscent of the “Andantino de Clara Wieck” found in Robert’s Grand Sonata no. 3, op. 13 (“Concerto sans Orchestre”). In spite of its very small scale, this beautiful miniature is a self-contained piece, with an exquisite melancholy and longing.

The collection, as it is known today, was compiled in 1852, i.e. just one year before Robert Schumann’s mental collapse and breakdown, but the individual works were written at different moments in his life. Among them, also the first “Little Piece” (composed in 1838) had been intended for Clara, as it is an untexted Lied he gave her as a Christmas present. Other pieces resemble Characterstücke, character pieces, such as for example No. 3, originally titled “Jagdstück” and evoking a hunting scene, or No. 5 “Fata Morgana”, or those which retained their titles (such as “Marsch”, “Abendmusik” and the other March which closes the series).

The year after Schumann had gathered the Bunte Blätter, Clara – by then his wife of thirteen years – decided to resume her own compositional activity, which she had gradually abandoned after her marriage. In a diary entry of May 29, 1853, she noted: “Today I began for the first time in years to compose again. I want to write variations on a theme of Robert’s out of Bunte Blätter, for his birthday. But I find it very difficult – the break has been too long”. We have to believe her words, even though nothing in her finished work betrays this difficulty: neither the time it took her to finish her composition (a mere six days!), nor the quality of the completed piece, the set of Variations which would eventually be published as her op. 20. She was able, therefore, to present her composition to Robert on his birthday, with a very humble dedication: “For my dear husband, for June 8, 1853, a weak attempt once more on the part of his Clara of old”. This “Clara of old” was Clara the virtuoso pianist (though she continued concertizing until a very old age), Clara the composer who had relinquished her creative talent, at least partly, Clara the muse of Robert’s works (the “Clara theme” was rarely used by Robert after 1841) and Clara the young creator of the Romance varié op. 3. In fact, in 1854, Johannes Brahms (who was very close to the Schumanns and substantially helped Clara during her husband’s mental illness) took up Clara’s Variations and studied them, since he wished to compose a set of variations of his own on the same theme by Schumann used by her. While he was analysing Clara’s work, he realized that her third variation could be combined with the theme from her own Romance varié, used by Robert in his Impromptu. Clara was thrilled, and she noted in her diary: “Brahms has had a splendid idea, a surprise for you, my Robert. He has interwoven my old theme with yours – already I can see you smile”.

Clara was living a terrible moment of her life: in May 1854 she was nine months pregnant, she had been forbidden to see her husband in the asylum where he had had to be hospitalized, and in that situation she played her Variations for Brahms and some friends. A piece which spiritually symbolized her union with her husband, a union physically embodied in the child she was bearing, was being played when she was separated from her husband. She wrote: “It is just a year since they were composed, and I was so happy thinking of surprising him with them. This year I must spend his birthday alone, and he will not even know the day”. Brahms’ choice to write his own Variations on Schumann’s theme was felt by her as an attempt at consoling her in her grief, as she stated: “Brahms sought to comfort me; he composed variations on that wonderfully heartfelt theme that means so much to me, just as last year when I composed variations for my beloved Robert, and moved me deeply through his sweet concern”. Fascinatingly, Brahms would model his ninth Variation on Schumann’s op. 99 no. 5, thus building a further artistic and human connection between the three artists and their works (his dedication on the manuscript is touching: “Little Variations on the Theme of His, dedicated to Her”).

Also Clara’s Trois Romances op. 11, written well before this sad epilogue (in 1839, the year preceding their wedding) are a homage to her fiancé; in particular, the second Romance was felt by Schumann as a symbol of their love: “In your Romance”, he wrote, “I can hear again that we are destined to be man and wife. You complete me as a composer just as I do you. Each of your thoughts comes from my very soul; indeed, it is you I have to thank for all my music. There is nothing to change in the Romance; it must remain exactly as it is”. The three pieces are imaginative, skilfully written and touchingly expressive, from the plaintive Andante in E-flat minor, to the G-minor movement which pleased Robert so much, to the carefully built third Romance, in A-flat major.

A style similar to that of the Romances is found also in the beautiful Quatre pieces fugitives, written in 1840-4 and dedicated to Clara’s half-sister, Marie Wieck, who was following in her footsteps as a budding concert pianist. Similar to many of Robert’s works, these pieces are Characterstücke, revealing her appreciation of certain signature traits of her husband’s style such as his predilection for the lower registers of the piano. In spite of Clara’s dedication to Marie, here too an homage to Robert is found: the final Scherzo corresponds to the Scherzo found in a Sonata Clara had written for Robert, once more as a Christmas present, in 1841.

This extraordinary couple, with their complicated and difficult family life, with their circle of musical friends (first and foremost Mendelssohn, Brahms and Joachim) was and remains possibly the most extraordinary symbol of how music can truly become the language of love; the works recorded in this Da Vinci Classics album, with their stories, allusions and meanings, but first and foremost thanks to their exquisite musical beauty, are a living testimony of how deeply Clara and Robert’s love can still inspire and touch us.