The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2

y the devil and makes people cheerful. Occupied with it, man forgets all anger, unchastity, pride,

last of all the story of Schumann's love-life, be

if discoverable it is-with double distinctness where two musicians have fallen in love with each other, and with each other's music. There are many inst

so beautiful, so nearly ideal, that-needless to say-it has not been repeated. But while the experiment has not been duplicated, the story well merits a repetition, especially in view

st-minded musicians in the history of the art. Nor can there be any doubt that Clara Wieck was one of the richest dowered musicians who ever sh

. Would you believe it? It was the mother who opposed the boy's taking up music as a career! the father who wished him to follow his

eloved mother. Robert's letters to her show a remarkable affec

developed that pure fervour of feeling to which his whole life bore witness; this, however, soon estranged him fro

legal studies, but loved to play the piano, and write letters, and dream of literature, to idolise Jean Paul Richter and to indulge a most commendable passion for go

er of magnificent melancholy; the tone of its allusions to a certain young woman reminds

ly would I throb in all her pulses! yea, might I be but a tear, I would weep with her, and the

vast evening landscape, over which faintly

cent Eutopia; she cannot grasp an idea." And yet she was very beautiful, and if she were "petrified,"

y of youth often embodies its inmost longings. So I have no longer a sweetheart, but am

girl called "Nanni," but that blaze is now "only a quietly b

joyfully, so blissfully in her arms and her love." He did not see her, but later, to his amazement, he stumbles upon the supposedly finished sweetheart "Liddy." She is bristling with "explanations upon explanations." She begs him to go up a steep mountain alone with her. He goes "from politeness, per

of lightning and a cloud of thunder woke him from his dreams;

t he entered the University at Leipzig to study law. The wife of Professor Carus charmed him by her singing and inspired various songs. At her hou

ears old, and nine years younger than Schumann, when they met. She made a sensational début in concert the same year. And, child as she was, she excited at once the keenest and most affec

etly to be a pianist, not a lawyer. He dreamed

te of meeting "a beautiful English girl, who seemed to have fallen in love, not so much with myself as my piano playing, for all English women love with the head-I mean they love Brutuses, or Lord Byrons, or Mozart and Raphaels." Surely one of the most remar

m Venice, whither he had appare

ted.... She was an English girl, very proud, and kind, and loving, and

er written," pleading ardently with his mother to let him be a musician. She decided to leave the decision concerning her son's future to Wieck, who, knowing Schumann's attainments and promise, voted for music. Schumann, wild with delight and ambition, fled from Heidelbe

st violent melancholy, obsessions of inky gloom, which kept returning upon him at long intervals. But

n love the day before yesterday. The gods gran

G-G. He apologised to his family for not dedicating his first work to them, but explained that it was not good enough. It is published with an inscript

tch through opera-glasses-champagne." The next year he was torn between two admirations. One, the daughter of the German-born American consul at Liepzig,-her name was Emily L

er-by adoption, though this he did not know

as I might wish to have for a wife; and I will whisper it in your ear, my good mother, if the Future were to ask me whom I should choose, I would answer unhesitatingly, '

e and Robert had acted as godparents to one of Wieck's children, possibly Cla

with fine diplomacy, he also wrote a fatherly letter to her supposed father, praising some of the baron's compositions with certain r

sly fond of her, and he poured out his soul to her friend, who was also

jewel, lest it should be in unworthy hands. If you ask me to put a name to my grief I cannot do it. I think it is grief itself; but alas, it may be love itself, and mere longing for Ernestine. I really cannot stand it any longer, so I have writte

out in a boat, and, shipping the oars, had sat side by side in complete silence-that deathlike silence which so often enveloped Schumann even in the circles

"Carnéval," using for his theme the name of Ernestine's birthplace, "Asch," which he could spell in music in two ways: A-ES-C-H, or AS-C-H, for ES i

yed, great-hearted, greatly suffering little girl of fifteen was learning, for the first time, sorrow. This was Clara Wieck, who was already electrifying the most serious critics and captivating the most cultured audiences by the maturity of her art, already wi

girl over the youth she loved. Can't you see her now in her lonely room, reeling off from under he

r she could wri

ke you better and it soon went so far that every time you came I had to call her. I was glad to do this since I was pleased that she liked you. But you talked more and more with her and cut me short; that hurt me a good deal; but I consoled myself by saying it was only natural since you were with me all the time; and, besides, Ernestin

"less Bavarian beer; not to turn night into day; to let your girl friends know that you think

stowed on her in the privacy of the home. For he and she seemed to be as son and daughter to old Wieck, who was also greatly interested in the critical ideals of Schumann, and joined him zealously in the organisation and conducting of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. This, Schumann made the most wonderfully catholic and prophetic critical organ that ever existed for art; and in the editing of it he approved himself to posterity as a mus

ly thirteen, and he twenty-two, he could write to his "Dear honoured Clara," "I often think of you, not as a brother of his sister, or merely in friendship, but rather as a pilgrim thinking of a distant shrine." He began t

ed verses upon her genius. In a letter to Wieck, in 1833, he says, "It is easy to write to you, but I do not feel equal to write to Clara." She was still, however, the child to him; the child whom he used

faster, and, as it were, leaf by leaf. The other day, as we were walking back from Cannovitz (we go for a two or three hours' tramp almost every day), I heard her say to herself: 'Oh, how happy I am! how happy!' Who would not love to hear that? On this same road ther

y of womanly de

other, with an occasional "Longingly yours." He begged her to keep mental trysts

f our names on the title-page might foreshadow the union of our ideas in the future. A poor fellow like myself cannot offer

tone is very cordial, and, knowing the sequel, it is hard not to read into them perhaps more than Schumann meant. The letters could hardly have seemed to him to be love letters, since he writes to Clara that he has been considering the

sity and make you believe that I was there. In short a great many quaint notions came to my head and have only just been dispersed b

elight of letting his "fingers chase the pen, and the pen chase the

chords of the ninth and the thirteenth. He paints her a pleasant portrait of herself in a letter which, h

a curious mingling of profound admiration and of teasing amuse

talking; rushing from fun to earnest as usual, diplomatically playing

hopes upon, but in the very same letter Schumann could refer to that torment of Clara's soul, Ernestine, and

e diary, "We have not missed her; for the last six weeks she has been a stranger in our house; she had lost completely her lovable and frank disposition." He compares

torture. It humiliated his own love, and greatly undermined the romance, which crumpled absolutely when he learned that she was not the baron's own daughter, but only an adopted child, and of an illegitimate birth at that. He had not learned these facts from her; indeed she had practised elaborate deceptions upo

erning this whole black page of my life, I might tell you a deep secret of a heavy psychic disturbance that had befallen me earlier. It would take a long time, how

ds, and that six years later he dedicated to her a volume of songs (Opus 13). Three years after the separation

returned to its home in the original key of "carissima Clara, Clara carissima." Clara, who had found small satisfaction in her fame out-of-doors, since she was defeated in her love in her home, had the joy of seeing the gradual growth in Schumann's hear

s their deep meanings. While Schumann was earning his living and a wide reputation by publishing the praises of other composers, by burrowing in all the obscure meaning of new geniuses, and revealing their messages to the world, his own great works were lying ignored and uncomprehended and seemin

ary after his name stands the entry: "Clara's eyes a

; he declared his love then and there. But she reminded him of Ernestine, and, with that trivial perjury to which lovers are always apt, he informed her that Ernestine was already engaged to

f near swooning. Before my eyes it grew black!... Th

for it would have been a greater and more terrible misery had they married. "Earlier or later my old love and attachment for you would have awakened

erself wrot

you could love Clara alo

ther died. He was compelled to leave Leipzig in dismal gloom. He said to Clara simply, "Bleib mir tr

g for the coa

, Feb. 1

y one, but now I cannot any more. And if you do not know, I cannot tell you. But love me well; do you hear? ... I demand much since I give much. To-day I have been excited by various feelings; the opening of mother's will; hearing all about her death, etc. But your radiant image gleams through all the darkness and helps me to bear everything

if I ask him for his blessing. Of course there is much to be thought of and arranged. But I put great trust in our guardian angel. Fate alwa

lise, that I love you quite unspeakably. The room is getting dark. Passengers near me are going to sleep. It is sleeting and snowi

r RO

ed his chances of earning large moneys as a concert performer by practising until his right hand was permanently injured and the third finger useless. As early as 1831 Wieck is quoted as objecting to Schumann's habits, and saying that, if he had no money at all, he might turn out well; for Schumann, while never rich, never knew poverty. But their friendship continued cordial and

, was unhappy, and after six years was ended in divorce. Clara remained with her father, while her mother married a music-teacher named Bargiel, and bore him a son, Waldemar, well known as a compos

ned like another Capulet, till he scared the seventeen-year-old girl into giving him Schumann's letters. Then he threatened to shoot Schumann if she did not promise never to speak to him again. She made the promise, and the manner in which she did not k

of March, 1836, Schumann writes to August Kahlert, a stranger b

he point at once. I have a particular favour to ask you. It is this: Will you not devote a few moments of your life

nd forbids any sort of intercourse on pain of death. Well, it has all happened before, thousands of times. But the worst of it is that she has gone away. The latest news came from Dresden. But we know nothing for certain, though I suspect, indeed I am nearly convinced, that they are at Breslau. Wieck is sure to call upon you at once, and w

rther remark that it will be an easy thing for you to obtain Clara's confidence and favour, as I (who am more than partial to the lovers), have often told her that I correspond with you. She will be happy to see you, and to g

n. The next day Schumann wrote to his sister-in-law Theresa still with a little hope:

as a stranger on the casual meetings that happened to the torment rather than the liking of both. The nagging uncertainty, the simulating of indifference, a stolen glance, or a ha

ewhere for society, and when the taverns and the boisterous humour of his friends

t be calm and clear-sighted; it has come to this, eithe

had come between the lovers that

as ever, but I am resigned

In May he dedicated to her his Sonata in F Sharp Minor. It was, as he expressed it: "One long cry of my heart for you, in which a theme of yours appears in all possible forms." His Opus 6, dated the same year, was his won

t her faith. He passed through one of those terrific crises of melancholia which at long i

al anguish, and then I have no one but you who really se

time, he described th

ve through this one torment without going mad.' I thought once to find your engagement announced in the paper-that bowed my neck t

r, Carl Banck, had been deceived by her friendship into thinking that he could persuade her to love him. His ambition suited eminently the family politics of Father Wieck. He made his first mistake by slander

r, but left it to a friend of his named Becker. In the next number Schumann wrote an enthusiastic criticism upon a Concerto by Sterndale Bennett. The attempt failed, however, and Schumann's

and Florestan. Now, as Litzman notes, the answer to that outcry came back to him over the head of the audience. Clara knew he would be there, and that he would understand. Her fingers seemed to be giving expression not only to his own yearning, but to her answer and her like desire. It was a

preparing. Wieck's enmity to Schumann had been somewhat mitigated after two years of meeting no opposition. Schumann was encouraged to hope that, if he wrote a letter to Wieck on Clara's birthday, September 13, 1837, it might find the old bear in a congenial mood. He had written to Clara the very morning after the concert at daybreak, say

ver. The grief of my heart, the many tears, could I but describe them ... oh, no! Your plan seems to me risky, but a loving heart fears no obstacles. Therefore once more I say yes! Could God turn my eighteenth birthday into

r CL

hom she recommended to complete confidence: "So Nanny can serve as a pen to me." At last the lovers met clandestinely by appointment, as Cl

our hat and passed your hand across your forehead; I had the

despondency, that Schumann wrote the seventh of his "Davidsbündl

trembling hand will not let the pen run quietly.... To-day is Clara's birthday,-the day w

tacles that had met their way he

thing of the highest bliss, except the parental blessing. An awful moment it is until I learn your decision, awful as the pause between lightning and thunder in the tempest,

n your hands, dear lady, I lay our future happiness,

ept alone all the long birthday. Her father asked her why she was so unhappy, and when she told him the truth, he showed her Schumann's letter, and said: "I did

know what to do. Not at all. He was not able to make any valid objections; but as I said before,

next then, my dear Clara, what next? Your father himself said to me the fearful words: 'Nothing shall shake me.' Fear everything from him, he will compel you by force if he cannot by trickery. Fürchten Sie Alles!"

is concert giving and travelling. Further than that he lets your heart bleed, destroys my strength in the midst of my ambition to d

romised him that, and warned him also to be true, or e

econd person singular of intimacy which all languages keep except the E

en the endurance of a German daughter. So now, though Robert begged her to write him secretly, she refused with tears. But, fortunately for them both, she did not long remain in the town where they were separated like prisoner

ciatively the music of men who wrote in another style than his, he was a

his old days, that he might say: 'What good children!' If he understood me better he would have saved me many worries and would never have written me a letter which made me two years older. Well, it is all over and forgiven now; he is your father, a

Clara in a way unequalled, or at least never equally confessed by any other musician. He writes her that the Davidsbündlert?nze were written in ha

it all will be a jolly wedding,' but towards the end, my sorrow about you c

rite music together when

tch me too closely when I am composing; that would drive me to desperation; and for my part, I promise you, too, only very seldom to listen at

rk-to live with me blissful and calm" (selig und still). And when she

ic, and said that he had written nothing in the Zeitschrift fo

y, and have been sitting still, saving my money without a thought of spending it on amusement or horses, and quietly going my own w

ontradictory dignity with remarkable skill, with a fidelity to both that makes her in the last degree both admirable and lovable. When she advised patience or postponement, the impatient Robert saw her father's hand moving the pen

lating from one mood into another. Besides, music is so thoroughly an expression of mood, and a good letter has so necessarily a unity of mood, that musicians, ex officio, tend to write correspondence that is literary without trying to be so, sincere without stupidity. But in the volumes and volumes of m

possible, though equally balanced; and the honou

ded her personality to complete his creative powers in music. While Schumann had no such problem to meet, he lacked Clara's elastic and buoyant nature, and it must never b

ions; for in spite of the promises he had given them, he could break out in such speeches as this: "I

n different towns. There were zealous messengers ranging from the Russian Prince Reuss-K?striz, through all grades of society, down to the devoted housemaid "Nanny." Chopin, and Mendelssohn, and many another music

mous for the swiftness of his discoveries and the bravery of his proclamations of genius. As for Clara, though already in her eighteenth year, she was one of the most famous pianists in the world, and favourably compared, in many respects, especially in point of poetical interpretation, with Liszt, Thalber

in instalments. Doctor Weber in Trieste offered to give Schumann ten thousand thalers-an offer which could not of cou

0, before they should marry-and the two years were long and w

shall yet flow. Foolish wish! I am sometimes such a silly child. Do you remember that two years ago on Christmas E

ould again be received at home as a friend. She was made the court pianist at this time, and it was a quaint whimsy of fate that, in conne

ontent "to die an artist, it would please a certain girl to see 'Dr.' before his name." He was willing to

prosperity of Schumann's paper began to slough off. It occurred to the lovers that they would prefer to live in Vienna, and that the Zeitschrift could prosper there. There were endless difficulties, a censorship to pacify, and many commercial schemes to arrange, but nothing must be left untried. The scheme was put under way. Mean

od and noble a girl as you, should not be a respectable man and not cont

und; but she wrote Schumann that if the whole aristocracy of both places fell at her feet, she would let them lie there and turn to the simple artist, the dear, noble man, and lay her heart at his feet. ("Al

u not feel that I was there?" He could even see his ring glitter on her finger. Another day Clara saw him

released Schumann from his former engagement to her-it being remembered that among Germans a betrothal always used to be

will I give my consent.' What I had feared has come true. I must

y nagging attempt was made to postpone the marriage till the latter part of 1840, but Clara wrote that she would be with Robert on Easter, 1840, without fail. Then he went to Vienna to establish his journal there, and from there he sent a bundle of thirty short poems written in her praise. While he was in Vienna, her father shipped her off to Paris, so sure now of cleaving their hea

ne. She dreamed only of hurrying back to Leipzig and Schumann and a home wit

moment Clara hoped to win over her father by a last concession. She wrote from Paris that it would be well to postpone the marriage a few months longer than they had first intended, and Emily List wrote a long letter advocating the same and explaining how much it grieved Clara to ask this. She advised Robert to take up the book business of his brother, who had succeeded his father's p

lay. Clara's letter seems to have been only her last tribute to her father, for, at Schumann's first protest, she hastened to write that she could endure anything, except his doubt; that she would be with him on Easter, 1840, come what would. This cheered

we will publish some things under our two names, so that posterity may regard us as one heart and one soul, and may not know which is yours and which is mine. How h

1. That Robert and Clara, so long as Wieck lived, should not make their residence in Saxony; but that Schumann must none the less make as much money in the new home as his Zeitschrift brought him in Leipzig. 2. That Wieck should control Clara's property for five years, paying her, during that time, five per cent. 3. That Schumann should make out a

on the 24th of June. Schumann wrote a short note to the old man, telling him that if he did not hear in eight days, silence would be taken as the last refusal

be personally present in six or seven weeks. She had written him a letter of great cheer and sen

at Berlin, where her own mothe

verything possible to make her life miserable, spying upon her and making it impossible to be alone long enough to write Schumann a l

ever a word of tenderness but only and always reproaches, had orphaned her indeed. Her heart was doubly ripe for a little mothering, and Frau Bargiel seized the moment. She wrote letters of greatest warmth and sweetness to her child in Paris, and to Schumann she wrote an invit

think I shall live to hear the decision of the court." As soon as Clara left Paris he hastened toward her and met her at Altenburg. It was a blissful reunion after a year of separation, and they went together to Berlin, where

so gentle toward him. He not only neglected her in Paris, except to write her merciless letters, but when she returned and he saw himself confronte

t $1,500) which I have saved from seven y

ruments, but I must later pay 1,000 tha

ich shall come to me, also the capital, in case of a separation-What a hideo

ion of the lawsuit. He made it impossible for Clara to get back to Paris, as she wished, to earn more money before the marriage. He demanded that she s

ty, and he gave the love affair as unpleasant a notoriety as possible. For an instance of senile spite: Clara had always been given a Behrens piano for her concerts in Berlin. Wieck wrote to a friend to go to Behrens, and warn him that he must not lend Clara his pianos, because she was used to the hard English action, and would ruin any others! He wrote that he hoped the honour of the King of Prussia would prevent his disobedient daughter from appearing in public concerts in Berlin. It need hardly be said that Clara was neither forbidden her piano nor her concerts; indeed, the king appeared in person at her concert and applauded the runaway vigorou

recent death of Henrietta Voigt had plunged him. Clara had the rare agony of seeing him weep. It was now the turn of the strong Clara to break down, and only with the doctor's aid she continued her concerts. Her father's effort to undermine her good name extended to the publication of a li

e afterward, that through the long and ardent and greatly tormented love story of the Schumanns there never appears a line in any of their multitudinous letters which shows or hints the fainte

rth could cut them apart. They began to dream of their marriage as more certain than the dawn. Schumann writes to Clara-"Mein Herzensbrautm?dchen"-that he wishes her to study and prepare for his exclusive hearing a whole concert of music, the bride's concert. She responds that he too must prepar

der words, that I turned blood-red." January 31, 1840, Schumann had taken up his plan to gain himself a doctor's degree to match Clara's titles. He had asked

now existed for seven years; my position as composer and the fac

the University of Jena granted him his doctorate on February 24, 1840, a bit of spe

pamphlet form and distributed. Toward Wieck he is still pitiful, "The wretched man is torturing himself; let it be his punishment." The lib

he north for my betrothed; who is exactly like a c

n's singing to Clara's accompaniment some of the manifold songs that were suddenly beginning to bubble up from Schumann's

in thoughts of you. If I were not engaged t

rush from his soul

quite uncanny at times. I cannot help it, and shou

way from his music. Yet all he wished was to

as a surprise, taking her out for a long walk until the

had determined not to permit their father to drive them past this date. But they went meekly enough under the yoke of the law and passed many a month until it seemed to the litigants that the conditi

n. The case was not ended, but the lovers immediately began to hunt for a place to live. On the sixteenth of July they found a litt

g what the simplest girl

is final appeal. Worn out and lacking in further weapons of any kind, he let the occasion pass

reward for the lovers. Since Wieck had withdrawn his evidence, the verdict was strongly worded in favou

he banns, and the lovers went

y an old school friend of Schumann's. On the 13th, a Sunday, and Clara's birthday-her twenty-first-she was the wife of the man w

thening and deepening their love for each other and their worthiness for each other? It is the struggle for existence and the battle with

n? Shall we not, then, thank old Wieck for his fine lessons in psychical culture? His daughter Marie, by the way, Clara's half

er diary a little triumph song of joy.

ng disturbing on this day, and so let it be inscribed in this book as the most beautiful and the most important day of my life. A period in my existence has now closed. I have endured very many sorrows in my young years, but also many joys which I shall never forget. Now begins a new life, a beautiful l

even after the birth of her first child, on September 1, 1841, the year also of Schumann's first symp

sake. He has been trying to make it up with me too, but the man can have no feelings or he co

nition from the Czar and Czarina, he addressed old Wieck as "Dear Father," and described to him with contagious pride the immense success of his wife. A little later he reminded him that "It is the tenth birthday

nto a very Eden of love and art commingled. The gush of song from his heart continued, he dedicated to her his "My

their temperament; while she looked upon it as her highest privilege to give to the world the most perfect interpretation of his works, or at least to stand as mediatrix between him and his audience, and to ward off all disturbing or injurious impressions from his sensitive soul, which day by day became more irritable. Now that he found perfe

calls "the marvellous couple." In his letters there are always loving allusions to "my Clara," and though he could not himself play because of h

, after praising Clara's playing, turned to Robert and said: "Are you also musical?" But then one does not expect much from a king. The musicians knew

advice, he moved to Dresden. His trouble seems to have been "an abnormal formation of irregular masses of bone in the brain." He was afraid to live above the ground floor, or to go high in any building, lest he throw himself from the window in a sudden attack. He was subje

that he preferred staying at ho

t still keep out of the way; the only thing

ed an inability to remember his own music long enough to write it down. He saw but few friends, among them the charming widow of Von Weber, Ferdinand Hiller, Mendelssohn, Joachim, and a few others. Wagner

e took great delight in his family, and could even compose amid the hilarity and noise of his children. Concerning children he had written in 1845 to Mendelssohn, whose wife had

ms waiting for her in the wings. Schumann wrote three sonatas for his three daughters, and oth

(who was then twenty years old), who became a devoted friend and was of much comfort to Frau Schuma

en duped into believing in the cheap swindle of table-tipping. The bliss of Robert Browning's home was broken up in this same form, of

t to write down a theme given him by the ghosts of Schubert and Mendelssohn, on which he afterward w

er he had embodied the nightmare in one of his compositions. Clara herself in later life was long distressed by hearing a conti

d finding him peevish and her a model of meekness and patience. Poor Schumann realised his failings a

aced under restraint, and he passed his last two years in a private asylum, near Bonn. Periods of complete sanity, when he received his friends and wrote to them, alternated with periods of absolute despair. Under the weight of his affliction, his soul, like Giles Corey's bo

il 1882, when her health forbade her touring longer. She had shown herself a woman worth fighting for, even as Schumann fought for her, and she

d gave him her support under the long discouragement of its neglect and the temptations to be untrue to his best ideals; but that she travelled through Europe and pr

ith a preface, saying that her desire was to make him known for himself as well as he was loved and honoured in his artistic importance. As she had written in 1871

fishness. It seems actually and beautifully true, as Reissman says, that "Schum

hat of Robert and Clara Schumann ennoble not only the