Clara Schumann was born September 13, 1819 to Marianne and Frederi

It did not take Frederick long to notice that Clara’s piano playing, even at the age of five, was unusually accomplished. If she heard a short piece played only once, she could repeat it without ever seeing the written music. Frederick realized that Clara’s amazing musicianship was also accompanied by a personality he could mold to his liking. She was not only talented; she was also obedient and eager to please.

Through the years of personal turmoil, Clara’s many friendships helped to sustain her. Most of her friends were musicians. One was a young composer and pianist, whom both Clara and Robert liked very much. His name was Johannes Brahms. During Robert’s hospitalization, Johannes devoted himself to helping the Schumann family. He rented a room nearby and spent most of his time at Clara’s house, In doing so he earned Clara’s lifelong gratitude. Clara, in return, used her influence to promote Johannes’s music. In time he came to be recognized, along with Robert Schumann, as one of the greatest composers of the nineteenth century. Clara and Johannes regarded each other as best friends.

Unfortunately, at the same time that Clara was discovering her voice at the piano, her parents’ marriage was falling apart. Frederick’s ranting and raving, his constant demands, and his rigid attitudes forced Marianne to realize that she could no longer live with him, even though it meant abandoning her children. Asking for a divorce was almost impossible for a German woman of the nineteenth century. Women owned no property, and had few respectable ways to make a living. Divorce was considered scandalous and shameful; women had no rights, and laws did not protect them. Even worse, in a divorce a mother had to give up her children. According to German law, children were the father’s property. In 1824, when Clara was almost five, Marianne took the drastic step of moving out of the house. When she left, Frederick was furious. The children were only allowed to visit their mother when he gave permission. Marianne eventually remarried, and moved to faraway Berlin with her new husband. After the move, Clara and her brothers rarely saw their mother. It would be many years later that Clara would reconcile with her mother. Soon after her parents’ divorce, Clara suffered a second blow when Frederick fired her nanny. Suddenly all of the women who had ever loved her were gone. At six, Clara was left with nothing but two baby brothers, a temperamental, demanding father, and her music (Reich, 1999).

Thus begins a new life for Clara, and yet it was not so different from the one she had been living. While another female musician might have been content to retire to a life of house keeping and child rearing, Clara Schumann had no such thought. “The practice of art is the very air I breathe,” she wrote (Reich, 1999). Not only was Clara independent and ambitious, she thrived on the life of a performer, savoring the applause, the attention, and the fame. Even motherhood could not compete. Pregnancy did not prevent Clara from performing, even though at that time it was not considered p

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