Clara Schumann: Komponistin, Interpretin, Unternehmerin, Ikone: Bericht uber die Tagung anlasslich ihres 100. Todestages (review)

Clara Schumann: Komponistin, Interpretin, Unternehmerin, Ikone: Bericht über die Tagung anlässlich ihres 100. Todestages. Edited by Peter Ackermann and Herbert Schneider. (Musikwissenschaftliche Publikationen, 12.) Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1999. [270 p. ISBN 3-487-10974-3. DM 68.]

This volume contains fourteen papers presented in 1996 at a Frankfurt symposium honoring Clara Schumann. Although the editors do little to suggest common themes among the essays, arranging them alphabetically by author, they can be divided into two groups, one dealing with biography and the other with Schumann's impact on the present. A key biographical essay is by Eva Rieger, who notes that of the two most important recent biographers of Schumann, Eva Weissweiler tends to "demonize the often idealized picture of Clara Schumann from the past," whereas Nancy Reich searches "the lives and works of women from the past so as to be able to use them, patternlike, as models" (p. 209; all translations are mine). Rieger rejects such polarized views, seeking rather to address the question of how Schumann worked as a woman in a man's world. She shows how Schumann's sex affected the way she viewed her compositions and her role as a composer, and, in regard to her work as a performer, how it influenced the repertory she chose and the public persona she presented.

The remainder of the biographical essays give details about specific events or relationships in Schumann's life. Rieger's insight that Schumann limited herself to--and also overcame--her womanly place echoes in several essays, though sometimes, despite admirable documentation, in a form that seems to indicate insufficient reflection on the material at hand. For example, Monica Steegmann writes on Schumann as her own concert manager, citing as a primary example letters of 1848-49 to Hermann Härtel arranging a chamber music concert. What most impresses the present reader in this correspondence is not Schumann's attention to detail, which Steegmann emphasizes, but rather the opposite: how much she delegates to others, that is, how much of the commanding role usually assumed by men she takes upon herself. A counterexample can be seen in Ute Bär's essay on the working relationship of Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. The two artists were friends, but they were also brought together by concert conditions of the time. Many of their appearances together were in England, not least because they could rely on a concert agent there. Apparently, Schumann was happy to give up the role that Steegmann so proudly assigns her.

Schumann's balance of private (womanly) and professional (masculine) roles forms the background of three further essays. One by Gerd Nauhaus on her relation to the Kufferaths--at first professional, later personal friends--does not directly address the issue, but the reader readily sees that her letters mix her roles as entrepreneur and family correspondent. Another perspective emerges from Beatrix Borchard's study of Schumann's exchange of letters with the singer Pauline Viardot-García. Borchard highlights the differences between the two women, which Schumann herself attributes to their nationalities: Viardot-García, with her Spanish blood and love of brilliant music, does not appreciate the worth of Robert Schumann, the true and profound German artist, and thus, one infers, the accommodations Clara made for him by scaling back her own career.

Gabriele Busch-Salmen's essay on the importance of portraits to the public presentation of an artist, and on how Schumann manipulated their clichéd images of women, allays any doubts as to whether she was conscious of her balancing act. A portrait from 1835 by Julius Giere shows her as a child, yet seated before a piano with an open copy of her piano concerto on the desk--an overt display of her professional accomplishment. Later, double portraits with her husband reflect Clara's secondary position (behind Robert in the 1848 plaster cast by...