Clara Schumann and the Imagined Revelation of Musical Works

Clara Schumann established herself as a pianist who performed the Austro-German, canonical repertory with authority. I use largely unexplored concert reviews and other writings to consider how critics perceived Schumann employing her own faculties and abilities when performing these works. Beginning in the 1840s, Schumann cultivated an image as a pianist who authentically revealed musical works’ inherent essences or composers’ intentions. But how critics imagined her performing such revelations, I argue, shifted across her career. At different moments of her career and in different repertories, they imagined Schumann sharing a marital division of musical labour, transcending her own subjectivity when performing music by other composers, channelling memories, and embodying various gendered personae. Schumann moulded her playing and collaborations to cultivate this image, and critics filtered her performances through their own agendas (including attitudes about gender and pianism). These discourses illuminate how Schumann and her contemporaries performed and constructed revelatory interpretative power.