2023-07-13 16:05:15
– Clara and Robert, the black suns
A close-knit couple right down to their scores, the Schumanns embody, for better or for worse, the romantic ideal.
Posted today at 6:05 p.m.
Robert and Clara in a lithograph produced in 1847 by the painter Eduard Kaiser.
GETTY IMAGES
One day, among the dozens of letters that Robert Schumann addressed to his beloved Clara, there were these words, which alone concentrate the fusional state in which the lovers were immersed: “Each of your thoughts comes from the depths of my soul, like me, I owe you all my music.” All the lyrical impetus of an era, that of the triumph of romanticism, is found concentrated in a few lines. But there is above all, through these words, the illustration of a unique trajectory in the history of music, one which has seen the destiny of two artists travel as closely as possible, right down to their respective works, in a indissoluble intertwining.
youthful admiration
The fate of the Schumanns has fascinated researchers and music lovers, biographers and historians. Probably because it is an anomaly, a strange singularity whose traces can be found from the beginning of their adventure. Let’s go back in time then, to 1828. At that precise moment, Clara Wieck was 8 years old. Her father Friedrich, a very famous piano teacher, knew how to bring out in her a breathtaking talent as an interpreter. The promise of a career is already there when an 18-year-old student arrives at the Leipzig house. It is Robert Schumann, whom the master of the place agrees to take under his wing and to lodge in a small room.
From the start, the young man feels a deep admiration for his ten-year-old daughter. Love already? Maybe. Still, the thread of feelings will only thicken as the years go by. This is all the more so as the precocious virtuosity of the child is joined by an asserted creative vein. Clara composed four “Polonaises”, her opus 1, at only 11 years old. Eight years later, in 1838, Robert officially declares his love for his accomplice. His reaction? “I think of our future which I presage so happy, she ignites. More and more I know that my life belongs to you. Everything is indifferent to me except my art. My art is you.” Happiness then? They got married and had many children? Not so fast.
“Clara is composing a play? Robert makes a variation of it. She writes a “Romance”, he illuminates it in turn.
Because a first shadow veils this promise, that of a father who wants nothing to do with this union and who considers the suitor as a miserable pupil, unworthy of his daughter’s talent. It is true that Clara, at that time, was a diva recognized throughout Europe. From Paris to Vienna, everyone is tearing it up; Goethe, Paganini, Mendelssohn and Chopin celebrate his genius. Friedrich Wieck dreams of another destiny for the prodigious musician, he then decides to take her away from her lover by sending her to Dresden.
The court and marriage
The passion resists however, by interposed hidden letters, but also by an incessant musical dialogue. Clara is composing a play? Robert makes a variation of it. She writes a “Romance”, he illuminates it in turn. One day, the father makes the suitor believe that his daughter is now living other stories. The world, that of Schumann, stops for months. Everything seems to be over. Desperate love, stifled passion then arise in this “Fantasy op. 17” where fiery and meditative impulses, so Schumanian, cross the three movements.
Then everything starts again thanks to Clara’s return to Leipzig for a recital during which she plays an extract from Robert’s “Symphonic studies op.13”. This one is overwhelmed and composes in the wake of the famous “Davidbündlertänze”, then so many major pieces for piano.
The union between the two will be official in 1840. It will go through the court, first of all, where Father Friedrich is summoned after his multiple refusals and where he is dismissed against the couple. Then by a small church near Leipzig. Another life then begins, which is not always for the best, far from it. Because, beyond Germany, Robert remains the spouse of the genius pianist. From then on, he will work more or less consciously to limit the influence of Clara, who will also chain pregnancies, eight in all. Over the years, the couple grows darker, it knows here and there returns of splinters, the proof in 1841 by this cycle of Lieder, “Liebesfrühling op.37/12”, unique conjugal work in history.
The following years, spent from 1850 in Düsseldorf, are those of the inexorable advance of Robert’s illness, whose ill-being pushes him to throw himself into the Rhine. He will be saved by fishermen before sinking definitively into madness, while his activities as a conductor have turned into a fiasco. Interned for twenty-nine months in the asylum of Endenich, he died there in 1856 at the age of only 46. During this long stay, Clara will never visit him, except three days before his death. The existence of the widow will therefore be devoted to the influence of Robert’s work. The publication of the imposing catalog at Breitkopf & Härtel is his last great gesture of love towards this man he met at the age of 8.
Rocco Zacheo joined the editorial staff of the Tribune de Genève in 2013; he deals with classical music and opera and devotes himself, on an ad hoc basis, to literary news and disparate cultural events. Previously, he worked for nine years at Le Temps newspaper and collaborated with RTS La Première. More informations
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