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The Virtuosic Genius of Clara Schumann
by Sarah Fritz
A triumphant and striking portrait of a cultural icon who changed the course of music history, and an invitation to reconsider artistic legacies.
A child prodigy equal to Mozart, Paganini called her a "genuine artist;" Goethe said "she plays with the strength of six boys." She premiered the "unplayable" works of Chopin at age twelve and brought Bach fugues and Beethoven sonatas into the concert hall at sixteen. During her sixty-year career, she made Robert Schumann a household name and premiered Brahms's famous "Lullaby." Many critics—who dubbed her "Saint Cecilia," "queen of the piano," and a "priestess of art"—preferred her piano playing to her rival Franz Liszt.
Why is her name not uttered in the breath as Liszt, Brahms, or Mozart today? In Madame Composer, Sarah Fritz reveals how and why Clara Weick Schumann, a giant of Romantic music, has been diminished and sometimes deliberately obscured. By exposing the Nazi propaganda which buried Clara Schumann's achievements, the power Clara once wielded in the industry comes to the fore. Fritz exposes the truth behind why Clara devoted her career to promoting men's works instead of her own creations, even though her melodies were quoted in famous works by Brahms, Liszt, and others, which is revealed in print for the first time.
Clara's life was more fascinating than fiction. A neurodivergent child, she shared a forbidden love with the poor composer Robert Schumann, whose tragic death in an asylum left her a single parent of seven children. And her forty-year relationship with Brahms is one of the most important artist-mentor partnerships in cultural history yet has long been relegated to tabloid scandal.
Filled with new discoveries and insight, Sarah Fritz's fierce and dynamic Madame Composer is the definitive biography on a singular musical force and reveals Clara as a woman in full.
"Clara Schumann learned to write music before learning the alphabet, improvised at the piano before she talked in sentences, and was giving private performances by age seven. When she married Robert in 1840 she was so famous that he was sometimes referred to as 'the husband of Clara Wieck.' Impassioned. Vividly, written, Madame Composer is a persuasive brief for Clara Schumann's right to an honored place in the classical music canon." ―Kirkus Reviews
"A gripping, eminently readable biography of the great Clara Schumann and the society she was born into, Madame Composer is at once a celebration of genius and a fierce invective against the structural hurdles that women faced in the world of 19th-century classical music." ―Jennifer Higgie, author of The Mirror and the Palette and The Other Side
This information about Madame Composer was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Fritz is a musicologist, mezzo-soprano, and music historian who's contributed to the New York Times, given pre-concert talks for the Philadelphia Orchestra, and appears in the PBS documentary, Mozart's Sister. She runs the Clara Schumann Channel platform, dedicated to educating the public about women composers and performs with the Philadelphia Orchestra's Symphonic Choir, including an appearance in the choir scene of the movie Maestro. Fritz teaches on the faculty of the Westminster Conservatory in Princeton, New Jersey.
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