Clara Josephine

Schumann

Background	Early and Late Years	Obstacles
References	Links	Email Comments

Background

Clara Schumann was one of the most famous pianist of her time. She lived in Germany and was born on September 13, 1819. Her father started her with piano lessons when she was five.

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Early and Late Years

Clara's father started her writing down her thoughts and feelings in a diary when she was seven. She would write in it after a piano lesson, and her father would read it. Sometimes, when she would have a bad lesson, her father would write bad things about her like, "rotten ignorant girl, spoiled child," or even "lazy spoiled brat." There was a young man named Robert Schumann, who was taught piano lessons by Clara's father. He would tell her ghost stories after his lesson. At night he would dress up as a ghost, and frighten her. Clara eventually married Robert after long years of being forbidden to see him. They were still able to get letters to each other with the help of one of Robert's friends. Clara could not write in her diary about this because Clara's father still read her diary although she was about twenty years old. They got married the day before Clara's twenty-first birthday, September 12, 1840. Robert died at forty-six after being in an asylum for two years. Clara died forty years later at seventy-six.

Obstacles

Clara had hard times during the period in which she was forbidden from seeing Robert. She was convinced by Robert to lie to her father if he asked her what she had done that day. Her father hated Robert and did not want her to have anything to do with him.

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Reference

Krull, Kathleen. Lives of the Musicians. Orlando:Harcourt Brace Publishers,1993

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