The musicologist Nancy Reich dedicated a large part of her academic career to the study of the life and work of Clara Schumann, collecting documents such as correspondence, concert programs and diaries of the German pianist, composer and professor, many of them unpublished, with which shapes the personality, life and musical legacy of the artist. Barlin Libros has translated the latest update of this monumental biography, from 2001, which compiles all of her work and new documents that the author has been finding since the first publication, in 1996.
The result is a portrait that is as faithful as possible with the documents that have transcended Clara’s life, from her childhood as a child prodigy, through the almost “toxic” bond she had with her father (Friedrich Wieck), her relationship with Robert Schumann, with whom she had seven children, her life after the death of the musician and composer and her friends, among whom Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn and Pauline Viardot stand out. Clara never abandoned her musical career and was acclaimed because her talent was “undeniable” since she was the “great concert artist” of the time, admired by musicians and fans, who put her on the same level as “a man”, breaking with that. the canons of a time in which women barely fulfilled roles outside the home and motherhood, Navarro highlights.
She was also responsible for introducing the music of Robert Schumann, very new and avant-garde at the time. “She was the concert performer,” whom the public went to see, and she “played the role of her husband’s executor,” notes the editor. Clara Schumann was playing almost until the last years of her life, despite the arthritis and rheumatism that she suffered from. “She had a life through and for music,” and at her time, in her contemporaneity, she was a very relevant, acclaimed figure, but it has been in posterity when she has been “totally hidden,” she laments. Navarrese.
Nancy B. Reich’s biography was a milestone in gender studies in the history of music. For Lucía Navarro, the opportunity to translate it into Spanish has been an “exciting journey” into the life of a fascinating woman. She hopes that it will serve so that, in the academic field, more works composed by women are programmed and also form part of the study plans, and that the history of music does not forget its great female protagonists.
