Clara Schumann

THE publishers say truly that in the whole history of music no woman has made so substantial a contribution to her art as Clara Wieck, wife of the gifted and ill-fated composer Robert Schumann. Her story has great pathos, and Mr. Burk tells it with fine restraint and dignity. His account of Schumann’s courtship might have been shortened to advantage, and so might some of his citations from letters; but it is hard to see how otherwise his book could be improved. Mendelssohn, Jenny Lind, the great Joachim, and especially Brahms, emerge from his pages as admirable figures; his account of the Schumanns’ relations with Brahms, taken by itself, would be enough to establish Mr. Burk’s work as very nearly of the highest class. Madame Schumann had the amusing instinct of the mother cat towards these rising young artists of the romantic school; at the faintest scent of Liszt, Bruckner, Berlioz, Richard Wagner, she would be up and bristling. As a teacher, a musical publicist, and a concert pianist of the first order, Madame Schumann lived many years, — she died at seventy-seven, — every hour of which she consecrated to interpreting the work of the romantic school and bringing it into popular favor. The musical world of today has simply no idea of the immense debt it owes this woman for much that is best in its legacy from the last century, and Mr, Burk has done himself honor in reminding us of it so forcibly.