Reminder— Clara Schumann was the youngest EVER to compose, perform, and publish a piano concerto.
She premiered it at the Gewandhaus with Mendelssohn conducting—one month after her 16th birthday.
Younger than Mozart.
Happy Birthday to the great Clara Schumann!🎉🎂
A composer, pianist, and genius who curated the classical canon as we know it.
🥂Cheers to the Queen of the Piano, the Priestess of Art! 🥂
Some things haven’t changed since 1839… 😂🙄
Clara Wieck, after her concert: “The man said not one syllable about my playing and only admired my earrings💎— I should have liked to beat him!”
If Clara Schumann saw concert programs today, she’d be like, “Why don’t you program the latest works by your composer friends? Don’t you like new music anymore?”
My 90yr old, piano teacher grandmother was upset she can’t hear the top octave of the piano anymore.
I read her Clara Schumann’s late diary entires on struggling to hear orchestras & low notes in her 70s.
She got so excited, “Why don’t musicians talk about this?”
Today, Oct 1st, 1853—the day Johannes Brahms met his piano teacher, composition mentor, & career advisor—Clara Schumann… 🎼
And fell in love with her too. Oops!💞
Happy birthday, Clara Schumann!🎁
One of the great composers & greatest pianists in history who devoted her life to Art.🙏🏻
Thank you, Clara, for everything!🥂❤️
Did you know Wolfgang was a talented pianist? Ludwig was also an accomplished composer, and Johannes was skilled at writing for orchestra.
Let’s celebrate men composers!
To be clear—Clara Schumann was NOT an exception. There are MANY historically marginalized composer geniuses. Clara’s just MY fav.
Please do tweet YOUR favs!
Next time you’re tired—think of Clara Schumann in her 20s…
She gave birth to 6 children but still composed a sonata, a piano trio, 10+ songs, 3 piano opuses, and toured Vienna & Russia.
Oh and taught daily lessons😱🤩😭
To refer to Clara Schumann as “muse” or “inspiration” is reductive, objectifying, and inaccurate.
She was an EDITOR of Robert’s music and Johannes’s MENTOR—the first person he sent his drafts for critique.
Let’s try “musical partner” instead.
Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann married
#otd
in 1840 —
A musical partnership that changed the face of Romanticism with their commitment to love and art in music.❤️🙏🏻
Johannes Brahms’s most epic surprise for Clara Schumann🎁—his brand new 3rd Symphony on her 64th birthday.
He played it for her & gave her a 4-hand piano manuscript. ❤️
Uh-oh Tristan und Isolde premiered today.😁😈 The most HILARIOUS Clara Schumann quote ever:
“It is the most repulsive thing I ever saw in my life… listening to such love-lunacy… The saddest experience of my whole artistic career.” 😂😂😂😂😂
Let’s talk luxury of TIME to compose—
Johannes Brahms & Robert had MONTHS to compose each of their sonatas.
Clara Schumann composed half of hers in a WEEK—with her 1st baby only 4 months old.
Happy birthday, Franz Liszt!🥳🥂🎹
“He cannot be compared to any other player… He arouses terror and amazement, and is a very attractive person. His appearance is indescribable – he is absorbed by the piano…” ~ Clara Wieck
*A thread of Clara praise for Franz*
“Classical music, like whiteness itself, is frequently racially unmarked and presented as universal—until people of color start performing it.”
@kira_thurman
Clara Schumann received this letter (with no other text) from Johannes Brahms on her 49th birthday— the horn call from the 4th movt of his 1st Symphony… 8 yrs before its premiere.
Leonard Bernstein with his teacher and mentor, the legendary Nadia Boulanger, who awarded him the medal of the Legion of Honour. Bernstein was one of Boulanger’s many famous students.
Photographed together here in her Paris flat, 1978. ❤️
I just realized, Clara Wieck Schumann was younger than EVERYONE when she finished her first piano concerto.
Clara 16
Mozart 17*
Chopin 20
Mendelssohn 21
Haydn 24
Brahms 25
Beethoven 25**
Liszt 30
Schumann 35
Happy birthday to Clara Schumann’s husband, Robert, the muse for many of her masterpieces!🥳❤️
The Variations op. 20 were given to him as a present
#otd
in 1853.
🎁Happy birthday, Ludwig van Beethoven!🎉
The composer against which Clara Schumann measured all other composers. She esteemed his sonatas above all others and brought them permanently into the concert hall.
Happy Pride month from Clara Schumann’s daughter, Eugenie who in her 40s followed her “better half” soprano Marie Fillunger to London. They spent the rest of their lives together—and were buried side by side. ❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🤎🖤🩶🤍
While Robert was hospitalized, Clara Schumann kept a flower album for him—saving him a flower from each city she performed in.🌺
She never got to give it to him… 💔
😭😭😭😭😭
A great tragedy in music history—
#otd
in 1854, Robert Schumann jumped in the freezing Rhine.
He left a note: “Dear Clara, I’m going to throw my wedding ring in the Rhine; do the same with yours, then our rings will be united.” 😭❤️
Happy Birthday, Johannes Brahms!🍻
A man Clara Schumann devoted all her powers to help him & his work change history: “Your music is a part of my own flesh and blood.”💔
Robert Schumann was still asked “Are you a musician?” when Clara performed in 1853 — 4 months before going into the hospital, Endenich.
“Clara was as famous as Robert” is incorrect. During his lifetime, Clara was always more famous than him.🤷🏻♀️
Given recent U.S. events, I’ve got an explicit thread on Clara Schumann and unwanted pregnancies:
8 children by age 34 was she never on her goals list.
At age 28, she would’ve stopped at 4 children. Except, “Robert says children are blessings.”
Clara Wieck premiered her Piano Concerto in A Minor
#otd
in 1835 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. 🎉👏🏻
A foundational work in the early-romantic repertoire with untold influence on Schumann & Brahms.
She was 16yrs old.
Clara Schumann always begged Johannes to send her music. (She wanted music more than letters—hehe!)
He’d send her excerpts—like this from the G maj Sextet in 1855— 9yrs before he published it.
Wendy Carlos won a Grammy in 1970 for her album “Switched-on Bach” a pioneering artist of the Moog synthesizer… and the first trans woman to win a Grammy. 😍
Has anyone noticed phone noise at concerts getting WORSE?
It was ridiculous last night at Philly Orch. Yannick had to restart the Bruckner 9 Adagio TWICE. 😱
For context—he memorized the ENTIRE program FOR last night.
"Bradley Cooper conducts a masterful symphony." Nominated for 8 Critics Choice Awards and 4 Golden Globe Awards including Best Picture, MAESTRO is now playing on Netflix.
In honor of Richard Wagner’s birthday— Clara Schumann’s EPIC burns of his operas:🔥
“This is not music at all to me—though I don’t deny his powers for drama.” (Tannhäuser)
🧵
Next on… Things I should’ve learned in music school:
The original Greek Mixolydian mode is attributed to Sappho… a woman composer of the ancient world. 🤯
“Too bad Clara Schumann didn’t compose more.” Yes, but do you know every piece she wrote? If I tweet one per week, it’ll take me over a year… Here goes.🧵
Clara Schumann’s complete catalogue—in reverse order of composition:
Happy Birthday to Pauline Garcia-Viardot, the great opera composer and legendary diva!🎉🎂🥂
Lifelong friend of Clara Schumann, her fav composer among women—Clara LOVED Viardot’s operas.😍
*subtweet*😈
I believe there is a body of young people out there who would love to study Wieck, Price, Smyth, Brontë, Austen, Plath, Farrenc, Beach, etc. in detail, and would feel rewarded if that opportunity was provided in education more often.
Who doesn’t want THIS handsomeness in their feed???
No wonder Clara and Robert Schumann were head over heels for 20yr old Johannes Brahms. The whole Beethoven thing was just bonus material.
We can celebrate Gustav Mahler and also remember he forbid Alma Schindler from composing after they married. He made her help edit and copy out the parts for his symphonies instead.
Clara Schumann hated long concerts and conductors whose programs showed “no mercy.” She wrote that Robert and Mendelssohn always knew the happy medium and no concert should ever exceed 2 hrs.
Today in 1835, Clara Wieck premiered her sole orchestral work in Leipzig with Felix Mendelssohn conducting— her innovative, ingenious, influential Piano Concerto in A minor. 🎹🎼😍
Oh dear, it’s a Wagner day. I’ll just leave this here…
“This enthusiasm for Wagner seems to me a kind of disease which sweeps across a country and carries away the very best people.”
~ Clara Schumann’s diary, 1872
5days after Robert jumped in the Rhine… Johannes Brahms was at Clara Schumann’s door.
“He said he’d come to comfort me with music, if I had any wish for it.” ~Clara’s diary, Mar. 3 1854
#otd
❤️😭
Is all of Clara Schumann’s music too hard for amateurs?
I play this one! The first page of her A minor Romanze WoO—heartbreakingly beautiful.😭😍 One of my fav pieces in ALL of music.
For those who “hate Brahms”—
I’m genuinely happy for you that repressed existential pain doesn’t echo in your soul from note one. Like—really that’s a good thing.
Johannes Brahms wrote Clara Schumann his op. 119 Intermezzos were “for her hands alone.”
He was 60. She was 74.❤️😭
“My God, how this description will whet your appetite!” 🔥
IT’S OFFICIAL!!!
I’m talking at the pre-concert talks😱 this weekend with assistant conductor, Austin Chanu, for the Wieck/Price/Ravel program
@BeatriceRana
@nezetseguin
@philorch
!!! 🥳😁🥰
Happy birthday to the great Amy Beach! 🎉 The first American woman to compose large orchestral works—including her wonderful Gaelic Symphony (1896) & her 4 movt. Piano Concerto in C# min. (1899)🎻🎹
Clara Schumann on the foundation of the Bayreuth Theater: “This enthusiasm for Wagner seems to me a kind of disease.”
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Tell us how you really feel, Clara!
A portrait of violinist Joseph Joachim and his friend and collaborator, pianist Clara Schumann, performing together. The two musicians were also dear friends with Brahms. Art by Adolph Von Menzel.
The word “fresh” appears in Clara Schumann’s diaries and letters 200+ times. Yes, she helped create the classical canon, but she bitterly complained when concerts lacked “freshness”. She LIVED for new music.
Oct. 1st, 1853—Johannes Brahms walked into the Schumanns’ parlor.🚶🏼
It began a historic musical partnership. (No, I don’t mean with Robert.)
I mean, the 40yr professional relationship of Clara & Johannes.👫🎼
Oh
#LesbianVisibilityDay
😍
Eugenie Schumann (Clara’s youngest daughter) called soprano Marie Fillunger “her better half” in 1878 and followed her to London in 1891. They lived together for decades and are buried beside each other.❤️❤️❤️