Clara: A Novel

This was the first book I ever received for free two years ago. I started reading it and got bored and put it aside. This year is the time for me to wrap up unfinished business. Although I felt it took forever, I finally finished the book. This book is the story of Clara and Robert Schumann, famous pianist and composer, about their troubled marriage and madness.

For the rest of the review, visit my book blog at: http://angelofmine1974.livejournal.com/55726.html ( )

Clara by Janice Galloway (Scotland,2002)

This is a fictionalised biography of Clara Wieck, who married the composer Robert Schumann. Under the tutelage of a tyrannical father, piano teacher Friedrich Wieck, young Clara is formed into a child prodigy. Her career as a concert pianist continues into adulthood and she is acclaimed throughout Europe.
Schumann enters the story as a pupil of Herr Wieck. Due to a hand problem Schumann cannot be the performer he wishes to be and turns all of his efforts to composition. Even before an amorous relationship develops between the two, Clara becomes Schumann’s voice through his piano pieces. No-one understands Schumann as well as Clara.
And so they marry but their lives are regularly affected by Schumann’s mental illness. Over many years Clara acts as nurse to her husband’s moods, transcribes his music, performs his music, composes her own music, tours when money runs low, and bears eight children.
Galloway’s novel is marvellous in its evocation of Clara’s life in the nineteenth century. I have previously studied the Schumanns but Clara
portrays their lives much more vividly than I could have imagined for myself. Of course this is fiction, but it does paint an unforgettable picture. Galloway prose is unique and lovely. Clara is an excellent book about a remarkable woman. I loved it. ( )

subtitle: A Novel of Clara Schumann

A fictional account of the real-life character Clara Wieck Schumann, her father Friedrich Wieck, and her husband Robert Schumann. Clara’s life is told from her earliest memories, through her training by her father as a concert pianist, her forbidden courtship with Robert, her troubled marriage, and Robert’s confinement and death. This is not a happy story, something that is obvious from the very beginning. Clara’s father is strict and overbearing, and treats her as property to be exploited. She is a gifted pianist, and begins touring (with her father) in her early teenage years. Clara’s skill makes her father famous as a teacher, and Robert Schumann (nine years older than Clara) becomes a student. The inevitable happens when Clara and Robert fall in love.

Even at this early stage, Robert’s instability is made obvious by the author. The marriage is forbidden by Friedrich, and Robert and Clara have to resort to appealing to the courts for permission to marry, which happens once Clara comes of age. The marriage is troubled from the start. The author portrays Robert as suffering from alternating periods of manic and melancholic states. Clara is perpetually pregnant, and forced to tour to support the family. She compares the difficulty of living with Robert to walking on eggshells.

This is fiction, of course, but based largely on fact. The edition I read (ISBN: 0743238532) includes an interview with the author in which she states that she was as accurate as she could be without being slavish. The tone throughout, in my opinion, is one of quiet desperation. We are always waiting for the next crisis in Robert’s life. The author’s style heightens the feeling of anxiety.

Clara suffers terribly from her father and from Robert, but there are moments when she is happy, although there is always the threat of disaster looming. All the famous musicians of the time make an appearance in the novel: Paganini, Liszt, Mendelsohn, and the young Brahms. The author is not a musician, but I could not tell it from the writing – she does an excellent job.

Here is the young Friendrich, describing his fascination for the piano:

… God wanted Friedrich for the piano. What else explained his fascination, his feeling of kinship for the instrument? Something about its hamstrung innards, its rickle of ivory slats, kept drawing him almost against his will. Dependent and tyrannical, willing and resistant, the piano soothed and irritated in equal measure. You could spend your life trying to tame the brute, coaxing it, pursuing its relentless demand for mastery. What music it could make: and orchestra in a box! It was peerless. Yet it was nothing, no more than a stranded whale, without a human operative. Without him.

And here is Clara, thinking about the manuscript for Schumann’s piano concerto:

… Even the look of it thrilled her: the bar lines looped over and skirted and duped for melody’s sake, effects that could be seen only on the page, not heard in their full subtlety at all. It was clever and beautiful, but it was more that that. It was proof. Proof that sheer effort of will could construct a wholeness where none existed. Proof that music and those who made it could confront chaos, and find in it what was tender and fantastical and clear and true. And this was her purpose: to play such music; music that made everything, everything, come through.

Reading the novel put me in my own melancholic state for days. Isn’t that what we desire from good literature? That it is so convincing and real that we are lost in the story? Thankfully we have Clara’s legacy as a concert pianist and Robert’s music to keep their memories alive – and this excellent novel. ( )

I don't think I have enough adjectives to describe this glorious novel. Here's 3 for starters: intelligent, informative, ingenious.

It is the story of the love, courtship and marriage of Robert and Clara Schumann. Clara, a young naive girl, musical prodigy in her own right, falls for Robert Schumann. Her bullying father opposes the union but, this is the height of the Romantic Era, and true love prevails. Robert and Clara marry but Clara escapes from one prision to another. Robert is beset with mental illness and Clara is beset by no less than 10 pregnancies! Yet, forced to be the breadwinner, she must stay strong and successful .....

Drawing on many details that must have been included in the Schumanns' marriage diary, Janice Galloway paints a detailed picture of the tensions and the ofttimes present bleakness and desperation in Clara's life. The narrative style is extraordinary. The action is presented from the viewpoint of the 3 main protagonists: Clara, her father and Robert Schumann himself. The reader feels as though s/he is inside their heads, following their thought processes (stream of consciousness?) yet, at the same time, s/he is slightly distanced because this is a 3rd person narrative with the feel of a biography. The style does take time to get used to but it is well-worth the effort.

The structure of the novel is also extraordinary. An enforced separation during their courtship sees Robert Schumann set over 100 lyrical poems to music. One of these cycles - Frauenliebe und -leben by Adalbert von Chamisso - Schumann's Opus 42 - consists of 8 poems. The book is structured around these poems, starting with "Seit ich ihn gesehen" (Since I saw him ....), the section in which Clara meets Schumann to "Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan" (Now you have hurt me for the first time) in which Schumann dies and leaves Clara a widow with 8 children to feed. I found this an ingenious device for interweaving the music into the structure of the novel, demonstrating the fundamental role it played in Clara Schumann's life.

The backdrop of the novel is extremely colourful, littered as it is with the great composers of the C19th - Mendelssohn, Chopin, Paganini, Lizst and Brahms, each with their own distinctive ways and characters. There's plenty on musical theory and lots of interesting detail regarding piano teaching methods of the time. Yet, while the music is intrinsic to the story, it never overwhelms the main narrative. While musicians will appreciate the knowing details (Galloway is herself a trained musician, I believe), you do not need to be a musician to appreciate this novel.

Augmenting the reading with a recording of Clara's compositions and a recital of Chamisso's lyrical poetry turned the book group discussion into a real evening of culture.

A worthy Scottish Saltire Book of Year 2002 and the best novel I read in 2006. ( )