Scan 13
Musical Courier 1903-01-28: Vol 46 Iss 1192, 1903
61 lines. Read by computer on 22 September 2026. Printed page 14. See the scan on archive.org.
1SCHUMANN'S COURTSHIP.
3The course of true love did not run very smooth for Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck any more than it does for less artistic and more prosaic lovers. Schumann had known her since she was thirteen years old, even then being an accomplished pianist; but Papa Wieck, a man of practical common sense as well as a great piano teacher, refused his consent to their union. The lovers sighed and longed, but clouds still hung over them. On May 2, 1839, Clara, who was then concertizing in Paris, wrote Schumann a letter which threw him into deep despair. A few days before she had assured him that at Easter of the following year she would become his wife, and we can imagine how keen would be the pain to the composer, in whose brain the seeds of insanity were already germinating, when her letter urged him to be patient about their betrothal till she had got together a little capital, which, united to what Schumann already had, would enable them to begin their wedded life comparatively free from care; then, she added, her father would readily give his consent to their union.
5In the same strain her friend and confidant, Emilie List, wrote to him; both letters were simply reasonable and prudent, and in Clara's every line revealed her love and truth. Her letter had crossed one that Schumann had written to her, in which, all beaming with joy, he reckoned that they possessed enough to be able to face the future without anxiety.
7"I am quite horrified," he wrote, "when I compare our wealth to that of others. How good Heaven has been to us that we need not work for our daily bread, two simple artists as we are. It makes me happy, does this thought."
9He goes into figures and calculates that from dividends and other sources of income they will have 1,384 thalers a year. Clara must have divined that her common sense letter would grieve and depress Schumann, for she immediately wrote to him on May 13 to soothe and quiet him respecting her feelings and to restore their old confidence. To this he at once replied in a noble letter in which he clasped her hand for a final reconciliation.
11Clara was now twenty years of age and could not get married without her father's consent, and Schumann resolved to make another appeal to him. He submitted to Clara two letters, one to her father, in a cool, businesslike, respectful tone, and another to the court of law to which application would be made to overrule Father Wieck's objection and legalize the marriage without his consent. But even then neither appeals nor threats moved the old man. He did indeed ostensibly give his consent, but with such reservations that it was really a refusal. He laid down as preliminary conditions that as long as he lived Robert and Clara should not live in Leipsic, but that Schumann must nevertheless earn as much elsewhere as his newspaper the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, brought in; that he, Wieck, need not hand over her property to Clara till five years had passed, during which period he would pay her 5 per cent. per annum; that Schumann have legally certified and placed in the hands of Wieck's lawyer the statement of his income that he had exhibited two years before; that Clara renounce all claims as an heir to his (Wieck's) property, and finally that Schumann should neither speak nor write to him till Wieck himself expressed a wish that he should do so. If all these clauses were agreed to then the marriage might take place on Michaelmas Day, 1839.
13Terms like these, put in such an insulting way, convinced Schumann that the breach with the father could never be healed, but he clung to the hope that, if the marriage were once solemnized, even by the intervention of the court, there would be more friendly relations created between him and his father-in-law. Meanwhile his correspondence with Clara was painfully emotional.
15"What heart sorrow you would have spared me if you had sent to me earlier your father's letter and your answer!" is the cry with which he begins one letter. "Think," he continues, "that at all this distance I have nothing but your words in your letters to which I can cling," adding that day by day his courage is sinking. "It is a long time since I wrote to you, and I had determined to part from you for some time. Why? Let me forget it. It is over! Now, however, that you trust me so fully once again, that I see through the net in which your father would entrap us, I have no fear that you will again waver in your plighted word or show any weakness. Thereon I press thy hand—my Clara—and never again half say or half write anything."
17Clara's love, however, had never wavered, in spite of the querulous tone of her lover's letters, and she sent him on his birthday a portrait of herself which she had painted in Paris, and also a cigar case which she had made herself. On the same day she received a letter from Schumann, which reveals the noble side of his character:
19Leipsic, June 3, 1839.
21My Good, Beloved Bride—This letter you receive on my twenty-ninth birthday. May it find you flourishing in body and soul and bring my image before you more intimately than ever. We can look back on the by-gone year free from all reproach; we have been true to each other; we have gone onward and approached nearer to our goal. The worst, I think, is past, but still, though we are near the haven, let us look ahead. Fortune has willed that we must fight to gain inch after inch. But, then, when we stand at the altar—then, I believe that never has a "Yes" been said with such conviction, such firm faith in a happy future. What must I do till that moment? Become more and more worthy of you. Do not regard this a mere figure of speech. As for the high courage which relies on nothing, I am proud; as for modesty such as you have I confess my weakness readily and seek to better myself. Many a time in later years you will grieve about me. I lack much from being the whole perfect man. I am too restless, too childish, often too soft. I cling too much to what gives me pleasure without regard to others; in brief, I have bad days when nothing suits me. Tenderness and love such as you have often shown me will build me up; already to have you near one must ennoble; but these are words. There remains what is the surest, we love each other with our whole hearts, and I think that in your heart there dwells a great, rich love, and that you can long make your husband happy. You are a wonderful girl, Clara! A crowd of such beautiful and various qualities rests in your being. I do not know where you gained them all in your short life, and in the surroundings in which you have developed! One thing I know, that I, with my gentle ways, early made an impression on you, and I think you would have been another girl had you not seen and known me. Leave me this blissful faith. I have taught you love, your father hate (in a good sense, I mean, for we must be able to hate). I have brought you up to be my bride such as in idea only I imagined. You were my most talented pupil; as a reward, therefore, you have said to me: "Now, take me too."
23A very charming and characteristic letter, full of the deep feeling which inspired him to send to Clara the humorous account (is not humor a form of pathos?) of the festivities with which his birthday was celebrated. "Will you listen to me, your old fairy story teller? My first thoughts flew to you." Then he humorously tells how the morning sun was the first to congratulate him, how he thought the fitting place for the festivities was the open air amid green fields. Butterflies were his heralds, larks flew right and left to greet the birthday hero, while fields of ears of corn bowed in salutation, there was no cloud in the heavens, "so I was glad at heart, and thought of my queen in faraway lands. I felt proud of my kingdom." Then in mid-day slumber he dreams that a friend appears, and hopes he will soon be married to his queen whom a cruel father keeps in durance. Then he drew out her portrait and forgot his kingship, forgot everything and "kissed and looked, and kissed again and then—the rest you can imagine."
25But all the while the hard hearted father stood between the lovers, and urged Clara to subscribe the conditions already mentioned, of which she says that they were so insulting that she was horrified to think her father could have written them. She refused firmly, and the matter went before the courts of law. At last, after much mental torment, the marriage took place September 12, 1840, at Schonefelt, near Leipsic. Poor Clara! it had been better for her had she listened to the paternal advice. Wieck had early detected the shadow of the doom that awaited, sooner or later, his brilliant scholar, a doom that nothing could avert, which compelled him to leave Leipsic three years after his marriage, which clouded his life for years and left him at last to die, a suicidal maniac, in the arms of the faithful Clara.
27In her diary she tells us that on the wedding day there was little dancing, no exuberant gaiety, but general content. "It was a beautiful day, even the sun that had been hidden for several days, shed its mild beams as if to bless their union. 'Nothing disturbed us on this day, so let it be inscribed in this book as the fairest and most important of my life. One period of my life is ended, now a new life begins,' and then, as if with a presentiment, she adds, 'heavy duties rest on me; may heaven give me strength to fulfill them as a good wife ought; it has always supported me and will do so further.'"
29The Francis Walker Studio.
31Two very large gatherings were entertained by Francis Walker last week, the American Association of Allied Arts at a musicale on the afternoon of January 19, and on Thursday evening, January 22, over a hundred well known society people participated in a reception and dance given by Mr. Walker and Douglas Maxwell Stanfield.
33At the musicale the audience, numbering more than 150 people, were the Art Association and their friends, and the following program was given:
35Song, The Devout Lover……………………………M. Valerie White
36Francis Walker.
38Duets—
39On the Banks of That Lone River…………………..
40The Secret……………………………………..Mrs. Walter Iringer and Miss Richie Bolles.
42Piano—
43Nocturne………………………………………Harrison-Irvine
44Minuet…………………………………………..Seeboeck
45Song, Holy Night……………………………….Luton Wood
46Song, The Violet……………………………….Mildenburg
47Piano, Etude in D flat………………………….Liszt
48Irish Folksong…………………………………Foote
49Song, Auf Wiedersehen………………………….Arthur Nevin
50Francis Walker.
52The accompanists were Mrs. Harry F. Irvine, Miss Richie Bolles and Mrs. Charles Pliny Bromley.
54The reception and dance on the 22d was in some respects the most brilliant studio affair of the season. The large reception room and corridor were used for dancing, making a very bright and inviting suite of rooms. A feature of the evening was the presence of a group of charming Southern girls, with their chaperons, Mrs. De Jarnette and Mrs. Elizabeth Conin Latta.
56Songs by Clara A. Korn.
58The Newark Sunday Call, of recent date, contained the following:
60Mrs. Clara A. Korn, the well known pianist and composer, who resides in East Orange, is the author of an album of nine songs, just published by Breitkopf & Härtel, of New York and Leipsic. The poems are selected from Tennyson, Lowell, Whitier and other poets. Mrs. Korn has a graceful imagination, and these melodies are fluent and pretty, and the piano accompaniments are well and judiciously written, not too difficult and complex, but yet more than the common and, we may say, commonplace, alternations of the tonic and dominant chords. These songs have the merit of being singable, which quality sometimes does not attach to some very good songs, considered as musical compositions. Mrs. Korn deserves congratulation on these songs.
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