Musical messaging in the early piano correspondence between Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann

Abstract

Clara Wieck (1819-96) was a particularly successful nineteenth-century musician. Unlike many of her female contemporaries, and contrary to her social conditioning, she occupied space within the male dominated public sphere of music making, as both a performer and composer. Her participation in dichotomous social realms was unique, and affected the normalcy of her personal life and relationships. Accordingly, during their courtship, Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann (1810-56) were forced to communicate their love through a means that departed from the nineteenth-century norm---music. This thesis argues that many of their early piano works, spanning the decade of the 1830s, were written with some intention of correspondence or message to the other party. Three main conceptual frameworks are employed for musical analysis: firstly, the characteristics of sentiment, social context, mood, and gender as betrayed by genre; secondly, the overt relevance of musical quotation; and finally, the perceived relevance of titles and dedications. Wieck and Schumann's music and courtship is explored herein to determine the extra-musical communicative potential of music for solo piano.