Compositional Methods

Although Clara Schumann pursued a career primarily as a concert pianist, she composed some fifty works that, taken together, illustrate a two-pronged interest found also in the output of her husband, Robert Schumann. On the one hand, Clara and Robert adopted compositional styles and genres in vogue during their day. On the other hand, both deeply appreciated the traditions of their largely Germanic forebears, and they paid tribute by grounding their music in historical methods inherited from their predecessors. This chapter considers their output from each perspective and then concludes with examples that illustrate a productive dialogue between the two.