CLARA SCHUMANN.*

is not long since we noticed in these columns the admirable work of Miss Florence May—The Girlhood of Clara Schumann, in which the relations of the great pianist to her father, Friedrich Wieck, were for the first time fairly, fully, and dispassionately set forth in English by an English writer. Miss May's book, however, only carried the story as far as 1840. Here we have in a slightly condensed form Litzmann'a great biography, which not only justifies Miss May's view of the father but completes in great detail the life-history of his daughter. The work occupies two stout volumes in the excellent abridged version of Miss Hadow, and illustrates a characteristic defect of modern biography—that authors have not time to write short books. When we have said this we have said practically all that can be said in disparage- ment of the book. Dr. Litzmann honestly avows his lack of technical musical knowledge in his preface, but the general reader will not recognize the shortcoming. As Schumann himself remarked, few trained musicians have any real literary skill ; and an accomplished man of letters with a general appreciation of music and a deep admiration for his subject makes a far better biographer than a scientific musician with no command of literary expression. This Life is not a critical biography ; the author was too closely in touch with Madame Schumann to adopt such an attitude; but it is a splendid memorial to a noble woman and a great artist, and it owes its abiding value to the fact that it is mainly told in her own letters and diaries.

In his Afernoires Tolstoy, while discussing various forms of affection, describes a type which is exacting as well as devoted. The affection which Wieck felt for his daughter was of this tyrannous kind. He was a man of remarkable persistence and energy, who had made great sacrifices for art, and who had been embittered by his matrimonial troubles. Disappointed in his wife, he staked all on his daughter, in whom he hoped vicariously to achieve the wider distinction denied him as an artist. He was a hard taskmaster, but the stories of overwork are shown to have been greatly exaggerated. None the less, Clara knew little of the joys of child- -hood ; she was practically motherless, and in a sense she could not call her soul her own. Her father for several years dictated her diary. As a teacher be was the best she could possibly have had, if we are to judge not merely by the perfection of her technique, but by the standards of taste • Clara Schumann an Artist's Life. By Berthold Littmann. Translated lad abridged frona the Fourth Edition- by Grace E. Hadow, Irith.a Preface by Rados,. 2 vols. London, Macmillan and Co. L24a. net.]

which he enforced and his emancipated outlook on both the past and the present. Though he was prepared to make com- promises in deference to the public, be was at heart an idealist, not an opportunist. At the same time it is impossible to deny that there was a great deal of shrewd worldly wisdom in his initial objections to Cla.ra's engagement to Robert Schumann.

Why should she sacrifice a brilliant career at the very outset to become the wife of an unpractical visionary who was crippled as a virtuoso, and had not yet earned public recognition as a composer ? But when their attachment had been tested by time and Schurnann's reputation was steadily growing, Wieck's hostility was so far from being appeased that it hardened into an unnatural and implacable fury. For four years he main- tained this unrelenting attitude and, as Mr. Hadow notes in his

introduction, it was very characteristic of Wieck that after barring his front door against the rebels he should invite them in through the door of the music-room. "He had opposed Schumann from a genuine disbelief in his powers, and with 'a sort of Stoic justice withdrew when he found that he was in-

tile wrong." Wieck was a very angular man, but he was a humorist in his odd way, and much will be forgiven him for the delightful remark with which he reassured Clara, aged nine, on her arrival at the Gewandhaus on the occasion of her first performance in those classic precincts. "On setting out

for the concert-room the debutante was put by mistake into an omnibus conveying some dancers to a country ball. When she arrived at the Gewandhaus, very late and very nervous, she was met by her father with a paper of sugar-plums and, the grave reassurance, 'I quite forgot to tell you, Clarchen, that people are always taken to the wrong house the first time they play in public.'" Again, his answers to the "seventeen questions which wore asked him seven hundred times at Hamburg" when Clara was on tour are an inimitable and abiding satire on irrelevant inquisitiveness.

Amid these harsh but strenuous and stimulating influences- Clara Wieck grew up, if not a paragon of all the virtues, at any rate a delightful specimen of rightmindedness and goodness of heart as well as of rare musical accomplish- ment. She inherited none of her father's saturnine

humour ; she was neither embittered by disappointment and sorrow nor spoiled by success. She seemed incap-

able of jealousy, and her judgments of her great contem- poraries and rivals are at once generous and discriminating.

Anything that savoured of charlatanry, affectation, or extra- vagance she could not endure; yet she was able to appreciate the magic of Liszt as an interpreter, while repelled by his artistic personality and bored by his compositions. Yet it would be a great mistake to regard her as a sort of female Aristides. among artists. She was neither a pedant nor a prude. If she

cordially disliked Wagner she was from the outset enchanted by Chopin. Her catholicity of taste was combined with .a wholesome independence of view. She was a pioneer a romanticism and a devoted champion of Bach and Beethoven. She was equally intimate with Jenny Lind and Pauline

Viardot-Garcia, two great artiste of diametrically opposed temperaments. And though a devoted wife she could not

share all her husband's enthusiasms, e.g., for Sterndale Bennett. Rubinstein's talent she was inclined to underestimate, per- haps because of the wrong notes, which he himself admitted were numerous enough to make a symphony, and it is curious. to note that as she grew older Brahms's playing caused her-

positive irritation from its slovenliness and obscurity. This was not the only cause of friction between them, but in spite-

of occasional estrangements it was a very noble and beautiful friendship, and Madame Schumann has left on record, in memorable and moving words addressed to her children, her- acknowledgment of all she owed Brahms in the dark days a her husband's decline.

To every man, no matter how unhappy he may be, God sends some comfort, and we are surely meant to enjoy it and to strengthen ourselves by its means. I have you, but you are but children. You hardly knew your dear father, you were still too young to feel deep grief, and thus in those terrible years you could give me no comfort. Hope, indeed, you could bring me, but that was not enough to support ins through such agony. Then came Johannes Brahms. Your father loved and admired him, as he did no man except Joachim. He came, like a true friend, to share all my sorrow ; he strengthened the heart that threatened to break, he uplifted my mind, he cheered my spirits when and where ever he could, in short he was my friend in the fullest sense of the word. . . . He and Joachim were the only people whom your dear father saw during his illness, and he always received them with evident %basun, sojenpata.itis mind was -clear.. And he did- - not know. -Joisannenfor years, as I did. can truly say, my children; 'that" I never loved any friend at I did him—it is an eirquitite-harnreny of Au". • '164s- nOt-hia yotith that r-love; there-it-no Aattered ;vanity in my affection. I love–his-treshness-of-,mind, -his wonderfully gifted nature,_his noble heart, which khave learned to _know in the -oparsiStyenni, as others cannot," - . It la intentely interesting . to read and compare her first iMprOssions. of 'the " rourrg Eagle" with the letters of Schumann, and the lemons." New Paths" article. Through- couttheir long 'fiends hip Madame 'Schumann criticized B ra hm a's compositions with the mtmost, frankness, bale never appears tOlave resented it in the slightest; indeed; one latter of his, -which annoyed her a good. deal, takes her to task for rating &is geniustoo. high.- Her unswerving. -honesty is shown in a :remarkable letter to Madame Sehroeder-Devrient, begging that illustrious artist to reconsider her decision to re turn to public life when her voice had gone. "You who stand- there- nnapproach, able, who- personified an ideal in • art, will 'you now deliver yourself up to the-light-minded, shallow multitude which cries ▪ a voice'? If you sang your heart out of your body they would not- acknowledge it, becansesour voide no longer las its youthful freshness, and .unfcirtunately it is this multi- inde that has to. pay."

The story of the last years of Madame Schumann's married life is one long tragedy relieved by a few shining moments. .Sehumann's breakdown was all the more distressing because it involved the shattering of every gentle and beautiful nature, and -when time had begun to heal his wife's sorrow, it was renewed

• anxiety for her children.. If ever anyone was made-strong 1.?3, suffering it was Clara Schumann, and those who remember her playing will recall that high and intimate quality which is only found in artists who have felt and suffered and .endrired. It is pleasant to think that though she found the :artistic atmosphere of England uncongenial at the time of her first *visit, and was treated with a lack not merely of sympathy ibrit.of chivalry by the press, the English public took-to her from the first, and in time she came-to-recognize not only the tvvarmth of their goodwill but the fineness - of-their perception. "The English," she wrote in 1888," are wonderfully responsive, 'though their stiff manners often -conceal it,- but if they once let themselves go, their feelings break -out with greater -energy than is the case with us Germans." And again- she writes several years later that, though the English did not under, stand 'Brahma better than the Germans, they treated great :artists with greater reverence. Madame 'Schumann's last sears were clouded by infirmity, and she felt the affliction of .deafness keenly, but her spirit was indomitable, and it might 'indeed be said of her that she recalled the boast of Solon recorded by Cicero : qui se- quotidie aliquid addiseentem.senem fieri dicit—studying new music, going to hear new plays, and even practising her scales when-she was nearly seventy. eve. Her devotion to her children was hivingly repaid: by her. daughters Marie and Eugenie,. her two "guardian angels," who were with her at the end. She was laid beside .her husband at Bann on a beautiful day- in--Whitsuntide; 1896, and the record closes with the words in which:- Brahma; who was so soon to follow her to the grave, expressed • his feelings to Joachim on learning that her days were itumbered "The thought of losing her can no longer frighten us, not even me, the lonely one, for whom all too little lives in this world. And when. she • ha left us, will-hot our ..faces shine when.werthink of her--of that.gloriouswornan whom-we have-been happy enough. to know during the course of a long life, loving and admiring her ever more and more ? Thus,and thus only, shall we mourn her." Miss Miaow has done-her work extremely well, and her brother, the Principal of . Armstrong. College, .Newcastle, has contribirted.an introduction which is delightful in spirit and expression: - The extraordinary number, of bad _misprints is ;doubtless -.attributable to. the fact that the book has, been. printed:abroad.'