Beatrice Venezi’s BLOG – The century that transformed the author into a muse.
Last time, I left you standing in front of a locked cupboard. Inside lay the music that Nannerl Mozart had written, which no one would ever hear again. And I had promised you one thing: that the coming century — the nineteenth century, the Romantic era — would treat female talent with something more subtle than the ban that had locked that cupboard. It would not have forbidden women from making music. It would have convinced them, with all the delicacy of a compliment, that their role was to inspire it, not to create it. The muse, not the composer.
Tonight I’m going to open three different wardrobes. I find the first one left ajar by a brother who loves his sister, but not enough to let her sign it. The second I find bolted shut by a father who writes his daughter’s diary for her, in the first person, as if she were him. The third, however — and this is why you must stay until the very end — someone manages to unhinge it completely with a single word: equality.
Let’s start with Hamburg, in the early nineteenth century. A city that was subjugated, liberated, expanding, and then reduced to ashes: the perfect breeding ground for Romanticism to take root – the era that placed emotion in the place of Enlightenment reason, and the artist’s tormented self in the place of the perfect form of Classicism.
In that city, Fanny Mendelssohn was born in that century. Perhaps the surname sounds familiar to you.
His father’s name is Abraham; he is a banker, and for her youngest son — Felix, the youngest at five — she has a clear vision for his future: «Music will become his profession.»
For Fanny, however, the verdict is the opposite, and he puts it in writing: «For you, however, it can and must be nothing more than a mere adornment. You ought to apply yourself with greater seriousness and more zeal to your true and only work – the only work befitting a young lady: being a housewife.»
Two and a half centuries have passed since Maddalena Casulana, who, in 1568, dared to write that it was «futile mistake»Men like to think they are the sole masters of talent. And Fanny hears the same old idea repeated to her, almost word for word. Progress, as we shall see, is never a straight line.
Fanny isn’t giving up. But he is under no illusions either, and he admits as much with a bitterness that, two centuries on, we recognise all too well, for it is the same as that felt by anyone who creates something amidst general indifference: «If no one offers you an opinion or takes the slightest interest in your creations, in time you lose not only all pleasure, but also any ability to judge their value. I cannot help but regard it as a sign of talent that I do not give up composing, even though I cannot get anyone to take an interest in my efforts.»
Take a moment to reflect on this sentence, because it is a very modern form of creative unease, and it lies at the heart of today’s entire episode: it is not enough simply to have the gift. You also need someone who, upon seeing it, will acknowledge it.
And here, Fanny doesn’t miss that someone entirely. Felix truly admires her, gives her advice and relies on her. But there is a world of difference between admiring a sister and letting her sign and publish her work, and Felix does not bridge that gap. It is said that some of the Lieder published under his name were actually written by her. And in the presence of Queen Victoria, who confesses to Felix that she loves his composition above all others Italy , Felix is forced to admit that the music had, in fact, sprung from Fanny’s mind. Not because she wanted to steal it from him: it was simply that, for a woman, publishing it was still considered improper, and he said quite sincerely «I can’t say I approve of it.».
Fanny is waiting. He waited forty-one years. And then, in 1846, he wrote Felix the bravest letter in this story: «For forty years I’ve been afraid of you, just as I was afraid of Dad when I was fourteen, because I’ve always wanted to please the people I love. But now, Felix, I’m going against your wishes and I’m telling you that I’ve started publishing.»
From then on, Fanny wrote and published, He composed nearly five hundred works, including a masterpiece such as the Trio in D minor, Op. 11.
He wrote it just one month before his death. On 14 May 1847, barely a year had passed since she had decided to take control of her life; a stroke struck her whilst she was practising a piece on the piano. In a final, bitter twist of irony, that piece wasn’t even hers: it was The First Walpurgis Night, by Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny’s brother.
Let’s move on to Leipzig, during the same period; another little girl is growing up in a different kind of shadow.
“The daughter of”. Then: “the wife of”. This, it seems, was the whole of Clara Wieck Schumann’s fate, despite her talent.
Her father, Friedrich Wieck, is a renowned piano teacher, the owner of a piano factory, and for years he writes the little girl’s diary in the first person, as if Clara were him. When she grows up and wants to write the diary herself, her father still insists on reading it and approving it. Clara is moulded, in body and mind, towards a single goal: to become the very best. And indeed she does. She made her debut at the age of ten; at eighteen she was appointed ‘Chamber Virtuoso of the Emperor’ in Vienna — the highest honour for a musician — and Paganini, Goethe and Liszt were among those who came to applaud her. Even Chopin sent her his compliments.
And in the midst of this triumph, at the age of nine, She knew one of her father’s pupils who was rather unreliable but full of genius: Robert Schumann. She fell in love with him at sixteen and married him at twenty-one, only when coming of age finally allowed her to go against her father’s wishes.
The Schumann household is brimming with music, of poetry, of two minds that mirror one another: the famousCarnival Robert’s Op. 9 references works by Clara, and for years, some of her Lieder were mistaken for compositions by him.
And there’s more: during those very same years, Clara was the link between Robert’s music and that of a young composer — entirely different in style — who had been a regular visitor to the Schumann household since he was a boy: rigorous, conservative, and, according to the gossip of the time, in love with her all his life: Johannes Brahms. Without Clara — her judgement, her energy, her network of connections — we would probably not know German Romanticism today as we do. It is she who holds together, literally with her own hands, the legacy of two of its leading figures.
But marriage, however much it is based on love, rearranges the rooms, including the music rooms. An injury to his ring finger forces Robert to give up the piano and devote himself solely to composition, and to compose he needs absolute silence. Clara writes, disconsolate: «My playing is falling behind; it always happens when Robert’s composing. There isn’t even an hour for me; I can’t get anything done with the composition, and sometimes I feel like smashing my stupid head against the wall.»
Not the thin walls of just any old house: the thin walls of a marriage in which two geniuses breathe the same air, and one of them, almost always, has to hold their breath.
Eight children, a love that lasts as long as Robert does not begin to show increasingly unmanageable signs of that inner turmoil — the Tornness which I have already mentioned elsewhere, embodied in his characters Florestano and Eusebio — right up to the mental illness that slowly erases everything from his mind. Including music. He died at the age of forty-six.
And here, exactly where Fanny’s life had come to an end, Clara’s story begins anew. For when Robert died, she did not fade away with him: she gathered his compositions, organised them, safeguarded them and promoted them with a tenacity that she felt, she said, was a true calling. And she returned to performing and teaching at the Frankfurt Conservatoire for another forty years, with acclaimed tours throughout Europe; her final concert took place when she was seventy-two.
And yet, even at the height of his success, There remains that little voice that whispers to her to be humble, not to put herself out there too much. Of her own music, Clara herself will say: «It’s just a woman’s job.»
That’s what she says about herself. Not a critic, not a father, not a husband: her. That is how deeply the idea that someone else planted in your mind as a child can take root over the course of a lifetime. Clara Schumann will, in the minds of many, always and in any case remain Robert Schumann’s wife.
And now we come to the third wardrobe. Which someone, at last, breaks down.
Louise was born into a family of artists, In a bohemian milieu where talent needs no justification, she studied music seriously, not merely for pleasure: she enrolled at the conservatoire, studying under exceptional teachers in a class that had, until then, been open only to men. She joined the class and stood out from the rest.
Love – that, at least, stops her for a moment: At the age of seventeen, she married Aristide Farrenc, a flautist, and set off on tour with him – not as “his wife”, but as one half of an equal partnership. When Aristide grew tired of life on the road and set up a music publishing firm in Paris, Louise returned to her studies where she had left off, and over the years built up a reputation as a soloist and composer that no one could ignore: two overtures, three symphonies — the third of which was received with great acclaim at the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire — and a Nonet that won over Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt and Brahms.
In 1842, she was called to teach the piano at the Paris Conservatoire. She remained there for over thirty years. She was the only woman in the entire institution.
But for the top ten, that professorship is paid less than that of her male colleagues. And here, instead of suffering in silence like so many before her, Louise fought back. For a decade. And in the end — perhaps spurred on by the overwhelming success of her Nonet — she achieved what, even today, remains the most difficult goal for so many women: a salary identical to that of her male colleagues. Equality, yes. Regardless of gender. Despite everything.
It’s a small victory, in a century of closed doors. But it is a genuine victory, the first in this series that does not end in regret.
He died in 1875. With her passing, her fame also fades, as is the case with many of the women featured in this book. It is up to us to restore them to their rightful place in the spotlight.
Three women, one century. Fanny, who waited forty years to disobey, yet remains, to most people, “the sister of”. Clara, a key figure of German Romanticism, remains, to most people, “the wife of”. Louise, who, alone amongst them all, manages to secure not only the right to compose, but also equal pay. Three different ways of answering the same question that Romanticism had posed without stating it openly: muse or author?
Next time, we’ll move on to the 20th century, and I’ll tell you about Nadia Boulanger and Sofia Gubaidulina. But that, as always, is for another episode.
For the time being, Just bear this image in mind: three cupboards, three different keys. And at least one of these keys – Louise’s – managed to open the cupboard.
Beatrice Venezi