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Old Wieck stooped to everything, and even told Clara that he had written to Ernestine to demand a statement that she fully released Schumann from his former engagement to her it being remembered that among Germans a betrothal always used to be almost as difficult a bond to sever as a marriage tie.
But in our system of naïve psychology, we ought not to omit such distinctly true remarks as Rabelais' much-quoted words: “The appetite comes during the eating”; or Fox's words: “Example will avail ten times more than precept”; or Moltke's: “Uncertainty in commanding produces uncertainty in obedience”; or Luther's: “Nothing is forgotten more slowly than an insult, and nothing more quickly than a benefaction.” It is Fichte who first said: “Education is based on the self-activity of the mind.” Napoleon coins the good metaphor: “A mind without memory is a fortress without garrison.” Buffon said what professional psychologists have repeated after him: “Genius is nothing but an especial talent for patience.” Schumann claims: “The talent works, the genius creates.” We may quote from Jean Paul: “Nobody in the world, not even women and princes, is so easily deceived as our own conscience”; or from Pascal: “Habit is a second nature which destroys the original one.” Nietzsche says: “Many do not find their heart until they have lost their head”; Voltaire: “The secret of ennui is to have said everything”; Jean Paul: “Sorrows are like the clouds in a thunderstorm; they look black in the distance, but over us hardly gray.” Once more I quote Nietzsche: “The same emotions are different in their rhythm for man and woman: therefore men and women never cease to misunderstand each other.”
She made frequent tours, and met with universal success. The criticisms of her work include an extremely favourable notice by Schumann. In 1840 she settled in Boulogne, where she became renowned as a teacher, and led a successful career until her death in 1887.
he "measured himself against Beethoven and Mozart" by playing in a public concert; at sixteen years of age he wrote his Première Symphonie. As he grew older he soaked himself in the music of Bach and Händel, and was able to compose at will after the manner of Rossini, Verdi, Schumann, and Wagner.
This seems to me a bigger task than is set before any other class of art-workers. The pianist must be able to render with appropriate sentiment the simplicity and fresh naïveté of the earlier classics, Haydn, Mozart; the grandeur of Bach; the heroic measures of Beethoven; the morbid elegance of Chopin; the romanticism of Schumann; the magnificent splendor of Liszt.
Schumann compared the second SCHERZO, Op. 31, to a poem of Byron's, "so tender, so bold, as full of love as of scorn." Indeed, scorn an element which does not belong to what is generally understood by either frolicsomeness or humour plays an important part in Chopin's scherzos. The very beginning of Op. 31 offers an example. It must be a charnel-house, he said on one occasion."
It is interesting to know the ideas, even the erroneous ideas, of geniuses and men of great talent, such as Goethe, Schumann, Wagner, Sainte-Beuve, and Michelet, when they wish to indulge in criticism; but it is of no interest at all to know whether Mr. So-and-so likes, or does not like, such-and-such dramatic or musical work." So writes M. Vincent d'Indy.
The imagery of this tribute to Clara's playing is readily understood. In Paris she heard Chopin and Mendelssohn. All these experiences tended to her early development, and there is little wonder if Schumann saw her older than she really was. In 1834 Schumann's early literary tastes asserted themselves, but now in connection with music.
All these expressions of tenderness and fascinations were ground enough for the child Clara to build Spanish hopes upon, but in the very same letter Schumann could refer to that torment of Clara's soul, Ernestine, and speak of her as "your old companion in joy and sorrow, that bright star which we can never appreciate enough." A change, however, seems to have come over Ernestine.
The influence of Mendelssohn, whose friendship ended only with his death, of David, Schumann, Liszt, Berlioz, and Brahms, who was largely indebted to Joachim for the introduction of many of his works to the public, brought out the thorough uprightness, firmness of character and earnestness of purpose, and that intense dislike of all that is artificial or untrue in art, which have made him a great moral power in the musical world.
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