en
giving her husband's songs. Like Grieg's wife, she is more successful
than all other singers in this role of domestic devotion. She usually
appears with him as accompanist, a position in which he excels, and each
modestly tries to make the other respond to the applause that is sure to
follow their performance.

CHAPTER IV.

CLARA AND ROBERT SCHUMANN

History has never witnessed a more perfect union of two similar natures,
both endowed with rich mental gifts, and each filled with a perfect
sympathy for the other, than the marriage of Robert Schumann and Clara
Wieck. It holds a place in the story of music similar to that occupied
by the romance of Abelard and Heloise in poetry. The lives of both
composers afford an example of the most unselfish devotion and depth of
affection, combined with the highest idealism in an art that poets
themselves have admitted to be even nobler than their own.

[Illustration: MARIE WIECK]

The birth of Clara Wieck, on September 13, 1819, took place at Leipsic.
That city had not yet entered upon the period of musical greatness that
it was soon to enjoy. The day of Beethoven and Schubert was apparently
passing, and only the lighter and more trivial styles of composition
held sway. Her father, however, Friedrich Wieck, was a piano teacher of
extensive reputation and most excellent qualities, and did his best to
raise the standard of the place. From him, and from her mother as well,
the young Clara inherited her innate musical taste. But the maternal
influence was not of long duration, for domestic troubles soon caused
the separation of Wieck and his wife, the latter marrying the father of
Woldemar Bargiel, while the former also entered into a second union,
with Clementine Fechner at Leipsic. A daughter of this second marriage,
Marie Wieck, won some fame as a pianist, but was far surpassed by her
elder half-sister.

Clara did not at first show signs of becoming a child prodigy, but in
her fifth year she gave indications of possessing musical talent, and
her careful father proceeded at once to develop her powers. So
successful were his individual methods that in four years she was able
to play Mozart and Hummel concertos by heart, and ready to sustain her
part in public. Her first appearance was in conjunction with Emilie
Reichold, one of her father's older pupils, with whom she played
Kalkbrenner's variations on a march from "Moses." One important paper of
the time spoke of her