[Last ed. 12 May 2024]
OUT-LINE

Contributor(s)
Armen Nalbandian

Partner(s)Andante Piano


The Unsung Melodies of Classical Music History



Image by Outlyr-e. Original photograph by Louis Fleckenstein of unidentified woman playing the piano, J. Paul Getty Museum, Public Domain.


For Women’s History Month, Andante Piano — a subsidiary of Amsterdam-based Disruptive Records — launched the ‘Keys For Change’ campaign to spotlight gender disparity in the classical music sector both current and historical. As a collaborator to their campaign, Outlyr-e delivered the strategic focus on the critical and historical contexts that nurtured the gender inequalities in classical music, as well as the biases in the representation of the art form’s prevailing legacies. This Out-line accompanies an interview-lecture in illuminating the overlooked social ecosystems and artistic landscapes from which classical music arose, through two crucial figures who were instrumental in the forming of the classical music canon: Clara Schumann and Nadia Boulanger. 


I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea. A woman must not desire to compose - there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?
– Clara Schumann

I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that's a job where I don't think sex plays much part.
— Nadia Boulanger


To be noted, during the time period of classical music, composition was not thought of as a female activity. But now centuries later, this appears to still be reinforced: a study conducted between 2020-2021 showed that in the world's 100 top orchestras, only 5% of music scheduled to be performed is written by women[01]. Women were thought of as instrumentalists, and in that regard furthermore relegated to instruments deemed appropriate for their gender; the piano, harp, and violin. Even that being the case, it wasn’t until 1913 that major orchestras began to feature female performers, and then scarcely until the 1960’s. 

“Why have women been excluded from the classical music canon?” is a question often asked — with absolute reason. But the question itself postulates another, one of the canon’s own representation. Sewn amidst the of grandeur of symphonies, operas, and concert halls are the myths that surround the great masters that defined the narrative of what we now know as classical music, the most pervasive of these myths being that of the great composers as solitary geniuses. Of course, the creation of classical music does not hinge only on the figure of the composer, but is comprised of the soloists and ensembles that perform the music, the musicians within the ensembles, the conductors, the patrons and institutions that commission the works and so on. It can be argued that a composer’s work is only as great as its performance, and in the case of many great composers, their work was best served by a conductor or soloist of prodigious talents.

Beyond the ecosystem of talents supporting the development and staging of the music, we would understand better how the canon came to be by acknowledging the mechanisms that contributed to a piece of work being performed often enough, and the specific settings conducive to its esteemed status.

✦

CLARA SCHUMANN

When we consider the great classical artists, Clara Schumann’s (1819-1896) name isn’t mentioned in the same breadth as Frédéric Chopin and Johannes Brahms, and certainly not her husband Robert Schumann, which has to do as much with the gender inequality of that time as with our current bias around whose and how achievements are highlighted in classical music, a bias which exists in various aspects.

A child prodigy, Clara Schumann was one of the preeminent pianists of her generation, whose playing was publicly heralded by Chopin and Franz Liszt, amongst other great classical musicians of the Romantic period, and also by figures like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who once proclaimed “Clara’s interpretation makes one forget the composer.”[02] To understand Clara’s impact on music history, it is important to note that she existed in a time before the technology for recording music. To be able to know and listen to the works of composers required attendance at a concert, laying the composer’s work in the hands of the specific performer’s own interpretation, if it wasn’t the composer performing their work themself. But concerts featuring solo piano music predominantly functioned as a background soundtrack for social gatherings among the bourgeoisie, who would hold conversations and move around the hall.

The invention of the modern piano recital in which an audience would sit down and pay undivided attention to the performance is often attributed to Liszt[03], who managed to garner a sort of hysteria surrounding his performances. But while Liszt was the first to give such concerts the name of the “piano recital,” the format of a piano recital as we know it today is more accurately credited to Clara Schumann. In Liszt’s concerts, the focus was often on his own compositions, and where he performed the pieces of other composers, transcriptions we can access today[04] show that he took great liberties in his interpretation particularly with regards to tempo and approach. Schumann, while a brilliant composer herself, focused her repertoire on faithful presentations of other composers. This format is more akin to the classical piano recitals that followed into the present time where pianists are expected to accurately perform the works of other composers, with little if any time dedicated to their own pieces.

Because audiences were so taken by both Liszt and Schumann’s piano performances, the role of piano music as programmatic music for high society was deemphasized. But while Liszt favored technically difficult showcases of virtuosity, Schumann shifted the focus from the composer-pianist to the interpreter-pianist who was committed to the expression and intent of other composers, with acute and generous regard for the greatness of music to be shared[05]. She performed the work of composers of the previous generation like Bach and Beethoven but also key was her dedication to her contemporaries namely Chopin, Brahms, and her husband Robert — composers whose work was championed by Clara. By choosing to play the compositions of both groups she played a crucial role in ensuring these composers’ placement in the modern piano canon. 

Most notably, the artistry and regularity with which she played Chopin’s compositions — thousands of concerts over her 55-year performing career had featured Chopin — contributed to his music’s popularity that has endured for nearly two centuries.


Clara’s short improvised preludes, which introduced each piece in ingenious fashion, and which combined tender, melodious playing with the most brilliant bravura [...] - were received enthusiastically by a public belonging to the most distinguished society and who attended in large numbers, despite the fact that it was a weekday and thus not an ideal day for a concert. [...] Chopin’s compositions, performed in such a way, must finally succeed with the masses.

— Robert Schumann’s review for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik detailing one of Clara's concerts in Vienna, December 1837.[06]


More often than not, the work of Clara Schumann is reduced to her myth: one of being a muse, most notably to Brahms, whom the Schumanns had a close friendship with. But Clara was not his muse; she was his mentor as well as a faithful performer and primary interpreter of his compositions. While Robert extolled Brahms’ music, as in an article entitled "Neue Bahnen" ("New Paths") in the 28 October issue of the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Musik nominating Brahms as one who was "fated to give expression to the times in the highest and most ideal manner,”[07] it was his relationship with Clara that was the transformative one. Brahms met the Schumanns when he was just 20 years old. Clara gave Brahms piano lessons and would also offer her critique and advice on his compositions, which contributed to his stature in history, often mentioned in the same breadth as Bach and Beethoven, dubbed the “3 B’s of classical music.”[08] How highly Brahms regarded Schumann’s mind and ability is quite obvious when one reads the correspondence between the two[09]. Though Brahms has had an enduring impact through the brilliance of his work, comprehending his genius requires recognizing the profound influence Clara had on his compositions and musical perspective. 

While managing to attain recognition during her working years for her undeniable repertoire as a performer, Clara’s practice as a composer took a backseat as concertizing was more lucrative for the main breadwinner of the family, in addition to being a mother of eight. Robert wrote of the gendered domestic expectations that had ultimately curtailed Schumann’s work as a composer:


Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out.[10]


Moreover, Clara's musical identity early on had become so closely intertwined with Robert’s due to his debilitating hand injury, after which his musical expression at the piano could only be experienced through Clara's fingers, considering his music was rarely performed by other pianists at the time.

Clara Schumann stopped composing after Robert’s death in 1856. In 1887, nearly thirty years after his death, Clara not only edited the initial Complete Works of Robert Schumann but also released an Instructive Edition of his piano compositions. This edition aimed to counter the heavily edited versions of Robert's music, which were widespread in England at the time. To violinist Josef Joachim she wrote the following in a letter: “Even if I am not a creating artist, still I am re-creating.”[11] Her life and contributions underscore a multifaceted understanding of musical artistry, one that extends to the impact of performance and interpretation, and further, the legacy of teaching, editing and documenting the work of her peers. In 1878, Clara became the inaugural piano instructor at the newly established Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium in Frankfurt, where she stood as the sole female member of the faculty.

In 1898, the first women’s orchestra was founded in Berlin by a pianist and composer named Mary Wurm, who also conducted the orchestra herself. She was a student of Clara Schumann's.

✦

NADIA BOULANGER

The biography of Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) reveals the side of the classical music world that is rarely discussed: the impact of the educator. Boulanger’s students include musicians as diverse as Daniel Barenboim, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, John Eliot Gardiner and Philip Glass, to Quincy Jones and Astor Piazzolla. Stories of her impact on composers include Leonard Bernstein showing her the score of West Side Story prior to its premiere. In Bruno Monsaingeon’s 1977 documentary on Nadia Boulanger, Bernstein, while never a formal student of Boulanger’s, is interviewed at length about her influence, and how he sought her guidance at the recommendation of Copland.

She conducted the premieres of several works by Copland and most notably Igor Stravinsky, whose work she edited over decades and who held her musical prowess and teaching in such high regard that he sent his own son Soulima to study with her. 

Returning to the formation of the classical music canon, it must be noted the number of important composers and conductors that studied with Boulanger and were in turn influenced by her determination to champion the work of Stravinsky, whose work was integral in the courses she would give. Stravinsky’s neoclassical works were prime for her traditional form of analysis as opposed to the serialism in  Schoenberg’s. The two major figures of musical thought coming out of the 20th century were Stravinsky and Schoenberg (and his pupils i.e. the Second Viennese school); their approaches represented the two major paths in 20th century classical music. Simplified, Stravinsky embraced polytonality while Schoenberg championed atonality and later the twelve-tone row. Stravinsky was seen to be innovating from existing tradition, while Schoenberg was looking to break from tradition. Put into context, Boulanger’s focus on Stravinsky is of notable significance given the intellectual rivalry between Stravinsky and Schoenberg, who represented the Second Viennese school: Boulanger’s teaching instilled a respect for the music of the past, which Schoenberg’s looked to break from.

Both teachers had taught the composers of the following generation, with Anton Webern, Alban Berg and John Cage as notable students of Schoenberg, while Copland, Glass, Carter and Bernstein studied under Boulanger with all of latter’s tutelage bearing the undeniable influence of Stravinsky. While Schoenberg was a teacher himself and generous with his students, Stravinsky's music and neoclassicism found a powerful advocate in Boulanger, whose influence extended to her students, a significant number of whom pursued careers as conductors. This ensured that Stravinsky's compositions and the neoclassical canon often found favor in the programming decisions of their respective symphony orchestras.

Upstream, Boulanger’s had a profound impact on Stravinsky’s work. She edited his work for decades on over 43 different works (most notably Symphony of Psalms which she lectured about in her class three days before it was premiered, the Symphony in C, Stravinsky’s Mass, and the opera The Rake’s Progress) with them exchanging over 406 letters from 1929 to 1979. One can now compare her edits to the final scores we know of his work[12]. 

Her move to the United States also bestowed a profound educational legacy, shaping what would be known as the American sound of classical music, led by composers Copland and Samuel Barber among the 600 plus American musicians she taught there. Neoclassical in nature and highly influenced by Stravinsky and the Parisian aesthetic of refinement and rationality, these were the preeminent sounds of 20th Century classical music prior to developments and fame of John Cage and Morton Feldman. 

Yet, in the mainstream reconnaissance of classical and symphonic music, Nadia Boulanger is rarely mentioned or credited with the influence she had on the music celebrated by institutions around the world, even though she was internationally and institutionally recognized during her time as the preeminent teacher of music. After becoming renowned for her teaching methods and musical acuity at the École Normale de Musique de Paris and at her private studio, she was highly sought-after and accepted positions at the Longy School of Music, Radcliffe College, Juilliard, and other music schools in the United States. She also established and served as director of the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau.

At the receiving end of incalculable gender bias, Boulanger’s legacy became subject to continuous gendered abasement, remembered in history as the “midwife of music,” a term used by her former student Virgil Thomson, diminishing her significant role as a composer, conductor, and educator — yet the term would resurface in a headline in The Washington Post in 1982[13]. 

✦

Reflecting on the overlooked and misrepresented contributions of women in classical music, we become conscious of our position as one of posterity. We make work on legacies of the past, a past which was historicized based on biases still being reinforced today, even if they are glossed over by surface-level attempts at tackling gender inequality. That bias also runs concurrent with biases against composers from different ethnicities and class distinctions. As we celebrate Clara Schumann and Nadia Boulanger let us also look to artists such as — to list a mere few — Ruth Crawford, Éliane Radigue, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Annea Lockwood, Mary Lou Williams, Beatriz Ferreyra, Ursula Bogner and Maryanne Amacher, all of whom create an important bridge to better understand the important contributions of women in the overall history of music. As neglected as the auditory sense is in our hyper-visual society, so wide is the opportunity to learn to listen to the greatness in music beyond the biases that have been reinforced in its history. Let the music speak for itself. 



Notes
  1. Sophie Anderson, “Case study: Diversifying repertoire with the Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra,” (Making Music, 2024).
  2. Louis James Block, “Records of a Great Musician," The Dial, Vol. 54, ed. Marianne Moore, (The Dial Company, 1913), 453.
  3. Music journalism in the present day continue to herald Liszt as "the world’s first rock star” who devised the idea and garnered enough attention to have the stage to himself. See https://www.npr.org/2011/10/22/141617637/how-franz-liszt-became-the-worlds-first-rock-star or https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/liszt-is-dead-long-live-the-piano-recital-1.2200833.
  4. Versions of Works by Others (Liszt, Franz),” (ISMLP), https://imslp.org/wiki/Versions_of_Works_by_Others_(Liszt,_Franz). 
  5. From Jerrold Moore’s liner notes for “Pupils of Clara Schumann. Fanny Davies, Adelina de Lara, Ilona Eibenschütz,” (Pearl Records, 1986), 29: Moore includes an anecdote from Ilona Eibenschütz, where Schumann asked, “When you play like that, what are you trying to express?” When the student responded, I am trying to express myself, the teacher offered her approach, “Don’t you think that Beethoven is greater than you? You must lose your own personality in the endeavor to reproduce the much greater thoughts and feelings of the masters. There is no greatness for the representative artist without reverence for the composer.”
  6. Quote sourced from Gili Loftus, “Recapturing Clara Wieck-Schumann's Transitional Pianism,” (McGill University, 2017).
  7. Robert Schumann, “Neue Bahnen,” Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik Vol. 39, no. 18 (1853), translation obtained from Yale University Library, https://musiclib-exhibits.library.yale.edu/exhibits/schumann/neue_zeitschrift.html.
  8. 19th-century conductor Hans von Bülow famously replaced Hector Berlioz with Brahms from the original “3 B’s” coined by composer Peter Cornelius. Von Bülow proclaimed, “I believe in Bach the Father, Beethoven the Son, and in Brahms the Holy Ghost of music.” 
  9. Schumann and Brahms, Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms 1853-1896, Vol. 1, ed. Berthold Litzmann (E. Arnold & Company, 1927)
  10. Robert Schumann in the Schumann’s joint diary, cited in Jenni Murray, “A History of the World in 21 Women: A Personal Selection,” (Oneworld Publications, 2018)
  11. Clara Schumann quoted in Joseph Joachim, Briefe von und an Joseph Joachim, ed. Johannes Joachim and Andreas Moser, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1911–13), 86.
  12. Kimberly A. Francis, “Meditating Modern Music: Nadia Boulanger Conducts Igor Stravinsky,” (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2010).
  13. Article available through The Washington Post Archives: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/07/03/midwife-to-music/75fb2eba-39b2-42ce-b81e-200ac9710dde/ . This moniker was again brought up by the same critic in 1987 in a review of a concert at the Kennedy Centre celebrating Nadia Boulanger’s 100th birth anniversary.







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