Clara and Robert Schumann in Context

Reappraises the Schumanns' artistic and cultural contexts and traces their critical reception from the nineteenth century to the present day. This book will appeal to students and educators in musicology, women's studies, and cultural studies, as well as music professionals working in broadcasting, festival curation, and audience engagement.

Illuminating the shared world of Clara and Robert Schumann, this volume takes a renewed look at the Schumanns and reconsiders them both as individual artists and as a couple who each charted their trajectories with the other in mind. It focuses on key aspects of their artistic and cultural environments amid the creative and political ferment of nineteenth-century Germany and traces their critical reception from their own time to the present day. The topics range from personal and professional relationships to their socio-cultural environment and their influence on subsequent generations of musicians, giving fresh perspectives on established themes and introducing new material and sources particularly in relation to Clara. The book broadens and re-evaluates existing understandings of the Schumanns and makes scholarship currently better known in the German-speaking sphere accessible to English-language readers.