From the moment four-year-old Clara Wieck Schumann heard music coming from her father’s piano store, she wanted to play the piano. She became a child prodigy and made her debut at nine and went on to have the longest concert career of any woman in the nineteenth century. At the age of eighteen, she was named Royal and Imperial Virtuosa–the highest musical honor in Austria.
Clara wanted to do more than entertain, she wanted the audience to feel love, sorrow, joy, and beauty. She achieved this with a new style of playing the piano. She managed to have a sixty-year concert career, marry Robert Schumann and oversee his estate, plus take care of eight children. As a celebrated composer, she wrote a piano concerto, chamber music, songs, pieces for piano, and her most well-known work, the Piano Trio in G Minor.
“The reader will enjoy a bird’s eye view of the tumultuous times in which the Schumanns lived and flourished. While targeted toward elementary school students, musicians of any age will find this 70-page biography engaging and informative.” — Marsha Rocklin, Reviewer, California Music Teacher
Dragonfeather Books
72 pp. ● 6×9
$9.95 (pb) $3.95 (eb)
ISBN 978-1-949290-49-3 (pb)
JUVENILE NONFICTION / Biography & Autobiography / Music
Schumann, Clara, — 1819-1896
For ages 9-12
Publication date: April 6, 2021
Janet Nichols Lynch is the author of thirteen books including American Music Makers: An Introduction to American Composers, Women Music Makers: An Introduction to Women Composers, Racing California, a Society of School Librarians International Honor Book, and Messed Up, an ALA Quick-Pick for Reluctant Readers and a VOYA (Voices of Youth Advocates) Top of the Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Seventeen, and Highlights for Children.
Janet was born and raised in Sacramento. She graduated with a BA in Music from California State University, Sacramento; an MM in Piano from Arizona State; and an MFA in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno. She has taught music, English, and history at the middle school, high school, and college levels. She lives with her husband in Visalia, California, and they have two grown children. She enjoys competing in runs and triathlons, and has the goal of cycling in every state.