In June 1853, Clara Schumann set to music six inset-poems from the novella Jucunde, hot off the press earlier that year, by the minor poet Hermann Rollett. Schumann and Rollett actually met in Vienna in July 1856, shortly after her husband’s death, and she gave him a presentation copy of her Op. 23 songs. The young Rollett was a political firebrand; he wrote differently after the revolution ended in failure, but he included some of his earlier poems in Jucunde, and covert hints of continued adherence to former doomed ideals are still apparent. So too with Robert and Clara Schumann: both harboured republican sympathies, and both would signal their disillusionment and unchanged political views in several of their songs from the 1850s. If these works seem harmless at first hearing, semi-hidden hints of underlying politics emerge on closer examination. From Robert Schumann’s ‘Des Sennen Abschied’, Op. 79 No. 22; ‘Heimliches Verschwinden’, Op. 89 No. 2; and ‘Warnung’, Op. 119 No. 2, we arrive at Clara Schumann’s ‘Geheimes Flüstern’, Op. 23 No. 3, whose harmonic, tonal and motivic elements hint to the cognoscenti of sadness over political failure and of unconquerable hope for the future.

Until the recent emergence of women composers from the shadows, the name Schumann coupled with that of Bach in the context of compositional influence would have been taken to indicate Robert Schumann. However, their marriage diaries reveal that Robert and Clara Schumann were involved in studying together the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, specifically the two books of his ‘Forty-Eight’ Preludes and Fugues. This chapter first explores some implications of the documentary evidence of Robert and Clara Schumann’s engagement with J. S. Bach’s music, as well as Clara Schumann’s perception of her compositional efforts. The case studies that follow consider the impact of Bach on Clara Schumann as a composer, focusing on her Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 16 (especially No. 1 in G minor) and her Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17 (with particular reference to the first movement and finale), and ranging from direct connections to broader compositional traits. Comparison with Robert Schumann’s fugal writing proves revealing with reference to the finale of his Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44, and the finale of Clara’s Piano Trio. Concluding remarks explore the nature of intertextuality, and the wider context of nineteenth-century Bach culture in relation to the work of women composers.

In this chapter, Clara and Robert are shown to have embraced the Androgyne principle in their romantic relationship and marriage. Theorized by Jakob Boehme and adopted by the Jena romantics, the Androgyne ideal promoted the fusion of marital partners as well as gender-fluid behaviours in the name of spirituality. Of particular interest are Clara’s deeds in the period following Robert’s institutionalization in March 1854. Instead of decreasing her commitment to idealized matrimony, she deliberately strengthened it and maintained that outlook, even after Robert’s death in July 1856, until the end of her own life in 1896. This chapter investigates several questions: Why? What informed and motivated Clara’s actions? Were they simply displays of female heroism and/or conjugal fidelity? Whose interests were being served? What did her decisions imply about her perceptions of gender and gendered conduct? And why were her choices accepted, socially and culturally? The Schumanns’ correspondence and diary entries, published statements issued by Clara, and reviews of her playing are analysed in social-historical context. In her role as Robert’s posthumous Androgyne, Clara brought together diverse strands: their bond, certainly, but also philosophical-literary beliefs about perfect love, set within a Lutheran Pietist cultural framework that promoted female strength.