I know that we're a new music blog, but Sarah and I both want to recognize Clara Schumann (b. September 13, 1819; d. May 20, 1896) on her birthday today. She is someone who is often pigeonholed as a performer and marginalized as a composer. Her music stands up well to the other music being written at the time by her more well-known male peers, but history as it is written and remembered tends to warp our sense of who wrote "good" music and thus affects what music becomes canonized. Thankfully, there are performers these days who perform and study her music, but I still strongly feel that she and other female composers (such as Fanny Mendelssohn, Alma Mahler, Amy Beach, and countless others) are painfully under-programmed and relatively unappreciated.
So let's take a moment today to remember and celebrate Clara Schumann as an important and skilled composer.
No comments:
Post a Comment