1 - Three Assumptions

Summary

This chapter elaborates upon the claims I discussed in the introduction. First, I show what can be gained by taking Clara Schumann’s music on its own terms rather than measuring it against the music of her husband. Second, I argue that the traditional tools of music theory and analysis can reveal an enormous amount about her compositional craft – and, by extension, about the craft of other female composers. I also suggest that those tools themselves can be enriched by being applied to her music (principally in that her songs encourage us to use those tools in search not only of overt complexity and radical ingenuity but also of subtlety and expressive nuance). Finally, I claim that bringing the tools of the “new Formenlehre” to Clara Schumann’s songs allows us to appreciate the sophistication of her text-setting practices, and also to grapple with broader questions about the relationship between form and text in nineteenth-century art song.