The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2Hughes, Rupert
History
The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2
Hughes, Rupert
Composers -- Biography
A month after this serene resignation he goes to Dresden, and finds his
heart full of longing for this very "Nanni." He roves the streets
looking under every veil that flutters by him in the street, in the
hope that he might see her features; he remembers again "all the hours
which I dreamed away so joyfully, so blissfully in her arms and her
love." He did not see her, but later, to his amazement, he stumbles
upon the supposedly finished sweetheart "Liddy." She is bristling with
"explanations upon explanations." She begs him to go up a steep mountain
alone with her. He goes "from politeness, perhaps also for the sake of
adventure." But they are both dumb and tremulous and they reach the peak
just at sunset. Schumann describes that sunset more gaudily than ever
chromo was painted. But at any rate it moved him to seize Liddy's hand
and exclaim, somewhat mal-à-propos: "Liddy, such is our life."
He plucked a rose and was about to give it to her when a flash of
lightning and a cloud of thunder woke him from his dreams; he tore the
rose to pieces, and they returned home in silence.
In 1828, at Augsburg, he cast his affectionate eyes upon Clara von
Kurer, the daughter of a chemist; but found her already engaged. It was
now that he entered the University at Leipzig to study law. The wife of
Professor Carus charmed him by her singing and inspired various songs.
At her house he met the noted piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck, and thus
began an acquaintance of strange vicissitude and strange power for
torment and delight.
Wieck, who was then forty-three, chiefly lived in the career of his
wonder-child, a pianist, Clara Josephine Wieck. She had been born at
Leipzig on September 13, 1819, and was only nine years old, and nine
years younger than Schumann, when they met. She made a sensational
début in concert the same year. And, child as she was, she excited at
once the keenest and most affectionate admiration in Schumann. He did
not guess then how deeply she was doomed to affect him, but while she
was growing up his heart seemed merely to loaf about till she was ready
for it.
For a time he became Wieck's pupil, hoping secretly to be a pianist,
not a lawyer. He dreamed already of storming America with his
virtuosity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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