Janice Galloway: Clara: A Novel

Reviewed by PHILIP CULBERTSON

When young Robert Schumann proposed to his piano teacher's daughter, Clara Weick, Herr Weick was so outraged that he threatened to shoot Schumann if he ever came near his daughter again. Weick was possessive and a harsh task-master. Clara was his, and she was destined to be a great concert pianist, not a housewife. Schumann sued, and after four bitter years of legal wrangling, won the right to marry his child bride.

For the next 14 years, Clara supported Schumann financially, endured his growing physical frailty and schizophrenia, raised seven children, and continued her career as one of Europe's most brilliant concert artists. She adored Schumann, and was devastated when he died in a mental asylum.

Clara relied on the friendship and patronage of Chopin and Mendelssohn. After Schumann died, she scandalised her contemporaries by having a relationship with Brahms, 14 years her junior.

Surrounded by brilliance, Clara is almost eclipsed, yet she endures. Hers is a story of love and passion, devotion and duty. She authored 66 compositions of her own, yet was most acclaimed for performing compositions by the men in her life rather than her own.

Clara's final gift to her husband, immediately before he attempted suicide, was to compose a brilliant set of piano pieces entitled Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann. Brahms wrote a set of variations on the same theme - and dedicated them to Clara. As Clara herself lay dying, her final request was that her grandson Ferdinand play Schumann's Romance in F-sharp major.

Galloway, who has previously won a number of international prizes for her novels, has written tenderly of Clara's sorrow and courage. The text is rich in the detail of 19th- century Europe, particularly around the time of the Dresden Revolution.

Since Clara was a copious diarist, Galloway has been able to draw on a wealth of primary sources. Peppered with the misogyny of the age, the text portrays a woman every bit as talented as the men who surrounded her, yet struggling to maintain any sense of identity beyond her duty to support her family financially.

Galloway's virtuosity and languid prose is best appreciated at a leisurely pace. This is no pulp-fiction page-turner, but a deeply reflective and profoundly moving account of a brilliant woman who had no choice but to turn her talents to reflecting the greater glory of the great Romantic male composers. It was a great pity, and the reader will finish the last page with a profound sadness.

Random House, $26.95

* Philip Culbertson is a classical pianist, and the Director of Pastoral Studies at St John's Theological College.