Trois romances

Clara Wieck (Schumann after her marriage) wrote her Trois Romances for piano in 1839, during a solitary seven-month stay in Paris. Aged 19, she was internationally celebrated as a concert pianist and furthermore was an experienced composer, especially in writing for her own instrument. She was far away from her beloved Robert Schumann, who was living temporarily in Vienna. Forcibly separated by Clara’s father, the young couple were, from a distance, undergoing a legal battle with him for a marriage licence. Perhaps this situation left a mark on Clara’s creative state. These Romances are lyrical, full of original and strikingly beautiful twists and turns. Their mood, however, is overcast: the second piece’s offbeat rhythms and build-up to crisis is particularly strong, and the passage that follows is interrupted by unsettling silences before the main theme returns. The third Romance is the most optimistic, but seems shot through with darker, questioning, rhetorical moments. Robert published the second Romance with his journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The following year the couple won their court battle and were married at last.