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The Marriage Diaries of Robert & Clara Schumann: From Their Wedding Day Through the Russia Trip
The Schumann Marriage diaries provide a vivid portrait of the unique artistic and personal union between two renowned musicians. For the first four years of their marriage, Robert and Clara Schumann kept a joint diary, recording their entries, at least initially, on alternate weeks. Begun on September 13, 1840, the day after their marriage, the diary opens with guidance from "This little book . . . has a very intimate meaning; it shall be a diary about everything that touches us mutually in our household and marriage."
The diaries reflect the harmony as well as the discord in their marriage. Robert and Clara describe in intimate detail their honeymoon period, the births of their children, their busy social lives, travels throughout Europe, financial problems, separations, and reunions. The book also evokes the artistic milieu of nineteenth-century Germany. The Schumanns came in contact with many musicians, including their close friends Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt, and recorded their insightful reactions to the artists and their music.
The marriage diaries cover a fertile period in Robert Schumann's life, during which he wrote the Spring Symphony, the Piano Concerto, most of his chamber music, his first oratorio, "Paradise and the Peri," and numerous songs. They reflect the frenetic pace at which he worked, as well as his growing bouts of depression, his ambivalent response to Clara's decision to return to the concert stage after a prolonged hiatus, and her anxiety in the face of Robert's changing moods.
This edition includes the couple's travel book, written during their stressful concert tour of Russia in 1844, which marked the end of the marriage diaries; Robert Schumann's descriptions of Russian customs; and the poems he wrote in Moscow - all of which provide a fascinating and uniquely detailed glimpse at what it was like to travel in Russia at the time.
The diaries reflect the harmony as well as the discord in their marriage. Robert and Clara describe in intimate detail their honeymoon period, the births of their children, their busy social lives, travels throughout Europe, financial problems, separations, and reunions. The book also evokes the artistic milieu of nineteenth-century Germany. The Schumanns came in contact with many musicians, including their close friends Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt, and recorded their insightful reactions to the artists and their music.
The marriage diaries cover a fertile period in Robert Schumann's life, during which he wrote the Spring Symphony, the Piano Concerto, most of his chamber music, his first oratorio, "Paradise and the Peri," and numerous songs. They reflect the frenetic pace at which he worked, as well as his growing bouts of depression, his ambivalent response to Clara's decision to return to the concert stage after a prolonged hiatus, and her anxiety in the face of Robert's changing moods.
This edition includes the couple's travel book, written during their stressful concert tour of Russia in 1844, which marked the end of the marriage diaries; Robert Schumann's descriptions of Russian customs; and the poems he wrote in Moscow - all of which provide a fascinating and uniquely detailed glimpse at what it was like to travel in Russia at the time.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 25, 2025
A marvel of a primary source, these diaries are the sort of document I can hardly believe was written down.
Would I like an inside glimpse of what Robert and Clara Schumann thought about their marriage, their household, their work, their travels, the contemporary musical scene, the birth of their children? Would I like to see them navigate, in real time, the difficulties of pursuing two musical careers in a house without sound proof walls? Would I be interested in the quotidian delights and distresses surrounding a middle-class existence in Leipzig in 1840?
Yes, please! Absolutely!
The book was chock-full of promise and did not disappoint; in fact it contained so many excellences that it's hard to enumerate them all. It was completely charming to see how devotedly each spouse took a turn writing on alternate weeks for the first year of their marriage—until their first daughter was born. Thereafter the entries become less frequent (yep, sounds about right!) though still regular. Their oft-expressed astonishment at the bliss of married life also diminishes around the same time, partly replaced by exquisitely touching things about their children and family, which make them "inexpressibly happy."
We tend to think more about the narrative arc of an entire life—the highlights and great accomplishments—so I found it fun and illuminating, by contrast, to enter into the minutiae of a few years of the Schumanns' lives. Some striking themes emerge when looking at the micro narrative that vanish when only concerned with the macro: money anxieties and hopes for better days (oh, how I relate!), innumerable social calls, ongoing friction (eventually resolved) with Clara's father, visits from relatives, day trips and sightseeing and enjoyment of landscapes, difficulties with servants, birthday and Christmas gifts and celebrations, ill health and indisposition, involvement in the musical and artistic scene in Leipzig and broader Europe, the struggle to hold one's self to working diligently day by day. The outline of a great person's biography makes him seem superhuman, but humanity lies in the details.
And it just so happens that Schumann composed my longstanding favorite piece, his Quintet (op. 44), around midway through the diaries. The piece was popular with audiences from the beginning, and I had the joy of reading part of the record of its popularity: the dozen times Clara recorded performing it, even before it was published, in the marriage diaries.
A special delight for me was to observe how Clara comes to the fore in the diaries. Robert initiates the project and writes the first entry in his well-educated prose style, and when Clara takes up the pen she confesses—repeatedly—to feeling intellectually inferior. But as the years go by (the diaries begin September 1840 and end May 1844) Robert, consumed by his composition work, writes less and less frequently. Clara gradually becomes the animus behind continuation, Robert even asking her to transcribe or record things that he is too busy to include. Clara lacks her husband's clever style, but I think she has a superior talent for vivid narrative and pacing. And as she writes more, her professions of inferiority diminish.
While reading, I kept remembering a fact from the Schumann biography I read last month, that after discontinuing the marriage journals in May 1844, husband and wife turned to separate journaling projects. Robert kept cryptic, "telegraphic" records of his own activities, and Clara maintained her own, more verbose journals for the rest of her life (which included more years of widowhood than marriage). It seems to me that Clara found her voice as a diarist while working with Robert on the marriage diaries, and that this skill he gave her the ground to cultivate served her well in the decades where she continued her career and motherhood without him. The diaries were a priceless gift for him to bestow on their marriage—priceless beyond what he could intend or comprehend. After Robert entered the asylum and died there, Clara must have found comfort both in the skill she developed through writing the diaries and the written record itself of their early years together.
I enjoyed approaching the diaries from a double perspective, both as an outsider looking in and as an insider relishing an account of common experience. As an outsider, I was a reader in 2025 approaching a document nearly two centuries old and an admirer—very much from afar—of Schumann's compositions and Clara Schumann's virtuosity.
But as an insider, I shared their experience of delight in a marriage that combines "magnificent attachment" (Robert's phrase) with artistic projects and pursuits, where artistic ideals and realization of those ideals both emanate from and reconfirm the attachment. In these terms I felt close kinship with the Schumanns—despite my amateurish musical skills—because these conversations about excellence in art persist even as individual interlocutors pass out of the world. I had the uncanny but rather delightful feeling that Joseph and I have ourselves reenacted many of these same discussions.
Would I like an inside glimpse of what Robert and Clara Schumann thought about their marriage, their household, their work, their travels, the contemporary musical scene, the birth of their children? Would I like to see them navigate, in real time, the difficulties of pursuing two musical careers in a house without sound proof walls? Would I be interested in the quotidian delights and distresses surrounding a middle-class existence in Leipzig in 1840?
Yes, please! Absolutely!
The book was chock-full of promise and did not disappoint; in fact it contained so many excellences that it's hard to enumerate them all. It was completely charming to see how devotedly each spouse took a turn writing on alternate weeks for the first year of their marriage—until their first daughter was born. Thereafter the entries become less frequent (yep, sounds about right!) though still regular. Their oft-expressed astonishment at the bliss of married life also diminishes around the same time, partly replaced by exquisitely touching things about their children and family, which make them "inexpressibly happy."
We tend to think more about the narrative arc of an entire life—the highlights and great accomplishments—so I found it fun and illuminating, by contrast, to enter into the minutiae of a few years of the Schumanns' lives. Some striking themes emerge when looking at the micro narrative that vanish when only concerned with the macro: money anxieties and hopes for better days (oh, how I relate!), innumerable social calls, ongoing friction (eventually resolved) with Clara's father, visits from relatives, day trips and sightseeing and enjoyment of landscapes, difficulties with servants, birthday and Christmas gifts and celebrations, ill health and indisposition, involvement in the musical and artistic scene in Leipzig and broader Europe, the struggle to hold one's self to working diligently day by day. The outline of a great person's biography makes him seem superhuman, but humanity lies in the details.
And it just so happens that Schumann composed my longstanding favorite piece, his Quintet (op. 44), around midway through the diaries. The piece was popular with audiences from the beginning, and I had the joy of reading part of the record of its popularity: the dozen times Clara recorded performing it, even before it was published, in the marriage diaries.
A special delight for me was to observe how Clara comes to the fore in the diaries. Robert initiates the project and writes the first entry in his well-educated prose style, and when Clara takes up the pen she confesses—repeatedly—to feeling intellectually inferior. But as the years go by (the diaries begin September 1840 and end May 1844) Robert, consumed by his composition work, writes less and less frequently. Clara gradually becomes the animus behind continuation, Robert even asking her to transcribe or record things that he is too busy to include. Clara lacks her husband's clever style, but I think she has a superior talent for vivid narrative and pacing. And as she writes more, her professions of inferiority diminish.
While reading, I kept remembering a fact from the Schumann biography I read last month, that after discontinuing the marriage journals in May 1844, husband and wife turned to separate journaling projects. Robert kept cryptic, "telegraphic" records of his own activities, and Clara maintained her own, more verbose journals for the rest of her life (which included more years of widowhood than marriage). It seems to me that Clara found her voice as a diarist while working with Robert on the marriage diaries, and that this skill he gave her the ground to cultivate served her well in the decades where she continued her career and motherhood without him. The diaries were a priceless gift for him to bestow on their marriage—priceless beyond what he could intend or comprehend. After Robert entered the asylum and died there, Clara must have found comfort both in the skill she developed through writing the diaries and the written record itself of their early years together.
I enjoyed approaching the diaries from a double perspective, both as an outsider looking in and as an insider relishing an account of common experience. As an outsider, I was a reader in 2025 approaching a document nearly two centuries old and an admirer—very much from afar—of Schumann's compositions and Clara Schumann's virtuosity.
But as an insider, I shared their experience of delight in a marriage that combines "magnificent attachment" (Robert's phrase) with artistic projects and pursuits, where artistic ideals and realization of those ideals both emanate from and reconfirm the attachment. In these terms I felt close kinship with the Schumanns—despite my amateurish musical skills—because these conversations about excellence in art persist even as individual interlocutors pass out of the world. I had the uncanny but rather delightful feeling that Joseph and I have ourselves reenacted many of these same discussions.
November 12, 2024
Rather adorable joint diary of their first couple years of marriage, plus a journal of a trip to Russia shortly thereafter. Not a lot of music, but gives a sense of the times and places. You certainly get a sense of the conflicts within Clara Schumann, a talented pianist whose career and even her ability to practice took a decided backseat to her husband's.
April 23, 2023
read for research but was actually entertaining and very interesting
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews