Is it better to be famous or Lucky? Felix Mendelssohn vs. Clara Schumann

While Clara Schumann’s Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, op. 20, and Felix Mendelssohn’s Variations serieuses, op. 54, are both representative large-scale piano works by each composer, they are fundamentally very different. Due in part to the reasons for their composition, and in part to the uniqueness of each individual composer, the two pieces, while similar in construction, are ultimately very different in both content and effect on their audience, both historically, and in current performances.

Clara Schumann was a composer in her own right, but was more known during her lifetime as a performer. Her works were not ill-received by the audiences she premiered them for, but they were fairly conservative in comparison to those of her peers. As such, they were most often premiered by Clara herself, alongside other works of more prominent composers, such as her husband. While Clara did concertize her works in major venues, often times it was the smaller musical gatherings put on by her father that saw the unveiling of her own works.

Mendelssohn, by comparison was seen as a jack-of-all-trades. His abilities to compose were recognized very early in his life, and by the time he was sixteen, he had arguably surpassed even Mozart in terms of musical intellect and output. Like Clara, Mendelssohn was also a great performer, showing extreme competence on the piano and organ as well as great skill as a conductor and violist. However, unlike Clara, he was not seen as any of these things above being a composer, and as such, the premiere of his works was of greater importance to his status in the music realm than Clara’s.

Mendelssohn’s Variations serieuses, unlike many of Mendelssohn’s other works which were premiered, were written to be included in a collection of works that were to be published and sold to raise funds for a memorial to Beethoven. Mendelssohn demonstrates in this work his ability to imitate the style of his predecessors with great skill; his imitation, and expansion, of Beethoven’s style, seen in many of his other major piano works, is evident in these variations as well, and are modeled after Beethoven’s 32 Variations in Cm (WoO 80).

Perhaps it is the public nature of Mendelssohn’s compositions versus the private nature of Clara’s that explains the way they are received. While Mendelssohn’s Variations serieuses are perhaps better crafted than Clara’s Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, they are far less intimate. It could also be that this difference in perception has to do with who each piece was composed for. While Mendelssohn may have greatly admired Beethoven, and written a piece that shows a restrained passion that stems from great respect, Clara’s passion may be more unbridled because she is composing from a theme by, and perhaps for, the person she loves and has chosen to spend her life with.

Clara’s work may also be more impassioned because of a relatively difficult life, when compared to that of Mendelssohn, although this line of logic diminishes the emotional capacity of Mendelssohn, which may or may not be fair. Perhaps he wasn’t ‘deep enough’ to convey the same emotion that Clara did in many of her work, but as a very intelligent man, this seems somewhat unlikely. Perhaps it is only that he doesn’t wear as much on his sleeve, preferring in his Variations serieuses to instead show more restraint. Of course, this restraint could easily be ascribed to the piece’s premier in a very public place as well.