# Talk:Clara Schumann

this page doesn't objectively address the talent of Clara or why she quit composing (ie internalized and cultural oppression).  I made these changes and they dissappeared shortly 

Thank you for your help, but the lead is rather too short than too long. The tour sentence is too complicated, but Paris and London should be there, if not Vienna also. + chamber music, as unusual for a virtoso player. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:57, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Now, heading for PR and FAC, the lead IS too short. Also, can we please have a bit of air in the citations, spaces, I mean, as a little service to future editors. I fixed 4 of them, - ref = harv requires that the "last" parameter is full, otherwise the name of the ref needs to be defined. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:03, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
Gerda Arendt -
I think the lead is supposed to be short, that's what it's for: just a "hook", enough for a summary of what the article is about, to explain the article title.
Refs: I think I finally figured it out. Films and television don't really have authors, so cast and crew names go in "others" parameter. Citation gets listed by title. Take a look, see what you think.
Air is a matter of personal preference. I like things compact. Extra spaces means more typing. Doesn't affect the display, it's just for editing. Each editor is different. If you like, you can change them all (but ALL, so it's consistent), I don't mind TOO much, no biggie for quibble. Chuckstreet (talk) 00:26, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

/* Later life */
I added back the original paragraph about her 1870s concertizing, with the 1874 U.S. tour and the concerts in England and Holland and the 1877 Beethoven 5th with Bargiel. Added the ref back to all of that; it got lost in the shuffle of sentences, and the part about her arm injury got mixed up with it (both originally posted by the same user, but as separate paragraphs).
The text now jumps from her 1870s concertizing and her arm injury, to her last concert in 1891. Could we get something about her performances in the 1880s to fill the gap?
Chuckstreet (talk) 01:07, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for digging into that. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:43, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Only: I don't see a ref for a US tour. I looked in vol 1 and vol 2 of the offline source, and can't find it, not in the given pages nor anywhere else. (There's a vol 3 that I don't see, though.) I think a tour would show here, but all 1874 mentionings are not about it (but about reduced concertizing), nor do I find it anywhere else in that text, nor New York, nor U.S.. Help?? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:57, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
The only thing I found referencing an 1874 tour in America looks suspiciously like the author was using Wikipedia as a source. Reaper Eternal (talk) 14:17, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
No US tour mentioned in her entire concertizing history at www.schumann-portal.de either. But I see another problem: the dates of her arm injury and her refrain from concertizing appear to be incorrect. Judging by that concert list on the portal, the only large gap is between December 1873 and March 1875. No concertizing at all in 1874 (obviously no tour to US or anywhere). Also can we verify the correct date for the Beethoven 5th with Bargiel in Berlin? We have 1877, but I see no concert in Berlin in 1877 in the portal list. The only Berlin concerts in the 1870s were 1870, 1871, and 1875 (Oct-Dec), the next one after that was 1883 (there's a typo in two entries in that list there 1882->1883). Chuckstreet (talk) 16:05, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
I hope we can, just had a few other tasks. Perhaps "injury" isn't even the right word? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:08, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Rewrote the entire section, including info on concerts in 1880s, and her regular England tours, and listed more countries. I THINK those are the correct dates of her "injury"; please check the dates in Litzmann for me, re her visit and advice from the doctor, and that quote from her in May(?). Still don't know about the 1877 Berlin concert with Bargiel Beethoven 5th; please check this one. Chuckstreet (talk) 17:30, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for the rewrite. Sorry, can't find that Bargiel Beethoven V concert. Remove? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:09, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
The portal list says it omits performances in cities where she was living at the time, so that would be why no Berlin in 1877, and no Frankfurt in some other years. All I know is it wasn't the Berlin Philharmonic because that was founded in 1882. Clara played several times with them under Bargiel or Joachim or others conducting, in the 1880s, first time in 1883, Beethoven Choral Fantasy, later Beethoven 4th, no mention of 5th. The 1883 Choral Fantasy she played with her hand in pain from a staircase fall the day before, yet she got a standing ovation. For all accounts of her Berlin Phil concerts, they were all "tremendous successes". We could delete the 1877 ref and include the 1883 Choral Fantasy instead (with a mention of her hand injury in a letter to Brahms), but that was a different conductor; would be nice to mention Woldemar Bargiel somewhere in the article; this sentence is the only mention. What do you think? Chuckstreet (talk) 22:42, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
All good ideas, go ahead ;) - Bargiel is mentioned often, also letters between him and her, that's easy to source. Always nice to see the Choral Fantasy mentioned which was my first choral performance, age 10 ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:13, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
Okay, I'll get to it tomorrow or the weekend, I'm going to relax and binge-watch Star Trek right now. :-) Chuckstreet (talk) 05:57, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

I found the Grove Online version by Reich (2011) yesterday, and sourced things that it covers to it. I can't see her older books, and after the experience with the US tour and Beethoven's 5th piano concerto, I don't trust the older offline sources given, also find that they clutter the reflist. Can we have Reich 2011 at least in addition? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:57, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

I found the original reference for the Beethoven 5th 1877 Bargiel and the dates of her arm injury: Litzmann vol. 1 pages 322–323 (page numbers apparently vary between editions, though). I notice for one of them you cite Litzmann vol. 2, page 42 and a Google Books link; I'll have to check that out. I fixed up many more refs today; still some <ref> to be converted to {{sfn}}. The Reich Grove is only a tiny 2 pages, written in 2001; the various text on the page that you cited as ref in Reich Grove isn't mentioned in that tiny article; it's in the Reich book, also published in 2001. The book is available online, Google Books. Some of the older refs (not counting Litzmann) have cute quotes which I like, so I put them back in :) Chuckstreet (talk) 05:54, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
The Reich I like to quote in addition is this, it was updated on 23 February 2011, and makes for easy verify, much easier than for individual pages of a book even if online. It also has a complete works list, and a good bibliography, all concise. - Thank you for chasing the 5th concerto! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:17, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Yes that's the 2-page article written for Grove's 7th (the print ed.) in 2001. There's not much information in it, compared to other sources like Reich's book or Litzmann. Even the Wikipedia article is twice as long. The only thing "updated" in Grove's 8th (the online ed.) is a bibliography in 2011; the text of the article (and the list of compositions) haven't been updated since 2001. In fact, I've found new info on compositions since that was published. But my point in changing some of your new sfn refs to point to the full book instead of the 2-page article, is that some of the WP text you're referencing isn't found in the article but in the book. The Groves 8th you added in several sfn's is still referenced on this page, however; I just corrected the date. Chuckstreet (talk) 17:01, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for explaining, - I still think that it's convenient for some things. Choir rehearsla now. Sorry about no time. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:22, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
I think the more different references we have, the more well-rounded the article will be. I don't think it's good for an entire article to be based on only one or even two references (Reich and maybe Litzmann in this case). Would seem to be biased or one-sided. The more sources the better. As for the oldness of the sources, I find nothing wrong with that (Litzmann is over a century old after all), as long as the information or assertions haven't been proven wrong by later research. Chuckstreet (talk) 15:32, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

It was questioned during the GA review why Schumann didn't like Liszt. It seems to be an aesthetic disagreement in music styles. Here's a BBC podcast chatting about it [1] a short news article [2] ("I despise Liszt to the very depths of my soul") and a journal article [3] (paywalled) --Spacepine (talk) 11:30, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes that Composer of the  Week episode is very instructive. Donald Mcleod says: "she became increasingly repelled by his personality - both musical and, well, personal." The website notes say this:
"Distintissimo!" – most distinguished! – that’s how the 19th-century piano superstar Franz Liszt described Clara Schumann after seeing her play in Vienna in 1838. And Clara, like most people, was absolutely bowled over by Liszt – "He cannot be compared to any other player – he is absolutely unique", she wrote in her diary. But as a composer, she gradually came to detest him, and by the time of his death she could write that “his compositions lack those very qualities which he possessed as a virtuoso; they are trivial and tedious and will certainly soon disappear from the world in the wake of his passing.” Liszt, by contrast, paid Clara the compliment, late in life, of transcribing three of her songs for solo piano." Martinevans123 (talk) 11:38, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

This sentence under Child Prodigy (last sentence of paragraph 2) seems silly to me:

He would sometimes dress up as a ghost and scare Clara, creating a bond between the two.
The source reference is

Reich, Susanna (1999). Clara Schumann: Piano Virtuoso,. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 28. ISBN 0-618-55160-3,
a children's book, which explains the silliness. It's cute, but seems out of place and rather jarring in this article, don't you think? I vote for its deletion. Chuckstreet (talk) 15:47, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

agree --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:59, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
I removed the sentence and ref, but that leaves the previous sentences without a reference. I believe they're from the same children's book, though I find those sentences useful and not silly. Can we find another reference for them? Chuckstreet (talk) 14:34, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
I believe that Clara recalls Robert's ghost stories in some of the correspondence included in this work, which might be useful as a source for other details of their early life. I'm not entirely sure what would be the modern view of an 18 year-old boy taking an interest in a 9 year-old girl.  Martinevans123 (talk) 14:46, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

In citation templates, we don't say "p. 123" but "123", the template adds the "p." (or pp.). When a link can be modified by simply adding, often when giving a plural, such as [[lied]]er, that is the preferred way of piping, vs. [[Lied|lieder]], compare [[preludes]]s vs. [[prelude|preludes]]. It doesn't work when different spelling is needed, such as [[Symphony|symphonies]]. Consider to restore the better version. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:33, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

This discussion was moved from Chucktreet's user talk page. Nothing specific to Schumann. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:08, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Re p: yes that's the way it should work, but for some reason the template does not add the p in some of the cites, so it has to be specified manually.
Re linking partial words: you're right, my bad. A while back, I spotted one where it didn't work, it just blue-highlighted part of the word, so I corrected that, and while I was at it I "corrected" any other partial links I saw in the wikitext, not realizing those displayed fine. I'll fix. Chuckstreet (talk) 15:00, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, it seems that cite journal works differently, - always learning, and lack of consistency I think. Which leaves the other. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:00, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
More confusing: the examples in the documentation don't request a "p." or "pp.". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:05, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

I see someone else already got to correcting the partial linking already, but then he also got rid of the p. Need to put that back in otherwise it doesn't display. Chuckstreet (talk) 15:14, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
It seems the template's fault, so better complain there instead of changing single instances in articles. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:17, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Actually no the other user did not correct the partial links; he just messed up a different one: one that does NOT display correctly [[Austria]]'s doesn't highlight properly because of the apostrophe. I fix the ones that need fixing. Chuckstreet (talk) 15:21, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Calling Dragons flight and RexxS: problem with cite journal, parameters page and pages don't add "p." respectively "pp." to page number(s) as value, while - as far as I remember - they used to do it, and cite book still does. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:23, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

The reason is that citations to scholarly journals do not conventionally normally include the "p " before the page number(s), unlike citations to books, which conventionally do. The parameter itself can be called |page= or |p= for a single page and |pages= or |pp= for a range. For citations, you should never write |page=p. 1234; only write  |page=1234. Here are some abbreviated examples as illustration:

The template handles whether the p./pp. is inserted according to what type of cite it is. It is unfortunate that book and journal citations are not consistent with each other, but those are the scholarly conventions and the template coders merely followed them. HTH --RexxS (talk) 16:55, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
I went back to the [[llied]]er, but it seems possessives don't work with that trick. Besides "Austria's" there's also "Bonn's" on that page (that I left unchanged). However, I find it unnecessary to link Austria at all, so I completely removed the link. As for p, we should leave it until the template gets "fixed". It might be just an alternate style for journals, but I don't like it. The date runs into the page number and it looks weird; better to have a p in there... and then there's consistency... Chuckstreet (talk) 15:39, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

You are right, possessives don't work. I pinged the one who made the latest change to the cite journal template (which was major, and too hard for me to decipher, but he put up a health message), and a friend who knows templates in and out. Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:47, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
@Chuckstreet and Gerda Arendt: Have a look at pmid:1234, for example. Near the top you will see:
Drug Metab Dispos. 1975 Nov-Dec;3(6):565-76.
That is how scholarly journals make their citations. The corresponding Wikipedia citation might be:
{{cite journal |author=Nadeau D |title=Change in the kinetics of sulphacetamide tissue distribution |journal=Drug Metab. Dispos. |volume=3 |issue=6 |pages=565–76 |date=1975}}
Nadeau D (1975). "Change in the kinetics of sulphacetamide tissue distribution". Drug Metab. Dispos. 3 (6): 565–76.
We should respect the common conventions that most of our readers will be used to, not make up our own (even if we feel ours would be better). --RexxS (talk) 17:09, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
Perhaps we should, but I don't like the way the volume/number looks, for the same reason. "1975 Nov-Dec;3(6):565-76." looks very cluttered to me. In my view something like "1975 Nov-Dec, Vol. 3 No. 6, pp. 565-76." is a lot easier on the eyes and anyone would be able to understand and differentiate the different fields at a glance. Most WP pages I've seen do explicitly use "vol", "no", "p", and so on, and not the concise format without labels.
Most WP viewers are not "scholarly" necessarily, but still might be curious enough to read the cited article. I think it helps the general reader, whereas the cluttered version people without the technical knowledge of citations you just imparted would find confusing and indecipherable. It's one convention out of several; do we have to follow just this one on every page? Chuckstreet (talk) 18:34, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
I agree with Chuckstreet that the cluttered professional look is not for everybody, and the inconsistency with the rendering of books is striking. Could we use "cite book" instead until this gets resolved? I tried to post on the template talk, finding that it is a redirect, so I was unsure if I landed at the right place. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:18, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
Look, this is all well and good, but restoring the extra text just puts the page back into the maintenance category, which means some editor or bot will attempt to fix it. Again and again. If you object to the style of citations, take it up at the template level, do not subvert the function of templates with workarounds that make you happy.— TAnthonyTalk 04:08, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
Specifically, please open a discussion at Template talk:Cite journal. I tend to agree that the "p" should be rendered even in journal citations, but consensus up to now seems to have decided otherwise.— TAnthonyTalk 04:24, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Actually no, I have not decided otherwise, we don't have a consensus yet. So far, we we're just trying to figure out if the lack of a p in cite journal was a bug: that's been answered and reasoned.
I agree with you that there should be a p (and also a vol and a no.), all for the reasons I stated in my last post above. That can be achieved with an alternate template (instead of cite, which I think there IS a standing consensus to use), or some alternate parameters and formatting available within cite. The id= parameter can be used to add extra material at the END of the cite, which is exactly where the vol/no/p gets displayed. That's a valid solution.
But the question is still out: do we want journal citations on the Clara Schumann page to have the concise esoteric look, or the explicitly readable look? Consistency is important I think, and the other cites like "book" display a readable view with p before a page number. Citation format is a matter of individual preference, and is different for each WP article; the preference is usually dictated by the person who originally wrote it. Since the present attempt (going for GA, which it now is (with those added p's in cite journal so they display)) is a major rewrite, we can change the original cite style (and we're doing so).
BTW, I don't see any maintenance bots making any changes; that doesn't seem to be an issue, but if this page IS coming up in a maintenance log, putting the page number in the "id" parameter should fix that. Or even putting the page in the sfn template as per numerous other examples on this page - there's another solution. Chuckstreet (talk) 05:49, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
Update: I put the p or pp in the sfn's instead of the cite journals, similar to the p= we already have in many other sfn's for cite books. The p/pp displays fine now for journals. Go figure. Wonder why sfn will display it, when cite journal will not? Curious. Still wondering about vol and #. They displayed when we had them in <ref>, but not in cite journal; could "fix" those as well... Actually, there are still some <ref>s to convert to sfn's... to do... Yes I know, he who suggests it, etc. Chuckstreet (talk) 08:48, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
Good idea to have the pages in the short citations! Thank you for the transfer to Harvard, - it was Reaper Eternal who suggested a unified style. I suggest we go to peer review in 2 days. I'm busy today, which also avoids edit conflicts ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:53, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

I see that the Susanna Reich (1999) source cites a specific page number. However, it's not clear where in the article that source is cited, as I couldn't find a shortened footnote anywhere. AmericanLemming (talk) 03:04, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Fixed. Chuckstreet (talk) 05:53, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't see any activity on this article talk page for two months, so I thought I'd write here now and describe what I added to the article. Saw it was a bit lacking with some questioning statements without explanation in the section "Relation to composers", which I renamed "Relation to composers and controversy" (and someone else has now renamed War of the Romantics), about how Clara Schumann hated Liszt and Wagner and Bruckner, personally disliked them as well as their music it seems, but didn't say why.
I found the answers in the Wikipedia article War of the Romantics, which said Clara Schumann was basically the leader of this war against the newer composers, so I copied a sufficient amount of the information from that page to this one. I copied over the sources from that article too, though I think maybe they're too many, looks a bit cluttered with superscript numbers. Perhaps someone can weed it out, weedwacker you know. And maybe it's too much description anyway; possibly a briefer explanation and a link to the WOTR article if the reader wants to know more. Otherwise, enjoy!
Oh, I included stuff slightly biased toward Clara Schumann's side and not Liszt's side, even though I personally feel she doesn't deserve the deference, but I was nice to her because this is after all an article about HER. If anyone thinks it needs more balance here like the WOTR article has it, then feel free to rewrite.
In truth, Liszt took the high road and never personally attacked Clara or her co-conspirators like Brahms, nor denigrated their music, quite the opposite. The same cannot be said for the spiteful and annoying, backward-thinking Clara however (bitter she was after her famous husband's attempted suicide, institutionalization, and death). Liszt's supporters did the backbiting, including Wagner. And Brahms, for his part didn't really have his heart in such a war, he just wanted to be nice to Clara who he was in love with and valued her support of him, but he secretly liked the new music of Liszt and Wagner. It was really a one-woman war, and a public cat-fight between her and Liszt's daughter, Wagner's wife Cosima I didn't include because it wasn't in the WOTR article. I didn't add any new material. For reference, most of the material and more is in Alan Walker's book about Liszt's Weimar years. LisztianEndeavors (talk) 01:06, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

 This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2025 and 9 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): KaiKhatri (article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by KaiKhatri (talk) 18:19, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Please, students, respect that every entry needs a reliable source. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:49, 6 May 2025 (UTC)