“While researchers and social critics tend to focus on music created during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries when discussing the politics of gender and music, much can be discovered when one looks farther back in history. For instance, Clara Schumann, despite being a Wunderkind (prodigy) and one of the most influential piano performers and songwriters of the Romantic era and the years after, spent her entire life living in a patriarchal society where she was passed from the possession of one man to another, always under someone else’s control. Her musical talent was seen as a commodity and was used by the men in her life to promote their own fame and fortune.”

To read more… Kein Frauenschicksal: An Analysis of Clara Schumann