Madame Composer

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A01=Sarah Fritz
Author_Sarah Fritz
brahms muse
Category=AVL
Category=AVN
Category=DNBF
Category=JBSF1
Category=NHTB
clara schumann
composer
depression
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eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
female composer
forthcoming
germany
johannes brahms
misogyny
music
musical works
performer
rhine
robert schumann
women's history

Product details

  • ISBN 9781837051441
  • Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
  • Publication Date: 29 Oct 2026
  • Publisher: The History Press Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
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Clara Schumann was a composer of enormous brilliance who battled society’s and her own internalised misogyny. She struggled with depression, anxiety, and imposter syndrome, at once deeply desiring to be a good mother and wife, while fervently needing to create lasting art. And when her alcoholic and unstable husband first leaped into the Rhine and then died in an asylum, she became a single mother at thirty-four: with no time or peace to compose anymore, she once again started touring to support herself – and her seven children.

History has not been kind to Clara. She’s often remembered in relation to the men in her life – wife of Robert Schumann, muse to Johannes Brahms. Madame Composer finally rights the historical wrong and tells her story in full for the first time, proving that without Clara Schumann, many of history’s best-loved musical works would have been buried, or never written at all.

SARAH FRITZ is a musicologist, mezzo-soprano, and music historian who has contributed to the New York Times, given pre-concert talks for the Philadelphia Orchestra, and appears in the 2024 PBS documentary, Mozart’s Sister. Her popular Clara Schumann Channel platform – dedicated to educating the public about women composers – is followed by scholars, quoted in academic articles, and studied in graduate musicology classrooms. She teaches on the faculty of the Westminster Conservatory in Princeton, New Jersey.

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