Pianisms

This paper begins by examining Clara Schumann's early studies with Friedrich Wieck, who boasted in 1861 that she was the "best proof of what his method could produce." In order to assess the degree of Schumann's adherence to and liberation from her father's method throughout her career, the first half of the paper explores her engagement within the broader socio-musical networks from the time: on one hand, in relation to heroic virtuosi such as Franz Liszt, Adolf von Henselt, and Johannes Brahms, each of whom garnered fame for their pianistic idiosyncrasies and technical originality, and on the other, in connection with the plethora of keyboard technologies, self-help hand devices, and other technological gimmicks that commodified piano technique and codified bodily discipline in the early nineteenth century. The initial question surrounding Schumann's integration of the Wieck method concerns the gendered mechanisms of nineteenth-century piano pedagogy, which decreed that young female pianists passively internalize techniques taught to them by (male) pedagogues, while maturing male pianists actively mold their virtuosities as they saw fit. In order to investigate the limits of this virtuosic economy, the second part of the paper presents the seldom discussed story of Schumann's recurring hand injuries post-1840s and asks whether the pain was a by-product of other nineteenth-century female constraints such as the corset. Specifically, I discuss how several pieces Brahms wrote in his most extreme virtuosic idiom may have intensified Schumann's "chronic rheumatism," and work through the (im)possibility of (re)constructing gender from piano-technical rhetoric: was the clash between Schumann's technical capacity and Brahms's piano pieces indicative of how his "masculine" music was incompatible with her "feminine" physiognomy? In trying to conceptualize a nineteenth-century female pianism, I assess the ways in which these gendered frameworks prevented or enabled "freedom" in the performing experiences and haptic realities of female pianists. My most unique piece of evidence emerges from my own experiments playing virtuosic nineteenth-century music while wearing an historically-approximate steel corset: critically reassessing the ethos of carnal musicology as historical reenactment, I also seek to ask how and why nineteenth-century female pianism is still culturally relevant for contemporary perfumers and non-performers alike. 

The assertion that Johann Bernhard Logier's patented chiroplast was the cause of Robert Schumann's right hand disability lingers in the composer's afterlife. This paper examines known connections between Logier, Friedrich Wieck, Clara Wieck Schumann, Robert Schumann, and the notorious chiroplast. 


Wieck sold Logier's device among others in his Leipzig music shop. Logier spent three years in Berlin (1822–25) training other teachers to implement his system of group music instruction. Whether Wieck studied personally with Logier is uncertain, but he chose to use the group method for Clara's earliest lessons at age four. Even after developing his own pedagogical approach, Wieck had positive regard for Logier as teacher and keyboardist. The two men visited together as late as 1844, according to Marie Wieck, and Clara was acquainted with Logier's son Theodore.


Already practicing hours a day, Schumann noted numbness or lameness in his right hand as early as January 1830, even before he moved into the Wieck home. In May 1832 his diary mentioned the use of a _Cigarrenmechanik_; six months later Schumann told his mother that his finger was incurable. The nature of Schumann's "cigar mechanism" has never been confirmed, but some biographers refer to it generically as a "chiroplast." 


Logier's chiroplast or hand-shaper was a static positioning frame with slots to insert the fingers to maintain one or both hands in stable five-note positions. The apparatus was only useful for beginners since the hand was fixed over five keys. Wieck deemed such devices unnecessary and advised Schumann against using one. The mechanism does not match Dr. Moritz Emil Reuter's 1841 medical affidavit that alluded to "a machine that pulled these fingers strongly toward the back of the hand." A French design concocted by Félix Levacher d'Urclé (published 1846) better fulfilled Reuter's description and thus has been passed along and ultimately misidentified as "Logier's 'Chiroplast'"  (Perrey 2007 p. 12).


Speculation has only increased over time regarding diagnosis of the injury. The simple explanation of overuse-which Schumann himself suggested in 1839-has often been dismissed in preference for a physical malady or a suspect gadget.

With the flourishing of public concert life and widening educational opportunities since the late eighteenth century, more and more female musicians, particularly virtuoso pianists, broke through the social confinement of their public activity and achieved professional success. Titled by the Princess Louise of Prussia as the "Chamber Virtuoso of Her Royal Highness" and nicknamed by Paganini as "The Queen of the Piano," the highly esteemed German virtuoso pianist Anna Caroline de Belleville (1806-1880) was often greeted with enthusiasm by music critics during her concert tours starting in the 1820s. While a few biographical entries (Wenzel 2009; Goebl-Streicher 2011 and 2016) provide a general introduction to her life and career, there is a lack of critical examination of Belleville's playing style within the context of early nineteenth-century musical culture. Drawing on periodicals, magazines, correspondence, memoirs, and contemporary writings, this paper aims to reconstruct Belleville's early virtuoso career and understand her virtuosity by examining her strategic programming and evaluating her role in the changing performance practice in the early nineteenth century, a period when Belleville's touring career was at its height.


I argue that Belleville's concert repertoire before around 1833 featured almost exclusively contemporary virtuosic works, mostly variations and concertos by Herz, Hummel, Pixis and herself. Music critics during this period mainly interpreted her virtuosity in terms of her technical prowess, masculine qualities, expressive depth, and distinctive playing gestures. In the mid-1830s as Belleville started performing more works considered Classical or serious, some critics began to comment on her relation to the musical works she performed, particularly her interpretive strength. During this so-called "virtuoso era" (1830-48) when the performance-centered concert was still at its height, Belleville might have been one of the earliest virtuosos whose interpretive strength was favorably perceived by music critics. This newly added critical focus on Belleville's virtuosity, along with her change of repertoire, anticipated the larger paradigm shift of performance practice from composer/virtuoso-performer to interpreter-performer in the second half of the nineteenth century.