Review: Longing by J.D. Landis

Landis, J.D., Longing

Snowbooks (March 1, 2005)

416 pages

ISBN-10: 1905005059

ISBN-13: 978-1905005055

An ordinary novelist would be embarrassed to write a story as  overflowing with coincidence and melodrama as the true story of Robert and Clara Schumann. But such qualms do not apply to J. D. Landis, whose Longing, a “novelization” of their story, is based on unimpeachable sources—letters, diaries, court documents and similar materials. Truth, once again, seems stranger than  fiction.

Bored as a law student, Robert quits university and moves into the home of piano teacher Friederick Wieck, who has an eye for talent and promises to make him into a great concert pianist in only a few years. In the Wieck house Robert meets one of the daughters, the extraordinary Clara, age eleven, who is preparing for her first concert tour, which will take her  to Paris, then to Weimar to play for Germany’s greatest  poet, Goethe. Robert becomes impatient with his progress and tries a wooden finger-stretching machine. It damages a nerve in his left hand, in one blow putting an end to his future as a concert pianist. Still, he continues to study with Wieck, now as a composition student.

As Clara grows into adolescence, the two young people fall in love; but when her father finds out, he is furious, certain that Clara’s career will end if she marries this ex-piano student who offers her nothing but empty dreams of writing music for a living. Wieck angrily forbids Clara to see Robert and warns Robert that he will shoot him if he finds him approaching Clara again. For several years the lovers struggle to maintain their relationship by passing love-notes via sympathetic servants, managing only a few clandestine meetings. Finally, seeing Wieck reject all their efforts at peace-making, they sue in court for the right to marry without his approval. Wieck responds by sending venemous letters to friends and business contacts in an effort to besmirch Robert’s character and Clara’s musical abilities. EventuallyWieck loses the court case, is sentenced to a short jail term, and the lovers marry.

The marriage of Robert and Clara Schumann inaugurates one of the most remarkable artistic collaborations in history, with  Clara, one of the greatest pianists of her century, providing financial and emotional support to, and on concert stages  tirelessly promoting the music of, Robert, one of the greatest composers of his century. The collaboration is not only artistic; it produces eight children in the space of thirteen years.

Even during her years of child-bearing and domesticity, Clara continues her concert career, always successful, always a sensation, achieving enough credibility that her innovations on the concert stage—playing from memory, eliminating cheap entertainment acts, programming only music by the great composers—transform concert recitals and set the template that is still used  today. For Robert recognition comes much more slowly. While he associates with great musical figures such as Mendelssohn, Liszt and Chopin, he fails to gain much acceptance with the general public until many years after his death.

One morning there is a knock on the door of the Schumann house. It is a handsome young man carrying a knapsack full of his own compositions, come to pay tribute to his hero, Doctor Schumann. Robert invites him in and asks him to play something he has written. After hearing only a few bars, Robert tells him to stop and excitedly calls Clara from the other room. They invite the young man to stay with them for several days. His name is Johannes Brahms.

For many years Robert has been suffering from mental instability, but the disturbances are increasing, the hallucinations are getting harder to ward off. One rainy February night he runs out of the house in his dressing gown, races down to the Rhine, throws his wedding ring into the icy water and jumps in after it. Fishermen rescue him, and he is taken home. He asks to be taken to a mental asylum, saying he is afraid he might harm his wife and children. Brahms rushes back from Hamburg to help Clara take care of the household and the children. Although the asylum is only twenty miles away, on the advice of the doctors Clara does not visit Robert until a day or two before he dies. Clara and Johannes fall in love, but after Robert’s death they decide not to marry. They become the closest friends for the rest of their lives. Within months of Clara’s death, Brahms also dies.

Has the life of any artist offered richer material for books or movies? Hollywood did a creditable job in 1942 with Song of Love starring Catherine Hepburn as Clara, and more recently German cinema has made several attempts. But it took author J.D. Landis to give the story the treatment it deserves. From the mass of original documents he creates a gripping narrative that takes the reader into the Schumann home where you see things from such an intimate perspective that you are left feeling like a close friend of the family.

Landis’s style is sophisticated and literate, always finding the well chosen word, bold enough to use, where necessary, language that rises above our daily humdrum vocabulary. Now and again an historical personage has their moment on the stage, as do some historical events; and where an obscure reference, a point of law, or some oddity can use clarification, Landis supplies a helpful footnote. In a word, the book is a joy to read. Everyone who finishes it will feel compelled to search out, and listen afresh to, the music of Robert and Clara Schumann.