His love of music became early interwoven with love for Clara, the gifted daughter and pupil of his teacher, Friedrich Wieck.  To her he dedicated his creative power.  An attempt to gain flexibility by means of a mechanical contrivance having lamed his fingers, he turned from a pianist’s career to composition and musical criticism.  In becoming his wife Clara gave him both hands in more senses than one, and they shone together as a double star in the art firmament.  Madame Schumann had acquired a splendid foundation for her career through the wise guidance of her father, whose pedagogic ideas every piano student might consider with profit.  Her playing was distinguished by its musicianly intelligence and fine artistic feeling.  Earnest simplicity surrounded her public and her private life, and the element of personal display was wholly foreign to her.  She was the ideal woman, artist and teacher who remained in active service until a short time before her death, in 1896.

Those were charmed days in Leipsic when the Schumanns and Mendelssohn formed the centre of an enthusiastic circle of musicians, and created a far-reaching musical atmosphere.  Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), in his work for the piano, adapted to drawing-room use technical devices of his day, and in his “Songs without Words” gave a decisive short-story form to piano literature.  His playing is described as possessing an organ firmness of touch without organ ponderosity, and having an expression that moved deeply without intoxicating.  Living in genial surroundings, he was never forced to struggle, and although he climbed through flowery paths, he never reached the goal he longed for until his heart broke.

Delicate, sensitive, fastidious, Frederic Chopin (1809-1849) delivered his musical message with persuasive eloquence through the medium of the piano.  It was his chosen comrade.  With it he exchanged the most subtle confidences.  Gaining a profound knowledge of its resources he raised it to an independent power.  Polish patriotism steeped in Parisian elegance shaped his genius, and his compositions portray the emotions of his people in exquisitely polished tonal language.  Spontaneous as was his creative power he was most painstaking in regard to the setting of his musical ideas and would often devote weeks to re-writing a single page that every detail might be perfect.  The best that was in him he gave to music and to the piano.  He enlarged the musical vocabulary, he re-created and enriched technique and diction, and to him the musician of to-day owes a debt that should never be forgotten.  “He is of the race of eagles,” said his teacher, Elsner.  “Let all who aspire follow him in his flights toward regions sublime.”