Madame Composer

‘A gripping, eminently readable biography of the great Clara Schumann and the society she was born into, Madame Composer is at once a celebration of genius and a fierce invective against the structural hurdles that women faced in the world of 19th century classical music.’

-- Jennifer Higgie, author of The Mirror and the Palette and The Other Side

'Madame Composer is a revelation and a reckoning — a work of meticulous scholarship and genuine fire that restores Clara Schumann not as a footnote to the men around her but as a central figure: a prodigy, a virtuosa, a composer of radical originality, and the woman who shaped classical music as we know it. Sarah Fritz has cracked open one of music history's most consequential cover-ups, and she does it with a novelist's instinct for scene and a historian's precision. Fritz's detective work is thrilling. She uncovers, for the first time, the melodies Brahms and Liszt borrowed from Clara and never credited. She doesn't just restore Clara Schumann to her rightful place; she shows us, note by note, exactly how she was removed from it. The erasure of Clara Schumann is a story about how canons get made and who gets left out. Clara Schumann finally has the biographer she deserves.'

-- Elizabeth Winkler, author of Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies

'I thought I knew Clara Schumann. Sarah Fritz brings us closer to the woman behind the legend, and she is even more remarkable than the myth.'

-- Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera

'Madame Composer is an illuminating and fascinating new biography of the legendary Clara Schumann. Sarah Fritz's writing and extensive research reveals the many complex layers to the life of this extraordinary musician, bringing the reader ever closer to her spirit and her genius.’

-- Lucy Parham

'With its novelistic pacing and protagonist whose life is as dramatic as any Dickensian heroine, this propulsive debut biography enthralls.'

-- Kirkus Reviews, starred

‘… rousingly, needfully feminist.’

‘This is a wonderfully readable book, written with passion and brio, in which even technical musical analysis is made accessible to the non-specialist without dumbing down.’

* Financial Times *

‘Madame Composer is a testament to what Clara achieved in a life often controlled by outside forces: men, the music world, propriety. Fritz is assured in describing Clara’s musical life. One of the author’s strengths is weaving other women composers of the day into Clara’s story, placing Clara in a rich community of friends and role models. Clara helped define the future of music … she shaped the musical canon according to her own exquisite ear and sophisticated taste.’

* Wall Street Journal *

‘enjoyable’

‘Fritz sets out to reclaim Clara from a welcome feminist perspective, arguing that her music should be part of today’s canonic repertoire.’

‘… this well researched, engagingly written book is a powerful rallying cry.’

-- BBC Music Magazine