Even in her teenage years, Clara Wieck had a firm command of compositional material, and it is clear from her early piano pieces that she had studied the works of Chopin and Mendelssohn. Her accelerated maturity was in part the result of the extended tours she undertook with her father when she was a child. In the late 1830s, Wieck began study with Robert Schumann. Working with a new teacher, plus the natural growth in her musical maturity, led to a more subtle form of expression in Wieck's music. A perfect example of her increasing ability is the Three Songs on Poems of Friedrich Rückert, Op. 12, composed in 1840 and published in 1841 in Leipzig. (These were also published as Nos. 2, 4, and 11 of Robert Schumann's Gedichte aus Liebesfrühling, Op. 37.)

Wieck was to become one of the finest pianists of her time; not surprisingly, the instrument plays an important role in her songs. The first of the Three Rückert Songs, "Warum willst du and're fragen" (Why do you want to ask others?), begins with the piano alone, outlining the first line of the voice part. Once the voice enters, the piano parallels it to the end. In varied strophic form, the song is quiet and meditative. The second verse is the most adventurous, straying significantly from the pattern of the first, and after it there is a lengthy interlude for the piano that explores developmental possibilities of the melody. The third verse is more like the first, but the ensuing piano interlude ventures into the minor mode then back to major for the fourth verse.

"Er ist gekommen in Sturm und Regen" (He came in storm and rain) opens with an appropriately stormy piano introduction, initiating a pattern of arpeggios that continues under the voice. In the middle section of this varied, strophic song the melody takes on intense, nervous repeated notes, but when the text considers the approaching spring, the texture lightens and block chords support a bouncy voice part. The opening material returns to close the song.

In "Liebst du um Schönheit" (If you love beauty), the piano immediately establishes a continuous accompanimental pattern that is completely independent of the voice part. In a surprising suspension of the expected progress of the song, Wieck interrupts the line "Liebe den Frühling, der jung ist jedes Jahr!" (Love the spring, which is young every year!) after the first three words, the piano first providing the musical answer to the beginning of the line, before the voice moves on to something new.

© John Palmer, Rovi