When Clara Schumann was just eighteen she realised 'that I would be unhappy if I were unable to practise my art forever'. She found after her husband Robert Schumann's death, 'how necessary music is in my life - if I had to given it up I should soon perish'. Even when she was seventy, the thought that she might no longer be able to play was completely unbearable: 'How should I go on living if I had to give it up entirely!' Nothing shook her hold on life as strongly as the thought of giving up her music. It was something innate rather than acquired, a form of artistic expression, the language most familiar to her, 'the air in which I breathe. Only music and people could warm my heart' - and in that order.
