“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
“A revelation and a reckoning. Madame Composer is a work of meticulous scholarship and genuine fire. Fritz has cracked open one of music history’s most consequential cover-ups. Clara Schumann finally has the biographer she deserves.”
– Elizabeth Winkler, author of Shakespeare Was a Woman—and Other Heresies
“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
“Clara Schumann learned to write music before learning the alphabet, improvised at the piano before she talked in sentences, and was giving private performances by age seven. When she married Robert in 1840 she was so famous that he was sometimes referred to as ‘the husband of Clara Wieck.’ Impassioned. Vividly written, Madame Composer is a persuasive brief for Clara Schumann’s right to an honored place in the classical music canon.”
Today I’m so excited to share the covers of Madame Composer: The Virtuosic Genius of Clara Schumann, my new biography of this giant of German Romanticism. Yes, I said covers, plural, because there’s two: one for the US / Canada release, and one for the UK release. I love them both. It’s incredibly surreal to finally…
It’s official! I’m writing a new Clara Schumann biography for Pegasus Books entitled MADAME COMPOSER, to be published in 2026. I’m so grateful to Pegasus Books, to publisher Jessica Case, and my literary agent, Elias Altman at MMQA, for signing onto #TeamClara and for believing in my work. I am overjoyed at the privilege—thoroughly daunted by…
A new documentary about women composers, focusing on Maria Anna Mozart (otherwise known as Nannerl, Wolfgang’s older sister), is premiering at international film festivals this summer. Mozart’s Sister will also be broadcast on PBS in the U.S. and on other international channels this autumn. Filmmaker Madeleine Hetherton-Miau with Media Stockade has made an amazing film…
The Clara Schumann Channel 