Clara’s Blumentagebuch (Clara’s Flower Diary)

This program traces the steps of Clara Wieck Schumann, from 1857-1859, by way of flowers. It reflects sentiments from her Blumentagebuch–her diary of pressed flowers–in which Clara left dedications to meaningful people and moments in her life. Each flower or plant carries a set of meanings, both public, according to the practice of floriography in nineteenth-century Germany, and private, with associated memories and emotions. This precious book accompanied her as she toured throughout Europe and served as a record of friendship, mourning and memory. Moving amongst Clara’s floral meditations, we explore floriography in its romantic heyday and delight in the coded and the unspoken. With Clara, we visit Robert, as well as Beethoven and Schubert, and bring in a musical friend of our own, Loren Loiacono (b. 1989).

In a page dedicated to Robert, Clara dried ivy from his gravesite, a symbol of love and faithfulness.

Our program begins with a set of their early songs: the first, a love song by Clara, is drawn from a shared song cycle of lieder written together by Robert and Clara. We turn next to Schubert’s lied, which revels in the poignancy of this hidden language of flowers. In Loiacono’s Sonatensatz, a work written for Merz in 2022, she employs her own Blumensprache, drawing inspiration for the work from the passionate wildness of Robert Schumann’s trios. The program concludes with a celebration of friendship: Beethoven embodies these ideals in his at times noble, playful and transcendent work dedicated  to his great friend, Archduke Rudolph.