Clara Schumann 193rd birthday marked by a Google Doodle

Today's doodle has Clara Schumann surrounded by her eight children, all of whom are seen playing the piano. There is an effective use of lively colours - blue, red, yellow and green to form the letters 'Google'.

Clara's parents separated when she was just four and was raised by her father Friedrich Wieck. She was inspired by her father and learnt the ropes of playing a piano. Her first performance was at the age of eight at the Leipzig home of Dr. Ernst Carus, director of a mental hospital at Colditz Castle. It is here that she met her future spouse and gifted pianist Robert Schumann. Schumann was nine years elder to Clara. He was so impressed with her performance that he left his studies to learn the piano from Clara's father.

Clara was considered to be a child prodigy and her music was famous all across Europe. When Clara was eighteen, she performed a series of recitals in Vienna between December 1837 and April 1838. This is how Clara felt about composing music, "Composing gives me great pleasure...there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound."

Clara married Robert Schumann in 1839 against the wish of her father. They had eight children. However, her personal life was a bit tragic as four of her children died before her. One of her son and her husband spent the last years of their lives in a mental asylum. In fact, Clara herself became deaf in her later life and eventually died of a stroke in 1895 and the age of 76.

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