Back in 2015, this extended musical family told Clive Paget how the ‘food of love’ can also be the language of love.

This article first appeared in the June 2015 issue of Limelight.


The history of music is littered with examples of ‘keeping it in the family.’ Singers marry other singers, likewise instrumentalists. Romantic liaisons between pianists was a testament to the power of four hands, one piano in an age when that may well have been the closest you ever got to a member of the opposite sex. Wagner married Liszt’s daughter having prised her out of the hot little hands of his chief artist cheerleader, conductor Hans von Bülow. Musical dynasties abound – the Bachs, the Mozarts, the Mendelssohns. In the past, as is often still the case today, music is passed down from fathers to sons like a trade. But in a time when most professions were considered inappropriate for women, music was also passed on to young girls. For all his faults, old man Wieck set his daughter Clara on the road to a musical career and the liaison with Robert Schumann that would blow their family apart. So, with music, is it something...