Creativity Quote by Clara Schumann

A musician of Clara Schumann's caliber doesn’t dismiss “instrumental art” lightly. The line lands like a private sigh turned public verdict: the old promise that pure music can still yield “treasures” has started to feel unreliable, even a little naive. Read in her world, “treasures” isn’t just money or acclaim. It’s the hard-to-name rewards artists chase when the work is difficult and the culture is receptive: seriousness, depth, the sense that an audience is meeting you at your level.

The phrasing is telling. “Are no longer to be got” has the dry finality of someone who has tested the market and found it wanting. Schumann spent her life inside the machinery of performance: touring as a prodigy, sustaining a family after Robert Schumann’s decline, carrying his music into concert halls, teaching, negotiating with promoters and patrons. If “instrumental art” once implied a kind of moral prestige (music as the purest language, beyond words), the mid-19th century also saw that purity become a commodity: virtuoso display, salon fashion, audiences hungry for sensation rather than structure. Her sentence cuts through the romance and points to the new reality: instrumental music may be thriving as entertainment, yet failing as a reliable vessel for value.

The subtext is both cultural and personal. She’s not saying instrumental music is worthless; she’s mourning a shift in what it can secure - respect, stability, or even spiritual payoff. In a century obsessed with progress, Schumann offers a darker progress report: the art remains, the “treasures” have moved elsewhere.