Clara Schumann Wieck learned to compose, and from childhood to middle age she produced a good body of work. Clara wrote that "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". At age fourteen she wrote her piano concerto, with some help from Robert Schumann, and performed it at age sixteen at the Leipzig Gewandhaus with Mendelssohn conducting. As she grew older, however, she became more preoccupied with other responsibilities in life and found it hard to compose regularly,
Friedrich Wieck reviewed in the "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung". Spurred on by a favorable comment from von Weber, he left his position as a tutor and established himself in Leipzig as a piano teacher and in the business of renting and selling pianos and other musical instruments and keeping a music lending library, which Richard Wagner was known to use. Marriage was considered by Wieck as a means to improve his status, which he did by marrying Marianne Tromlitz. Tromlitz was a famous singer in Leipzig at the time. She taught the more advanced piano students of Wieck. As an accomplished singer, Marianne