Robert and Clara Schumann's early days

Three Movements for Six Hands is an historical novel about Robert and Clara Schumann and the young unknown, Johannes Brahms. It is being offered to subscribers, who will receive an autographed copy of the book before the rest of public. The target publication date is May 7, 2015, the birth date of Johannes Brahms.

Robert Schumann (pictured) first met his piano teacher's young daughter Clara when he was 18 and she was only 9. They became secretly engaged when they were 24 and 15, had their first kiss a year later and met secretly in Dresden a few months after that. Robert asked Clara's father for her hand in marriage when she turned 18 and he refused, believing Schumann had no future as a concert pianist. The couple petitioned the Court of Appeals for permission to marry without her father's consent and won, but they did not exercise that privilege until one day before her 21st birthday.

Our story takes place much later in their lives, when Robert was 43 and Clara was 34 and they met Johannes Brahms at the tender age of 20.

By subscribing to the book, you can contribute to the expenses of editing and publishing. Don't wait another day. If you haven't already sent in your check for $20.00, please do it today. Make your check out to Terry Row and mail it to PO Box 1121, Los Alamos, CA 93440-1121. 

Do you want a copy of Terry Row's new book?

Do you want a copy of Terry Row's new book, Three Movements for Six Hands, coming out on May 7, 2015?

Have you sent in your $20 Subscription Fee?

Clifton Edwin Publishing is counting on advance sales through subscription to pay for the editing and production of this historical novel about the relationships among Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann (pictured) and Robert Schumann. It's a tragic story of love, misery and death, not the antiseptic version you learned in Music History class.

You can help by supporting your local author and publisher. Subscribers will receive their autographed copies before the book is available to the public.

Here's the opening paragraph:

At nineteen years, Johannes Brahms was a beautiful youth with delicate hands and slender fingers that belied their strength, a clear tenor singing voice, a smooth, beardless face and a slight build. Women swooned over his rich and beautiful head of golden blond hair that flowed down to his shoulders and framed his pale blue eyes, giving him an aura of innocence. Although he was not a tall boy, he stood straight and upright, and looked people in the eye when he talked, giving him an air of authority.

Don't wait. The sooner the financial targets are met, the sooner the book can go to the editor and then to the printer. Send your check for $20.00 – to cover the book, sales tax, shipping and handling – to Terry Row, PO Box 1121, Los Alamos, CA 93440-1121.

Clifton Edwin Publishing announces new book for 2015

I'm happy to announce today, May 7, the 181st anniversary of the birth of Johannes Brahms, that I have completed the first draft of my new book, Three Movements for Six Hands, an Historical Novel by Terry Row, about the complicated and misunderstood relationships among Brahms, Clara Schumann and Robert Schumann.

When they met in 1853, Brahms was nineteen, a brilliant and handsome young man, an unknown pianist and unpublished composer, just beginning his career with his first concert tour. 

Clara Schumann was thirty four, a star, a former child prodigy, a famous professional touring and concertizing pianist, as well as a composer, at a time when women did not tour and concertize. She played for royalty. She traveled all over Europe. She played from memory, something unheard of at the time, establishing a standard still followed today. She had to interrupt her concert schedule seven times in twelve years to give birth.

Robert Schumann forty three, was a well-known composer, conductor, music critic, publisher and writer, unhappy that his own career as a pianist had failed due to a hand injury and dissatisfied with his current position as a conductor of a minor orchestra.

Their lives would soon collide in ways the Music History texts do not teach.

The Three Movements for Six Hands are: Love, Misery and Death, a structure that parallels Robert Schumann's piece for orchestra, the Introduction, Scherzo and Finale, Op. 52, written a dozen years earlier in 1841.

I'm also happy to announce that I am offering this book through an advance sales subscription. I got the idea from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who launched a subscription series in Vienna, for which he wrote and performed new piano concertos. The proceeds from this subscription will pay for the editing and printing of the book. The release date for the book is one year from today, May 7, 2015.

To reserve a copy today, send a check for $20.00 – to cover the book, sales tax, shipping and handling – to Terry Row, PO Box 1121, Los Alamos, CA 93440-1121.  I'll send autographed copies of the finished volume to subscribers in one year. Additional copies will go on sale without autographs at www.amazon.com and other channels after that.