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.

Phyllis Marie

I have enjoyed the era of the book, Phyllis Marie, the extraordinary characters, and the eloquently written English.

What a great book to read to take us away from the present.  A book can only do that to a person if it is very well written.  It shows the true meaning of a family: true love and commitment to a marriage for better or worse.  These characters show remarkable resilience in dealing with difficult situations.

The book is categorized as fiction, but the way it is written, most of it seemed true.  It is a book that will stay on my bookshelf and will bring memories of kind families with good values with whom I have only connected through the book.

In my opinion, this story will make a good movie because it covers several areas: an era, way of life, faith, challenges, family values, war, resilience, happiness, and more.

I am glad we have met, talked, and that I left the store carrying with me Phyllis Marie. 

Best regards,

Aleen B., CA

Untarnished Reputation

A few moments ago, I finished reading your wonderful Untarnished Reputation historical novel to my mom.   We both enjoyed it thoroughly.  Through each horse race, tracking the horse thieves and lattice weaving of Bat Masterson's assignment -- we were wide-eyed !!  It is so much fun reading aloud - I've never done that for my mom before - but she was so curious about your book. This was a very special week - my mom - Gwen - had her 89th birthday on August 28th and the reading all week of your book made it splendid, indeed.  Most, bully! Thank you, Terry for this marvelous gift. Now I must read Phyllis Marie for my mom -- she has become quite your fan.  Truly, your writing is brilliant and your imagination - truly creative.  Your storytelling is captivating and wondrous.

Rebecca Rutkowski

I dreamt I went to Hidden Valley again and sat in the sunlit orchestra of my youth in the wood-and-glass library of the York School. The doctor, the benign dictator who forever shaped my musical sensibilities rehearsed the Brahms Serenade in A Major, Op. 16 and although I could play the piece, I could not read the part on the music stand. My oboe stood on its instrument stand in front of me when I wasn't playing, and the reed was wrapped with violet thread. I had only a vague sense of the orchestra that surrounded me, strings, without violins in front of me, flutes to my right, clarinets and bassoons behind me, and horns in the distance somewhere. We were all golden children, sort of a classical music version of Woodstock, but without the rock'n'roll or the mud and the chaos.

Neil Armstrong died today.

My father worked for NASA on the X-15 project at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1960s and the Armstrongs were friends of the family. We attended the same church and my father and Neil were both ushers, as were several other test pilots, so I became an usher so I could hang out with them in the lobby during the sermon and listen to their shop talk. If it wasn't the recent test flight they were talking about, it was the upcoming test.

On test flight days, my mother and brother and I would get up very early, four in the morning, and drive out into the desert to a spot where we could see the flight. We'd watch the designated part of the sky, and pretty soon we could see the B-52 in the distance, followed by a couple of F-104 chase planes.

When the B-52 released the X-15, we would see that extra contrail start and speed away from the bomber as if it were standing still.

There were two basic types of test flights: speed and altitude. On speed flights, the X-15 would rocket past us so fast that it seemed to cover the entire sky in a matter of seconds and disappear on the horizon, but my favorite flights were the altitude tests, because as the X-15 climbed higher and higher it appeared to go slower and slower until it seemed almost to just stop. When it reached its peak it would appear to gain speed and again, disappear on the horizon.

After the flight, my mother would drop us off at school in time for our first classes. That evening, the local paper, the Lancaster Ledger-Gazette would have a big headline about the flight. I'd read all about it with the same enthusiasm as I did when I checked the baseball standings. What I didn't realize at the time was that the entire world was not paying as close attention as I was, as close attention as the citizens of the Antelope Valley. Not until Tom Wolfe's book, The Right Stuff, was my perception brought into line.