Although Clara Schumann did not write a pedagogical manifesto of any sort, the collective accounts of her students and colleagues capture a colorful collage of her pedagogy and pianism. In this dissertation, I use these accounts to reconstruct the foundations of Clara Schumann’s school of piano playing. I heavily rely on recorded evidence to demonstrate how the praxis of Clara’s students reflect and reveal the written accounts of her teaching. This study discloses a pedagogy of musical asceticism that demands the highest level of conscientiousness and self-denial. Throughout the process of observing, interpreting, and performing the musical notation, Clara Schumann required her students to justify their musical decisions with reason rather than mere “feeling.” Clara’s pedagogy, in short, asserts that understanding is key to accessing musical truth; in other words, illumination is gained by reason.