Fanny Mendelssohn

Fanny Hensel, 1842, by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim

Fanny Cäcilie Mendelssohn (14 November 1805 – 14 May 1847), later Fanny Hensel, was a German pianist and composer, the sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn and granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. She was the grandmother of the philosopher Paul Hensel and the mathematician Kurt Hensel.

Life

Fanny Mendelssohn, sketched by her future husband Wilhelm Hensel

Fanny Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, the oldest of four children. She was descended on both sides from distinguished Jewish families; her parents were Abraham Mendelssohn (who was the son of philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and later changed the family surname to Mendelssohn Bartholdy), and Lea, née Salomon, a granddaughter of the entrepreneur Daniel Itzig. She was not however brought up as Jewish, and never practised Judaism.

Fanny shared the early musical education and upbringing of her younger brother Felix, including tuition from Carl Friedrich Zelter. The siblings shared a great passion for music. Like Felix (who was born in 1809), Fanny showed prodigious musical ability as a child and began to write music. Visitors to the Mendelssohn household in the early 1820s, including Ignaz Moscheles and Sir George Smart, were equally impressed by both siblings. She may also have been influenced by the role-models of her great-aunts Fanny von Arnstein and Sarah Levy, both lovers of music, the former the patroness of a well-known salon and the latter a skilled keyboard player in her own right.^[1]

However, Fanny was limited by prevailing attitudes of the time toward women, attitudes apparently shared by her father, who was tolerant, rather than supportive, of her activities as a composer. Her father wrote to her in 1820 "Music will perhaps become his [i.e. Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament". On the other hand, Felix was supportive of her, as a composer and a performer, although cautious (professedly for family reasons) of her publishing her works under her own name. He did however arrange with her for a number of her songs to be published under his own name. In turn Fanny helped Felix by constructive criticism of pieces, which he always considered very carefully.

In 1829, after a courtship of several years, Fanny married the painter Wilhelm Hensel and the following year she had her only child, Sebastian Ludwig Felix Hensel.^[2]

Her husband was supportive of her composing. Subsequently, her works were often played alongside her brother's at the family home in Berlin in a sunday concert series (Sonntagskonzerte), which was originally organized by Fanny's father, and after 1831 carried on by Fanny herself. Her public debut at the piano (and only known public performance) came in 1838, when she played her brother's Piano Concerto No. 1. In 1846, she decided, without consulting Felix, to publish a collection of her songs (as her op. 1).^[3]

Grave of Fanny Hensel in Berlin

Fanny Hensel died in Berlin in 1847 of complications from a stroke suffered while rehearsing one of her brother's oratorios, The First Walpurgis Night. Felix himself died less than six months later from the same cause (which was also responsible for the deaths of both of their parents and of their grandfather Moses),^[4] but not before writing his String Quartet No. 6 in F minor in memory of his sister.

In recent years, her music has become better known thanks to concert performances and a number of CDs being released on labels such as Hyperion and CPO. Her reputation has also been advanced by those researching female musical creativity, of which she is one of the relatively few well-documented exemplars in the early 19th century.

Music

See also List of compositions by Fanny Mendelssohn.

Fanny Mendelssohn composed 466 pieces of music. Her compositions include a piano trio and several books of solo piano pieces and songs. A number of her songs were originally published under Felix's name in his opus 8 and 9 collections. One of these songs, "Italy", was a favourite of Queen Victoria, who thought Felix had written it. Her piano works are often in the manner of songs, and many carry the name Lied ohne Worte (Song without Words). This style (and title) of piano music was most successfully developed by Felix Mendelssohn, though some modern scholars assert that Fanny may have preceded him in the genre.

She also wrote, amongst other works for the piano, a cycle of pieces depicting the months of the year, Das Jahr ("The Year").^[5] The music was written on coloured sheets of paper, and illustrated by her husband Wilhelm . Each piece was also accompanied by a short poem.

In a letter from Rome, Fanny Mendelssohn described the process behind composing Das Jahr:

I have been composing a good deal lately, and have called my piano pieces after the names of my favourite haunts, partly because they really came into my mind at these spots, partly because our pleasant excursions were in my mind while I was writing them. They will form a delightful souvenir, a kind of second diary. But do not imagine that I give these names when playing them in society, they are for home use entirely.^[6]

Published sources

• Fanny Mendelssohn's son Sebastian Hensel edited the family correspondence as The Mendelssohn Family 1729-1847 (tr. into English, 4th revised edition 1884) which still remains an important source of information about Fanny, Felix and their relatives.

• Fanny's correspondence with Felix has been translated into English and edited by Marcia Citron: The Letters of Fanny Hensel to Felix Mendelssohn (New York, 1987).

• R. Larry Todd's Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (Oxford University Press, 2003) ISBN 0-19-511043-9 is the most recent comprehensive survey of Felix and contains much information about Fanny.

• The Mendelssohns: Their Music in History edited by John Michael Cooper & Julie D. Prandi (Oxford University Press, 2002) contains material on both composers.

• R. Larry Todd Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn (Oxford University Press, 2010) ISBN 978-0-19-518080-0

Other references

• Citron, Marcia J. Mendelssohn, Fanny In Grove Music Online (subscriber access). Oxford Music Online, (accessed February 13, 2010).
• Kimber, Marian Wilson, "The 'Suppression' of Fanny Mendelssohn: Rethinking Feminist Biography," 19th-Century Music, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 113–129
• Sterndale Bennett, R., "The Death of Mendelssohn", in Music and Letters vol. 36 no.4, Oxford, 1955
• Tillard, Françoise, translated by Camille Naish, Fanny Mendelssohn , Amdeus Press, Portland, Oregon, c1996, ISBN 0931340969

Notes

1. ^ Citron, Mendelssohn, Fanny
2. ^ Fanny Mendelssohn: Her Life and Music, musicforpianos.com. Retrieved on 20 July 2009.
3. ^ Citron, Mendelssohn, Fanny
4. ^ Sterndale Bennett (1955) 376
5. ^ Marcia J. Citron: 'Mendelssohn, Fanny', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed [10 June 2008]), <http://www.grovemusic.com>
6. ^ Citron, Marcia J. The Letters of Fanny Hensel to Felix Mendelssohn.

External links

• Free scores by Fanny Mendelssohn in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by Fanny Mendelssohn at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Fanny Mendelssohn in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• FannyHensel.de - comprehensive site
• Hensel-Biography - some notes about the composer and her family
• Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel Piano Trio in d minor sound-bites and short bio
• Klavierstücke for piano four hands, in youtube

Persondata
Name	Hensel, Fanny
Alternative names	Mendelssohn, Fanny Cäcilie
Short description	German pianist and composer
Date of birth	14 November 1805
Place of birth	Hamburg
Date of death	14 May 1847
Place of death	Berlin