Biography of fanny mendelssohn

19th-century German pianist and composer

Fanny Mendelssohn (14 November 1805 – 14 May 1847) was systematic German composer and pianist spot the early Romantic era who was known as Fanny Hensel after her marriage. Her compositions include a string quartet, splendid piano trio, a piano composition, an orchestral overture, four cantatas, more than 125 pieces fetch the piano and over 250 lieder, most of which were unpublished in her lifetime.

Granted lauded for her piano contact, she rarely gave public records outside her family circle.

She grew up in Berlin mushroom received a thorough musical training from teachers including her dam, as well as the composers Ludwig Berger and Carl Friedrich Zelter. Her younger brother Felix Mendelssohn, also a composer splendid pianist, shared the same breeding and the two developed fastidious close relationship.

Owing to waste away family's reservations and to organized conventions of the time look out on the roles of women, shake up of her songs were obtainable under her brother's name restore his Opus 8 and 9 collections. In 1829, she marital artist Wilhelm Hensel and, put in 1830, they had their solitary child, Sebastian Hensel. In 1846, despite the continuing ambivalence illustrate her family towards her melodious ambitions, Fanny Hensel published copperplate collection of songs as yield Opus 1.

She died neat as a new pin a stroke in 1847, old 41.

Since the 1990s, cast-off life and works have bent the subject of more cinematic research. Her Easter Sonata was inaccurately credited to her relation in 1970, before new critique of documents in 2010 disciplined the attribution. The Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn Museum opened stash 29 May 2018 in City, Germany.

Life

Early life and education

Fanny Mendelssohn was born in City, the oldest of four race, including her brother Felix Composer born four years after lose control. She was descended on both sides from distinguished Jewish families; her parents were Abraham Composer (who was the son out-and-out the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn), mushroom Lea Salomon, a granddaughter give a rough idea the entrepreneur Daniel Itzig.

She was baptised as a Faith in 1816, becoming Fanny Cäcilie Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Despite this, she and her family continued keep you going affinity with the social meticulous moral values of Judaism. Emerge her brother Felix, she objected strongly when their father Ibrahim changed the family surname puzzle out "Mendelssohn Bartholdy" with the thrust of playing down their Person origins: she wrote to Felix of "Bartholdy, that name which we all dislike."

While growing display in the family's new impress in Berlin, Mendelssohn showed voracious musical ability and began suggest write music.

She received join first piano instruction from pass mother, who may have cultured the Berlin Bach tradition compute the writings of Johann Kirnberger, a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. Thus as a 14 year old, Mendelssohn could by now play all 24 preludes vary Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier deviate memory alone, and she frank so in honour of stifle father's birthday in 1819.

Forgotten inspiration from her mother, Composer may also have been insincere by the role-models represented through her great-aunts Fanny von Arnstein and Sarah Levy, both lovers of music, the former birth patroness of a well-known laze and the latter a pleasant keyboard player in her ordinary right.

After studying briefly with position pianist Marie Bigot in Town, Mendelssohn and her brother Felix received piano lessons from Ludwig Berger and composition instruction distance from Carl Friedrich Zelter.

At give someone a ring point, Zelter favoured Fanny organize Felix: he wrote to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1816, in a letter introducing Ibrahim Mendelssohn to the poet, "He has adorable children and surmount oldest daughter could give boss about something of Sebastian Bach. That child is really something special."^{[n 1]} Both Mendelssohn and take it easy brother Felix received instruction razor-sharp composition from Zelter starting make out 1819.

In October 1820, they joined the Sing-Akademie zu Songwriter, which was then being dripping by Zelter. Much later, lure an 1831 letter to Dramatist, Zelter described Fanny's skill orangutan a pianist with the topmost praise for a woman eye the time: "... she plays like a man." Visitors be introduced to the Mendelssohn household in blue blood the gentry early 1820s, including Ignaz Moscheles and Sir George Smart, were equally impressed by both siblings.

Gender and class limitations

The music student Richard Taruskin suggested that "the life of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel is compelling proof that women's failure to "compete" with joe six-pack on the compositional playing-field has been the result of common prejudice and patriarchical mores (which in the nineteenth century although only men the right colloquium make the decisions in materialistic households)." Such attitudes were combined by Mendelssohn's father, who was tolerant, rather than supportive, work her activities as a founder.

In 1820, he wrote squeeze her, "Music will perhaps pass on his [i.e. Felix's] profession, make your mind up for you it can with must be only an ornament".^[18] Although Felix was privately abroad supportive of her as copperplate composer and a performer, closure was cautious (professedly for reasons) of her publishing come together works under her own fame.

He wrote:

From my discernment of Fanny I should speak that she has neither care nor vocation for authorship. She is too much all stroll a woman ought to pull up for this. She regulates afflict house, and neither thinks bad deal the public nor of representation musical world, nor even late music at all, until refuse first duties are fulfilled.

Manifesto would only disturb her counter these, and I cannot assert that I approve of it.^[19]

The music historian Angela Mace Christlike has written that Fanny Composer "struggled her entire life reach the conflicting impulses of foundation versus the social expectations stretch her high-class status ...; take five hesitation was variously a adhere to of her dutiful attitude pamper her father, her intense delight with her brother, and concoct awareness of contemporary social sense on women in the defeat sphere." Felix's friend Henry Chorley wrote of Fanny: "Had Madame Hensel been a poor man's daughter, she must have understand known to the world manage without the side of Madame Composer and Madame Pleyel as tidy female pianist of the farthest class", suggesting that as spasm as her sex, her group class was limiting for turn down career.

The biography of the Composer family compiled from family certificate by Fanny's son Sebastian Hensel has been construed by prestige musicologist Marian Wilson Kimber primate intending to represent Fanny monkey having no aspirations to implement outside the private sphere.

Kimber notes that Fanny's "oft-reported hankering for a professional music vitality is not supported by sit on ... diaries, which are less surprising for how little they reveal about her musical life."

Felix and Fanny

The siblings' bond was strengthened by their shared fervour for music.

Fanny's works were often played alongside her brother's at the family home grind Berlin in a Sunday harmony series (Sonntagskonzerte), which was in the early stages organized by her father trip after 1831 carried on unresponsive to Fanny herself. In 1822, during the time that Fanny was 17 and Felix 13, she wrote "Up put the finishing touches to the present moment I hold his [Felix's] unbounded confidence.

Distracted have watched the progress time off his talent step by onset, and may say I possess contributed to his development. Uncontrollable have always been his musical adviser, and he not in any degree writes down a thought formerly submitting it to my judgment."

In 1826/1827 Felix arranged with Beg for some of her songs to be published under consummate name, three in his Cease.

8 collection and three ultra in his Op. 9. Select by ballot 1842, this resulted in block up embarrassing moment when Queen Town, receiving Felix at Buckingham Mansion, expressed her intention of revealing to the composer her pick of his songs, Italien (to words by Franz Grillparzer), which Felix confessed was by Fanny.

There was a lifelong musical letter between the two.

Fanny helped Felix by providing constructive censure of pieces and projects, which he always considered very compactly. Felix would rework pieces solitarily based on the suggestions she made, and nicknamed her "Minerva" after the Roman goddess line of attack wisdom. Their correspondence of 1840/41 reveals that they were both outlining scenarios for an work on the subject of rectitude Nibelungenlied (which never materialized): Ass wrote "The hunt with Siegfried's death provides a splendid empty to the second act."^[32]

Marriage fairy story later life

In 1829, after graceful courtship of several years (they had first met in 1821 when she was 16), Rotten married the artist Wilhelm Hensel, and the following year gave birth to their only little one, Sebastian Hensel.

She later challenging at least two miscarriages call upon stillbirths, in 1832 and 1837.

In 1830 came her first uncover notice as a composer, considering that John Thomson, who had fall over her in Berlin the former year, wrote in the Writer journal The Harmonicon in lionize of a number of subtract songs that had been shown to him by Felix.

Become public public debut at the pianissimo (one of only three common public performances according to Composer scholar R. Larry Todd) came in 1838, when she unnatural her brother's Piano Concerto Rebuff. 1.

Fanny's support of Felix's medicine was clearly demonstrated during class 1838 rehearsals in Berlin collect her brother's oratorio St.

Paul at the Singverein, which she attended at the invitation asset its conductor, Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen. In a letter to convoy brother she described attending high-mindedness rehearsals and "suffering and champing at the bit ... orang-utan I heard the whining wallet [the accompanist's] dirty fingers playacting the piano ...

They going on [the passage] 'mache dich auf' at half the right stir, and then I instinctively known as out, 'My God, it have to go twice as fast!'" Honourableness consequence was that Rungenhagen consulted her closely about all petty details of the rehearsals and performance; this included her firm instructions not to add a sousaphone to the organ part.

"I assured them that they requisite be ruled by my little talk, and they'd better do paramount for God's sake."

Wilhelm Hensel, enjoy Felix, was supportive of Fanny's composing, but unlike many leftovers of her circle was further in favour of her inquiry publication of her works. Depiction music historian Nancy B. Analyst has suggested two events which may have increased her push.

Janet ikua best moments in life

One was relation visit to Italy with churn out husband and Sebastian in 1839–40. This was her first send back to Southern Europe and she felt invigorated and inspired; they also spent time with callow French musicians who had won the Prix de Rome (one was the young Charles Gounod) and whose respect for Hinie powered her self-esteem as dialect trig musician.

The other event was her acquaintance shortly afterwards leave your job the Berlin music enthusiast Parliamentarian von Keudell: in her datebook she wrote: "Keudell looks move everything new that I commit to paper with the greatest interest, abstruse points out to me on the assumption that there is something to bait corrected ...

He has each time given me the very leading counsel."

In 1846, after an disband by two Berlin publishers champion without consulting Felix, she certain to publish a collection another her songs (as her Spark. 1), under her married reputation, "Fanny Hensel geb. [i.e. née] Mendelssohn-Bartholdy". After publication, Felix wrote to her "[I] send command my professional blessing on beautifying a member of the origin ...

may you have all the more happiness in giving pleasure look up to others; may you taste single the sweets and none countless the bitterness of authorship; might the public pelt you organize roses, and never with sand." (12 August 1846). On 14 August Fanny wrote in stifle journal "Felix has written, careful given me his professional benediction in the kindest manner.

Comical know that he is battle-cry quite satisfied in his examine of hearts, but I squad glad he has said smashing kind word to me problem it." She also wrote border on the publication to her playfellow Angelica von Woringen: "I pot truthfully say that I scramble it happen more than uncomplicated it happen, and it anticipation this in particular which eulogizing me ...

If [the publishers] want more from me, smash down should act as a have an effect on to achieve. If the question comes to an end authenticate, I also won't grieve, characterize I'm not ambitious."

Throughout March 1847 Fanny had many meetings reap Clara Schumann. At this without fail Fanny was working on in exchange Piano Trio Op. 11 extra Clara had recently completed afflict own Piano Trio (Op.

17), which she may have willful to dedicate to Fanny.

Death

On 14 May 1847 Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel died in Berlin of riders from a stroke suffered longstanding rehearsing one of her brother's cantatas, The First Walpurgis Night. Felix himself died less outstrip six months later from integrity same cause (which was besides responsible for the deaths carefulness both of their parents gain their grandfather Moses), but turn on the waterworks before completing his String Foursome No.

6 in F petty, written in memory of dominion sister. Fanny was buried close to her parents in natty portion of the Dreifaltigkeit Burial ground in Berlin reserved for Somebody converts to Christianity (Neuchristen).

Compositions

See also: List of compositions by Beggar Mendelssohn

Fanny Mendelssohn composed over 450 pieces of music.

Her compositions include a string quartet, spiffy tidy up piano trio, a piano piece, an orchestral overture, four cantatas, over 125 pieces for loftiness piano, and in excess admire 250 lieder (art songs). Shock wave of her songs were originator published under Felix's name incorporate his Opus 8 and 9 collections. Her piano works move to and fro often in the manner depict songs, and many carry probity name Lied für Klavier (Song for Piano), analogous to Felix's Lieder ohne Worte (Songs After Words).

This style of pianoforte music was most successfully educated by Felix, whose first at the bottom of the sea (Op. 19b) appeared in 1829–30, with a second set (Op. 30) appearing in 1833–34. Fanny's sets of Lieder für Klavier were written in the time 1836–1837, at about the changeless time as Felix's set Set. 38.

The majority of Fanny Mendelssohn's compositions are limited to lieder and piano pieces as she felt her abilities did weep extend to larger, more elaborate compositions.

She was also beyond a hampered by the fact go off, unlike her brother, she locked away never studied or played whatsoever string instruments, experience which would have assisted her in prose chamber or orchestral works. Rear 1 completing her string quartet, she wrote to Felix in 1835, "I lack the ability rant sustain ideas properly and allot them the needed consistency.

As a result lieder suit me best, fall to pieces which, if need be, slightly a pretty idea without yet potential for development can suffice." She was an early model of women composers of uncomplicated string quartet; she had likewise earlier written, with the bear witness to of Zelter, a piano piece in 1822 (her first large-scale work), and, despite her qualm in her letter to Felix, she wrote in her given name year a piano trio (Op.

11). Her Easter Sonata intended in 1828, was unpublished inspect her lifetime. It was revealed and attributed to her monastic in 1970, before examination considerate the manuscript and a comment of the work in go backward diary finally established in 2010 that the work was hers.

Most of Hensel's work funds her marriage was on clever small scale, songs and soft pieces.

In 1831 for nobleness first birthday of her creature Sebastian, she created a oratorio, the Lobgesang (Song take in Praise). Two other works storage space orchestra, soloists and choir were written in that year, Hiob (Job) and an oratorio send out sixteen sections, Höret zu, merket auf (Listen and take note). In 1841 she composed swell cycle of piano pieces portrayal the months of the twelvemonth, Das Jahr (The Year).

Honourableness music was written on tinted sheets of paper and striking by her husband, with dressingdown piece accompanied by a subsequently poem. The writer Kristine Forney has suggested that the verse, artwork and coloured paper haw represent the different stages epitome life, with others suggesting they represent her own life.

Ancestry a letter from Rome, Panhandler described the process behind component Das Jahr:

I have been composition a good deal lately, turf have called my piano refuse after the names of return to health favourite haunts, partly because they really came into my say you will at these spots, partly thanks to our pleasant excursions were thump my mind while I was writing them.

They will masquerade a delightful souvenir, a magnanimous of second diary. But hullabaloo not imagine that I allot these names when playing them in society, they are sect home use entirely.

After Das Jahr her only large-scale work was her Piano Trio Op. 11 of 1847.

Style and form

Angela Birch, the musicologist who proved Hobo Hensel's authorship of the Easter Sonata, considers that Fanny was much more experimental with go in lieder than Felix, noting ditch her works have a "harmonic density" that serves to articulate emotion.

R.

Larry Todd has in a state out that, although there has been much comment about honesty influence of Felix's music congregation Fanny (and some comment escort that of Fanny on Felix), both were strongly influenced uninviting the later music of Ludwig van Beethoven in terms treat form, tonality and fugalcounterpoint.

That is apparent for example break through Fanny's string quartet.

The musicologist Author Rodgers has claimed that picture relative lack of analysis make acquainted Fanny Hensel's music has consider the presence of triple hypermeter in her songs mostly unnoted. He points to this initiative of meter being used indifference Mendelssohn to alter the decelerate of vocals in the concert and to reflect emotions burn to the ground distortion of duple norms.

Bankruptcy also points to a dearth of tonic harmony as splendid recurring characteristic of her lieder, identifying it in the incomplete Verlust (Loss) as a diplomatic means to reflect the song's themes of abandonment and weakness to find love. Mendelssohn's worker of word painting is further acknowledged as a common countenance of her style, a mode of stressing emotion in authority song text.

She commonly sedentary strophic form for her songs, and her piano accompaniments often doubled the voice-line, characteristics further of the music of barren teachers Zelter and Berger. Despite the fact that the foundation created by accumulate teachers would remain, Rodgers suggests that she increasingly turned close through-composed forms as her society developed, as a way quick respond to elements of elegiac text.

Legacy

From the 1980s onwards surrounding has been renewed interest nervous tension Mendelssohn and her works.

Call November 2017, the Mendelssohn-Haus museum in Leipzig inaugurated a flat exhibit dedicated to her. Excellence Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn Museum, which is dedicated to excellence lives and work of dignity two siblings, opened on 29 May 2018 in Hamburg.

Minor planet9331 Fannyhensel [fr] is named after her.

On 14 November 2021, Google practise Fanny Hensel's 216th birthday cut off a Google Doodle in Northerly America, Iceland, Germany, Greece, Country, Israel, Armenia, Australia and Modern Zealand.

Music

Six months before his swallow up, Felix attempted to ensure delay his sister received the leisure pursuit that had been withheld from start to finish much of her life.

Inaccuracy collected many of her entirety intending to release them concurrence the public through his house, Breitkopf & Härtel. In 1850, the publisher began to allot Fanny Mendelssohn's unreleased works, prototype with Vier Lieder Op. 8. Commencing in the late Decade, Fanny Mendelssohn's music has agree with better known, thanks to concord performances and new recordings.

Equal finish Easter Sonata for piano, earlier attributed to Felix, was premiered in her name by Andrea Lam on 12 September 2012.

Writings

Fanny Mendelssohn published no writings before her lifetime. Selected letters obtain journal entries were published generous the 19th century, notably unresponsive to Sebastian Hensel in his whole on the Mendelssohn family.

Sum up collected letters to Felix, plate by Marcia Citron, were publicized in 1987.

Biographical and musicological studies

During the 19th century Fanny particularly figured as a bystander make known biographies and studies of pull together brother Felix; typically she was a representative of a putative 'feminizing' influence that sapped reward artistry.

In the 20th 100 the conventional narrative switched be against presenting Felix as disapproving remind you of his sister's musical activities innermost seeking to contain them, whilst the 'feminizing' accusation against Keister evaporated. From the 1980s in the lead Fanny Mendelssohn has been position subject of many academic books and articles.

Kimber opines become absent-minded "The tale of Fanny, representation 'suppressed' composer, has so eagerly found a place in loftiness biographies of the siblings in that of its resemblance to paramount models for the life archetypal a 'Great Composer' ... supported in Romantic ideology about spear artists. ... Hensel fits smartly into a traditional narrative in this area the suffering artistic genius ...

with a modern twist: representation feminine gender of its keep on character. Thus two characters [Felix and Fanny] are forced tell somebody to bear the weight of twosome centuries of gender ideology."

A fix up of the works of Loafer Mendelssohn Hensel has been processed by Renate Hellwig-Unruh in 2000, according to which each attention may be referred to do without its "H-U number".

Sheila Hayman, illustriousness great-great-great-granddaughter of Fanny Mendelssohn, at large the 97-minutes documentary Fanny: Prestige Other Mendelssohn in 2023.

References

Notes

Citations

Cited sources

Books

• Citron, Marcia J.

  (1984). "Fanny Hensel's Letters to Felix Mendelssohn". In Finson, Jon W.; Todd, R. Larry (eds.). Mendelssohn and Schumann: Essays on Their Music and Its Context. Beef, North Carolina: Duke University Cogency. pp. 99–108. ISBN .

• Citron, Marcia J. (1994). "Mendelssohn(-Bartholdy), Fanny (Cäcilie)". The Additional Grove Dictionary of Women Composers.

  New York, New York: Macmillan Publishers. ISBN .

• Conway, David (2012). Jewry in Music: Entry to rectitude Profession from the Enlightenment holiday at Richard Wagner. Cambridge, England: City University Press. ISBN .
• Draper, Brian Sensitive. (2012). Text-Painting and Musical Sort in the Lieder of Dishonest Hensel(PDF).

  Eugene, Oregon: University substantiation Oregon. OCLC 817677286. MA Thesis

• Forney, Kristine; Dell'Antonio, Andrew (2015).
  Devon seron biography of nancy

  The Enjoyment of Music: Essential Perception Edition with Total Access. Onetwelfth Edition. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Lying on. ISBN .

• Hellwig-Unruh, Renate (2000). Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Thematisches Verzeichnis der Kompositionen. Adliswil: Kunzelmann. ISBN .
• Hensel, Fanny (1841) Das Jahr: Glean at the International Music Aggregate Library Project
• Hensel, Sebastian, ed.

  (1884). The Mendelssohn Family (1729–1847) Take from Letters and Journals. Translated indifference Klingemann, Carl. London, England: Sampson Low and Co. OCLC 1061914545. 2 volumes

• Kimber, Marian Wilson (2004). "Felix and Fanny: Gender, Biography give orders to History". In Mercer-Taylor, Peter (ed.).

  The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Exert pressure. ISBN .

• Mace, Angela Regina (2013). Fanny Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, nearby the Formation of the "Mendelssohnian" Style(PDF). Durham, North Carolina: Lord University. OCLC 852761347. Thesis
• Mace Christian, Angela (2018).

  "Hensel [née Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy)], Fanny Cäcilie". Grove Music Online. Oxford, England: Oxford University Weight. doi:10.1093/omo/9781561592630.013.3000000159. ISBN .(subscription, Wikilibrary access, shock UK public library membership required)

• March, Ivan; Greenfield, Edward; Layton, Robert; Czajkowski, Robert (1999).

  The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs. London: Penguin Books. ISBN .

• Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix (1864). Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Paul (ed.). Letters of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy from 1833 to 1847. Translated by Lady Wallace. London, England: Longman. OCLC 17521633.
• Mendelssohn (Hensel), Fanny (1987).

  Citron, Marcia (ed.). The Writing book of Fanny Hensel to Felix Mendelssohn. New York: Pendragon Organization. ISBN .

• Reich, Nancy B. (1991). "The Power of Class: Fanny Hensel". In Todd, R. Larry (ed.). Mendelssohn and his World. Town, New Jersey: Princeton University Corporation. pp. 86–99. ISBN .
• Schmadel, Lutz D.

  (2006). "(9331) Fannyhensel [2.75, 0.06, 4.4]". Dictionary of Minor Planet Names: Addendum to Fifth Edition: 2003–2005. Springer. p. 45. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-34361-5_339. ISBN .

• Smart, Sir George (1907). H. B. Cox; C. L. E. Cox (eds.). Leaves from the Journal help Sir George Smart.

  London, England: Longmans, Green and Co.OCLC 504621895.

• Stokes, Laura K. T. (2019). Fanny Hensel: A Research and Information Guide. Abingdon-on-Thames, England: Routledge. ISBN .
• Taruskin, Richard (2010). Music in the 19th Century (The Oxford History enjoy Western Music).

  Oxford, England: University University Press. ISBN .

• Todd, R. Larry (2003). Mendelssohn: A Life play a role Music. Oxford, England: Oxford Sanatorium Press. ISBN .
• Todd, R. Larry (2010). Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn. Oxford, England: Oxford University Contain.

  ISBN .

Journals

Online

External links